Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

She doubted that they'd make it there scot-free, though.

Singapore might try to ditch the Bank gangsters and the evidence, but too many people must know. There'd be a hot trail to a ship with this many big operators on it. The video press were already swarming into Singapore under the shadow of the Red Cross-eager pioneers of another gunless global army, packing mikes and minicams. Once the ship was out in international waters, Laura was half convinced that reporters would show up.

Should be interesting. The pirates wouldn't like it much- their skin blistered under publicity. But at least they'd es- caped the Grenadians.

There seemed to be an unspoken conviction among the

Singaporeans that the Grenadians had finished. That with the

Bank scattered, and the Government in ruin, there was simply no point left in their terror campaign.

Maybe they were right. Maybe successful terrorism had always worked like this-provoking a regime till it crumbled under the weight of its own repression. "Babylon Falls"

-they'd bragged about it. Maybe Sticky and his friends would now slip out of Singapore in the confusion of the revolt.

If there was any sanity left in them, they'd be glad to run, puffed and proud, triumphant. Probably amazed to be alive.

They could swagger back to their Caribbean shadows as true voodoo legends, new-millennium spooks nonpareil. Why not live? Why not enjoy it?

She wanted to believe that they'd do it. She wanted it to be over-she couldn't bear to think back to Sticky's feverish menu of technical atrocities.

A shudder struck her where she stood. A rocketing wave of intense, unfocused, ontological dread. For a moment she wondered if she'd been pellet-shot. Maybe Sticky had dosed her while she was unconscious and the fear drug was just now coming on... . God, what an awful suspicion.

She remembered suddenly the Vienna agent she'd met in

Galveston, the polite, handsome Russian who had talked about the "evil pressure in a bullet. "

Now, for the first time, she was grasping what the man had meant. The pressure of raw possibility. If something was possible-didn't that mean that somewhere, somehow, some- one had to do it? The voodoo urge to truck with demons. The imp of the perverse. Deep in the human spirit, the carnivo- rous shadow of science.

It was a dynamic, like gravity. Some legacy of evolution, deep in human nerves, invisible and potent, like software.

She turned around. No sign of Shaw. A few yards behind her, Bad Luck was retching, loudly, over the guard rail. He looked up, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

She could have been him. Laura forced herself to smile at him.

He gave her a look of tremulous gratitude and came to join her. She almost fled at once, but he held up a hand. "It's okay," he said. "I know I'm dosed. It comes in waves. I'm better now."

"You're very brave," Laura said. "I'm sorry for you, sir. "

Bad Luck stared at her. "That's nice. You're nice. You don't treat me like a leper. " He paused, hot little rat eyes studying her. "You're not. one of us, are you? You're not with the Bank."

"What makes you say that?" Laura said.

"You're somebody's girl friend, is it?" He grinned in a cadaverous parody of flirtation. "Lot of bosses on this ship.

Top brass goes for those hot Eurasian girls."

"We're getting married, la," Laura said, "so you can forget all about it, fellow."

He dug into his jacket. "Want a cigarette?"

"Maybe you'd better save them," Laura said, accepting one.

"No, no. No problem. I can get anything! Cigarettes, blood components. Megavitamins, embryos.... My name's

Desmond, miss. Desmond Yaobang."

"Hi," Laura said. She accepted a light. Her mouth imme- diately filled with choking poisoned soot.

She couldn't understand why she was doing this.

Except that it was better than doing nothing. Except that she felt sorry for him. And maybe the presence of Desmond

Yaobang would keep everyone else at a distance.

"What do you think they'll do to us, in Abadan? Do with us, I mean." Yaobang's head just topped her shoulder. There was nothing obviously repulsive about him, but the chemical fear had etched itself into the set of his eyes, the lines of his face. It had soaked him through with an aura of creepiness.

She felt the strong, irrational urge to kick him. The way a flock of crows will peck an injured one to death.

"I dunno," Laura drawled, contempt making her careless.

She looked at her sandaled feet, avoiding his eyes. "Maybe they'll give me some decent shoes.... I'll be okay if I can make a few phone calls."

"Phone calls," Yaobang parroted nervously, "capital idea.

Yes, get Desmond to a phone and he can get you anything.

Shoes. Surely. You want to try it?"

"Mmm. Not just yet. Too crowded."

"Tonight then. Fine, miss. Splendid. I won't be sleeping anyway."

She turned away from him and put her back to the rail. The sun was setting between two of the whirling wind columns.

Vast underlit cloud banks of mellow Renaissance gold. Yaobang turned and looked as well, biting his lip, mercifully silent.

Along with the filthy brain buzz of the cigarette, it gave

Laura an expansive feeling of sublimity. Beautiful, but it wouldn't last long-the sun sank fast in the tropics.

Yaobang straightened, pointed. "What is that?"

Laura looked. His paranoia-sharpened senses had caught something-a distant, airborne glint.

Yaobang squinted. "Some little kind of chopper, maybe?"

"It's too small!" Laura said. "It's a drone!" Light had winked briefly from its blades and now she'd lost it against the clouds.

"A drone?" he said, alarmed by her tone of voice. "Is it voodoo? Can it hurt us?"

"Shut up!" Laura shoved away from the rail. "I'm gonna climb up to the crow's nest-I want a better look." She hurried across the deck, her sandals flopping.

The ship's foremast had a radar horn and video for the guidance computer. But there was access for repair and hu- man backup: a crow's nest, three stories above the deck.

Laura grabbed the cool iron rungs, then stopped in frustra- tion. The damned sari-it would tangle her feet. She turned and beckoned to Yaobang.

There was a shout from above. "Hey!"

A man in a popsicle-red rain slicker was leaning over the crow's-nest railing. "What are you doing?"

"Are you crew?" Laura shouted, hesitating.

"No, are you?"

She shook her head. "I thought I saw something"-she pointed--over there!"

"What did you see?"

"I think it was a Canadair CL-227!"

The man's shoes clattered as he came down quickly to the deck. "What's a canadare?" Yaobang demanded plaintively, hopping from foot to foot. He noticed a pair of Zeiss binocu- lars around the other's neck. "Where'd you get those?"

"Deck room," said Red Raincoat, meaninglessly.

"I know you, right? Henderson? I'm Desmond Yaobang.

Countertrade section."

"Hennessey," Red Raincoat said.

"Hennessey, yes ..."

"Give me those," Laura demanded. She grabbed the bin- oculars. Under the flimsy poncho, Hennessey's chest was padded and huge. He was wearing something. Bulletproof vest?

A life jacket.

Laura tore her sunglasses off, felt hastily for a pocket- none, in a sari-and propped them on her head. She focused the binoculars.

She found the thing almost at once. There it was, hovering malignantly at the twilit skyline. It had been in her night- mares so many times that she couldn't believe she was seeing it.

It was the drone that had strafed her Lodge. Not the identical one, because this one was military green, but the same model-double rotors, dumbbell shape. Even the stupid landing gear.

"Let me see!" Yaobang demanded frantically. To shut him up, Laura passed him the binoculars.