Islands in the Net (58 page)

“Rizome-GoMotion,” McIntyre said. “Doesn't sound half bad.”

“Good,” Garcia-Meza said. “He is vulnerable, as I said. Transport—that would give us influence over him.”

“We might be better off forgetting all about him,” de Valera said. “It's hot in the Sahara. Maybe they'll all evaporate.”

“No one's ever going to forget Gresham,” Laura said. “They never forget what they can't have.… We'd better get hold of that company.” She looked around the table as they sat in the flickering television dimness. “Don't you see it? Iron Camels—the Jonathan Gresham Look. Every would-be tough guy and rugged individualist and biker lunatic on this planet is gonna want one for himself. In six months Arizona will be full of guys in nylon
tagelmousts
breaking their necks.” She propped her head in her hands. “And there's not a damn thing he can do about
that
.”

“Could be worth millions,” de Valera mused. “Hell, I'd bet on it.” He looked up. “When does this thing air?”

“Three days.”

“Can we do anything in that time?”

“In California? Sure,” said Mrs. Wu. “If we get right on it.”

So they got right on it.

Laura was cleaning her kitchen when her watchphone buzzed. She touched it and the door opened. Charles Cullen, Rizome's former CEO, stood out in the corridor in denim overalls.

“Mr. Cullen,” she said, surprised. “I hadn't heard you were back in Atlanta.”

“Just dropping in on old friends. Sorry I didn't call, but your new phone protocols.… Hope you don't mind.”

“No, I'm glad to see you. C'mon in.” He crossed the living room and she came out of the kitchen. They hugged briefly, cheek-kissed. He looked at her and grinned suddenly. “You haven't heard yet, have you?”

“Heard what?”

“You haven't been watching the news?”

“Not in days,” Laura said, throwing magazines off the couch. “Can't stand it—too depressing, too weird.”

Cullen laughed aloud. “They bombed Hiroshima,” he said.

Laura went white and grabbed for the couch.

“Easy,” he said. “They fucked up! It didn't work!” He rolled the armchair behind her. “Here, Laura, sit down, sorry.… It didn't explode! It's sitting in a tea-garden in downtown Hiroshima right now. Dead, useless. It came flying out of the sky—
tumbling
, the eyewitnesses said—and it hit the bottom of the garden and it's lying there in the dirt. In big pieces.”

“When did this happen?”

“Two hours ago. Turn on the television.”

She did. It was ten in the morning, Hiroshima time. Nice bright winter morning. They had the area cordoned off. Yellow suits, masks, geiger counters. Good helicopter overhead shot of the location. Tiny little place in wood and ceramic in some area zoned for small restaurants.

The missile was lying there crushed. It looked like something that had fallen off a garbage scow. Most of it was engine, burst copper piping, ruptured corrugated steel.

She turned down the gabbling narrative. “Isn't it full of uranium?”

“Oh, they got the warhead out first thing. Intact. They think the trigger failed. Conventional explosive. They're looking at it now.”

“Those
evil bastards
!” Laura screamed suddenly and slapped the coffee table hard. “How could they pick
Hiroshima?
”

Cullen sat down on the couch. He could not seem to stop grinning. Half amusement, half twisted nervous fear. She'd never seen him smile so much. This crisis was bringing out the bizarre in everyone. “Perfect choice,” he said. “Big enough to show you mean it—small enough to show
restraint
. They're evacuating Nagasaki right now.”

“My God, Cullen.”

“Oh,” he said, “call me Charlie. Got anything to drink?”

“Huh? Sure. Good idea.” She called the liquor cabinet over.

“You've got Drambuie!” Cullen said, looking. He picked out a pair of liqueur glasses. “Have a drink.” He poured, spilled a sticky splash on the coffee table. “Whoops.”

“God, poor Japan.” She sipped it. She couldn't help but blurt her thought aloud. “I guess this means they can't get
us
.”

“They're not gonna get anybody,” he said, gulping. “The whole world's after 'em. Sound detectors, sonar, anything that can float. Hell, they got the whole Singapore Air Force scrambling for the East China Sea. They picked the bomb up on airport radar coming in, got a trajectory.…” His eyes gleamed. “That sub's gonna die. I can feel it.”

She refilled their glasses. “Sorry, there's not much left.”

“What else have we got?”

“Uh …” She winced. “Some plum wine. And quite a bit of sake.”

“Sounds great,” he said unthinkingly. He was staring at the television. “Can't send out for liquor. It's quiet here in your place … but believe me, it's getting very strange out in those corridors.”

“I've got some cigarettes,” she confessed.

“Cigarettes! Wow, I don't think I've smoked one of those since I was a little kid.”

She got the cigarettes from the back of the liquor cabinet and brought out her antique ashtray.

He looked away from the television—it had switched to a public statement by the Japanese premier. Meaningless figurehead. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to barge in on you like this. I was in your building before I heard the news and.… Actually, I was just hoping that we could … you know … have a good talk.”

“Well, talk to me anyway. Because otherwise I think I'm going to have a fit.” She shivered. “I'm glad you're here, Charlie. I'd hate to be watching this alone.”

“Yeah—me too. Thanks for saying that.”

“I guess you'd rather be with Doris.”

“Doris?”

“That
is
your wife's name, isn't it? Did I forget?”

He raised his brows. “Laura, Doris and I have been separated for two months now. If we were still together I'd have brought her with me.” He stared at the television. “Turn it off,” he said suddenly. “I can only handle one crisis at a time.”

“But—”

“Fuck it, it's
gesellschaft
stuff. Out of our hands.”

She turned it off. Suddenly she could feel the Net's absence like a chunk taken out of her brain.

“Calm down,” he said. “Do some deep breathing. Cigarettes are bad for us anyway.”

“I didn't know about Doris. Sorry.”

“It's the demotion,” he said. “Things were fine as long as I was CEO, but she couldn't take the Retreat. I mean, she knew it was coming, that it's customary, but …”

She looked at his denim overalls. They were worn at the knees. “I think they take this demotion ritual a little too far … what do they have you do, mostly?”

“Oh, I'm in the old folks home. Change sheets—reminisce—pitch a little hay sometimes. Not so bad. Kind of gives you the long view.”

“That's a very correct attitude, Charlie.”

“I mean it,” he said. “This Bomb crisis has people totally obsessed right now, but the long-term view's still there, if you can back off enough to look at it. Grenada and Singapore … they had wild ideas, reckless, but if we're smart, and very careful, we might use that kind of radical potential sensibly. There's a world of hurt to be put right first … maybe a lot more if these bastards bomb us … but someday …”

“Someday what?” Laura said.

“I don't really know what to call it.… Some kind of genuine, basic improvement in the human condition.”

“It could do with some,” Laura said. She smiled at him. She liked the sound of it. She liked him, for having brought up the long term, in the very middle of hell breaking loose. The very best time for it, really. “I like it,” she said. “Sounds like interesting work. We could talk about it together. Network a little.”

“I'd like that. When I'm back in the swing of things,” he said. He looked embarrassed. “I don't mind being out of it a while. I didn't handle it well. The power.… You should know that, Laura. Better than anyone.”

“You did very well—everyone says so. You're not responsible for what happened to me. I went into it with my eyes open.”

“Jesus, it's really good of you to say that.” He looked at the floor.

“I dreaded this meeting.… I mean, you were nice enough the few times we've met, but I didn't know how you'd take it.”

“Well, it's our work! It's what we do, what we are.”

“You really believe in that, don't you? The community.”

“I have to. It's all I have left.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Me too.” He smiled. “Can't be such a bad thing. I mean, we're both in it. Here we are. Solidarity, Laura.”

“Solidarity.” They clicked glasses and drank the last Drambuie.

“It's good,” he said. He looked around. “Nice place.”

“Yeah … they keep the journos out.… Got a nice balcony, too. You like heights?”

“Yeah, what is this, fortieth floor? I can never tell these big Atlanta digs apart.” He stood up. “I could use some air.”

“Okay.” She walked toward the balcony; the double doors flung themselves open. They stood on the balcony looking down to the distant street.

“Impressive,” he said. Across the street they could see another high-rise, floor after floor, curtains open here and there, glow of television news. The balcony was open above them and they could hear it muttering out. The tone rising.

“It's good to be here,” he said. “I'll remember this moment. Where I was, what I was doing. Hell, everyone will. Years from now. For the rest of our lives.”

“I think you're right. I know you are.”

“It's either gonna be the absolute worst, or the final end of something.”

“Yeah … I should have brought the sake bottle.” She leaned on the railing. “You wouldn't blame me, Charlie, would you? If it was the worst? Because I did have a part in it. I did it.”

“Never even occurred to me.”

“I mean, I'm only one person, but I did what one person can do.”

“Can't ask for more than that.”

There was a bestial scream from upstairs. Joy, rage, pain, hard to tell. “That was it,” he said.

People were pouring into the streets. They were jumping out of vans. Running headlong. Running for one another. Distant leaping bits of anonymity: the crowd.

Horns were honking. People were embracing each other. Strangers, kissing. A mob flinging itself into its own arms. Windows began flying open across the street.

“They got 'em,” he said.

Laura looked down at the crowd. “Everybody's so happy,” she said.

He had the sense not to say anything. He just held out his hand.

About the Author

Bruce Sterling is an American author and one of the founders of the cyberpunk science fiction movement. He began writing in the 1970s; his first novel,
Involution Ocean
, about a whaling ship in an ocean of dust, is a science fictional pastiche of Herman Melville's
Moby-Dick
. His other works, including his series of stories and a novel,
Schismatrix
, set in the Shaper/Mechanist universe, often deal with computer-based technologies and genetic engineering. His five short story collections and ten novels have earned several honors: a John W. Campbell Award, two Hugo Awards, a Hayakawa's SF Magazine Reader's Award, and an Arthur C. Clarke Award. Sterling has also worked as a critic and journalist, writing for
Metropolis, Artforum, Icon, MIT Technology Review, Time
, and
Newsweek
, as well as
Interzone, Science Fiction Eye, Cheap Truth, and Cool Tools
. He edits
Beyond the Beyond
, a blog hosted by
Wired
.

Sterling is also involved in the technology and design community. In 2003 his web-only art piece,
Embrace the Decay
, was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and became the most-visited piece in the museum's digital gallery. He has taught classes in design at the Gerrit Reitveld Academie in Amsterdam, Centro in Mexico City, Fabrica in Treviso, Italy, and the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. Sterling lives in Austin, Texas; Belgrade, Serbia; and Turin, Italy.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1988 by Bruce Sterling

Cover design by Jesse Hayes

ISBN: 978-1-4976-8651-9

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com