Islands in the Net

"You're grateful to me, because you think I saved you.

The hell. We did our best to kill. everyone in that convoy. We raked that truck with machine-gun fire, three times. I don't know how the hell you lived."

" `Fortunes of war

"I love war, Laura. I enjoy it, like the F.A.C.T. Them, they enjoy murdering rag-heads with robots. Me, I'm more visceral. Somewhere inside me, I wanted Armageddon, and this is as close as it ever got. Where the Earth is blasted and all the sickness comes to a head."

He leaned closer. "But that's not all of it. I'm not i

Green and pleasant and controlled, and just like everywhere else. "

"So I win, and you lose-is. that what you're telling me?

That we're enemies? Maybe we are enemies, in some abstract way that's all in your head. But as people, we're friends, aren't we? And I'd never hurt you if I could help it."

"You can't help it. You were hurting me even before I knew you existed." He leaned back. "Maybe my abstractions aren't your abstractions, so I'll give you some of your own.

How do you think I financed all this? Grenada. They were my biggest backers. Winston Stubbs... now there was a man with vision. We didn't always see eye to eye, but we were allies. It hurt a lot to lose him."

She was shocked. "I remember.... They said he gave money to terrorist groups."

"I haven't been picky. I can't afford to be-this project of mine, it's all Net stuff, money, and money's corruption is in the very heart of it. The Tuaregs have nothing to sell, they're

Saharan nomads, destitute. They don't have anything the Net wants-so I beg and scrape. A few rich Arabs, nostalgic for the desert while they tool around in their limousines.... Arms dealers, not many of those left I even took money from FACT, back in the old days, before the Countess went batshit. "

"Katje told me that! That it's a woman who runs FACT.

The Countess! Is it true?"

He was surprised, sidetracked. "She doesn't `run it,' ex- actly, and she's not really a countess, that's just her nom de guerre... . But, yeah, I knew her, in the old days. I knew her very well, when we were younger. As well as I know you."

"You were lovers?"

He smiled. "Are we lovers, Laura?"

The silence stretched, a desert silence broken by the distant whooping of the Tuaregs. She looked into his eyes.

"I talk too much," he said sadly. "A theorist."

She stood and pulled the tunic over her head, threw it to her feet. She sat beside him, naked, in the light of the screen.

He was silent. Clumsily, she pulled at his shirt, ran her hand over his chest. He opened his robe and put his weight on her.

He fumbled at her gently. For the first time, something vital, deep within her, realized that she was alive again. As if her soul had gone to sleep like a handcuffed arm, and now blood was returning. A torrent of sensation.

A moment passed with the muted crinkling of contraceptive plastic. Then he was on her, inside her. She wrapped her legs around him, her skin aflame. Flesh and muscle moving in darkness, the smell of sex. She closed her eyes, overwhelmed.

He stopped for a moment. She opened her eyes. He was looking at her, his face alight. Then he reached out with one arm and tapped the keyboard.

The machine sca

Unable to stop herself, she turned her head to look.

Cityscape / cityscape / trees / a woman I brand names /

Arabic script / image / image / image/

They were moving in time. They were moving in rhythm to the set, eyes lifted up, fixed on the screen.

Pleasure shot through her like cha

He gripped her hard and closed his eyes. He was going to finish soon. She did what she could to help him.

And it was over. He slid aside, touched the screen. The image froze on a weather station, ranks of silent numbers, cool computer-graphic blues of. lows and highs.

"Thank you," he said. "You were good to me."

She was shaking in reaction. She found her robe and put it on, body-mind whirling in turmoil. As reality came seeping back, she felt a sudden giddy wash of joy, of pure release.

It was over, there was nothing to fear. They were people together, a man and woman. She felt a sudden rush of affection for him. She reached out. Surprised, he patted her hand. Then he rose and moved into the television dimness.

She heard him fumbling, opening a bag. He was back in a moment. Bright gleam of tin. "Abalone."

She sat up. Her stomach rumbled loudly. They laughed, comfortable in their embarrassment, the erotic squalor of intimacy. He pried open the can and they ate. "God, it's so good," she told him.

"I never eat anything grown in topsoil. Plants are full of deadly natural insecticides. People are nuts to eat that stuff."

"My husband used to say that all the time."

He looked up, slowly. "I'm gone tomorrow," he repeated.

"Don't worry about anything."

"It's fine, I'll be all right." Meaningless words, but the concern was there-it was as if they had kissed. Night had fallen, it had grown cold. She shivered.

"I'll take you back to camp."

"I'll stay, if you want."

He stood up, helped to her feet. "No. It's warmer there."

Katje lay in a camp bed, white sheets, the floral smell of an air spray over the reek of disinfectant. There was not much machinery by modern standards, but it was a clinic and they had pulled her through.

"Where did you find such clothes?" she whispered.

Laura touched her blouse self-consciously. It was a red off-the-shoulder number, with a ruffled skirt. "One of the nurses--Sara ... I can't pronounce her last name."

Katje seemed to think it was fu

Laura had ever seen her smile. "Yes .... there's such a girl in every camp... . You must be popular."

"They're good people, they've treated me very well."

"You didn't tell them... about the Bomb."

"No-I thought I'd leave that too you. I didn't think they'd believe me."

Katje let the lie float over her, not taken in, but letting it pass. Noblesse oblige, or maybe the anesthetic. "I told them

... now I don't worry ... let them worry."

"Good idea, save your strength."

"I won't do this anymore I'm going home. To be happy." She closed her eyes.

The door opened. The director, Mbaqane, barged through, followed by Barnaard the political man, and the- paratroop captain.

And then the Vie

Two men in safari suits and speckled glasses, and a stylish, middle-aged Russian woman in a. jacket, sleek khaki pants, and patent-leather boots.

They stopped by the bed. "So these are our heroes," the woman said brightly.

"Indeed, yes," said Mbaqane.

"My name is Tamara Frolova-this is Mr. Easton, and

Mr. Neguib from our Cairo office."

"How do you do," Laura said reflexively. She almost rose to shake hands, then stopped herself. "This is Dr. Selous....

She's very tired, I'm afraid."

"And small wonder, yes? After such narrow escapes."

"Ms. Frolova has very good news for us," Mbaqane said.

"A cease-fire is declared. The camp is out of danger! It seems the Malian regime is prepared to sue for peace!"

"Wow," Laura said. "Are they handing over the bombs?"

Unhappy silence.

"A natural question," said Frolova. "But there have been some errors. Honest mistakes." She shook her head. "There are no bombs, Mrs. Webster."