Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

I've seen their nuclear submarine. I even lived aboard it. For weeks. "

"Jesus Christ," Gresham said. "You saw all that? An eyewitness?"

"Yes. I did."

He believed her. She could see it was hard for him, that it was news that was changing the basic assumptions of his life.

Or at least the basic assumptions of his war, if there was any difference between his living and his warring. But he recog- nized that she was telling him the truth. It was coming across between them, something basic and human.

"We gotta do an interview," he muttered.

An interview. He had a camera, didn't he? She felt con- fused, relieved, obscurely ashamed. She looked back for that moral bedrock. It was still there. "Save my friend's life."

"We can try it." He stood up in the saddle and yanked something from his belt-a white folding fan. He flicked it open and held it over his head, waved it, sharp semaphore motions. For the first time Laura realized that there was another Tuareg in sight-a buglike profile, almost lost in heat haze, a mile to the north. A dotlike answering flicker.

Katje groaned in the back, a raw animal sound. "Don't let her drink too much," Gresham warned. "Mop her down instead. "

Laura moved into the back.

Katje was awake, conscious. There was something vast and elemental, terrifying, about her ordeal. There was so little that talking or thinking could do about it-no way to debate with death. Her face was like a skull and she was fighting alone.

As hours passed Laura did what she could. A word or two with Gresham and she found what little he had that could help. Padding for Katje's head and shoulders. Leather bags of water that tasted flat and distilled. Some skin grease that smelled like animal fat. Black smudge on cheekbones to cut the glare.

The exit wound in the back was worst. It was ragged and

Laura feared it would' soon turn septic. The scab broke open twice during the worst jolts and a little rill of blood ran across

Katje's spine.

They stopped once when they hit a boulder and the right front wheel began complaining, Then again when Gresham spotted what he thought were patrol planes-it was a pair of vultures.

As the sun set Katje began muttering aloud. Bits and pieces of a life. Her brother the lawyer. Mother's letters on flowered stationery. Tea parties. Charm school. Her mind groped in delirium for some vision, miles and years away. A tiny center of human order in a circle of desolate horizon.

Gresham drove until well after twilight. He seemed to know the country. She never saw him look at a map.

Finally he stopped in the channeled depth of an arroyo-a

"wadi," he called it. The sandy depths of the dry river were crowded with waist-high bushes that stank of creosote and were full of tiny irritating burrs.

Gresham dismounted, shouldering a duffel bag. He pulled his curved machete and began chopping bushes. "The planes are worst after dark," he said. "They use infrareds. If they hit us at all, they'll probably take out the scoot." He began placing bushes over the buggy, camouflaging it. "So we'll sleep away from it. With the baggage."

"All right." Laura crawled from the back of the buggy, battered, filthy, bone-weary. "What can I do to help?"

"You can dress yourself for the desert. Try the knapsack."

She took the knapsack around the far side of the truck and fumbled it open. Shirts. Spare sandals.' A long, coarse tunic of washed-out blue, wrinkled and wadded and stained. She shrugged out of her prison blouse.

God, she was so thin. She could see every rib. Thin and old and exhausted, like something that ought to be killed. She tunneled into the tunic-its shoulder seams came halfway down her biceps and the sleeves hung to her knuckles. It was thick though, and beaten soft with long wear. It reeked of

Gresham, as if he had embraced her.

Strange thought, dizzying. She was embarrassed. She was a spectacle, pathetic. Gresham couldn't want a madwoman....

The ground rose up and struck her. She lay in a heap of her own arms and legs, wondering. A muddle of time passed, vague pain and rushing waves of dizziness.

Gresham was gripping her arms.

She looked at him blankly. He gave her water. The water revived her enough to feel her own distress. "You passed out," he said. She nodded, understanding for the first time.

Gresham picked her up. He carried her like a bundle of balloons; she felt light, hollow, bird-boned.

There was a lean-to pegged to the wall of the arroyo.' A

windbreak with a short arching tent roof of desert camo-cloth.

Under the roof a dark figure crouched over the white-striped prison form of Katje-another of the Tuareg raiders, a long sniper's rifle strapped to his back. Gresham set Laura down, exchanged words with the Tuareg, who nodded somberly.

Laura crawled into the tent, felt rough wool beneath her fingers-a carpet.

She curled up on it. The Tuareg was humming tonelessly to himself, under a ramp of blazing stars.

She was woken by the steaming smell of tea. It was barely dawn, a red auroral brightening in the east. Someone had thrown a warm rug over her during the night. She had a pillow too, a burlap bag stenciled in weird angular script. She sat up, aching.

The Tuareg handed her a cup, gently, courteously, as if it were something precious. The hot tea was dark brown and frothy and sweet, with a sharp minty reek. Laura sipped it. It had been boiled, not brewed, and it hit her like a hard narcotic, astringent and strong. It was foul, but she could feel it toughening her throat like tanned leather, bracing her for another day's survival.

The Tuareg half turned away, shyly, and discreetly lifted his veil. He slurped noisily, appreciatively. Then he opened a drawstring bag and offered it to her. Little brown pellets of something-like peanuts. Some kind of dried scop. It tasted like sugared sawdust. Breakfast. She ate two handfuls.

Gresham emerged from the lightening gloom, an enormous figure wrapped to the eyes, yet another bag slung over his shoulder. He was tossing handfuls of something over the dirt, with swift, ritual gestures. Tracer dust, maybe? She had no idea.

"She made it through the night," Gresham told her, dust- ing his hands. "Even spoke a little this morning. Stubborn, those Boers."

Laura stood up, painfully. She felt ashamed, "I'm not much use, am I?"

"It's not your world, is it." Gresham helped the Tuareg unpeg and fold the tent. "Not much pursuit, this time.... We planted some heat flares, maybe that sidetracked the planes.

Or they may think we were Azanian commandos.... I hope so. We might provoke something interesting."

His relish terrified her. "But if FACT has the Bomb.... You can't provoke people who can destroy whole cities!"

He was unimpressed. "The world's full of cities. " Gresham glanced at a wristwatch on a braided leather bracelet. "Got a long day ahead, let's move."

He'd repacked the buggy-shifted some of his cargo to another truck. Katje lay in a nest of carpet, shaded by the tarp, her eyes open.

"Good morning," she whispered.

Laura sat beside her, bracing her back and legs. Gresham kicked the buggy into motion. It whined reluctantly as it picked up speed-battery draining, she thought.

She took Katje's wrist. Light, fluttery pulse. "We're gonna get you back to your own people, Katje."

Katje blinked, her lids veiny and pale. She forced the words. "He is a savage, an anarchist...."

"Try to rest. You and I, we're gonna live through this.

Live to tell about it." The sun peered over the horizon, a vivid yellow blister of heat.

Time passed, and the heat mounted sullenly as the miles passed. They were leaving the deep Sahara and crossing country with something more akin to soil. This had been grazing land once-they passed the mummies of dead cattle, ancient bone stick-puppets in cracked rags of leather.