Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

"You want me to go to Singapore?" Laura said. "Yes. I'll go there. If it'll stop this."

"They need not fear little toy planes," Andrei said. "But you can tell them to be afraid of the dark. To be afraid of food-and air-and water-and their own shadows."

David looked at Andrei, his jaw dropping.

Andrei sighed. "If they are innocent of this, then they must prove it and join us immediately."

"Yes, of course," Laura said quickly. "You have to make common cause. Together. Rizome can help."

"Otherwise I pity Singapore," Andrei said. He had a look in his eyes that she had never seen in a human face. It was the farthest thing from pity.

Andrei left them at the little military airstrip at Pearls. But the evacuation flight he'd promised never showed-some kind of foulup. Eventually, after dark, a cargo chopper ferried

Laura and David to the civilian airport at Point Salines.

The night was pierced with headlights and the airport road was snarled with traffic. A company of mechanized infantry had seized the airport gates. A blasted truck on the roadside smoldered gently-it had wandered through a scattering of paper-clip mines.

Their chopper carried them smoothly over the fence. In- side, the airport was a jumble of luxury saloons and limos.

Militia in flak jackets and riot helmets were beating the airport bounds with long bamboo poles. Minesweepers. As the chopper settled to the weedy tarmac, Laura heard a sharp crack and flash as a pole connected.

"Watch you step," the pilot said cheerily, flinging open the hatch. A militia kid in camo, about nineteen-he looked excited by the night's action. Any kind of destruction was thrilling-it didn't seem to matter that it was his own people.

Laura and David decamped onto the tarmac, carrying the sleeping baby in her tote.

The chopper lifted silently. A little baggage cart scurried past them in the darkness. Someone had crudely wired a pair of push brooms to the cart's front. Laura and David shuffled carefully toward. the lights of the terminal. It was only thirty yards away. Surely somebody had swept it for mines already... . They eased their way around a mauve sports car.

Two fat men, wearing elaborate video makeup, were asleep or drunk in the car's plush bucket seats.

Soldiers yelled at them, beckoning. " 'Ey! Get away! You people! No robbin', no lootin'!"

They stepped into the long floodlit portico of the terminal.

Some of the glass frontage had been smashed or blown out; inside, the place was crammed. Excited crowd noise, waft of body heat, popping, scuffling. A Cuban airliner lifted off, its graceful hiss of takeoff drowned by the crowd.

A soldier in shoulder bars grabbed David's arm. "Papers.

Passport card."

"Don't have 'em," David said. "We were burned out."

"No reservation, no tickets?" the colonel said. "Can nah come in without tickets." He examined their cadre's uni- forms, puzzled. "Where you get those telly-glasses?"

"Gould and Castleman sent us," Laura lied smoothly. She touched her glasses. "Havana's just a stopover for us. We're witnesses. Outside contacts. You understand."

"Yah," the colonel said, flinching. He waved them inside.

They filtered quickly into the crowd. "That was brilliant!"

David told her. "But we still got no tickets."

["We can handle that,"] Emerson said. ["We have the

Cuban airline online now. They're running the evacuation-we can get you the next flight."

"Great. "

["You're almost back-try not to worry. "]

"Thanks, Atlanta. Solidarity." David scanned the crowd.

At least three hundred of them. "Man, it's a mad doctor's convention

Like kicking over a rotten log, Laura thought. The airport was crawling with tight-faced Anglos and Europeans-they seemed split pretty evenly between well-dressed gangster ex- iles and vice-dazzled techies gone native. Dozens of refugees sprawled on the floor, nervously clutching their loot. Laura stepped over the feet of a slim black woman passed out on a heap of designer luggage, a dope sticker glued to her neck.

Half a dozen hustlers in Trinidadian shirts were shooting craps on the floor, shouting excitedly in some East European language. Two screaming ten-year-olds chased each other through a group of men methodically smashing tape cassettes.

"Look," David said, pointing. A group of white-clad women stood at the edge of the crowd. Faint looks of disdain on their faces. Nurses, Laura thought. Or nuns.

"Church hookers!" David said. "Look, that's Carlotta!"

They shouldered their way through, skidding on trash.

Suddenly a scream erupted to their left. "What do you mean, you can't change it?" The shouter was waving a Grenadian credit card in the face of a militia captain. "There's fucking millions on this card, asshole!" A portly Anglo in a suit and jogging shoes-the shoes flickered with readouts. "You'd better call your fucking boss, Jack!"

"Sit down," the captain ordered. He gave the man a shove.

"Okay," the man said, not sitting. He stuffed the card inside his lapel. "Okay. I changed my mind. I'm choosing the tunnels instead. Take me back to the tunnels, pal." No response. "Don't you know who you're fucking talking to?"

He grabbed the captain's sleeve.

The captain knocked the grasping hand loose with a quick chop to the arm. Then he kicked the man's feet out from under him. The complainer fell heavily on his ass. He lurched back to his feet, his fists clenching.

The captain shrugged his tangle-gun free and shot the man pointblank. A high-speed splattering punch of wet plastic. A

serpent's nest of stinking ribbon flew over the Anglo's chest, trapping his arms, his neck, his face, and a nearby piece of luggage. He hit the floor squalling.

A roar of alarm from the crowd. Three militia privates rushed to their captain's aid, guns drawn. "Sit down!" the captain shouted, pumping another round into the chamber.

"Everyone! Down, now!" The tangle-victim started to choke.

People sat. Laura and David, too. people sat in a spreading wave, like a sporting event. Some laced their hands behind their heads, as if by reflex. The captain grinned and bran- dished his gun over them. "Better." He kicked the man, casually.

Suddenly the nuns approached in a body. Their leader was a black woman; she pulled back her wimple, revealing gray hair, a lined face. "Captain," she said calmly. "This man is choking. "

"He a t'ief, Sister," the captain said.

"That may be, Captain, but he still needs to breathe."

Three of the Church women knelt by the victim, tugging at the strands around his throat. The old woman-an Abbess,

Laura thought unwillingly-turned to the crowd and spread her hands in the crook-fingered Church blessing. "Violence serves no one," she said. "Please be silent."

She walked away, her sisters following without a word.

They left the tangle-victim where he lay, wheezing quietly.

The captain shrugged, and slung his gun again, and turned away, gesturing to his men. After a moment people began to stand up.

["That was well done,"] Emerson said.

David helped Laura to her feet and picked up the baby's tote. "Hey! Carlotta!" They followed her.

Carlotta spoke briefly to the Abbess, pulled her wimple back, and stepped away from her sisters.

"Hello," she said. Her frizzy mane of hair was pulled back. Her sharp-cheeked face looked naked and bleak. It was the first time they'd ever seen Carlotta without makeup.

"I'm surprised to see you leaving," Laura told her.

Carlotta shook her head. "They hit our temple. A temporary setback."

"Sorry," David said. "We were burned out, too."

"We'll be back," Carlotta shrugged. "Where there's war, there's whores."

The speakers crackled into life-a Cuban stewardess speak- ing Spanish. "Hey, that's us," David said suddenly. "They want us at the desk." He paused. "You hold Loretta, I'll go." He hurried off.