Islands in the Net (36 page)

Renewed pounding came from the door. Someone had jammed the ceramic edge of a machete through and was sawing vigorously at the tangle-tape. They turned to face it—and saw, beyond it, over the waterfront, one of the loading cranes. The skeletal arm was spinning on its axis, gathering speed with ponderous grace. At the end of its cables was a cargo fridge container, rising high above the docks with centrifugal force.

Suddenly the crane let loose. The heavy cargo box, half the size of a house, spun free and arched dizzily through space. It flew almost gently, arcing and tumbling, like a softball tossed underhand.

Its flight ended suddenly. It slammed, with cybernetic precision, into a black police chopper hovering over the waterfront. There was an explosive burst as the fridge car ruptured, with gaseous jets of frost and the bright cartwheeling of hundreds of cardboard boxes. The chopper snapped, buckled, and splashed dramatically into dirty seawater. It lay sprawled amid the floating boxes like a dragonfly crushed by a car grill.

“Mrs. Srivijaya's Frozen Fish Sticks,” little Derveet murmured, at Laura's elbow. She'd recognized the cargo.

The crane slithered downward, its claws clanking for another grab.

“How did they do that?” Hotchkiss demanded.

“It a very smart machine,” said Mr. Suvendra.

“I'm getting old,” Hotchkiss said sadly. “Where do they control that damned thing?”

“Inside the godown,” Mr. Suvendra said. “There are consoles—”

“Fine.” Hotchkiss grabbed Mr. Suvendra's skinny wrist. “You take me there. Lu! Aw! We're moving!”

“No,” Mr. Suvendra said.

Suvendra grabbed her husband's other arm. Suddenly they were tugging at him like a rag doll. “We don't do violence!” she said.

“You
what?
” Hotchkiss said.

“We don't fight,” Suvendra said passionately. “We don't like you! We don't like your government! We don't fight! Arrest us!”

“That bloody crane is going to kill our pilots—”

“Then you stop fighting! Send them away!” Suvendra lifted her voice, shrilly. “Everyone, sit!”

The Rizome crew froze wherever they stood and sat in place, as one person. Mr. Suvendra sat too, though he still dangled by one arm from Hotchkiss's huge, freckled paw.

“You fucking politicals,” Hotchkiss said in amazed contempt. “I don't believe this. I'm
ordering
you, as citizens—”

“We're not your citizens,” Suvendra said flatly. “We don't obey your illegal martial-law regime, either. Arrest us!”

“I bloody well will arrest you, the lot of you! Hell, you're as bad as they are.”

Suvendra nodded, taking a deep breath. “We are nonviolent. But we are your Government's enemies, Colonel, believe it!”

Hotchkiss looked at Laura. “You too, eh?”

Laura glared up at him, angry to see him single her out from her people. “I can't help you,” she told him. “I'm a globalist, and you're an arm of the State.”

“Oh bloody Christ, you're a sorry bunch of milk-and-water sons-of-bitches,” Hotchkiss said mournfully. He looked them over, making a decision. “You,” he told Laura.

He pounced on her, handcuffing her arms behind her back.

“He's stealing Laura!” Suvendra yelled, scandalized. “Get in his way!”

Hotchkiss levered Laura to her feet. She didn't want to go, but stumbled up quickly as agonizing pain hit her shoulder sockets. The Rizome crew crowded around him, waving their arms, shouting. Hotchkiss yelled something wordless, kicked Ali in the kneecap, then pulled his tangle-pistol. Ali, and Mr. Suvendra, and Bima went down, clawing at swarming blobs of tape. The others ran.

The rebels were breaking through again. A gap showed at the top of the door. Hotchkiss shouted at Officer Lu, who snatched a black knobby cylinder from his belt and tossed it through.

Two seconds passed. There was a cataclysmic flash from behind the door, a horrific bang, and the door jumped open, gushing smoke. “Go!” Hotchkiss yelled.

The upper stairwell was littered with rebels, deafened, blinded, howling. One was still on his feet, slashing frenziedly at empty air with a ceramic sword and screaming, “Martyr! Martyr!” Lu knocked him flat with a burst of jelly-rounds. Then they marched in, firing with their tangle-pistols into the heaving crowd.

Aw tossed another flash-grenade onto the landing below. Another cataclysmic wham. “Okay,” Hotchkiss said from behind Laura. “You wanna play Gandhi, you'll do it with two broken arms. March!” He shoved her forward through the door.

“I protest!” Laura shouted, dancing to avoid arms and legs.

Hotchkiss jerked her backward against his chest. “Look, Yankee,” he said with chilling sincerity. “You're a cute little blonde who looks real nice on telly. But if you muck about with me, I'll blow your brains out—and say the rebels did it. Where are the goddamn controls?”

“Ground floor,” Laura gasped. “In the back—glassed in.”

“Okay, we're moving. Go! Go!” Vicious racket as Lu opened up with the gun again. In the enclosed stairwell the hellish noise of it spiked right into her head. Laura felt a sudden burst of sweat drench her from head to foot. Hotchkiss yanked her along, his hand wedged under her armpit. He was crashing down two, three steps at a time, half carrying her. A big man, unbelievably strong—like being dragged by a gorilla.

The throat-catching sting of smoke. Great bubbling spatters on the cheerful pastel walls: purple dye, or smeared blood. Rebels down whimpering, some screaming, hands cupped over eyes or ears. Rebels glued to the stair railings, black-faced and gasping in the grip of tangle-tape. She stumbled on the sprawled legs of a boy, unconscious or dead, his face punched open by a jelly-bullet, blood streaming from a ruined eye.…

Then they were down on the first floor, and out the stairwell door. Distant sunlight poured through the smashed-out front of the godown, where the cops and rebels were still in pitched battle, the rebels getting the better of it. Inside the cavernous godown the A-L.P. were frenziedly rallying, machete-slicing tape from some of their tangle-victims, dragging captured, handcuffed cops behind a wall of crates.… They looked up in surprise, thirty sweat-drenched, blood-smeared, angry men, backlit by the street.

For a moment they all stood in frozen tableau. “Where's the control room?” Hotchkiss whispered.

“I lied,” Laura hissed at him. “It's on the second floor.”

“You fucking cow,” Hotchkiss marveled.

The A-L.P. were edging forward. Some wore stolen police helmets and almost all had riot shields. One of them suddenly fired a tangle-round, which narrowly missed Officer Aw and writhed on the floor like a molten, spastic tumbleweed.

Laura sat down, heavily. Hotchkiss made a grab at her, thought better of it, and began backing up. Suddenly they broke and ran for the back of the godown.

Then it was maelstrom all around her. Men ran after the retreating SWAT team, shouting. Others dashed up the stairs, where Hotchkiss's stunned and blinded victims were moaning, cursing, crying out. Laura drew up her legs, clenched the hands cinched behind her back, tried to make herself small.

Her mind raced wildly. She should go back to the roof, rejoin her people. No—better to help the injured. No—try to escape, to find the police, get arrested. No, she should—

A mustached Malay teenager with a swollen, battered cheek menaced her with a drawn sword. He gestured her up, prodding her with his foot.

“My hands,” Laura said.

The boy's eyes widened. He stepped behind her and sawed through the tough plastic strap of her cuffs. Her arms came free with a sudden grating rush of pleasure-pain in her shoulders.

He spat angry Malay at her. She stood up. Suddenly she was a head taller than he was. He backed off a step, hesitated, turned to someone else—

A wind and a sibilant hissing filled the godown. A chopper had dropped to street level—it was looking in on them through the hole in the godown's front wall. Expressionless helmets behind the cockpit glass. An explosive huff as a gun-metal canister jumped loose. It hit the godown floor, rolling, careening, gushing mist.…

Oh fuck. Tear gas. A sudden parching, virulent wave of it struck and she could feel the acid grip of it on her eyeballs. Panic hit her then. She scrambled on her hands and knees. Tearblur, savage pain of it in her throat. No air. She bounced off people, blinded and pushing wildly, and suddenly she was running. Running free …

Tears, in poisoned torrents, drenched her face. Where they touched her lips she felt a stinging tingle and a taste like kerosene. She kept running, shying away from the gray blur of looming buildings on the side of the street. Her throat and lungs felt full of fish hooks.

She reached the end of her adrenaline. She was too shocked to feel her own fatigue, but her knees began to buckle on their own. She headed for a doorway and collapsed into its recess.

Just then the sky opened up, and it began to rain. Another vertical, bursting monsoon. Wave after wave of it pounded the empty street. Laura crouched miserably in the doorway, catching rain in her cupped hands, bathing her face and the exposed skin of her arms. At first the water seemed to make it worse—a vicious stinging, as if she'd been breathing Tabasco sauce.

She had two plastic bangles now, over the chafed raw skin of her wrists. Her feet were soaked in their cheap, clammy sandals—not from rain, but from the water-cannon puddles in the street outside the godown.

She had run right through the street battle, blind. No one had even touched her. Except—there was a long strip of tangle-tape on her shin, still wriggling feebly, like the shed tail of a lizard. She picked it off her jeans.

She could recognize the area now—she'd run all the way to the Victoria and Albert Docks, just west of East Lagoon. To the north she saw the high-rise of the Tanjong Pagar public-housing complex—bland, dun-colored government bricks.

She sat, breathing shallowly, coughing, spitting every once in a while. She wished she were back with her people in the godown. But there was no way she could reach them again—it was not a sane option.

She'd meet them in jail anyway. Get the hell out of this battle zone and somehow manage to get arrested. Nice quiet jail. Yeah. Sounded good.

She stood up, wiping her mouth. Three cycle-rickshaws raced past her toward East Lagoon, each one crowded with a clinging mass of drenched, staring rebels. They ignored her.

She made a break for it.

There were two wet, unstable street barricades between her and Tanjong Pagar. She climbed over them in pounding rain. No one showed to stop her.

The glass doors of the Tanjong housing complex had been smashed out of their aluminum frames. Laura ducked into the place, over crunchy heaps of pebbly safety glass. Air conditioning bit into her wet clothes.

She was in a shabby but neat entrance hall. Her foam sandals squelched messily on the scuffed linoleum. The place was deserted, its inhabitants, presumably, respecting the government's curfew and keeping to their rooms upstairs. It was all mom-and-pop shops down here, little bicycle repair places, a fish market, a quack fractionation parlor. Cheerfully lit with fluorescents, ready for business, but all deserted.

She heard the distant murmur of voices. Calm, authoritative tones. She headed for them.

The sounds came from a glass-fronted television store. Cheap low-res sets from Brazil and Maphilindonesia, color gone garish. They'd been turned on all over the store, a few showing the Government channel, others flickering over and over with a convulsive, maladjusted look.

Laura eased through the doorway. A string of brass bells jumped and rang. Inside it reeked of jasmine incense. The shop's walls were papered with smiling, wholesome Singapore pop stars: cool guys in glitter tuxedos and cute babes in straw sun hats and peplums. Laura stepped carefully over a toppled, broken gum machine.

A little old Tamil lady had invaded the place. A wizened granny, white-haired and four feet tall, with a dowager's hump and wrists thin as bird bone. She sat in a canvas director's chair, staring at the empty screens and munching on a mouthful of gum.

“Hello?” Laura said. No response. The old woman looked deaf as a post—senile, even. Laura crept nearer, her shoes squelching moistly. The old woman gave her a sudden startled glance and adjusted her sari, draping the shoulder flap modestly over her head.

Laura combed at her hair with her fingers, feeling rainwater trickle down her neck. “Ma'am, do you speak English?”

The old woman smiled shyly. She pointed at a stack of the canvas chairs, folded against the wall.

Laura fetched one. It had an inscription across the back in wacky-looking Tamil script—something witty and amusing, probably. Laura opened it and sat beside the old woman. “Um, can you hear me at all, or, uh …”

The Tamil granny stared straight ahead.

Laura sighed, hard. It felt good to be sitting down.

This poor dazed old woman—ninety if she was a day—had apparently come wandering downstairs, for canary food or something, too deaf or past-it to know about the curfew. To find—Jesus—an empty world.

With a sudden, surreptitious movement the old gal popped a little colored pebble into her mouth. Grape bubble gum. She munched triumphantly.

Laura examined the televisions. The old woman had set them for every possible channel.

Suddenly, on Channel Three, the flickering stabilized.

With the speed of a gunfighter the old woman pulled a remote. The Government spokesman winked out. Channel Three rose to a static-filled roar.

The image was scratchy home video. Laura saw the image bumping as the narrator aimed the camera at his own face. He was a Chinese Singaporean. He looked about twenty-five, chipmunk-cheeked, with thick glasses and a shirt crowded with pens.

Not a bad-looking guy, really, but definitely not TV material. Normal-looking. You wouldn't look twice at him in any street in Singapore.