Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

Laura punctured the foil over her steaming chicken almondine.

She felt no appetite. Those drowned bodies ... stiff and dead and moving on dark currents ... dark currents of rage. "He's right," she said. "Not my Loretta. But one of us has to go.

To Singapore."

David gaped. "Why?"

"Because we're needed there, that's why. Because it has what we want," she said. "Power to control our own lives.

And the real answers.' The truth!"

David stared at her. "The truth. You think you can get it?

You think you're that important?"

"I'm not important," Laura said. "I know I'm nothing much now-the sort of person who gets pushed around, insulted, and has her house shot up. But I might make myself important, if I worked at it. It could happen. If Suvendra needs me, I'm going."

"You don't even know Suvendra!"

'I know she's Rizome, and I know she's fighting for us.

We can't turn our backs on an associate. And whoever shot up our Lodge is going to pay for it."

The baby started to whimper. David slumped in his chair.

He spoke very quietly. "What about us, Laura-you and me and Loretta? You could die over there. "

"This isn't just for the company-it's for us! Running away can't make us safe."

"Then what am I supposed to do?" David said. "Stand on the dock and blow kisses? While you sail off to make the world safe for democracy?"

"So what? Women always did that in wartime!" Laura struggled to lower her voice. "You're needed here anyway, to counsel the Committee. I'll go to Singapore."

"I don't want you to go." He was trying to be curt and tough, lay it down in front of Emily like an ultimatum, but all the force was out of it. He was afraid for her, and it was half a plea.

"I'll come back and I'll be fine," she said. The words sounded like a reassurance, instead of a refusal. But he wasn't any less hurt.

Taut silence. Emily looked wretched. "Maybe this isn't the time to talk about it. You've both been under a lot of strain.

No one says you're acting non-R."

"They wouldn't have to say it," Laura said. "We know how to feel it without any words."

David spoke up. "You're going to do it no matter what I say to you, aren't you.

It was no use hesitating now. Better to get it over with.

"Yes. I have to," she told him. "It's gotten to me now. It's inside me, David. I've seen too much of it. If I don't work through this somehow, I'll never really sleep again."

"Well," he said. "Then it's no use arguing, is it? This is where I beat you into submission, or threaten divorce." He got off his barstool, jerkily,, and began pacing. Wired with tension, his feet stuffing the carpet. Somehow she forced herself to stay quiet and let him struggle with himself.

At last he spoke aloud. "I guess we're in the thick of it now, whether we like it or not. Hell, for all we know, half of

Rizome's on some terrorists' hit list, just because we took a stand. If we cower to criminals, we'll never live it down.

He stopped and looked at her.

She'd won. She felt her face, set stiff and stubbornly, break into a smile. Helpless and radiant, a smile for him. She was very proud of him. Proud just because of what he was; and proud, too, that Emily had seen it.

He sat on his barstool again and locked eyes with her.

"But you're not going," he told her. "I am."

She took his hand and looked at it, held it in her fingers.

Good, strong, warm hand. "That's not how it works with us," she told him gently. "You're the idea man, David. I'm the one who hustles people."

"Let me get shot," he said. "I couldn't stand it if anything happened to you. I mean that."

She hugged him hard. "Nothing will happen, sweetheart.

I'll just do the goddamned job. And I'll come back. Covered with glory."

He broke away from her, got to his feet. "You won't even give me that much, will you?" He headed for the door. "I'm going out."

Emily opened her mouth. Laura grabbed her arm. David left the apartment.

"Let him go," Laura said. "He's like that when we fight.

He needs it."

"I'm sorry," she said.

Laura felt close to tears. "It's been real bad for us. All that time online. He has to blow off some steam."

"You're just jet-lagged. And Net-burned. I'll get you some

Kleenex. "

"I'm better with him, usually." She forced a smile. "But right now I'm on-rag."

"Oh, gosh." Emily gave her a tissue. "No wonder."

"Sorry."

Emily touched her shoulder gently. "I always hassle you with my problems; Laura. But you never lean on me. Always so controlled. Everyone says so." She hesitated. "You and

David need some time together."

"We'll have all the time in the world when I get back."

"Maybe you ought to think it over."

"It's no use, Emily. We can't get away from it." She wiped her eyes. "It was something Stubbs told me, before they killed him. One world means there's no place to hide."

She shook her head, tossed her hair back, forced the sting in her eyes to fade. "Hell, Singapore's just a phone call away.

I'll call David from there every day. Make it up to him."

Singapore.

SINGAPORE. Hot tropic light slanted through brown wooden shutters. A ceiling fan creaked and wobbled, creaked and wobbled, and dust motes did a slow atomic dance above her head.

She was on a cot, in an upstairs room, in an elderly waterfront barn. Rizome's HQ in Singapore-the Rizome godown.

Laura sat up, reluctantly, blinking. Thin wood-grain lino- leum, cool and tacky under her sweating feet. The siesta had made her head hurt.

Massive steel I-beams pierced through floor and ceiling, their whitewash peeling over lichen patches of rust. The walls around her were piled high with bright, unstable heaps of crates and cardboard boxes. Canned hairspray that was bad for the atmosphere. Ladies' beauty soap full of broad-spectrum antibiotics. Quack tonics of zinc and ginseng that claimed to cure impotence and clarify the spleen. All this evil crap had come with the place when the previous owners went bank- rupt. Suvendra's Rizome crew refused to market it.

Sooner or later they would toss it out and take the loss, but in the meantime a clan of geckos had set up housekeeping in the nooks and crannies. Geckos-wall-walking lizards with pale, translucent skins, and slitted eyes, and swollen-fingered paws. Here came one now, picking its way stealthily across the water-stained ceiling. It was the big matronly-looking one that liked to crouch overhead by the light fixture. "Hello,

Gwyneth," Laura called to it, and yawned.

She checked her wrist. Four P.M. She was still far behind on her sleep, hurry and worry and jet lag, but it was time to get up and get back after it.

She stepped into her jeans, straightened her T-shirt. Her deck sat on a small folding table, behind a big woven basket of paper flowers. Some Singapore politico had sent Laura the bouquet as a welcome gift. Customary. She'd kept it, though, because she'd never seen paper flowers like they made here in

Singapore. They were extremely elegant, almost scary look- ing in their museum-replica perfection. Red hibiscus, white chrysanthemum, Singapore's national colors. Beautiful and per- fect and unreal. They smelled like French cologne.

She sat, and turned the deck on, and loaded data. Pop- topped a jug of mineral water and poured it in a dragon- girdled teacup. She sipped, and studied her screen, and was absorbed.

The world around her faded. Into black glass, green letter- ing. The inner world of the Net.

PARLIAMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE

Select Committee on Information PolicyPublic hearings, October 9, 2023

COMMITTEE CHAIR

S. P. Jeyaratnam, M.P. (Jurong), P.I.P.

VICE-CHAIR

_Y. H. Leong, M.P. (Moulmein), P.I.P.