Islands in the Net (2 page)

It had brought her mother back into her life, but that would pass. Basically, things were sound, they were happy. Nothing wildly ecstatic, Laura thought, but a solid happiness, the kind she believed they had earned.

Laura picked at the part in her hair, watching the mirror. That light threading of gray—there hadn't been so much before the baby. She was thirty-two now, married eight years. She touched the faint creases at the corners of her eyes, thinking of her mother's face. They had the same eyes—set wide, blue with a glimmer of yellow-green. “Coyote eyes,” her grandmother had called them. Laura had her dead father's long, straight nose and wide mouth, with an upper lip that fell a little short. Her front teeth were too big and square.

Genetics, Laura thought. You pass them on to the next generation. Then they relax and start to crumble on you. They do it anyway. You just have to pay a little extra for using the copyright.

She lined her eyes, touched on lipstick and video rouge. She put on hose, knee-length skirt, long-sleeve blouse in patterned Chinese silk, and a dark blue business vest. She stuck a Rizome logo pin through the vest's lapel.

She joined David and her mother in the Lodge's dining room. The Canadians, here for the last day, were playing with the baby. Laura's mother was eating the Nipponese breakfast, little cakes of pressed rice and tiny popeyed fish that smelled like kerosene. David, on the other hand, had fixed the usual: cunningly disguised food-oid stuff. Fluffy mock scrambled eggs, soybean bacon, pancakes from batter made of thick, yellow scop.

David was a health-food nut, a great devotee of unnatural foods. After eight years of marriage, Laura was used to it. At least the tech was improving. Even the scop, single-cell protein, was better these days. It tasted all right, if you could forget the image of protein vats crammed with swarming bacteria.

David wore his overalls. He was going out house wrecking today. He had his heavy toolbox and his grandfather's old oil-company hard hat. The prospect of bashing up houses—filthy, crowbar-swinging muscle work—always filled David with childlike glee. He drawled more than usual and put hot sauce on his eggs, infallible signs of his good mood.

Laura's mother, Margaret Alice Day Garfield Nakamura Simpson, wore a Tokyo original in blue crepe de chine, with a trailing waist sash. Her woven-straw sun hat, the size of a bicycle wheel, was tied across her back. She called herself Margaret Day, since she had recently divorced Simpson, a man Laura scarcely knew.

“It's not the Galveston I remember anymore,” Laura's mother said.

David nodded. “You know what I miss? I miss the wreckage. I mean, I was ten when the big disaster hit. I grew up in the wreckage down the island. All those beach homes, snapped off, washed up, tossed around like dice.… It seemed infinite, full of surprises.”

Laura's mother smiled. “That's why you stayed here?”

David sipped his breakfast juice, which came from a powdered mix and was of a color not found in nature. “Well, after '02, everyone with sense pulled out. It left all the more room for us diehards. We BOI's, Born on the Island folks, we're a weird breed.” David smiled self-consciously. “To live here, you have to have a kind of dumb love for bad luck. Isla Malhaldo, that was Galveston's first name, you know. Isle of Bad Luck.”

“Why?” Laura's mother said obligingly. She was humoring him.

“Cabeza de Vaca called it that. His galleon was shipwrecked here in 1528. He was almost eaten by cannibals. Karankawa Indians.”

“Oh? Well, the Indians must have had some name for the place.”

“Nobody knows it,” David said. “They were all wiped out by smallpox. True Galvestonians, I guess—bad luck.” He thought it over. “A very weird tribe, the Karankawas. They used to smear themselves with rancid alligator grease—they were famous for the stench.”

“I've never heard of them,” Margaret Day said.

“They were very primitive,” David said, forking up another scop pancake. “They used to eat dirt! They'd bury a fresh deer kill for three or four days, until it softened up, and—”

“David!” Laura said.

“Oh,” David said. “Sorry.” He changed the subject. “You ought to come out with us today, Margaret. Rizome has a good little side biz with the city government. They condemn it, we scrap it, and it's a lot of fun all around. I mean, it's not serious money, not by
zaibatsu
standards, but there's more to life than the bottom line.”

“‘Fun City,'” her mother said.

“I see you've been listening to our new mayor,” Laura said.

“Do you ever worry about the people drifting into Galveston these days?” her mother said suddenly.

“What do you mean?” Laura said.

“I've been reading about this mayor of yours. He's quite a strange character, isn't he? An ex-bartender with a big white beard who wears Hawaiian shirts to the office. He seems to be going out of his way to attract—what's the word?—fringe elements.”

“Well, it's not a real city anymore, is it?” David said. “No more industry. Cotton's gone, shipping's gone, oil went a long time ago. About all that's left is to sell glass beads to tourists. Right? And a little, uh, social exotica is good for tourism. You expect a tourist burg to run a little fast and loose.”

“So you like the mayor? I understand Rizome backed his campaign. Does that mean your company supports his policies?”

“Who's asking?” Laura said, nettled. “Mother, you're on vacation. Let Marubeni Company find their own answers.”

The two of them locked eyes for a moment. “
Aisumasen
,” her mother said at last. “I'm very sorry if I seemed to pry. I spent too much time in the State Department. I still have the reflexes. Now that I'm in what they laughingly call private enterprise.” She set her chopsticks across her plate and reached for her hat. “I've decided to rent a sailboat today. They say there's an offshore station—an OPEC, or something like that.”

“OTEC,” David corrected absently. “The power station. Yeah, it's nice out there.”

“I'll see you at supper then. Be good, you two.”

Four more Canadians came in for breakfast, yawning. Margaret Day filtered past them and left the dining room.

“You had to step on her toes,” David said quietly. “What's wrong with Marubeni? Some creaky old Nipponese trading company. You think they sent Loretta's grandma here to swipe our microchips or something?”

“She's a guest of Rizome,” Laura said. “I don't like her criticizing our people.”

“She's leaving tomorrow,” David said. “You could go a little easier on her.” He stood up, hefting his tool chest.

“All right, I'm sorry,” Laura told him. There wasn't time to get into it now. This was business.

She greeted the Canadians and took the baby back. They were part of a production wing from a Rizome subsidiary in Toronto, on vacation as a reward for increased production. They were sunburned but cheerful.

Another pair of guests came in: Señor and Señora Kurosawa, from Brazil. They were fourth-generation Brazilians, with Rizome-Unitika, a textile branch of the firm. They had no English, and their Japanese was amazingly bad, laden with Portuguese loan words and much Latin arm waving. They complimented Laura on the food. It was their last day, too.

Then, trouble arrived. The Europeans were up. There were three of them and they were not Rizome people, but bankers from Luxembourg. There was a banker's conference in the works tomorrow, a major do by all accounts. The Europeans had come a day early. Laura was sorry for it.

The Luxembourgers sat morosely for breakfast. Their leader and chief negotiator was a Monsieur Karageorgiu, a tawny-skinned man in his fifties, with greenish eyes and carefully waved hair. The name marked him as a Europeanized Turk; his grandparents had probably been “guest workers” in Germany or Benelux. Karageorgiu wore an exquisitely tailored suit of cream-colored Italian linen.

His crisp, precise, and perfect shoes were like objets d'art, Laura thought. Shoes engineered to high precision, like the power plant of a Mercedes. It almost hurt to see him walk in them. No one at Rizome would have dared to wear them; the righteous mockery would have been merciless. He reminded Laura of the diplomats she'd seen as a kid, of a lost standard in studied elegance.

He had a pair of unsmiling companions in black suits: junior executives, or so he claimed. It was hard to tell their origins; Europeans looked more and more alike these days. One had a vaguely Côte d'Azur look, maybe French or Corsican; the other was blond. They looked alarmingly fit and hefty. Elaborate Swiss watchphones peeked from their sleeves.

They began complaining. They didn't like the heat. Their rooms smelled and the water tasted salty. They found the toilets peculiar. Laura promised to turn up the heat pump and order more Perrier.

It didn't do much good. They were down on hicks. Especially doctrinaire Yankees who lived in peculiar sand castles and practiced economic democracy. She could tell already that tomorrow was going to be rocky.

In fact the whole setup was fishy. She didn't know enough about these people—she didn't have proper guest files on them. Rizome-Atlanta was being cagey about this bankers' meeting, which was most unusual for headquarters.

Laura took their breakfast orders and left the three bankers trading sullen glares with the Rizome guests. She took the baby with her to the kitchen. The kitchen staff was up and banging pans. The kitchen staff was seventy-year-old Mrs. Delrosario and her two granddaughters.

Mrs. Delrosario was a treasure, though she had a mean streak that bubbled up whenever her advice was taken with anything less than total attention and seriousness. Her granddaughters mooched about the kitchen with a doomed, submissive look. Laura felt sorry for them and tried to give them a break when she could. Life wasn't easy as a teenager these days.

Laura fed the baby her formula. Loretta gulped it with enthusiasm. She was like her father in that—really doted on goop no sane person should eat.

Then Laura's watchphone beeped. It was the front desk. Laura left the baby with Mrs. Delrosario and took the back way to the lobby, through the staff rooms and the first-floor office. She emerged behind the desk. Mrs. Rodriguez looked up in relief, peering over her bifocals.

She had been talking to a stranger—a fiftyish Anglo woman in a black silk dress and a beaded choker. The woman had a vast mane of crisp black hair and her eyes were lined dramatically. Laura wondered what to make of her. She looked like a pharaoh's widow. “This is her,” Mrs. Rodriguez told the stranger. “Laura, our manager.”

“Coordinator,” Laura said. “I'm Laura Webster.”

“I'm the Reverend Morgan. I called earlier.”

“Yes. About the City Council race?” Laura touched her watch, checking her schedule. The woman was half an hour early. “Well,” she said. “Won't you come around the desk? We can talk in my office.”

Laura took the woman into the cramped and windowless little suboffice. It was essentially a coffee room for the staff, with a data-link to the mainframe upstairs. This was where Laura took people from whom she expected the squeeze. The place looked suitably modest and penurious. David had decorated it from his wrecking expeditions: antique vinyl car seats and a modular desk in aged beige plastic. The ceiling light shone through a perforated hubcap.

“Coffee?” Laura said.

“No, thank you. I never take caffeine.”

“I see.” Laura put the pot aside. “What can we do for you, Reverend?”

“You and I have much in common,” Reverend Morgan said. “We share a confidence in Galveston's future. And we both have a stake in the tourist industry.” She paused. “I understand your husband designed this building.”

“Yes, he did.”

“It's ‘Organic Baroque,' isn't it? A style that respects Mother Earth. That shows a broad-minded approach on your part. Forward-looking and progressive.”

“Thank you very much.” Here it comes, Laura thought.

“Our Church would like to help you expand services to your corporate guests. Do you know the Church of Ishtar?”

“I'm not sure I follow you,” Laura said carefully. “We at Rizome consider religion a private matter.”

“We Temple women believe in the divinity of the sexual act.” Reverend Morgan leaned back in her bucket seat, stroking her hair with both hands. “The erotic power of the Goddess can destroy evil.”

The slogan found a niche in Laura's memory. “I see,” Laura said politely. “The Church of Ishtar. I know your movement, but I hadn't recognized the name.”

“It's a new name—old principles. You're too young to remember the Cold War.” Like many of her generation, the reverend seemed to have a positive nostalgia for it—the good old bilateral days. When things were simpler and every morning might be your last. “Because we put an end to it. We invoked the Goddess to take the war out of men. We melted the cold war with divine body heat.” The reverend sniffed. “Male power mongers claimed the credit, of course. But the triumph belonged to our Goddess. She saved Mother Earth from the nuclear madness. And She continues to heal society today.”

Laura nodded helpfully.

“Galveston lives by tourism, Mrs. Webster. And tourists expect certain amenities. Our Church has come to an arrangement with the city and the police. We'd like an understanding with your group as well.”

Laura rubbed her chin. “I think I can follow your reasoning, Reverend.”

“No civilization has ever existed without us,” the reverend said coolly. “The Holy Prostitute is an ancient, universal figure. The Patriarchy degraded and oppressed her. But we restore her ancient role as comforter and healer.”

“I was about to mention the medical angle,” Laura said.

“Oh, yes,” said the reverend. “We take the full range of precautions. Clients are tested for syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and herpes, as well as the retroviruses. All our temples have fully equipped clinics. Sexual disease rates drop dramatically wherever we practice our art—I can show you statistics. We also offer health insurance. And we guarantee confidentiality, of course.”