Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

"They kept you in solitary, eh," Selous said gently.

"We have a baby, too," Laura babbled. "Her name's Loretta."

"They had you longer than me," Selous said. "It's been almost a year since they took me from camp."

Laura shook her head, hard. "Did, uh..." She cleared her throat. "Do you know what's going on?"

Selous nodded. "I know a little. What I heard from the other hostages. The last two nights--those were Azanian air raids. My people. Our commandos, too, maybe. I think they hit some fuel dumps-the sky burned all night!"

"Azanian," Laura said aloud. So that was it. What she'd just lived through. An armed clash between Mali and Azania.

It seemed obscure and improbable. Not that an African war was unlikely, they happened all the time. Back pages in newspapers, a few seconds on cable news. But that they were for real, they took place in a real world of dust and heat and flying metal.

The South Africans weren't in the news much. They weren't very fashionable. "Your people must have flown a long way."

"We have aircraft carriers," Selous said proudly. "We never signed your Vienna Convention."

"Oh. Uh-huh." Laura nodded blankly.

Selous looked at her clinically, a doctor hunting for signs of damage. "Were you tortured?"

"What? No." Laura paused. "About three months ago they beat me up. After I wrecked a machine." She felt embarrassed even to have mentioned it. It seemed so inade- quate. "Not like those poor people downstairs."

"Mmmm ... yes, they've suffered." It was a statement of fact. Curiously detached, a judgment by someone who'd seen a lot of it. Selous glanced out the back of the truck. They were in the middle of Bamako now, endless nightmare land- scape of foul shacks and huts. Wisps of evil yellowish smoke rose from a distant refinery.

"Were you tortured, Dr. Selous?"

"Yes. A little. At first." Selous paused. "Were you assaulted?

Raped?"

"No." Laura shook her head. "They never even seemed to think of it. I don't know why...."

Selous leaned back, nodding. "It's their policy. It must be true, I think. That the leader of FACT is a woman."

Laura felt stunned. "A woman."

Selous smiled sourly. "Yes ... we of the weaker sex do tend to get around these days."

"What kind of woman would. .."

"Rumor says she's a right-wing American billionaire. Or a

British aristocrat. Maybe both, eh-why not?" Selous tried to spread her hands skeptically; her cuffs rattled. "For years

FACT was nothing much... mercenaries. Then quite sud- denly ... very organized. A new leader, someone smart and determined-with a vision. One of us modem girls." She chuckled lightly.

There didn't seem to be more to say on that topic. It was probably a lie anyway. "Where do you think they're taking us?"

"North, into the desert-I know that much." Selous thought it over. "Why did they keep you locked away from the rest of us? We never saw you. We used to see your maid, that's all."

"My what?"

"Your cellmate, the little Bambara informer from downstairs."

Selous shrugged. "Sorry. You know how it is in a cell block. People get crazy. We used to call you the' Princess.

Rapunzel, eh."

"People get crazy," Laura said. "I thought I saw my

Optimal Persona. But it was you, wasn't it, doctor. You and I look a lot alike. You came in and treated me after I was beaten, didn't you."

Selous blinked doubtfully. " `Optimal Persona.' That's very American.... Are you from California?"

"Texas. "

"It certainly wasn't me, Laura.... I've never seen you before in my life."

Long, strange pause.

"You really think we look alike?"

"Sure," Laura said.

"But I'm a Boer, an Afrikaaner. And you have that hybrid

American look."

They had reached an impasse. The conversation hung there as heat and dust boiled over the empty end of the truck. She was dealing with an alien. They had missed a connection somehow. Laura felt thirsty already and they were not even out of the city.

She struggled to pick up the thread.

"They kept me in solitary because they said I had atomic secrets. "

Selous sat upright, startled. "Have you seen a Bomb?"

"What?'

"There are rumors of a test site in the Malian desert.

Where the F.A.C.T. tried to build a Bomb."

"First I've ever heard of that," Laura said. "I saw their submarine, though. They said it had atomic warheads on- board. The sub did have some missiles. I know that much, because they hit and sank a ship I was on."

"Exocets?" Selous said gravely.

"Yes, that's right, exactly."

"But there could have been other missiles with a longer range, eh? Long enough to hit Pretoria?"

"I guess so. But it doesn't prove they were nuclear bombs."

"But if they take us to this test site, and we find a huge crater of sand melted into glass, that would prove something, wouldn't it?"

Laura said nothing.

"It ties in with something the warden told me once,"

Selous said. "That they didn't really need me as a hostage- that our cities were hostage if we only knew."

"God, why do people talk like that?" Laura said. "Gre- nada, Singapore... " It made her feel very tired.

"You know what I think, Laura? I think they are taking us to their test site. To make a statement, yes? Me, because I am

Azanian, and we Azanians are the people they need to im- press at the moment. You, because you have witnessed their weapon ship. Their delivery system."

"Could be, I guess." Laura thought it over. "What then?

Do they free us?"

Selous's greenish eyes went remote and distant. "I'm a hostage. They will not let Azania attack them without a price."

Laura could not accept it. "That's not much of a price, is it? Killing two helpless prisoners?"

"They'll probably kill us on camera. And send the tape to

Azanian Army Intelligence," Selous said.

"But you Azanians would tell everyone, anyway, wouldn't you?"

"We've been telling people about FACT from the beginning,"

Selous scoffed. "No one would trust us if we said

Mali had the bomb. No one believes what we say. They only sneer at us and call us an 'aggressive imperialist state.' "

"Oh," Laura hedged.

"We are an empire," Selous said firmly. "President Umtali is a great warrior. All Zulus are great warriors."

Laura nodded. "Yeah, we Americans, uh, we had a black president ourselves."

"Oh, that fellow of yours didn't amount to anything,"

Selous said. "You Yankees don't even have a real govern- ment-just capitalist cartels, eh. But President Umtali fought in our civil war. He brought order, where there was savagery.

A brilliant general. A true statesman."

"Glad to hear it's working out," Laura said.

"Azanian black people are the finest black people in the world!"

They sat there sweating. Laura could not let it pass. "Look,

I'm no big Yankee nationalist, but what about... you know

... jazz, blues, Martin Luther King?"

Selous shifted on her bench. "Martin King. He had a dinner party, compared to our Nelson Mandela."

"Yeah but ...'

"Your Yankee black people aren't even real black people, are they? They're all Coloureds, actually. They look like

Europeans. "

"Wait a minute ... '

"You've never seen my black people, but I've certainly seen yours. Your American blacks crowd all our best restau- rants and gamble their global hard currency in Sun City and so on.... They're rich, and soft."

"Yeah, I come from a tourist town, myself."

"We have a wartime economy, we need the exchange money.... Fighting the chaos...he endless nightmare that is Africa.... We Africans know what it means to sacri- fice." She paused. "It seems harsh, eh? I'm sorry. But you outsiders don't understand."

Laura looked out the back of the truck. "That's true."