Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

Her mouth flooded with hunger. "Smoked oysters. No. Really?"

He patted his duffel bag. "Right here. In my bail-out bag.

Wouldn't want to lose 'em, even if they torched the scoot.

Hold on, I'll light a candle." He pulled the zip. Light flared.

Her eyes shrank. "Will the planes see. that?"

The candle caught, backlighting his head. Snarl of reddish- brown hair. "If they do, let's die eating oysters." He pulled three tins from the bottom of the bag. Their bright American paper gleamed. Treasure marvels from the empire of consumerism.

He opened one tin with his knife. They ate with their fingers, nomad style. The rich flavor hit Laura's shriveled taste buds like an avalanche. The aroma flooded her whole head; she felt dizzy with pleasure. Her face felt hot and there was a faint ringing in her ears. "In America, you can have these every day," she said. She had to say it aloud, just to test the miracle of it.

"They're better when you can't have them," he said. "It's a hell of a thing, isn't it? Perverse. Like hitting your head with a hammer 'cause it feels so good when you stop." He drank the juice out of the can. "Some people are wired that way."

"Is that why you came to the desert, Gresham?"

"Maybe," he said. "The desert's pure. The dunes-all lines and form. Like good computer graphics." He set the can aside. "But that's not all of it. This place is the core of disaster. Disaster is where I live."

"But you're an American," she said, looking down at

Katje. "You chose to come here."

He thought about it. She could feel him working up to something. Some deliberate confession.

"When I was a kid in grade school," he said, "some network guys with cameras showed up in my classroom one day. They wanted to know what we thought about the future.

They did some interviews. Half of us said they'd be doctors, or astronauts, and all that crap. And the other half just said they figured they'd fry at Ground Zero." He smiled distantly.

"I was one of those kids. A disaster freak. Y'know, you get used to it after a while. You get to where you feel uneasy when things start looking up." He met her eyes. "You're not like that, though."

"No," she said. "Born too late, I guess. I was sure I could make things better."

"Yeah," he said. "That's my excuse, too."

Katje stirred, listlessly.

"You want some abalone?"

Laura shook her head. "Thanks, but I can't. I can't enjoy it, not now, not in front of her." The rich food was flooding her system with a rush of drowsiness. She leaned her head on his shoulder. "Is she going to die?"

No answer.

"If she dies, and you don't go to the camp, what'll you do with me?"

Long silence. "I'll take you to my harem where I'll cover your body with silver and emeralds."

"Good God." She stared at him. "What a wonderful lie."

"No, I won't. I'll find some way to get you back to your Net."

"After the interview?"

He closed his eyes. "I'm not sure that's a good idea after all. You might have a future in the outside world, if you kept your mouth shut, about FACT and the Bomb and Vienna. But if you try to tell what you know ... it's a long shot."

"I don't care," she said. "It's the truth and the world has to know it. I've got to tell it, Gresham. Everything."

"It's not smart," he said. "They'll put you away, they won't listen."

"I'll make them listen, I can do it."

"No, you can't. You'll end up a nonperson, like me.

Censored, forgotten. I know, I've tried. You're not big enough to change the Net."

"Nobody's big enough. But it's got to change."

He blew out the light.

Katje woke them before dawn. She had vomited and was coughing. Gresham lit the candle, quickly, and Laura knelt over her.

Katje was bloated, and radiant with fever. The scab had broken on her stomach and she was bleeding again. The wound smelled bad, a death smell, shit and infection. Gresham held the candle over her. "Peritonitis, I think."

Laura felt a rush of despair. "I shouldn't have fed her."

"You fed her?"

"She begged me to! I had to! It was a mercy...."

"Laura, you can't feed someone who's been gut-shot."

"Goddamn it! There isn't any right thing to do with some- one like this...." She brushed away tears: rage. "Goddamn it, she's going to die, after everything!"

"She's not dead yet. We don't have that far now. Let's go."

They loaded her into the truck, stumbling in darkness.

Amazingly, Katje began to speak. Mumbles, in English and

Afrikaans. Prayers. She wouldn't die and now she was calling on God. To whatever mad God ran Africa, as if He were watching and condoning all this.

The camp was a square mile of white concrete block- houses, surrounded by tall chain-link fence. They rolled up a roadway lined by fences on either side that led to the center of the place.

Children had rushed the fence. Hundreds of them, faces rushing past. Laura could not look at them. She stared at a single face among the crowd. A black teenaged girl in a bright red polyester pinafore from some charity bale of Amer- ican clothing. A dozen cheap plastic digital watches hung like bangles on her rail-thin forearms.

She had caught Laura's eye. It galvanized her. She thrust her arms through the chain-link and begged enthusiastically.

"Mam'selle, mam'selle! Le the de Chine, mam'selle! La canne a sucre!" Gresham drove on grimly. The girl screamed louder, shaking the fence with her thin arms, but her voice was drowned in the shouting of others. Laura almost turned to look back, but stopped at the last moment, humiliated.

There were gates ahead. A striped military parachute had been spread for shade. Black soldiers in speckled desert fa- tigues, with broad-brimmed ranger's hats pinned up on one side with a regimental badge. Commandos, she thought, Azanian troops. Beyond the closed gates was a smaller camp within a camp, with taller buildings, Quonset huts, a helicopter pad.

An administrative center. Gresham slowed. "I'm not going into this fucking place."

"It's all right, I'll handle it."

One of the guards blew a whistle, and held up his hand.

They looked curious about the lone buggy, not particularly concerned. They looked well fed. City soldiers. Amateurs.

Laura jumped down, flopping in Gresham's spare sandals.

"Medic!" she screamed. "I've got a wounded Azanian, she's camp personnel! Get a stretcher!"

They rushed forward to look. Gresham sat in his saddle, looming above them aloofly, in his flowing robes, his head wrapped in the veil and turban. A soldier with stripes ap- proached her. "Who the fuck are you?" he said.

"I'm the one who brought her in. Hurry it up, she's dying!

Him, he's an American journalist and he's wired for sound, so watch that language, Corporal."

The soldier stared down at her. Her stained tunic, a dirty shirt turbanned around her head, eyes undersmudged with black grease.

"Lieutenant," he said, hurt. "My rank is lieutenant, miss."

She talked with the Azanian administrators in one of their long Quonset huts. Wall shelves bulged with canned goods, medical equipment, spare parts packed in grease. Heavy insu- lation on the rounded walls and ceiling cut the roar of their air conditioners.

A camp trusty in a white jacket, his cheeks ridged with tribal scars, circled among them with iced bottles of Fanta orange pop.

She'd given them only the sketchiest version of events, but the Azanians were jumpy and confused, and didn't seem to expect much from a desert apparition like herself. The camp's director was a portly pipe-smoking black Azanian named

Edmund Mbaqane. Mbaqane was bravely attempting to look bureaucratically unflappable and very much on top of things.

"We're so very grateful, Mrs. Webster ... forgive me if I seemed abrupt at first. To hear yet another story of this genocidal Bamako regime-it does make one's blood boil."