Bruce Sterling - Islands in the Net

The journos were waiting just outside the Rizome property line. They had cunningly managed to stick a bus in her way.

Laura's van stopped short. The hat and sunglasses wouldn't help her now. She climbed out.

They surrounded her. Keeping ten feet away, like the privacy laws demanded. A very small blessing. "Mrs. Web- ster, Mrs. Webster!" Then one voice amid the chorus. "Ms. Day!"

Laura stopped short. "What."

Red-haired guy, freckles. Cocky expression. "Any word on your impending divorce action, Ms. Day?"

She looked them over. Eyes, cameras. "I know people who could eat the lot of you for breakfast."

"Thanks, thanks, that's great, Ms. Day ..."

She crossed the beach. Up the old familiar stairs to the walkway. The stair rails had aged nicely, with the silken look of driftwood, and the striped awning was new. It looked like a good place, the Lodge, with its cheerful arches and sand- castle tower with the deep, round windows and the flags.

Innocent fun, sunbathing and lemonade, a wonderful place for a kid.

She stepped into the bar, let the door shut itself behind her.

Dim inside-the bar was full of strangers. Earth-cooled air, the smell of wine coolers and tortilla chips. Tables and wicker chairs. A man looked up at her-one of David's wrecking crew, she thought, not Rizome, but they'd always liked hang- ing out here-she had forgotten his name. He hesitated, recognizing her but not sure.

She ghosted past him. One of Mrs. Delrosario's girls passed her with a pitcher of beer. The girl stopped, turned on her heel. "Laura. It's you?"

"Hello, Inez."

They couldn't hug-Inez was carrying the beer. Laura kissed her cheek. "You're all grown up, Inez.... You can serve that stuff now?"

"I'm eighteen, I can serve it, I can't drink it."

"Well it won't be long now, will it?"

"I guess not...." She was wearing an engagement ring.

"My abuela will be glad to see you-I'm glad too."

Laura nodded toward the crowd from behind her sun- glasses. "Don't tell them I'm here-everyone makes such a big deal of it."

"Okay, Laura." Inez was embarrassed. People got that way when you were a global celebrity. Tongue-tied and worshipful-this, from little Inez, who used to see her chang- ing diapers and knocking around in her bathing suit. "I'll see you later huh?"

"Sure." Laura ducked behind the bar, went through the kitchen. No sign of Mrs. Delrosario, but the smell of her cooking was there, a rush of memory. She walked past copper-bottomed pans and griddles, into the dining room.

Rizome guests talking politics-you could tell it by the strained looks on their faces, the aggression.

It wasn't just the fear. The world had changed. They had eaten up the Islands and it had settled in their belly like a drug. That Island strangeness was everywhere now, diluted, muted, and tingly... .

She couldn't face them, not yet. She went up the tower stair,--the door wouldn't open for her. She almost walked into it headlong. Codes must have changed-no, she was wearing a new watchphone, not programmed for the Lodge.

She touched it. "David?"

"Laura," he said. "You at the airport?"

"No. I'm right here at the top of the stairs."

Silence. Through the door, across the few feet that still separated them, she could feel him, bracing himself. "Come on in...."

"It's the door, I can't get it open."

"Oh! Yeah, okay, I can get it." It shunted. She put her sunglasses away.

She came up through the floor and threw the hat onto a table, into a round column of sunlight from a tower window.

All the furniture was different. David rose from his favorite console-but no, it wasn't his, not anymore.

A Worldrun game was on. Africa was a mess. He came to greet her-a tall, gaunt black man, with short hair and read- ing glasses. They gripped each other's hands for a moment.

Then hugged hard, saying nothing. He'd lost weight-she could feel the bones in him;

She pulled back. "You look good."

"So do you." Lies. He took off the glasses and put them in his shirt pocket. "I don't really need these."

She wondered when she was going to cry. She could feel the need for it coming on. She sat down on a couch. He sat on a chair across the new coffee table.

"The place looks good, David. Really good."

"Webster and Webster, we build to last."

That did it. She began crying, hard. He fetched her some tissue and joined her on the couch and put his arm over her shoulders. She let him do it.

"The first weeks," he said, "about the first six months, I dreamed about this meeting. Laura, I couldn't believe you were dead. I thought, in jail somewhere. Singapore. She's a political, I told people, somebody's holding her, they'll let her go when things straighten out. Then they started talking about your being on the Ali Khamenei, and I knew that was it. That they'd finally gotten you, that they'd killed my wife.

And I'd been half the world away. And hadn't helped." He put his thumbs into the corners of his eyes. "I'd wake up at night and think of you drowning."

"It wasn't your fault," she said. "It wasn't our fault, was it? What we had was good, it was really going to last, to last forever. "

"I .really loved you," he said. "When I lost you, it just destroyed me."

"I want you to know, David-I don't blame you for not waiting." Long silence. "I wouldn't have waited either, not if it was like that. What you and Emily did, it was right for you, both of you."

He stared at her, his eyes bloodshot. Her gesture, her forgiveness, had humiliated him. "There's just no end to what you're willing to sacrifice, is there?"

"Don't blame me!" she said. "I didn't sacrifice anything,

I didn't want this to happen to us! It was stolen from us-they stole our life.

"We didn't have to do it. We chose to do it. We could have left the company, run off somewhere, just been happy."

He was shaking. "I would have been happy-I didn't need anything but you."

"We can't help it if we have to live in the world! We had bad luck. Bad luck happens. We stumbled over something buried, and it tore us up. " No answer. "David, at least we're alive. "

He gave a sharp bark of laughter. "Hell, you're more than alive, Laura. You're goddamn famous. The whole world knows. It's a fucking scandal, a soap opera. We don't 'live in the world'-the world lives in us now. We went out to fight for the Net and the Net just stretched us to pieces. Not our fault-oh hell no! All the fucking money and politics and multinationals just grabbed us and pulled us apart!"

He slammed his knee with his fist. "Even if Emily hadn't come in-and I don't love Emily, Laura, not like I loved you-how the hell could we have ever gone back to a real human life? Our little marriage, our little baby, our little house?"

He laughed, a high-pitched unhappy sound. "Back when I was a widower, there was a lot of rage and pain in that, but

Rizome tried to take care of me, they thought it was ... dra- matic. I still hated their guts for what they led us into, but I thought, Loretta needs me, Emily cares, maybe I can make a go of it. Go on living."

He was as taut as strung wire. "But I'm just a little person, a private person. I'm not Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, I'm not

God. I just wanted my wife and my baby and my work, and a few pals to drink beer with, and a nice place to live."

"Well they wouldn't let us have that. But at least we made them pay for what they did."

"You made them pay."

"I was fighting for us!"

"Yeah, and you won the battle-but for the Net, not for you and me." He knotted his hands. "I know it's a selfish thing. I feel ashamed sometimes, worthless. Those little bas- tards out in their submarine, they're still out there with their four precious home-made A-bombs, and if they fire one, it's gonna vaporize a million people just like us. They're evil, they have to be fought. So what do you and I matter, right?