Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

Just then the sky opened up, and it began to rain. Another vertical, bursting monsoon. Wave after wave of it pounded the empty street. Laura crouched miserably in the doorway, catch- ing rain in her cupped hands, bathing her face and the exposed skin of her arms. At first the water seemed to make it worse a vicious stinging, as if she'd been breathing Tabasco sauce.

She had two plastic bangles now, over the chafed raw skin of her wrists. Her feet were soaked in their cheap, clammy sandals-not from rain, but from the water-cannon puddles in the street outside the godown.

She had run right through the street battle, blind. No one had even touched her. Except-there was a long strip of tangle-tape on her shin, still wriggling feebly, like the shed tail of a lizard. She picked it off her jeans.

She could recognize the area now-she'd run all the way to the Victoria and Albert Docks, just west of East Lagoon. To the north she saw the high-rise of the Tanjong Pagar public- housing complex-bland, dun-colored government bricks.

She sat, breathing shallowly, coughing, spitting every once in a while. She wished she were back with her people in the godown. But there was no way she could reach them again-it was not a sane option.

She'd meet them in jail anyway. Get the hell out of this battle zone and somehow manage to get arrested. Nice quiet jail. Yeah. Sounded good.

She stood up, wiping her mouth. Three cycle-rickshaws raced past her toward East Lagoon, each one crowded with a clinging mass of drenched, staring rebels. They ignored her,

She made a break for it.

There were two wet, unstable street barricades between her and Tanjong Pagar. She climbed over them in pounding rain.

No one showed to stop her.

The glass doors of the Tanjong housing complex had been smashed out of their aluminum frames. Laura ducked into the place, over crunchy heaps of pebbly safety glass. Air condi- tioning bit into her wet clothes.

She was in a shabby but neat entrance hall. Her foam sandals squelched messily on the scuffed linoleum. The place was deserted, its inhabitants, presumably, respecting the gov- ernment's curfew and keeping to their rooms upstairs. It was all mom-and-pop shops down here, little bicycle repair places, a fish market, a quack fractionation parlor. Cheerfully lit with fluorescents, ready for business, but all deserted.

She heard the distant murmur of voices. Calm, authorita- tive tones. She headed for them.

The sounds came from a glass-fronted television store.

Cheap low-res sets from Brazil and Maphilindonesia, color gone garish. They'd been turned on all over the store, a few showing the Government channel, others flickering over and over with a convulsive, maladjusted look.

Laura eased through the doorway. A string of brass bells jumped and rang-. Inside it reeked of jasmine incense. The shop's walls were papered with smiling, wholesome Singapore pop stars: cool guys in glitter tuxedos and cute babes in straw sun hats and peplums. Laura stepped carefully over a toppled, broken gum machine.

A little old Tamil lady had invaded the place. A wizened granny, white-haired and four feet tall, with a dowager's hump and wrists thin as bird bone. She sat in a canvas director's chair, staring at the empty screens and munching on a mouthful of gum.

"Hello?" Laura said. No response. The old woman looked deaf as a post-senile, even. Laura crept nearer, her shoes squelching moistly. The old woman gave her a sudden star- tled glance and adjusted her sari, draping the shoulder flap modestly over her head.

Laura combed at her hair with her fingers, feeling rainwa- ter trickle down her neck. "Ma'am, do you speak English?"

The old woman smiled shyly. She pointed at a stack of the canvas chairs, folded against the wall.

Laura fetched one. It had an inscription across the back in wacky-looking Tamil script-something witty and amusing, probably. Laura opened it and sat beside the old woman.

"Um, can you hear me at all, or, uh... "

The Tamil granny stared straight ahead.

Laura sighed, hard. It felt good -to be sitting down.

This poor dazed old woman-ninety if she was a day-had apparently come wandering downstairs, for canary food or something, too deaf or past-it to know about the curfew. To find-Jesus-an empty world.

With a sudden, surreptitious movement the old gal popped a little colored pebble into her mouth. Grape bubble gum. She munched triumphantly.

Laura examined the televisions. The old woman had set them for every possible channel.

Suddenly, on Channel Three, the flickering stabilized.

With the speed of, a gunfighter the old woman pulled a remote. The Government spokesman winked out. Channel

Three rose to a static-filled roar.

The image was scratchy home video. Laura saw the image bumping as the narrator aimed the camera at his own face. He was a Chinese Singaporean. He looked about twenty-five, chipmunk-cheeked, with thick glasses and a shirt crowded with pens.

Not a bad-looking guy, really, but definitely not TV mate- rial. Normal-looking. You wouldn't look twice at him in any street in Singapore.

The guy sat back on his dumpy, overstuffed couch. There was a tacky painting of a seascape behind his head. He sipped from a coffee cup and fiddled with a microphone paper- clipped to his collar. She could hear him swallowing, loudly.

"I think I'm on the air now," he announced.

Laura traded glances with the little old woman. The old gal looked disappointed. Didn't speak English.

"This is my home VCR, la," said Normal Guy. "It al- ways say: `do not hook to home antenna, can cause broadcast pollution.' Stray signal, you see? So, I did it. I'm broadcast- ing! I think so, anyway."

He poured himself more coffee, his hand shaking a little.

"Today," he said, "my girl and I. 1 was going to ask to marry. She maybe not such great girl, and I'm not such great fellow either, but we have standard. I think, when a fellow needs to ask to many, such a thing should at least be possi- ble. Nothing else is civilized."

He leaned in toward the lens, his head and shoulders swelling. "But then comes this curfew business. I am not liking this very much, but I am good citizen so I am deciding, okay. Go right ahead Jeyaratnam. Catch the terror rascals, give them what for, definitely. Then, the cops. are coming into my building."

He settled back a little, twitching, a light-trail flickering from his glasses. "I admire a cop. Cop is a fine, necessary fellow. Cop on the beat, I always say to him, `Good morning, fellow, good job, keep the peace.' Even ten cops are okay. A

hundred cops though, and I am changing mind rapidly. Sud- denly my neighborhood very plentiful in cop. Thousands.

Have real people outnumbered. Barging into my flat. Search every room, every gracious thing. Take my fingerprints, take my blood sample even."

He showed a sticking plaster on the ball of his thumb.

"Run me through computer, chop-chop, tell me to clean up that parking ticket. Then off they run, leave door open, no please or thank you, four million others needing botheration also. So I turn on telly for news. One channel only, la. Tell me we have seize Johore reservoir again. If we have so much water, then why is south side of city on fire apparently, la?

This I am asking myself."

He slammed down ,his coffee cup. "Can't call girl friend.

Can't call mother even. Can't even complain to local politico as Parliament is now all spoilt. What is use of all that voting and stupid campaigns, if it come to this, finish? Is anybody else feeling this way, I am wondering. I am not political, but

I am not trusting Government one millimeter. I am small person, but I am not nothing at all."

Normal Guy looked close to tears suddenly. "If this is for the good of city then where are citizens? Streets empty!