Islands in the Net

Emerson polished off the last of her chile relleno. "These are real issues. If we want to live in a world we can recog- nize, we'll have to fight for the privilege. We at Rizome have to do our part. We are doing it. Here and now."

"You make a pretty good case," David said. "But I imagine the pirates see things differently."

"Oh, we'll be hearing their side soon enough." She smiled.

"But we may have some surprises for them. The havens are used to multinational corporations in the old style. But an economic democracy is a different animal. We must let them see that for themselves. Even if it means some risk to us."

David frowned. "You don't seriously think they'll try anything?"

"No, I don't. If they do, we'll simply call the local police.

It would be scandalous for us-this is, after all, a very confidential meeting-but worse scandal, I think, for them."

She placed fork and knife neatly across her plate. "We know there's some small risk. But Rizome has no private army. No fellows in dark glasses with briefcases full of cash and hand- guns. That's out of style." Her eyes flashed briefly. "We have to pay for that luxury of i

You understand. Don't you?"

Laura thought it over, quietly. "Our number came up," she said at last.

"Exactly. "

"Just one of those things," David said. And it was.

The negotiators should have arrived at the Lodge all at the same time, on equal terms. But they didn't have that much sense. Instead they'd chosen to screw around and attempt to one-up each other.

The Europeans had arrived early-it was their attempt to show the others that they were close to the Rizome referees

.and dealing from a position of strength. But they soon grew bored and were full of peevish suspicion.

Emerson was still mollifying them when the Singapore contingent arrived. There were three of them as well: an ancient Chinese named Mr. Shaw and his two Malay compa- triots. Mr. Shaw was a bespectacled, balding man in an oversized suit, who spoke very little. The two Malays wore black songkak hats, peaked fore and aft, with sewn-on em- blems of their group, the Yung Soo Chim Islamic Bank. The

Malays were middle-aged men, very sober, very dignified.

Not like bankers, however. Like soldiers. They-walked erect, with their shoulders squared, and their eyes never stopped moving.

They brought mounds of luggage, including their own telephones and a refrigerated chest, packed with foil-sealed trays of food.

Emerson made introductions. Karageorgiu glared aggres- sively, Shaw was woodenly aloof. The escorts looked ready to arm-wrestle. Emerson took the Singaporeans upstairs to the conference room, where they could phone in and assure their home group that they had arrived in one piece.

No one had seen the Grenadians since the day before, at the airport. They hadn't called in, either, despite their vague promises. Time passed. The others saw this as a studied insult and fretted over their drinks. They broke at last for di

The Singaporeans ate their own food, in their rooms. The

Europeans complained vigorously about the barbarous Tex-

Mex cuisine. Mrs. Delrosario, who had outdone herself, was almost reduced to tears.

The Grenadians finally showed up after dusk. Like Ms.

Emerson, Laura had become seriously worried. She greeted them in the front lobby. "So glad to see you. Was there any trouble?"

"Nuh," said Winston Stubbs, exposing his dentures in a su

The. ancient Rastaman had perched a souvenir cowboy hat on his gray shoulder-length dreadlocks. He wore sandals and an explosive Hawaiian shirt.

His companion, Sticky Thompson, had a new haircut. He'd chosen to dress in slacks, long-sleeved shirt, and business vest, like a Rizome associate. It didn't quite work• on him though; Sticky looked almost aggressively conventional. Car- lotta, the Church girl, wore a sleeveless scarlet beach top, a short skirt, and heavy makeup. A brimming chalice was tattooed on her bare, freckled shoulder.

Laura introduced her husband and the Lodge staff to the

Grenadians. David gave the old pirate his best hostly grin: friendly and tolerant, we're all just-folks here at Rizome.

Overdoing it a bit maybe, because Winston Stubbs had the standard pirate image. Raffish. "Howdy," David said. "Hope y'all enjoy your stay with us."

The old man looked skeptical. David abandoned his drawl.

"Cool cu

"Cool ru

Webster?"

David smiled. "My folks used to play them when I was a kid."

"Oh, seen. That would be Dr. Martin Webster and Grace

Webster of Galveston."

"That's right," David said. His smile vanished.

"You designed this Lodge,". Stubbs said. "Concretized sand, built from the beach, eh?" He looked David up and down. "Mash-it-up appropriate technology. We could use you in the islands, mon."

"Thanks," David said, fidgeting. "That's very flattering."

"We could use a public relations, too," Stubbs said, grin- ning crookedly at Laura. His eye whites were veined with red, like cracked marbles. "I-and-I's reputation could use an upgrade. Pressure come down on I-and-I. From Babylon

Luddites. "

"Let's all gather in the conference room," Emerson said.

"It's early yet. Still time for us to talk."

They argued for two solid days. Laura sat in on the meet- ings as Debra Emerson's second, and she realized quickly that Rizome was a barely tolerated middleman. The data pirates had no interest whatsoever in taking up new careers as right-thinking postindustrialists. They had met to confront a threat.

All three pirate groups were being blackmailed.

The blackmailers, whoever they were, showed a firm grasp of data-haven dynamics. They had played cleverly on the divisions and rivalries among the havens; threatening one bank, then depositing the shakedown money in another. The havens, who naturally loathed publicity, had covered up the attacks. They were deliberately vague about the nature of the depredations. They feared publicizing their weaknesses. It was clear, too, that they suspected one another.

Laura had never known the true nature and extent of haven operations, but she sat quietly, listened and watched, and learned in a hurry.

The pirates dubbed commercial videotapes by the hundreds of thousands, selling them in poorly policed Third World markets. And their teams of software cracksters found a ready market for programs stripped of their copy protection. This brand of piracy was nothing new; it dated back to the early days of the information industry.

But Laura had never realized the profit to be gained by evading the developed world's privacy laws. Thousands of legitimate companies maintained dossiers on individuals: em- ployee records, medical histories, credit transactions. In the

Net economy, business was impossible without such informa- tion. In the legitimate world, companies purged this data periodically, as required by law.

But not all of it was purged. Reams of it ended up in the data havens, passed on through bribery of clerks, through taps of datalines, and by outright commercial espionage. Straight companies operated with specialized slivers of knowledge.

But the havens made a business of collecting it, offshore.

Memory was cheap, and their databanks were huge and growing.

And they had no shortage of clients. Credit companies, for instance, needed to avoid bad risks and pursue their debtors.