Islands in the Net (21 page)

“She'll need to change—” David said.

“No, I won't,” Laura broke in. “I'm ready at any time. Unless your Bank thinks I'll soil their upholstery.” She pulled her glasses from a buttoned shirt pocket.

Sticky turned to David, pointing to the second jeep. “We got a special tourist show for you, today. This other jeep be escort duty for you, they driving you down to the beach. We got some very special building projects. You be loving this one, Dave.”

“Okay,” David told him. “But I gotta finish some bracing work under the house first, or the kitchen falls in.” He gave Laura a sudden hard hug. “Looks like I'm taking the baby today.” He whispered into her ear. “Luck, babe. Give 'em hell.” She kissed him hard. The soldiers grinned at them.

Laura climbed up into the jeep's front passenger seat. One of the soldiers got in back, his assault rifle clattering. Sticky lingered outside. He had slipped on a pair of polarized glasses. He scanned the sky carefully, shading his eyes with both hands. Satisfied, he vaulted into the driver's seat and slammed the door.

Sticky fired the engine with an old-fashioned ignition key. He took the estate's winding curves at hair-raising speed, driving loosely, easily, one dark hand on the steering wheel. Laura understood now why his skin color had varied. It wasn't makeup, but chameleon technical tricks, right down in the cells. Lots of changes—maybe too many. The little half-moons of his fingernails looked oddly yellowish. He'd been gnawing them, too.

He grinned at her breezily—now that he was driving, he seemed elated, high. Stimulants, Laura thought darkly. “Aren't you a sight,” Sticky told her. “I can't believe you didn't call time for pattin' on a little rouge.”

Laura touched her cheek involuntarily. “You mean video makeup, Captain? I understood this was to be a closed hearing.”

“Oooh,” Sticky said, amused at her formality. “That's seen, now. Long as the camera not lookin', you can run around in you grubbies, play dress-up all workin' class, huh?” He laughed. “What if you college-girl pal see you? The one what dress up all southern belle slavery drag? Emily Donato?”

“Emily's my closest friend,” Laura told him tightly. “She's seen me a lot worse than this, believe me.”

Sticky raised his brows. He spoke lightly. “You ever wonder about this Donato and your husband? She knew him before you did. Introduced you, even.”

Laura throttled her instant spurt of anger. She waited a moment. “You been having fun, Sticky? Running barefoot through my personnel file? I'll bet that gives you a real feeling of power, huh? Kind of like bullying teenage guards in this toy militia of yours.”

Sticky glanced sharply at the rearview mirror. The guard in the back pretended not to have heard.

They took the highway south. The sky was leaden with overcast, the greenish mounds of trees gone dusky and strange on misty volcanic slopes. “You think I don't know what you up to?” Sticky said. “All this workin' on the house? For no pay—just to make an impression. Giving the servants propaganda tapes.… Tryin' to bribe our people.”

“A position in Rizome is hardly bribery,” Laura said coolly. “If they work with us, they deserve a place with us.” They passed an abandoned sugar factory. “It's tough on them, doing our housework and moonlighting as your domestic spies.”

Sticky glared at her. “Those bloodclot fuckin' glasses,” he hissed suddenly.

“Atlanta, I'm going offline,” Laura said. She ripped off her rig and yanked open the map compartment. A cardboard egg carton of tangle-gun ammo fell on her foot. She ignored it and stuffed the rig in—in was squawking—and slammed the little steel door.

Sticky sneered. “That'll be trouble for you. You'd better put them back on.”

“Fuck it,” Laura told him. “It's worth it just to hear you cut that goddamn accent.” She grinned at him humorlessly. “C'mon, soldier. Let's have it out. I'm not gonna have you pick on me all the way to the Bank, just to psych me out, or whatever the hell it is you think you're doing.”

Sticky flexed his muscular hands on the steering wheel. “Aren't you afraid to be alone with me? Now you're off the Net, you're kind of soft and helpless, aren't you?” He gave her a sudden poke in the ribs with his finger, like testing a side of beef. “What if I drive off into those trees and get rude with your body?”

“Jesus.” That had never even occurred to her. “I dunno, Captain. I guess I tear your goddamned eyes out.”

“Oh, tough!” He didn't look at her—he was watching the road, driving fast—but his right hand darted out with unbelievable quickness and caught her wrist with a slap of skin on skin. Her hand went funny-bone numb and a roiling pain shot up her arm. “Pull free,” he told her. “Try.”

She tugged, feeling the first surge of real fear. It was like pulling on a bench vise. He didn't even quiver. He didn't look that strong, but his bare brown arm had locked like cast iron. Unnatural. “You're hurting me,” she said, trying for calmness. A hateful little tremor in her voice.

Sticky laughed triumphantly. “Now, you listen to me, girl. All this time, you—”

Laura sank suddenly in her seat and stamped the brake. The jeep skidded wildly; the soldier in the back cried out. Sticky let her go as if scalded; his hands slapped the wheel with panic speed. They swerved, hit potholes in the road shoulder. Their heads banged the hard ceiling. Two seconds of lurching chaos. Then they were back on the road, weaving.

Safe. Sticky drew a long breath.

Laura sat up and rubbed her wrist silently.

Something truly nasty had happened between them. She felt no fear yet, even though they'd almost died together. She hadn't known it would be so bad—a manual jeep—she'd just done it. On impulse. Rage that had boiled up suddenly, when their inhibitions had vanished, gone with the glass eye of the Net's TV.

Both acting like raging drunks when the Net was gone.

It was over now. The soldier—the boy—in the back seat was gripping his rifle in panic. He hadn't been feeling the Net—it was all a mystery to him, that sudden gust of violence, like a hurricane wind. There for no reason, gone for no reason … he didn't even know it was over yet.

Sticky drove on, his jaw set, his eyes straight ahead. “Winston Stubbs,” he said at last. “He was my father.”

Laura nodded. Sticky had told her this for a reason—it was the only way he knew how to apologize. The news didn't surprise her much, but for a moment she felt her eyes stinging. She leaned back against the seat, relaxing, breathing. She had to be careful with him. People should be careful with each other.…

“You must have been very proud of him,” she said. Gently, tentatively. “He was a special kind of man.” No answer. “From the way he looked at you, I know that—”

“I failed him,” Sticky said. “I was his warrior and the enemy took him.”

“We know who did it now,” Laura told him. “It wasn't Singapore. It was an African regime—the secret police in the Republic of Mali.”

Sticky stared at her as if she'd gone insane. His polarized shades had bounced off during the near wreck and his yellowish eyes gleamed like a weasel's. “Mali's an
African
country,” he said.

“Why should that make a difference?”

“We're fighting for African people! Mali … they're not even a data haven. They a sufferation country. They have no reason.” He blinked. “They're lying to you if they tell you that.”

“We know that Mali is the F.A.C.T.,” Laura said.

Sticky shrugged. “Anyone can use those letters. They're asking shakedown money, and we know where that's going. To Singapore.” He shook his head slowly. “War's coming, Laura. Very bad times. You should never have come to this island.”

“We had to come,” Laura said. “We were witnesses.”

“Witnesses,” Sticky said with contempt. “We know what happened in Galveston, we never needed you for that. You're hostages, Laura. You, your man, even the lickle baby. Hostages for Rizome. Your company is in the middle, and if they favor Singapore against us, the Bank will kill you.”

Laura licked her lips. She straightened in her seat. “If it comes to war, a lot of innocent people are going to die.”

“They've played you for a fool. Your company. They sent you here, and they knew!”

“Wars kill people,” Laura said. “David and I are not as innocent as some.”

He slammed the wheel with his hand. “Aren't you afraid, girl?”

“Are you, Captain?”

“I'm a soldier.”

Laura forced a shrug. “What does that mean in a terror war? They murdered a guest in my house. In front of me and my baby. I'm going to do what I can to get them. I know it's dangerous.”

“You're a brave enemy,” Sticky said. He pulled onto a secondary road, through a wretched little village of red dirt and rusted tin. They began winding uphill, into the interior. The sun split the clouds for a moment and branches dappled the windshield.

From a hairpin turn high on a hillside, Laura saw the distant clustered harbor of colonial Grand Roy—sleepy red roofs, little white porch-pillars, crooked, sloping streets. A drill rig crouched offshore like a spider from Mars.

“You're a fool,” Sticky told her. “You're trying to push some propaganda bullshit that you think will make everybody play nice. But this isn't some mama-papa Yankee shopping mall where you can sell everybody peace like Coca-Cola. It nah going to work.… But I don't think you ought to die for tryin'. It's not righteous.”

He snapped orders. The militiaman reached behind him and passed Laura a flak jacket and a black, hooded robe. “Put these on,” Sticky said.

“All right.” Laura buckled the bulky jacket over her work shirt. “What's this bathrobe?”

“It's a
chador
. Islamic women wear them. Real modest … and it'll hide that blond hair. There been spy planes where we're going. I don't want 'em seeing you.”

Laura tunneled into the robe and pulled the hood over her head. Once inside the baggy thing, she caught a lingering whiff of its previous user—scented cigarettes and attar of roses. “It wasn't the Islamic Bank—”

“We know it's the Bank. They been running spy planes in every day, puddle-jumping over from Trinidad. We know the plantation they're using, everything. We have our own sources—we don't need you to tell us anything.” He nodded at the map compartment. “You might as well put on your TV rig. I've said everything I'm saying.”

“We don't mean to hurt you or your people, Sticky. We don't mean you anything but good—”

He sighed. “Just do it.”

She pulled the glasses out. Emily screeched into her ear. [“What are you doing!? Are you all right?”]

“I'm fine, Emily. Cut me some slack.”

[“Don't be stupid, Laura. You're gonna damage our credibility in this. No secret negotiations! It looks bad—like they might be getting at you. It's bad enough now, without people thinking that you're going through back channels offline.”]

“We be goin' to Fedon's Camp,” Sticky said loudly, liltingly. “You listenin', Atlanta? Julian Fedon, he was a Free Coloured. His time was the French Revolution and he preach the Rights of Man. The French smuggle him guns, and he take over plantations, free the slaves, and arm them. He burned out the baccra slaveocrats with righteous fire. And he fight with a gun in his hand when the Redcoats invade … it took an army months to break his fort.”

They had come into a broken bowl of hills—ragged, volcanic wilderness. A tropical paradise, dotted with tall watchtowers. At first sight they looked blankly harmless, like water towers. But the rounded storage tanks were armored pillboxes, ridged with slotted gun slits. Their gleaming sides were pocked with searchlights and radar blisters, and their tops were flattened for helicopter pads. Thick elevator taproots plunged deep into the earth—no doors were visible anywhere.

They drove uphill on a tall stone roadway of hard, black blasted rock. Excavation rubble. There were mounds of it everywhere, leg-breaking dykes of sharp-edged boulders, half hidden under bird-twittery flowering vines and scrub.…

Fedon's Camp was a new kind of fortress. There were no sandbags, no barbed wire, no gates or guards. Just the ranked towers rising mutely from the quiet green earth like deadly mushrooms of ceramic and steel. Towers watching each other, watching the hills, watching the sky.

Tunnels, Laura thought. There must be underground tunnels linking those death towers together—and storage rooms full of ammunition. Everything underground, the towers mushrooming from under the surface in a geometry of strategic fire zones.

What would it be like to attack this place? Laura could imagine angry, hungry rioters with their pathetic torches and Molotov cocktails—wandering under those towers like mice under furniture. Unable to find anything their own size—anything they could touch or hurt. Growing frightened as their yells were answered by silence—beginning to creep, in muttering groups, into the false protection of the rocks and trees. While every footstep sounded loud as drumbeats on buried microphones, while their bodies glowed like human candles on some gunner's infrared screens.…

The road simply ended, in a half-acre expanse of weedy tarmac. Sticky killed the engine and found his polarized glasses. He peered through the windshield. “Over there, Laura. See?” He pointed into the sky. “By that gray cloud, shaped like a wolfs head …”

She couldn't see anything. Not even a speck. “A spy plane?”

“Yeah. From here, they can count your teeth on telephoto. Just the right size, too.… Too small for a stupid missile to find, and the smart ones cost more than it does.” A rhythmic thudding above them. Laura winced. A skeletal shadow crossed the tarmac. A cargo helicopter was hovering overhead.