Islands in the Net (20 page)

In the foreground, the girl balanced gracefully, slim legs held straight, toes pointed like a gymnast. And behind her Gelli went touch-touch-touch, three little dabs of movement to his face—fast, jerky, totally ritualized. Then the girl plunged, and the camera slid away. And Gelli vanished.

“What's wrong with him?” Laura whispered.

David was pale, his mouth tight-set. “I don't know. Some nerve disorder, obviously.”

“Parkinson's disease?”

“Maybe. Or maybe something we don't even have a name for.”

David killed the television. He stood up and unplugged the clock. He put on his glasses, carefully. “I'm gonna go answer some mail, Laura.”

“I'll come with you.” She didn't sleep for a long time. And there were nightmares, too.

Next morning, they inspected the foundations for settling and dry rot. They opened every window, making note of cracked glass and warped lintels. They checked the attic for drooping joists and moldy insulation, checked the stairs for springy boards, measured the slopes of the floor, cataloged the multitude of cracks and bulges in the walls.

The servants watched them with growing anxiety. At lunch they had a little discussion. Jimmy, it transpired, considered himself a “butler,” while Rajiv was a “majordomo” and Rita a “cook” and “nanny.” They weren't a construction crew. To David this sounded ludicrously old-fashioned; things needed doing, so why not do them? What was the problem?

They responded with wounded pride. They were skilled house staff, not no-account rudies from the government yards. They had certain places to fill and certain work that came with the places. Everybody knew this. It had always been so.

David laughed. They were acting like nineteenth-century colonials, he said; what about Grenada's high-tech, anti-imperialist revolution? Surprisingly, this argument failed to move them. Fine, David said at last. If they didn't want to help, it was no problem of his. They could prop up their feet and drink piña coladas.

Or maybe they could watch some television, Laura suggested. As it happened, she had some Rizome recruiting tapes that might help explain how Rizome felt about things.…

After lunch Laura and David continued their inspection remorselessly. They climbed up into the turrets, where the servants had their quarters. The floors were splintery, the roofs leaked, and the intercoms had shorted out. Before they left Laura and David deliberately made all the beds.

During the afternoon David caught some sun in the bottom of the dead pool. Laura played with the baby. Later David checked the electrical system while she answered the mail. Supper was fantastic, again. They were tired and made an early night of it.

The Bank was ignoring them. They returned the favor.

Next day David got out his tool chest. He made a little unconscious ritual of it, like a duke inspecting his emeralds. The toolbox weighed fifteen pounds, was the size of a large breadbox, and had been lovingly assembled by Rizome craftsmen in Kyoto. Looking inside, with the gleam of chromed ceramic and neat foam sockets for everything, you could get a kind of mental picture of the guys who had made it—white-robed Zen priests of the overhead lathe, guys who lived on brown rice and machine oil.…

Pry bar, tin snips, cute little propane torch; plumbing snake, pipe wrench, telescoping auger; ohm meter, wire stripper, needlenose pliers … Ribbed ebony handles that popped off and reattached to push drills and screwdriver bits … David's tool set was by far the most expensive possession they owned.

They worked on the plumbing all morning—starting on the servants' bathroom. Hard, filthy work, with lots of creeping about on one's back. After his afternoon sun worship David stayed outside. He'd found some gardening tools in a shed and tackled the front acreage, stripped to the waist and wearing his videoshades. Laura saw that he had fast-talked the two gate guards into helping him. They were trimming wild ivy and pruning dead branches and joking together.

She had nothing to report to Atlanta, so she spent her time catching flack. Unsurprisingly, there was plenty of gratuitous advice from every corner of the compass. Several idiots expressed grave disappointment that they had not yet toured a secret Grenadian drug lab. A Rizome graphics program was showing up as a pirate knock-off in Cuba—was the Bank involved? Rizome had contacted the Polish government—Warsaw said Andrei Tarkovsky was a black-market operator, wanted for forging false passports.

The Rizome elections were heating up. It looked like the Suvendra race was going to be close. Pereira—Mr. Nice Guy—was making a surprisingly strong showing.

David came in to shower for supper. “You're gonna burn up out there,” she told him.

“No, I won't, smell.” He reeked of rank male sweat with an undertone of mint. His skin looked waxed.

“Oh no!” she said. “You haven't been using that tube stuff, have you?”

“Sure,” David said, surprised. “Prentis claimed it was the best ever—you don't expect me to take that on faith, surely.” He examined his forearms. “I used it yesterday, too. I'd swear I'm darker already, and no burn either.”

“David, you're hopeless.…”

He only smiled. “I think I may have a cigar tonight!”

They had supper. The servants were upset by the recruiting tapes. They wanted to know how much of it was true. All of it, Laura said innocently.

As they lay in bed, she got Atlanta to slot her a Japanese-language tape—mystery stories of Edogawa Rampo. David fell asleep at once, lulled by the meaningless polysyllables. Laura listened as she drifted off, letting the alien grammar soak in to those odd itchy places where the brain stored language. She like Rampo's straight journalistic Japanese, none of those involved circumlocutions and maddening veiled allusions.…

Hours later she was shaken awake in darkness. Harsh babble of English. “Babe, wake up, it's news.…”

Emily Donato spoke out of the darkness. [“Laura, it's me.”]

Laura twisted in the lurching waterbed. The room was dim purples and grays. “Lights, turn on!” she croaked. Flash of overhead glare. She winced at the clock. Two
A.M.
“What is it, Emily?”

[“We got the fact,”] the clock proclaimed, in Emily's familiar voice.

Laura felt a pang of headache. “What fact?”

[“The F.A.C.T., Laura. We know who's behind them. Who they really are. It's Molly.”]

“Oh, the terrorists,” Laura said. A little jolt of shock and fear coursed through her. Now she was awake. “Molly? Molly who?”

[“The
government
of Molly,”] Emily said.

“It's a country in North Africa,” David said from his side of the bed. “The Republic of Mali. Capital Bamako, main export cotton, population rate two percent.” David, the Worldrun player.

“Mali.” The name sounded only vaguely familiar. “What do they have to do with anything?”

[“We're working on that. Mali's one of those Sahara famine countries, with an army regime, it's nasty there.… The F.A.C.T. is their front group. We've got it from three different sources.”]

“Who?” Laura said.

[“Kymera, I. G. Farben, and the Algerian State Department.”]

“Sounds good,” Laura said. She trusted Kymera Corporation—the Japanese didn't throw accusations lightly. “What does the Vienna heat say?”

[“Nothing. To butt out. They're covering something up, I think. Mali never signed the Vienna Convention.…”] Emily paused. [“The Central Committee meets tomorrow. Some people from Kymera and Farben are flying in. We all think it smells.”]

“What do you want us to do?” Laura said.

[“Tell the Bank when you testify. It wasn't Singapore that killed their man. Or the European Commerzbank either. It was the secret police in Mali.”]

“Jesus,” Laura said. “Okay …”

[“I'm sending you some backup data on a coded line.… Good night, Laura. I'm up late, too, if it helps.”]

Emily signed off.

“Wow …” Laura shook her head, clearing the last cobwebs. “Things are really moving.…” She turned to her husband—“Yike!”

“Yeah,” David said. He stretched out one arm, showing it to her. “I'm, uh, black.”

“David … you're black!” Laura yanked the sheet back, revealing his bare chest and stomach. She could feel her neck bristle in astonishment. “David, look at you. Your skin is black! All over!”

“Yeah … I was sunbathing nude in the pool.” He shrugged sheepishly, his shoulders dark against the crisp white pillow. “You remember that ship's officer—a blond, black guy—back on the
Charles Nogues?
I wondered, when I saw him …”

Laura blinked, trying to think back. “The blond black man … Yeah, but I thought he'd dyed his hair.…”

“His hair was natural, but he'd changed his skin. It's that suntan oil Prentis gave me. It affects the skin pigment, the melanin, I guess. It's a little patchy down here by my, uh, crotch … like I got very dark freckles, but big, kinda splotchy.… I should've asked how it works.”

“It's obvious how it works, David—it makes you black!” Laura began laughing, her mind pinched between the shocking and the ridiculous. He looked so different.… “Do you feel all right, sweetheart?”

“I feel fine,” he said coolly. “How do you feel about it?”

“Let me look at you.…” She sneaked a look at his crotch and began giggling helplessly. “Oh … It's not that funny but … Oh, David, you look like a horny giraffe.” She rubbed his shoulder, hard, with her thumb. “It's not coming off, is it.… Honey, you've really done it this time.”

“This is revolutionary,” he said soberly.

A fit of laughter seized her.

“I mean it, Laura. You can be black, from a tube. Don't you see what that means?”

She bit her knuckle until she got control of herself. “David, people don't want to risk skin cancer, just so they can be black.”

“Why not? I would. We live under a hard Texas sun. All Texans ought to be black. In that kind of climate, it's best for you. Sensible.”

She stared at him, biting her lip. “This is just too, too weird.… You're not really black, David. You've got an Anglo nose, and Anglo mouth. Oh look, here's a patch on your ear that you missed!” She shrieked with laughter.

“Stop that, Laura, you're making me mad.” He sat up straighter. “Okay, maybe I'm not black, up close.… But in a crowd, I'm a black man. Same in a car, or walking on the street. Or at a political meeting. That could change everything.”

His passion surprised her. “Not everything, David, come on. Rizome's CEO is black. America's had a black president, even.”

“Bullshit, Laura, don't pretend racism's a dead issue, why do you think Africa's in the mess it's in? Goddamn it, these Grenadians have really got something! I'd heard rumors of stuff like this, but the way they painted it, it was some kind of risky freak experiment.… But it's
easy
! I wonder how much they've made? Pounds? Tons?”

David's eyes were full of visionary fire. “I'm gonna walk up to first Third Worlder I see, and say, ‘Hi! I'm a white American imperial exploiter, and I'm black as the ace of spades, compadre.' This is the greatest thing I've ever heard of.”

Laura frowned a little. “It's just color. It doesn't change how you feel about yourself, inside. Or the way you act, either.”

“The hell you say. Even a new haircut can do that much.” He leaned back against the pillow, cradling his head. His armpits were splotchy. “I gotta get more of this stuff.”

Now he was involved. At last. It had taken something very weird to jolt him, but now he was with her all the way. He'd found something to galvanize him, and he was off and running. He had that look in his eyes again. Just like when they were first married, back when they were planning the Lodge together. She felt glad.

She reached across his chest, admiring the svelte contrast of her arm against his dark ribs. “You look good, David, really.… It suits you somehow.… I guess I never told you this, but I always had a kind of minor thing for black guys.” She kissed his shoulder. “I knew this guy in high school, he and I—”

David clambered suddenly out of bed. “Atlanta, who's online?”

[“Uh, the name's Nash, Thomas Nash, you don't know me …”]

“Tom, I want you to get a look at this.” David picked up his glasses and scanned himself head to foot. “What do you think of that?”

[“Um, seem to be having some trouble with brightness levels, Rizome Grenada. Also, you're not wearing clothes. Right?”]

Laura waited for David to come back to bed. Instead he started calling people. She fell asleep again while he was still ranting.

5

They were under the mansion's foundations with a hydraulic jack when they heard Sticky calling. “Yo Bwana, Blondie! You be comin' out now, time to face the music.…”

They wormed their way back into afternoon sunlight. Laura hauled herself through the foundation's concrete crawl hole and got to her feet. “Hello, Captain.” She picked at her hair, and came away with strings of cobweb.

David crawled out after her. His jeans and denim work shirt were caked at the knees and elbows with stale mud. Sticky Thompson grinned at David's darkened face. “You datin' locals now, Blondie? Where's the Great White Hunter?”

“Very funny,” David said.

Sticky led them back around the mansion's west wing. As they walked under newly pruned ylang-ylang trees, David juggled his glasses and jammed the earplug in. “Who's online? Oh. Hi. What? Hell, I got mud on my lenses.” He cleaned them with his shirt tail, ruefully.

Two military jeeps were waiting on the gravel drive—olive-drab hardtops with silvered windows. Three uniformed militiamen sat on the flat, square bumpers, sipping soft drinks from paper cartons. Sticky whistled sharply; the skinniest guard leapt to attention and opened one door. A colored decal flashed on the door panel: garish red, gold, and green—the Grenadian flag. “Truth-tellin' time, Mrs. Webster. We ready when you are.”