Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

"Fuck it, David, go!" She hauled at his arm. He went reluctantly, stumbling.

Once outside, they had to back away from the heat. One by one, the upper rooms were beginning to explode. David dropped his washcloth, numbly. "Flashover," he said, staring.

A fist of dirty flame punched out an upstairs window.

Shards of glass fountained across the lawn. "The heat builds up," David muttered clinically. "The whole room ignites at once. And the gas pressure just blows the walls out."

The soldiers pushed them back, holding their stupid, use- less tangle-guns at chest level, like police batons. David went reluctantly, hypnotized by destruction. "I've run simulations of this, but I've never seen it happen," he said, to no one in particular. "Jesus, what a sight!"

Laura shoved one of the teenage soldiers as he trampled her bare foot. "Some help you are, asshole! Where in hell is the fire department or whatever you use in this godforsaken place?"

The boy backed off, trembling, and dropped his gun. "Look at the sky!" He pointed northeast.

Low scud of burning clouds on the northern horizon. Lit like dawn with ugly, burning amber. "What the hell," David said, marveling. "That's miles away.... Laura, that's Point

Sauteur. It's the whole fucking complex off there. That's a refinery fire!"

"Brimstone fire," the soldier wailed. He started sobbing, dabbing at his face. The other soldier, a bigger man, kicked him hard in the leg. "Pick up you weapon, bloodclot!"

A distant dirty flash lit the clouds. "Man, I hope they haven't hit the tankers," David said. "Man, I hope the poor bastards on those rigs have lifeboats. " He tugged at his earpiece. "You getting all this, Atlanta?"

Laura pulled her own rig off his head. She backed away and fetched Loretta in her tote. She pulled the screaming baby free of the thing and cradled her against her chest, rocking her and murmuring.

Then she put the glasses on.

Now she could watch it without hurting so much.

The mansion burned to the ground. It took all night. Their little group huddled together in the guardhouse, listening to tales of disaster on the phones.

Around seven A.M., a spidery military chopper arrived and set down by the fountain.

Andrei, the Polish émigré, hopped out. He took a large box from the pilot and joined them at the gates.

Andréi's left arm was wrapped in medicinal gauze, and he stank of chemical soot. "I have brought shoes and uniforms for all survivors," he announced. The box was full of flat, plastic-wrapped packs: the standard cadre's jeans and short-sleeved shirts. "Very sorry to be such bad hosts," Andrei told them somberly. "The Grenadian People apologize to you."

"At least we survived," Laura told him. She slipped her bare feet gratefully into the soft deck shoes. "Who took credit?"

"The malefactors of the F.A.C.T. have broken all civilized bounds. "

"I figured," Laura said, taking the box. "We'll take turns changing inside the guardhouse. David and I will go first."

Inside, she shucked out of her flimsy nightrobe and buttoned on the stiff, fresh shirt and heavy jeans. David put on a shirt and shoes.

They stepped out and Rita went in, shivering. "Now, you will please join me in the helicopter," Andrei said. "The world must know of this atrocity...."

"All right," Laura said. "Who's online?"

["Practically everybody,"] Emily told her. ["We got you on a live feed throughout the company, and to a couple of news services. Vienna's gonna have a hard time holding this one.... It's just too big."]

Andrei paused at the chopper's hatchway. "Can you leave the baby?"

"No way," David said flatly. They climbed into two crash couches in the back, and David held Loretta's tote in his lap.

Andrei took the copilot's seat and they buckled in.

Up and away in a quiet hiss of rotor blades.

David glanced out the bulletproof window at the mansion's black wreckage. "Any idea what hit our house?"

"Yes. There were many of them. Very small, cheap planes-paper and bamboo, like children's kites. Radar- transparent. Many have crashed now, but not before they dropped their many bombs. Little thermite sticks with flaming jelly."

"Were they hitting us in particular? Rizome, I mean?"

Andrei shrugged in his shoulder harness. "It is hard to say.

Many such houses have burned. The communiqué does men- tion you.... I have it here." He passed them a printout.

Laura glanced at it: date and tag line, and block after block of the usual Stalinist garbage. "Do you have a casualty count?"

"Seven hundred so far. It is rising. They are still pulling bodies from the offshore rigs. They hit us with antiship 'missiles."

"Good God," David said.

"Those were heavy armaments. We have choppers out looking for ships. There may have been several. But there are many ships in the Caribbean, and missiles have a long range."

He reached into his shirt pocket. "Have you seen these before?"

Laura took the object from his fingers. It looked like a big plastic paper clip. It was speckled camo-green and brown, and weighed almost nothing. "No."

"This one is defused-it is plastic explosive. A mine. It can blow the tire off a truck. Or the leg off a woman or child." His voice was cold. "The small planes scattered many, many hundreds of them. You will not be traveling by the road anymore. And we will not set foot around the complex. "

"What kind of crazy bastard-" David said.

"They mean to deny us our own country," Andrei said.

"These devices will shed our blood for months to come."

Land slid below them; suddenly they were over the Carib- bean. The chopper wheeled. "Do not fly into the smoke,"

Andrei told the pilot. "It is toxic."

Smoke still billowed from two of the offshore rigs. They resembled giant tabletops piled high with burning cars. A pair of fire barges spewed long, feathered plumes of chemical foam over them.

The jackleg rigs had cranked themselves down to the sur- face; their ornate hydraulics were awash with saltwater. The water was full of blackened flotsam-blobs of fabric, writh- ing plastic snakes of cable. And stiff-armed floating things that looked like dummies. Laura looked away with a gasp of pain

"No, look very well," Andrei told her. "They never even showed us a face.... Let these people have faces, at least."

"I can't look," she said tightly.

"Then close your eyes behind the glasses."

"All right." She pressed her blind face to the window.

"Andrei. What are you going to do?"

"You are leaving this afternoon," he said. "As you see, we can no longer guarantee your safety. You will leave as soon as the airport is swept for mines." He paused. "These will be the last flights out. We want no more foreigners. No prying journalists. And none of the vermin from the Vienna

Convention. We are sealing our borders."

She opened her eyes. They were hovering over the shoreline. Half-naked Rastas were pulling corpses up onto the docks. A dead little girl, limp clothes sheeting water. Laura bit back a shriek, grabbing David's arm. Her gorge rose. She slumped back into the seat, fighting her stomach.

"Can't you see my wife is sick?" David said sharply.

"This is enough."

"No," Laura said shakily. "Andrei's right.... Andrei, listen. There's no way that Singapore could have done this.

That's not gang war. This is atrocity."

"They tell us the same," Andrei admitted. "I think they are afraid. This morning, we captured their agents in Trini- dad. It seems they have been playing with toy planes and matches."

"You can't attack Singapore!" Laura said. "More killing can't help you!"

"We are not Christs or Gandhis," Andrei said. He spoke slowly, carefully. "This is terrorism. But there is a deeper kind of terror than this... a fear far older and darker. You could tell Singapore about that terror. You know something about it, Laura, I think."