Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

Laura wore her sari flap hooded snugly over her head and a pair of cop's mirrorshades that she'd begged from Captain

Hsiu. Once past the private security and into the bank build- ing, redolent with the stink of panic and the new-mown-hay aroma of shredded files, the rest had been easy. No one was checking ID-she had none to check, no luggage, either.

No one bothered her-she was passing for somebody's

Eurasian mistress, or maybe some exotic tech in high Hindu drag. If the pirates learned she was here among them, they might do almost anything. But Laura knew with thrilling certainty that they'd never touch her. Not here, not now, not after all she'd come through.

She wasn't afraid. She felt bulletproof, invincible, full of electricity. She knew now that she was stronger than they were. Her people were stronger than their people. She could walk in daylight, but they couldn't. They'd thought they had teeth, in all their corner-cutting crime conspiracies, but their bones were made of glass.

The criminal machine just didn't have it the gemeineschaft.

They were rip-off artists, flotsam, and there was nothing to hold them together, no basic trust. They'd been hiding under the protective crust of the Singapore Government, and now that it was gone the Bank was wrecked. It would take them years to stick it all back together, even if they were willing to try, and the momentum, the world tide, was against them.

This place and its dreams were over-the future was some- where else.

What a brag session this was going to make. How she'd crept out of Singapore in the very midst of the pirate bankers.

A steady procession of twin-tutored Singaporean military chop- pers was arriving on the plush landing pad on the Bank's roof. Two, three dozen refugees at a time would cram in helter-skelter and vanish into the leaden monsoon sky.

The others waited, perching like crows on the chain-linked parapet and the concrete anchor blocks of the microwave towers. Some clumped moodily around portable televisions: watching Jeyaratnam on Channel Two, weary and beaten and gray-faced, quoting the Constitution and urging the populace back to their homes.

Laura edged around a luggage trolley piled high with bulg- ing ripstop luggage in maroon and yellow synthetic. Three men sat on the far side of it, bent forward attentively with their elbows on their knees. 'Two Japanese guys and an

Anglo, all three in crisp new safari suits and bush hats. They were watching television.

It was Channel Four, "On the Air-For the People,"

featuring, as a stuttering, blushing anchorwoman, Miss Ting-

Kim's old flame.

Laura watched and listened from a discreet distance. She felt a strange sisterhood with Miss Ting, who had obviously been swept into her current situation through some kind of odd synchronistic karma.

It was all like that now, the whole of Singapore, giddy and brittle and suspended in midair. Up here it might be solid gloom, but below them the streets were full of honking cars, one vast street party, the populace out congratulating itself on its heroism. The last billows of smoke were fading in the docklands. Revolutionary Singapore-vomiting. out these ex- pensive data pirates, like ambergris from the guts of a conva- lescent whale.

The smaller Japanese guy lifted his bush hat, and picked at an itchy sales tag inside the brim. "Kiribati," he said.

"If we get the bloody choice we take Nauru," said the

Anglo. He was Australian.

The Japanese ripped the tag loose, his face pinched.

"Kiribati's nowhere, man. They don't have dedicated landlines."

"The heat will be all over Nauru. They're afraid of those launch sites... .

Nauru and Kiribati, Laura thought little Pacific island states whose "national sovereignty" could be had for a price.

Good dumping grounds for Bank gangsters, obviously. But that was okay by her. Both islands were on the Net, and where there were phones, there was credit. And where there was credit, there were airline tickets. And where there were jets, there was home.

Home, she thought, leaning giddily against the heaped trolley.

Not Galveston, not yet. The Lodge would open again sometime, but that wasn't home anyway. Home was David and the baby.

Lying in bed with David, in warm tangled sheets, breathing

American air, a nice twilight outside maybe. Trees, leaf shadows, red dirt and Georgia kudzu in a safe Rizome Retreat. Little

Loretta, her solid little ribs and crooked baby grin. Oh, Lord ...

The larger Japanese was staring at her. He thought she was drunk. She straightened self-consciously, and he looked away, bored. He muttered something Laura didn't catch.

"Bullshit," the Aussie said. "You think everybody's fire- wired. That `spontaneous combustion' voodoo bullshit .. .

They're good, but they're not that good."

The big guy rubbed the back of his neck and shuddered.

"They didn't burn that dog on our doorstep for nothing."

"I miss poor Jim Dae Jung," said the little Japanese, sadly. "Burnt feet still in his boots and his skull shrunk as small as an orange...."

The Aussie shook his head. "We don't know that he caught fire on his own toilet. Just 'cause we found his feet there...."

"Hey," said the larger Japanese, pointing.

The two others rose eagerly, expecting another chopper flight. But there was something going on in the sky. Against a leaden background of clouds: streaks of blood-colored va- por. Like claw scratches on muddy skin.

Monsoon wind began quickly to distort it. Symbols in red smoke, scrawled against the sky. Letters, numbers:

3A3...

"Skywriting," the Aussie said, sitting down again. "Wish we had some binocs. I don't see a plane."

"Very small drone," said the big Japanese. "Or maybe it's made of glass." By now everyone on the roof was looking, pointing, and shading their eyes.

3 A 3 v - 0\...

"It's code," the Aussie said. "Gotta be the voodoo boys."

The wind had blown the first letters to shreds, but there was more.... = A_-S.. .

"Three A Three Vee Blank Zero Back-slash Equals A

Blank Blank S," the Aussie repeated slowly. "What in bloody hell are they getting at?"

"Maybe it's their evacuation signal," said the big man.

"You wish," the Aussie said.

The smaller Japanese began laughing. "No verticals in the letters," he announced triumphantly. "Bad programming.

Grenada was never any good with drones."

"No verticals?" the Aussie said, staring upward. "Oh. I get it. `BABYLON FALLS,' eh? Cheeky bastards."

"I guess they never really thought this would happen," the small man said. "Or they'd have done a better job announc- ing it."

"Still, you gotta give 'em credit," the Aussie said. "Invis- ible finger, writing in blood on the sky... probably would have scared the living crap out of people, if they hadn't fucked it up." He chuckled. "Murphy's Law, huh? Now it's just more weirdness."

Laura left them on their luggage trolley. Another chopper had appeared, coming in-a small one. She decided she would take it if she could-the talk had unsettled her.

As she neared the pad she heard low, piteous sobbing. Not demonstrative just uncontrollable moans and snivels.

The sobbing man was crouched under the rounded bulk of a rooftop storage tank. He was scanning the sky again and again, as if in terror of another message.

He was a sharpie-like the villains on Chinese television.

Thirtyish bedroom-eyed guys who were all laser-cut hairdos and jade cig holders. Only now he was squatting on his heels, under the cool white bulk of the tank, his shoulders wrapped in a black felt blanket clutched two-handed across his chest.

He was twitchy as a basket of crabs.

As she watched him he somehow got a grip on himself, wiped his eyes. He looked like he'd once been important.