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"Hungry," she whispered.
"No, you shouldn't eat."
"Please, I must. I must, just a little. I don't want to die hungry. "
Laura thought it over. Soup. It wasn't much worse than water, surely.
"You've been eating," Katje accused her, her eyes glazed and ghostly. "You had so much. And I had nothing."
"All right,- but not too much."
"You can spare it."
"I'm trying to think of what's best for you. No answer, just pain-brimming eyes full of suspicion and fever- ish hope. Laura tilted the bowl and Katje gulped desperately.
"God, that's so much better." She smiled, an act of heart- breaking courage. "I feel better.... Thank you so much."
She curled away, breathing harshly.
Laura leaned back in her sweat-stiff djellaba and dozed off.
She woke when she sensed Gresham climbing into the lean-to.
It was bitterly cold again, that lunar Saharan cold, and she could feet heat radiating off the bulk of him, large and male and carnivorous. She sat up and helped him kick his way under the carpet.
"We made good time today," he murmured. The soft voice of the desert, a bare disturbance of the silence. "If she lives, we can make it to her camp by midmorning. I hope the place isn't full of Azanian commandos. The long arm of imperialist law and order."
" `Imperialist.' That word doesn't mean anything to me."
"You gotta hand it to 'em," Gresham said. He was-looking down at Katje, who lay heavily, unconscious. "Once it looked like their little anthill was sure to go, but they pulled through somehow.... The rest of Africa has fallen apart, and every year they move a little farther north, them and their fucking cops and rule books."
"They're better than FACT! At least they help."
"Hell, Laura, half of FACT are white fascists who split when South Africa went one-man, one-vote. There's not a dime's worth of difference.... Your doctor friend may have a carrot instead of a stick, but the carrot's just the stick by other means. "
"I don't understand." It seemed so unfair. "What do you want?"
"I want freedom." He fumbled in his duffel bag. "There's more to us than you'd think, Laura, seeing us on the run like this. The Inadin Cultural Revolution-it's not just another bullshit cover name, they are cultural, they're fighting for it, dying for it.... Not that what we have is pure and noble, but the lines crossed here. The line of population and the line of resources. They crossed in Africa at a place called disaster.
And after that everything's more or less a muddle. And more or less a crime."
Deja vu swept over her. She laughed quietly. "I've heard this before. In Grenada and Singapore, in the havens. You're an islander too. A nomad island in a desert sea." She paused.
"I'm your enemy, Gresham."
"I know that," he told her. "I'm just pretending otherwise."
"I belong out there, if I ever get back."
"Corporate girl. "
"They're my people. I have a husband and child I haven't seen in two years."
The news didn't seem to surprise him. "You've been in the
War," he said: "You can go back to the place you called home, but it's never the same."
It was true. "I know it. I can feel it inside me. The burden of what I've seen."
He took her hand. "I want to hear all of it. All about you,
Laura, everything you know. I am a journalist. I work under other names. Sacramento Internet, City of Berkeley Munici- pal Video Cooperative, about a dozen others, off and on. I've got my backers.... And I've got video makeup in one of the bags. "
He was very serious. She began laughing. It turned her bones to water. She fell against him in the dark. His arms surrounded her. Suddenly they were kissing, his beard raking her face. Her lips and chin were sunburned and she could feel the bristles piercing through a greasy lacquer of oil and sweat.
Her heart began hammering wildly, a manic exaltation as if she'd been flung off a cliff. He was pi
Katje groaned aloud at their feet, a creaking, unconscious sound. Gresham stopped, then rolled off her. "Oh, man," he said. "Sorry."
"Okay," Laura gasped.
"Too weird," he said reluctantly. He sat up, pulling his robed arm from under her head. "She's down there dying in that fucking Dachau getup ... and I left my condoms in the scoot."
"I guess we need those."
"Hell, yes, we do, this is Africa. Either one of us could have the virus and not know for years." He was blunt about it, not embarrassed. Strong.
She sat up. The air crackled with their intimacy. She took his hand, caressed it. It didn't hurt to do it. It was better now between them, the tension gone. She felt open to him and glad to be open. The best of human feelings.
"It's okay," she said. "Put your arm around me. Hold me. It's good."
"Yeah." Long silence. "You wa
Her stomach lurched. "Scop, God, I'm sick of it."
"I've got some California abalone and a couple of tins of smoked oysters I've been saving for a special occasion."
Her mouth flooded with hunger. "Smoked oysters. No. Really?"
He patted his duffel bag. "Right here. In my bail-out bag.
Wouldn't want to lose 'em, even if they torched the scoot.
Hold on, I'll light a candle." He pulled the zip. Light flared.
Her eyes shrank. "Will the planes see. that?"
The candle caught, backlighting his head. Snarl of reddish- brown hair. "If they do, let's die eating oysters." He pulled three tins from the bottom of the bag. Their bright American paper gleamed. Treasure marvels from the empire of consumerism.
He opened one tin with his knife. They ate with their fingers, nomad style. The rich flavor hit Laura's shriveled taste buds like an avalanche. The aroma flooded her whole head; she felt dizzy with pleasure. Her face felt hot and there was a faint ringing in her ears. "In America, you can have these every day," she said. She had to say it aloud, just to test the miracle of it.
"They're better when you can't have them," he said. "It's a hell of a thing, isn't it? Perverse. Like hitting your head with a hammer 'cause it feels so good when you stop." He drank the juice out of the can. "Some people are wired that way."
"Is that why you came to the desert, Gresham?"
"Maybe," he said. "The desert's pure. The dunes-all lines and form. Like good computer graphics." He set the can aside. "But that's not all of it. This place is the core of disaster. Disaster is where I live."
"But you're an American," she said, looking down at
Katje. "You chose to come here."
He thought about it. She could feel him working up to something. Some deliberate confession.
"When I was a kid in grade school," he said, "some network guys with cameras showed up in my classroom one day. They wanted to know what we thought about the future.
They did some interviews. Half of us said they'd be doctors, or astronauts, and all that crap. And the other half just said they figured they'd fry at Ground Zero." He smiled distantly.
"I was one of those kids. A disaster freak. Y'know, you get used to it after a while. You get to where you feel uneasy when things start looking up." He met her eyes. "You're not like that, though."
"No," she said. "Born too late, I guess. I was sure I could make things better."
"Yeah," he said. "That's my excuse, too."
Katje stirred, listlessly.
"You want some abalone?"
Laura shook her head. "Thanks, but I can't. I can't enjoy it, not now, not in front of her." The rich food was flooding her system with a rush of drowsiness. She leaned her head on his shoulder. "Is she going to die?"
No answer.
"If she dies, and you don't go to the camp, what'll you do with me?"
Long silence. "I'll take you to my harem where I'll cover your body with silver and emeralds."