Islands in the Net

They'd been completely hidden before, by the sheer rising bulk of the ship. The barges pumped their loads aboard through massive ribbed pipelines. There was a kind of uneasy nastiness to the sight, vaguely obscene, like the parasitic sexuality of certain deep-sea fish.

"Don't you wa

"Well, could you go offline for a second, then?"

"Huh?" Laura paused. "Anything you want to tell me, you ought to be able to tell Atlanta."

"You gotta be kidding," Carlotta said, rolling her eyes.

"What's the deal, Laura? We talked private all the time at the

Lodge, and nobody bothered us then."

Laura considered. "What do you think, online?"

["Well, hell, I trust you,"] King said. ["Go for it! You're in no danger that I can see."]

"Well... okay, as long as David's here to watch over me." Laura stepped to the navigator's table, took off her videoglasses and earplug, and set them down. She backed away and rejoined Carlotta, careful to stay in view of the glasses. "There. Okay?"

"You've got really strange eyes, Laura," Carlotta murmured.

"Kind of yellow-green.... I'd forgotten how they looked. It's easier to talk to you when you don't have that rig on-kinda makes you look like a bug."

"Thanks a lot," Laura said. "Maybe you ought to take it a little easy on the hallucinogens."

"What's this high-and-mighty stuff?" Carlotta said. "This grandmother of yours, Loretta Day, that you think so much of-she got busted for drugs once. Didn't she?"

Laura was startled. "What's my grandmother got to do with it?"

"Only that she raised you, and looked after you, not like your real mother. And I know you thought a lot of old gra

David... . The farther you go back, the easier it is to sneak the records out. 'Cause no one's keeping guard on all the data. There's just too much of it to watch, and no one really cares! But the Bank does-so they've got it all."

Carlotta narrowed her eyes. "Marriage certificates-divorces

-charge cards, names, addresses, phones... . Newspapers, sca

Laura felt herself flush. "I can't stop you from invading my privacy. Maybe that gives you an unfair advantage over me. But I don't make final decisions-I'm only representing my people." A group of officers broke up around one of the screens, leaving the bridge with looks of stern devotion to duty. "Why are you telling me this, Carlotta?"

"I'm not sure ..." Carlotta said, looking genuinely puz- zled, even a little hurt. "I guess it's cause I don't want to see you walk blind into what's coming down for you. You think you're safe cause you work for the Man, but the Man's had his day. The real future's here, in this place." Carlotta low- ered her voice and stepped closer; she was serious. "You're on the wrong side, Laura. The losin' side, in the long run.

These people have hold of things that the Man don't want trifled with. But there's not a thing the Man can do about it, really. Cause they got his number. And they can do things here that straights are scared to even think about."

Laura rubbed her left ear, a little sore from its plug-in phone. "You're really impressed by that black market tech,

Carlotta?"

"Sure, there's that," Carlotta said, shaking her tousled head. "But they got Louison, the Prime Minister. He can raise up his Optimals. He can call 'em out, Laura-his Perso- nas, understand? They walk around in broad daylight, while he never leaves that old fort. I've seen 'em... walkin' the streets of the capital .... little old men." Carlotta shivered.

Laura stared at Carlotta with mixed a

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Don't you know what an Optimal Persona is? It's got no substance, time and distance mean nothing to it. It can look and listen... spy on you... . Or maybe walk right through your body! And two days later you drop dead without a mark on you. "

Laura sighed; Carlotta had had her going for a moment there. She could understand outlaw tech; but mystic bullshit had never done much for her. David and the Polish émigré were going over a CADCAM readout, all smiles. "Does

Andrei believe all this?"

Carlotta shrugged, her face closing up, becoming distant again. "Andrei's a political. We get all kinds in Grenada... .

But it all adds up in the end."

"Maybe it does... if you're batshit."

Carlotta gave her a look of pious sorrow. "I better put my rig back on," Laura said.

They had lunch with the ship's captain. He was the potbel- lied character with the six gold pens. His name was Blaize.

Nineteen of the ship's other commissars joined him in the supertanker's cavernous dining room, with its hinged chande- liers and oak wainscoting. They dined off old gold-rimmed china with the insignia of the P&O Shipping Line and were served by teenage waiters in uniform, hauling big steel tu- reens. They ate scop. Various hideous forms of it. Soups.

Nutmeg-flavored mock chicken breast. Little fricasseed things with toothpicks in them.

Eric King didn't wait through lunch. He signed offline, leaving them with Mrs. Rodriguez.

"We are by no means up to capacity," Captain Blaize a

Webster, what a fleet of ships, like this, could do, for the plight of Mother Africa."

"Yeah. I mean, I grasp the implications," David said, digging into his scop with gusto.

Light background music was playing. Laura listened with half an ear. Some kind of slick premille

..."(something something) for you, dear ... buh buh buh boooh ..." She could almost identify the singer ... from old movies. Cosby, that was it. Bing Cosby.

Now digitizing. effects started creeping in and something awful began to happen. Suddenly a bandersnatch had jumped into Cosby's throat. His jovial white-guy Anglo good vibes stretched like electric taffy-arrooooh, werewolf noises. Now

Bing was making ghastly hub hub hub backward croonings, like a sucking chest wound. The demented noise was filtering around the diners but no one was paying attention.

Laura turned to the young three-pen cadre on her left. The guy was waving his fingers over Loretta's tote and looked up guiltily when she asked. "The music? We call it didge-Ital

... dig-ital, seen, D.J.-Ital.... Mash it up right on the ship."

Yeah. They were doing something awful to poor old Bing while he wasn't looking. He sounded like his head was made of sheet metal.

Now Blaize and Andrei were lecturing David about money.