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Laura paused. She hadn't thought of the Committee elec- tions in a while. Emily supported Suvendra. "Yeah, that's right."
["What about Pereira?"]
"I like Pereira, but I'm not sure he has the stuff," Laura said. Carlotta gri
["Okay, I know Pereira blew it in Brasilia, but he's honest.
What about Mr. Suvendra and this Islamic Bank business? That doesn't bother you?"]
David, still rapt in conversation with the émigré Pole, stopped suddenly and put his hand to his ear. "Islamic Bank business," Laura thought, with a little cold qualm. Of course.
Someone from Rizome was negotiating with the Singapore data pirates. And of course, it would be Suvendra. It fell neatly into place: Ms. Emerson, and Suvendra, and Emily
Donato. The Rizome old girls' network in action.
"Um ... Eric," David said aloud. "This is not a private line."
["Oh,"] King said in a small, now-I've-done-it voice.
"We'd be glad to have your input, if you could write it up and send e-mail. Atlanta can encrypt it for you."
["Yeah, sure,"] King said. ["Stupid of me... my apologies."] Laura felt sorry for him. She was glad David had gotten him off her back, but she didn't like the way it sounded. The guy was being frank and up-front, in very
Rizome-correct fashion, and here they were telling him to mind his ma
David glanced at her and jerkily spread his hands, frown- ing. He looked frustrated.
Television. A kind of shellac of television surrounded and shielded both of them. It was like reaching out to touch someone's face, but feeling your fingers hit cold glass instead.
Andrei fired up the engine again. They picked up speed, scudding out to sea. Laura settled her videoglasses back carefully, blinking as her hair whipped around her head.
Caribbean water, smiling tropical sun, the cool, gleaming rush of speed below the bows. Intricate chunks of heavy industry loomed above the polluted shallows, huge, peculiar, ambitious ... full of insistent thereness. Laura closed her eyes. Grenada! What in hell was she doing here? She felt dazed, culture-shocked. A garbled crackling of talk from Eric
King. Suddenly the distant Net seemed to be digging into
Laura's head like an earwig. She felt a quick impulse to strip off the glasses and fling them into the sea.
Loretta squirmed in her arms and tugged her blouse in a. tight little fist. Laura forced her eyes open. Loretta was reality, she thought, hugging her. Her unfailing little guide.
Real life was where the baby was.
Carlotta edged closer across the damp bottom of the boat.
She waved her arm around her head. "Laura, you know why, all this?"
Laura shook her head.
"It's practice, that's what. Any one of these rigs-it could hold the whole Grenada Bank!" Carlotta pointed at a bizarre structure off to starboard-a flattened geodesic egg surrounded by buttressed pontoons. It looked like a fat soccer ball on bright orange spider's legs. "Maybe the Bank's computers are in there," Carlotta insinuated. "Even if the Man comes down on Grenada, the Bank can just duck aside, like electric judo! All this ocean tech-they can jackleg way out into international waters, where the Man just can't reach."
"The `Man'?" Laura said.
"The Man, the Combine, the Conspiracy. You know. The
Patriarchy. The Law, the Heat, the Straights. The Net. Them."
"Oh," Laura said. "You mean 'us.' "
Carlotta laughed.
Eric King broke in incredulously. ["Who is this strange woman? Can you give me another scan of that geodesic station? Thanks, uh, David... wild! You know what it looks like? It looks like your Lodge!"]
"I was just thinking that!" David said loudly, cupping his earphone. His eyes were riveted on the station and he was half leaning over the gunwale. "Can we cruise by it, Andrei?"
Andrei shook his head.
The stations fell behind them, their angular derricks framed against the curdled tropical green of the shoreline. The water grew choppier. The boat began to rock, its flat prow spanking each surge and flicking Laura's back with spray.
Andrei shouted and pointed off the port bow. Laura turned to look. He was pointing at a long, gray-black dike, a seawall.
A four-story office building stood near one end of it.
The installation was huge-the black dike was at least sixty feet high. Maybe a quarter mile long.
Andrei headed for it, and as they drew nearer, Laura saw little white spires scratching the skyline above the dike-tall street lights. Bicyclists rolled along the roadbed like gnats on wheels. And the office building looked more and more peculiar as they drew near-each story smaller than the last, stacked on a slant, with long metal stairs on the outside. And on its roof, a lot of tech busywork-satellite dishes, a radar mast.
The top story was round and painted nautical white. Like a smokestack.
It was a smokestack.
["That's a U.L.C.C.!"] Eric King said.
"A what, Eric?" Laura said.
["Ultra-Large Crude Carrier. A supertanker. Biggest ships ever built. Used to make the Persian Gulf run all the time, back in the old days."] King laughed. ["Grenada has super- tankers! I wondered where they'd ended up."]
"You mean it floats?" Laura said. "That seawall is a ship?
The whole thing moves?"
"It can load half a million tons," Carlotta said, luxuriating in Laura's surprise. "Like a skyscraper full of crude. It's bigger than the Empire State Building. Lots bigger." She laughed. "Course they don't have no crude in it, now. It's a righteous city now. One big factory."
They cruised toward it at full speed. Laura saw surface surges cresting against its bulk, whacking against it like a cliffside. The supertanker didn't show the slightest movement in response. It was far, far too big for that. It wasn't like any kind of ship she'd ever imagined. It was like someone had cut off part of downtown Houston and welded it to the horizon.
And on the closer edge of the mighty deck she could see-what? Mango trees, lines of flapping laundry, people clustered at the long, long railing•.... Hundreds of them. Far more than anybody could need for a crew. She spoke to
Carlotta. "They live there, don't they."
Carlotta nodded. "A lot goes on in these ships."
"You mean there's more than one?"
Carlotta shrugged. "Maybe." She tapped her own eyelid, indicating Laura's videoglasses. "Let's just say Grenada makes a pretty good flag of convenience."
Laura stared at the supertanker, sca
Carlotta snickered. "You're not too hip about black mar- kets, huh? The problem's always cash. What to do with it, I mean. Grenada's rich, Laura. And gettin' richer all the time."
"But why buy ships?"
"Now you're getting into ideology," Carlotta told her.
"Have to ask of Andrei about that."
Now Laura could see how old the monster was. Its sides were blotted with great caking masses of rust, sealed shut under layers of modem high-tech shellac. The shellac clung, but badly; in places it had the wrinkled look of failing plastic wrap. The ship's endless sheet-iron hull had flexed from heat and cold and loading stress, and even the enormous strength of modem bonded plastics couldn't hold. Laura saw stretch marks, and broken-edged blisters of "boat pox," and patches of cracked alligatoring where the plastic had popped loose in plates, like dried mud. All this covered with patches of new glue and big slathery drips of badly cured gunk. A hundred shades of black and gray and rust. Here and there, work gangs had spray-bombed the hull of the supertanker with intricate colored graffiti. "TANKERSKANKERS," "MON-