Islands in the Net (3 page)

“It's a very interesting proposal,” Laura said, tapping her desk with a pencil. “But it's not a decision I can make on my own. I'll be happy to take your ideas to our Central Committee.” She took a breath. The air in the tiny room held the smoky reek of the reverend's patchouli. The smell of madness, Laura thought suddenly. “You have to understand that Rizome may have some difficulties with this. Rizome favors strong social ties in its associates. It's part of our corporate philosophy. Some of us might consider prostitution a sign of social breakdown.”

The reverend spread her hands and smiled. “I've heard about Rizome's policies. You're economic democrats—I admire that. As a church, a business, and a political movement, we're a new-millennium group ourselves. But Rizome can't change the nature of the male animal. We've already serviced several of your male associates. Does that surprise you?” She shrugged. “Why risk their health with amateur or criminal groups? We Temple women are safe, dependable, and economically sensible. The Church stands ready to do business.”

Laura dug into her desk. “Let me give you one of our brochures.”

The reverend opened her purse. “Have a few of ours. I have some campaign pamphlets—I'm running for City Council.”

Laura looked the pamphlets over. They were slickly printed. The margins were dotted with ankh symbols, yin-yangs, and chalices. Laura scanned the dense text, spotted with italics and words in red. “I see you favor a liberal drug policy.”

“Victimless crimes are tools of Patriarchal oppression.” The reverend dug in her purse and produced an enameled pillbox. “A few of these will argue the case better than I can.” She dropped three red capsules on the desktop. “Try them, Mrs. Webster. As a gift from the Church. Astonish your husband.”

“I beg your pardon?” Laura said.

“Remember the giddiness of first love? The sense that the whole world had new meaning, because of him? Wouldn't you like to recapture that? Most women would. It's an intoxicating feeling, isn't it? And these are the intoxicants.”

Laura stared at the pills. “Are you telling me these are love potions?”

The reverend shifted uncomfortably, with a whisper of black silk against vinyl. “Mrs. Webster, please don't mistake me for a witch. The Church of Wicca are reactionaries. And no, these aren't love potions, not in the folklore sense. They only stir that rush of emotion—they can't direct it at anyone. You do that for yourself.”

“It sounds hazardous,” Laura said.

“Then it's the sort of danger women were born for!” the reverend said. “Do you ever read romance novels? Millions do, for this same thrill. Or eat chocolate? Chocolate is a lover's gift, and there's reason behind the tradition. Ask a chemist about chocolate and serotonin precursors sometime.” The reverend touched her forehead. “It all comes to the same, up here. Neurochemistry.” She pointed to the table. “Chemistry in those pills. They're natural substances, creations of the Goddess. Part of the feminine soul.”

Somewhere along the line, Laura thought, the conversation had gently peeled loose from sanity. It was like falling asleep on an air raft and waking up far out to sea. The important thing was not to panic. “Are they legal?” Laura said.

Reverend Morgan picked up a pill with her lacquered nails and ate it. “No blood test would show a thing. You can't be prosecuted for the natural contents of your own brain. And no, they're not illegal. Yet. Praise the Goddess, the Patriarchy's laws still lag behind advances in chemistry.”

“I can't accept these,” Laura said. “They must be valuable. It's conflict of interest.” Laura picked them up and stood, reaching over the desk.

“This is the modern age, Mrs. Webster. Gene-spliced bacteria can make drugs by the ton. Friends of ours can make them for thirty cents each.” Reverend Morgan rose to her feet. “You're sure?” She slipped the pills back in her purse. “Come and see us if you change your mind. Life with one man can go stale very easily. Believe me, we know. And if that happens, we can help you.” She paused meditatively. “In any of several different ways.”

Laura smiled tightly. “Good luck with your campaign, Reverend.”

“Thank you. I appreciate your good wishes. As our mayor always says, Galveston is Fun City. It's up to all of us to see it stays that way.”

Laura ushered her outside. She watched from the walkway as the reverend slipped into a self-driven van. The van whirred off. A flock of brown pelicans crossed the island, headed for Karankawa Bay. The autumn sun shone brightly. It was still the same sun and the same clouds. The sun didn't care about the landscape inside people's heads.

She went back in. Mrs. Rodriguez looked up from behind the front desk, blinking. “I'm glad my old man is no younger,” she said. “
La puta
, eh? A whore. She's no friend to us married women, Laurita.”

“I guess not,” Laura said, leaning against the desk. She felt tired already, and it was only ten o'clock.

“I'm going to church this Sunday,” Mrs. Rodriguez decided. “
Qué brujería
, eh? A witch! Did you see those eyes? Like a snake.” She crossed herself. “Don't laugh, Laura.”

“Laugh? Hell, I'm ready to hang garlic.” The baby wailed from the kitchen. A sudden Japanese phrase leapt into Laura's head. “
Nakitsura ni hachi,
” she blurted. “It never rains but it pours. Only it's better in the original. ‘A bee for a crying face.' Why can't I ever remember that crap when I need it?”

Laura took the baby upstairs to the tower office to deal with the day's mail.

Laura's corporate specialty was public relations. When David had designed the Lodge, Laura had prepared this room for business. It was equipped for major conferences; it was a full-scale node in the global Net.

The Lodge did most of its business as telex, straight print sent by wire, such as guest dossiers and arrival schedules. Most of the world, even Africa, was wired for telex these days. It was cheapest and simplest, and Rizome favored it.

“Fax” was more elaborate: entire facsimiles of documents, photographed and passed down the phone lines as streams of numbers. Fax was good for graphics and still photos; the fax machine was essentially a Xerox with a phone. It was great fun to play with.

The Lodge also took plenty of traditional phone traffic: voice without image, both live and recorded. Also voice with image: videophone. Rizome favored one-way prerecorded calls because they were more efficient. There was less chance of an expensive screwup in a one-way recorded call. And recorded video could be subtitled for all of Rizome's language groups, a major advantage for a multinational.

The Lodge could also handle teleconferencing: multiple phone calls woven together. Teleconferencing was the expensive borderland where phones blurred into television. Running a teleconference was an art worth knowing, especially in public relations. It was a cross between chairing a meeting and running a TV news show, and Laura had done it many times.

Every year of her life, Laura thought, the Net had been growing more expansive and seamless. Computers did it. Computers melted other machines, fusing them together. Television-telephone-telex. Tape recorder—VCR—laser disk. Broadcast tower linked to microwave dish linked to satellite. Phone line, cable TV, fiber-optic cords hissing out words and pictures in torrents of pure light. All netted together in a web over the world, a global nervous system, an octopus of data. There'd been plenty of hype about it. It was easy to make it sound transcendently incredible.

She'd been more into it when she'd been setting it up. Right now it seemed vastly more remarkable that Loretta was sitting up much straighter in her lap. “Looook at you, Loretta! Look how straight you can hold your head! Look at you, sweetie-face.… Wooga woog-woog-woog …”

The Net was a lot like television, another former wonder of the age. The Net was a vast glass mirror. It reflected what it was shown. Mostly human banality.

Laura zoomed one-handed through her electronic junk mail. Shop-by-wire catalogs. City Council campaigns. Charities. Health insurance.

Laura erased the garbage and got down to business. A message was waiting from Emily Donato.

Emily was Laura's prime news source for the backstage action in Rizome's Central Committee. Emily Donato was a first-term committee member.

Laura's alliance with Emily was twelve years old. They'd met in college at an international business class. Their shared backgrounds made friendship easy. Laura, a “diplobrat,” had lived in Japan as an embassy kid. For Emily, childhood meant the massive industrial projects of Kuwait and Abu Dhabi. The two of them had shared a room in college.

After graduation, they'd examined their recruiting offers and decided together on Rizome Industries Group. Rizome looked modern, it looked open, it had ideas. It was big enough for muscle and loose enough for speed.

The two of them had been double-teaming the company ever since.

Laura punched up the message and Emily's image flashed onto the screen. Emily sat behind her antique desk at home in Atlanta, Rizome's headquarters. Home for Emily was a high-rise apartment downtown, a cell in a massive modern beehive of ceramic and composite plastic.

Filtered air, filtered water, halls like streets, elevators like vertical subways. A city set on end, for a crowded world.

Naturally everything about Emily's apartment struggled to obscure the facts. The place abounded in homey quirks and little touches of Victorian solidity: cornices, baroque door frames, rich mellow lighting. The wall behind Emily was papered in paisley arabesques, gold on maroon. Her polished wooden desktop was set as carefully as a stage: low keyboard at her right hand, pen and pencil holders with a slanting peacock plume, a gleaming paperweight of gypsum crystal.

The Chinese synthetic of Emily's frilled gray blouse had the faint shimmer of mother-of-pearl. Emily's chestnut-brown hair had been done by machine, with elaborate braids and little Dickensian curls at the temple. She wore long malachite earrings and a round cameo hologram at her neck. Emily's video image was very twenties, a modern reaction against the stark, dress-for-success look of generations of businesswomen. To Laura's eye, the fashion suggested an antebellum southern belle filled to gushing with feminine graciousness.

“I've got the
Report
's rough draft,” Emily announced. “It's pretty much what we expected.”

Emily pulled her copy of the
Quarterly Report
from a drawer.

She flipped pages. “Let's get to the major stuff. The Committee election. We've got twelve candidates, which is a joke, but three front-runners. Pereira's an honest guy, you could play poker with him by telex, but he can't live down that Brasilia debacle. Tanaka pulled a real coup with that Osaka lumber deal. He's pretty flexible for an old-line salary man, but I met him in Osaka last year. He drank a lot and wanted to pinch me. Besides, he's into countertrade, and that's my turf.

“So we'll have to back Suvendra. She came up through the Djakarta office, so the East Asian contingent's behind her. She's old, though.” Emily frowned. “And she smokes. An ugly habit and it tends to rub people the wrong way. Those clove-scented Indonesian cancer sticks—one whiff and you're ready for a biopsy.” She shuddered.

“Still, Suvendra's our best bet. At least, she'll appreciate our support. Unfortunately that moron Jensen is running again on a youth platform, and that'll cut into the votes we can swing. But to hell with it.” She pulled at a coil of hair. “I'm tired of playing the young ingenue anyway. When I run again in '25 I think we should aim for the Anglo and feminist vote.”

She flipped pages, frowning. “Okay, a quick review of the party line. Let me know if you need more data on the arguments. Philippines farm project: no way. Farming's a black hole and Manila's price supports are bound to collapse. Kymera joint project: yes. Russian software deal: yes. The Sovs still have hard-currency problems, but we can cut a good countertrade in natural gas. Kuwaiti housing project: no. Islamic Republic: the terms are good but it stinks politically. No.”

She paused. “Now here's one you didn't know about. Grenada United Bank. The Committee's slipping this one in.” For the first time, Emily looked uneasy. “They're an offshore bank. Not too savory. But the Committee figures it's time for a gesture of friendship. It won't do our reputation much good if the whole thing is hashed out in public. But it's harmless enough—we can let it go.”

Emily yanked open a wooden drawer with a squeak and put the
Report
away. “So much for this quarter. Things look good, generally.” She smiled. “Hello, David, if you're watching. If you don't mind, I'd like a private word with Laura now.”

The screen went blank for a long moment. But the time elapsing didn't cost much. Prerecorded one-way calls were cheap. Emily's call had been compressed into a high-speed burst and sent from machine to machine overnight, at midnight rates.

Emily reappeared on the screen, this time in her bedroom. She now wore a pink-and-white satin night-robe and her hair had been brushed out. She sat cross-legged in her wooden four-poster bed, a Victorian antique. Emily had refinished her ancient, creaking bed with modern hard-setting shellac. This transparent film was so mercilessly tough and rigid that it clamped the whole structure together like cast iron.

She had attached the phone camera to one of the bedposts. Business was over now. This was personal. The video etiquette had changed along with Emily's expression. She had a hangdog look. A new camera angle, looking down into the bed from a somewhat superior angle, helped convey the mood. She looked pitiful.

Laura sighed, pausing the playback. She shifted Loretta in her lap and nuzzled her absently. She was used to hearing Emily's problems, but it was hard to take before lunch. Especially today. Weirdness beginning to mount. She lifted her finger again.