Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

Like most Singaporeans, they were sports nuts. Day after day they gathered in their polite, penniless hordes, keeping fit with healthful exercise. Except in their case it was unarmed combat-a very cheap sport, requiring no equipment but the human body... .

You could tell them in the streets by the way they walked.

Heads held high, eyes glazed with that calm karate look that came from the knowledge that they could break human bones with their hands. They were worthless and proud, languidly accepting any handout the system offered, but showing noth- ing even close to gratitude. Legally and constitutionally speak- ing, it was hard to say why they shouldn't be allowed to do nothing.... Except, of course, that it struck at the very heart of the industrial ethic.

Laura left the parapet. Mr. Suvendra had jury-rigged a coat-hanger antenna for his battery-powered TV, and they were struggling to catch a broadcast from Johore. The broad- cast flickered on suddenly, and everyone crowded around the television. Laura shouldered her way in between Ali and

Suvendra's young niece, Derveet.

Emergency news. The anchorman was a Malay-speaking

Maphilindonesian. The image was scratchy. It was hard to tell whether it was a simple. TV screwup or deliberate jam- ming by Singapore.

"Invasion talk," Suvendra translated gloomily. "Vienna are not liking this state of emergency: they call it coup d'etat, la!"

A young newswoman in a chiffon Muslim chador gestured at a map of the Malay peninsula. Nasty-looking storm fronts showed the potential striking range of Singaporean planes and ships. A weather girl for warfare, Laura thought.

"Definitely, Vienna could not invasion against all that, la...."

"Singapore Air Force are flying up Nauru, to protect the launch sites!"

"I hope their giant lasers are not hitting their own fellow in orbit!"

"Those poor little Pacific Island fellows, they must bitterly regretting the day they started on Singapore client-state!"

Despite its awful news, the television was cheering every- one up. The sense of contact with the Net sent a quick, racing sense of community over them. Half circled, shoulder to shoulder before the TV, they were almost like a Rizome council session. Suvendra felt it, too-she looked up with her rust smile in hours.

Laura was discreetly silent. The crew were still chagrined at her for disappearing earlier. She had run off to get in touch with David and had come back unconscious in a cab. She had told them about meeting Sticky. Their first thought was to inform the Government-but the Government had all that news already. The spring guns, the pellets, the mines-the acting prime minister, Jeyaratnam, had announced all that on television. Warned the populace-and shut them up in their own homes.

Suvendra clapped her hands. "Council session?"

A young associate manned the television, off on the corner of the roof. The rest linked hands and briefly sang a Rizome song, in Malay. Amid the city's menacing silence, their raised voices felt good. It almost made Laura forget that

Rizome Singapore were now refugees skulking on the roof of their own property... .

"For me," Suvendra told them seriously, "I think we have done all we can. The Government is martial law now, isn't it?

Violence is coming, isn't it? Do any of us want to fight

Government? Hands?"

No one voted for violence. They'd already voted with their feet-by running upstairs to avoid the rebels.

Ali spoke up. "Could we escape the city?"

"Out to sea?" suggested Derveet hopefully.

They looked over the waterfront: the unmanned cargo ships, the giant idle cranes, the loading robots shut down by Anti-

Labourite longshoremen who had seized the control systems.

Out to sea were the skidding white plumes of navy hydrofoils on patrol.

"This isn't Grenada. They're not letting anyone go," Mr.

Suvendra said with finality. "They'd shoot at us."

"I agree," said Suvendra. "But we could demand arrest,

Ia. By the Government. "

The others looked gloomy.

"Here we are radicals," Suvendra told them. "We are economic democrats in authoritarian regime. It is Singapore reform we are demanding, but chance is spoilt, now. So the proper place for us in Singapore is jail."

Long, meditative silence. Monsoon thunder rolled in from, offshore.

"I like the idea," Laura said meekly.

Ali tugged at his lower lip. "Safe from voodoo terrorists, in jail."

"Also less chance that the fascist Army might accidentally shoot us on purpose, Ia. "

"We must decide for us. We can't ask Atlanta," Suvendra pointed out.

They looked unhappy. Laura had a brainstorm. "'Atlanta-it has a famous jail. Martin Luther King "stayed there."

They broke into eager discussion.

"But we shan't do any good from jail, la."

"Yes, we can. Embarrass the government! Martial law can't last."

"We do no good here anyway, if Parliament is spoilt. "

Distant echoed shouting rose from the streets. "I'll go look," Laura told them, standing up.

She strode across the hot, flat rooftop to the parapet again.

The noise grew louder: it was a police bullhorn. For a mo- ment she glimpsed it, two blocks away: a red-and-white police car moving cautiously across a deserted intersection. It stopped before the ragged burlap heap of a street barricade.

Ali joined her. "We voted," he told her. "It's jail."

"Okay. Good."

Ali studied the police car, listening to it. "It's Mr. bin

Awang," he said. "Malay M. P. from Bras Basah. "

"Oh, yeah," Laura said. "I remember him from the hearings. "

"Surrender talk. Go peacefully, back to families, he says."

Rebels emerged from the shadows. They swaggered toward the car, lazily, fearlessly. Laura could see them shouting at the bulletproof glass, gesturing to the cop behind the wheel- turn around, go back. Verboten. Liberated territory .. .

The roof-mounted bullhorn bleated arguments.

One of the kids began spray-painting a slogan onto the hood. The prowl car emitted an angry siren wail and began backing up.

Suddenly the kids pulled weapons. Short, heavy swords, hid- den in their shirts and pants. They began hacking furiously at the prowl can's tires and door hinges. Unbelievably, the car gave way, with tortured screeches of metal audible for blocks around....

Laura and Ali shouted in astonishment. The rebels were using those deadly ceramic machetes, the same as she'd seen in Grenada. The long high-tech knives that had chopped a desk in half.

The other Rizomians ran up. The rebels hacked the hood off in seconds and efficiently butchered the engine. They wrenched the door off with ear-torturing screeches.

They were pulling the car apart.

They fished out the astonished cops, rabbit-punching them into submission. They got the M. P., too.

But then, suddenly, there was a chopper overhead.

Tear-gas canisters fell, shrouding the scene in up-rushing columns of mist. The rebels scattered. A burly longshoreman, wearing a diving mask, lifted a stolen police blunderbuss and fired tangle-rounds upward. They splattered harmlessly on the chopper's undercarriage in wads of writhing plastic, but it backed off anyway.

More siren howls and three more backup prowl cars rushed into the intersection. They skidded to a halt before the shat- tered car. Kids were still running from the wreckage, doubled over, clutching stolen tangle-ammo and stenciled canisters.

Some wore rubber swim goggles, giving them a weirdly squinty, professorial look. Their surgical masks seemed to help against the tear gas.

Doors flung open and the cops deployed, wearing full riot gear: white helmets, perspex face shields, tangle-guns, and lathi sticks. Kids scuttled for cover into the surrounding buildings. The cops conferred briefly, pointing at a doorway, ready to charge.