Bruce Sterling - Islands In The Net

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Islands in the Net
by Bruce Sterling
1
The sea lay in simmering quiet, a slate-green gumbo
seasoned with warm mud. Shrimp boats trawled the horizon.
Pilings rose in clusters, like blackened fingers, yards out in
the gentle surf. Once, Galveston beach homes had crouched
on those tar-stained stilts. Now barnacles clustered there, gulls
wheeled and screeched. It was a great breeder of hurricanes,
this quiet Gulf of Mexico.
Laura read her time and distance with a quick downward
glance. Green indicators blinked on the toes. of her shoes,
flickering with each stride, counting mileage. Laura picked
up the pace. Morning shadows strobed across her as she ran.
She passed the last of the pilings and spotted her home, far
down the beach. She grinned as fatigue evaporated in a flare.
of energy.
Everything seemed worth it. When the second wind took
her, she felt that she could run forever, a promise of inde-
structible confidence bubbling up from the marrow. She ran
in pure animal ease, like an antelope.
The beach leapt up and slammed against her.
Laura lay stunned for a moment. She lifted her head, then
caught her breath and groaned. Her cheek was caked with
sand, both elbows numbed with the impact of the fall. Her
arms trembled as she pushed herself up onto her knees. She
looked behind her.
Something had snagged her foot. It was a black, peeling
length of electrical cable. Junked flotsam from the hurricane,
buried in the sand. The wire had whiplashed around her left
ankle and brought her down as neatly as a lariat.
She rolled over and sat, breathing hard, and kicked the
loosened wire off her shoe. The broken skin above her sock
had just begun to bleed, and the first cold shock gave way to
hot smarting pain.
She stood up and threw off the shakiness, brushing sand
from her cheek and arms. Sand had scratched the plastic
screen of her watchphone. Its wrist strap was caked with grit.
"Great," Laura said. A belated rush of anger brought her
strength back. She bent and pulled at the cable, hard. Four
feet of wet sand furrowed up.
She looked around for a stick or a chunk of driftwood to
dig with. The beach, as usual, was conspicuously clean. But
Laura refused to leave this filthy snag- to trip some tourist.
That wouldn't do at all-not on her beach. Stubbornly, she
knelt down and dug with her hands.
She followed the frayed cord half a foot down, to the
peeling, chromed edge of a home appliance. Its simulated
plastic wood grain crumbled under Laura's fingers like old
linoleum tile. She kicked the dead machine several times to
loosen it. Then, grunting and heaving, she wrenched it up
from its wet cavity in the sand. It came up sullenly, like a
rotten tooth.
It was a video cassette recorder. Twenty years of grit and
brine had made it a solid mass of corrosion. A thin gruel of
sand and broken shell dripped from its empty cassette slot.
It was an old-fashioned unit. Heavy and clumsy. Limping,
Laura dragged it behind her by its cord. She looked up the
beach for the local trash can.
She spotted it loitering near a pair of fishermen, who stood
in hip boots in the gentle surf. She called out. "Trash can!
The can pivoted on broad rubber treads and rolled- toward
her voice. It snuffled across the beach, mapping its way with
bursts of infrasound. It spotted Laura and creaked to a stop
beside her.
Laura hefted the dead recorder and dropped it into the open
barrel with a loud, bonging thump. "Thank you for keeping
our beaches clean," the can intoned. "Galveston appreciates
good citizenship. Would you like to register for a valuable
cash prize?"
"Save it for the tourists," Laura said. She jogged on
toward home, favoring her ankle.
Home loomed above the high-tide line on twenty sand-
colored buttresses.
The Lodge was a smooth half cylinder of dense concretized
sand, more or less the color and shape of a burnt bread loaf.
A round two-story tower rose from the center. Massive con-
crete arches held it a dozen feet above the beach.
A broad canopy in candy-stripe red and white shaded the
Lodge's walls. Under the canopy, a sun-bleached wooden
walkway girdled the building. Behind the walkway's railings,
morning sunlight gleamed from the glass doors of half a
dozen guest rooms, which faced east to the sea.
A trio of guest kids were already out on the beach. Their
parents were from a Rizome Canadian firm, and they were all
vacationing at company expense. The kids wore navy blue
sailor suits and nineteenth-century Fauntleroy hats with trail-
ing ribbons. The clothes were souvenirs from Galveston's
historical district.
The biggest kid, a ten-year-old, ran headlong toward Laura,
holding a long wooden baton over his head. Behind him, a
modern window-sculpture kite leapt from the others' arms, wing
after tethered wing peeling loose in blue and green pastels.
Yanked free, each fabric aerofoil flapped into shape, caught
the wind, and flung itself into flight. The ten-year-old slowed
and turned, fighting its pull. The long kite bucked like a
serpent, its movements eerily sinuous. The children screamed
with glee.
Laura looked up at the Lodge's tower roof. The flags of
Texas and Rizome Industries Group slid up the tower's flag-
pole. Old Mr. Rodriguez waved at her briefly, then disappeared behind the satellite dish.. The
old man was doing the
honors as usual, starting another day.
Laura limped up the wooden stairs to the walkway. She
pushed through the heavy doors of the front lobby. Inside, the
Lodge's massive walls still held the coolness of night. And
the cheerful reek of Tex-Mex cooking-peppers, cornmeal,
and cheese.
Mrs. Rodriguez was not at the front desk yet she was a
late riser, not as spry as her husband. Laura walked through
the empty dining room and up the tower stairs.
The tower's trapdoor slid open at her approach. She emerged
through the tower's lower floor, into a round conference room
lined with modem office equipment and padded swivel chairs.
Behind her, the trapdoor accordioned shut.
David, her husband, was stretched out on a wicker couch,
with the baby on his chest. They were both fast asleep. One
of David's hands spread cozily across little Loretta's pajama'd back.
Morning light poured through the tower's thick, round
windows, slanting high across the room. It lent a strange
Renaissance glow to their faces. David's head was propped
against a pillow, and his profile, always striking, looked like
a Medici coin. The baby's relaxed and peaceful face, her skin
like damask, was hauntingly fresh and new. As if she'd
popped into the world out of cellophane.
David had kicked a woolen comforter into a wad at the foot
of the couch. Laura spread it carefully over his legs and the
.baby's back.
She pulled up a chair and sat by them, stretching out her
legs. A wash of pleasant fatigue came over her. She savored
it a while, then gave David's bare shoulder a nudge.
"Morning."
He stirred. He sat up, cradling Loretta, who slept on in
babylike omnipotence. "Now she sleeps," he said. "But not
at three A.M. The midnight of the human soul."
"I'll get up next time," Laura said. "Really."
"Hell, we ought to put her in the room with your mother."
David brushed long black hair from his eyes, then yawned
into his knuckles. "I dreamed I saw my Optimal Persona last night."
"Oh?" Laura said, surprised. "What was it like?"
"I dunno. About what I expected, from the stuff I read
about it. Soaring and foggy and cosmic. I was standing on the
beach. Naked, I think. The sun was coming up. It was hyp-
notic. I felt this huge sense of total elation. Like I'd discov-
ered some pure element of soul."
Laura frowned. "You don't really believe in that crap."
He shrugged. "No. Seeing your O.P. it's a fad. Like folks
used to see UFO's, you know? Some weirdo in Oregon says
he had an encounter with his personal archetype. Pretty soon,
everybody and his brother's having visions. Mass hysteria,
collective unconscious or some such. Stupid. But modern at
least. It's very new-millennium." He seemed obscurely pleased.
"It's mystic bullshit," Laura told him. "If it was really
your Optimal Self, you should have been building something,
right? Not beachcombing for Nirvana."
David looked sheepish. "It was just a dream. Remember
that documentary last Friday? The guy who saw his O.P.
walking down the street, wearing his clothes, using his charge
card? I got a long way to go just yet. ",He looked down at her
ankle and started. "What'd you do to your leg?"
She looked at it. "I tripped over a piece of hurricane junk.
Buried in the sand. A VCR, actually." Loretta woke up, her
tiny face stretching in a mighty toothless yawn.
"Really? Must have been there since the big one of '02.
Twenty years! Christ, you could get tetanus." He handed her
the baby and fetched a first-aid kit from the bathroom. On the
way back he touched a console button. One of the flat display
screens on the wall flared into life.
David sat on the floor with limber grace and put Laura's
foot in his lap. He unlaced her shoe and glanced at its
readout. "That's pretty rotten time. You must have been
limping, babe."
He peeled off her sock. Laura held the wriggling baby to
her shoulder and stared at the screen, distracting herself as
David dabbed at her raw skin.
The screen was running David's Worldrun game-a global
simulation. Worldrun had been invented as a forecasting tool
for development agencies, but a glamorized version had found
its way onto the street. David, who was prone to sudden
enthusiasms, had been playing it for days.
Long strips of the Earth's surface peeled by in a simulated
satellite view. Cities glowed green with health or red with
social disruption. Cryptic readouts raced across the bottom of
the screen. Africa was a mess. "It's always Africa, isn't it?"
she said.
"Yeah." He resealed a tube of antiseptic gel. "Looks like
a rope burn. It didn't bleed much. It'll scab.
"I'll be okay." She stood up, lifting Loretta, and disguis-
ing the pain for his sake. The rawness faded as the gel soaked
in. She smiled. "I need a shower."
David's watchphone beeped. It was Laura's mother,
calling from her guest room in the Lodge, downstairs.
"Ohayo, y'all! How about helping Granny surround some breakfast?"
David was amused. "I'll be down in a minute, Margaret.
Don't eat anything with the hide still on it." They went
upstairs to their bedroom.
Laura gave him the baby and stepped into the bathroom,
which shut behind her.
Laura could not understand why David actively liked her
mother. He'd insisted on her right to see her grandchild,
though Laura hadn't met her mother face to face in years.
David was taking naive pleasure in his mother-in-law's stay,
as if a week-long visit could smooth over years of unspoken resentment.
To David, family ties seemed natural and solid, the way
things should be. His own parents doted on the baby. But
Laura's parents had split when she was nine, and she'd been
raised by her grandmother. Laura knew that family was a
luxury, a hothouse plant.
Laura stepped into the tub and the curtain shunted shut.
The sun-warmed water washed the tension from her; she put
family troubles out of mind. She stepped out and blew her
hair dry. It fell into place-she wore a simple cut, short, with
light feathery bangs. Then she confronted herself in the mirror.
After three months, most of her postnatal flab had suc-
cumbed to her running campaign. The endless days of her
pregnancy were a fading memory, though her swollen body
image still lurched up sometimes in her dreams. She'd been
happy, mostly-huge and achy, but cruising on motherhood's
hormones. She'd given David some rough times. "Mood
swings," he'd said, smiling with fatuous male tolerance.
In the last weeks they'd both been spooked and twitchy,
like barnyard animals before an earthquake. Trying to cope,
they talked in platitudes. Pregnancy was one of those arche-
typal situations that seemed to breed cliche's.
But it was the right decision. It had been the right time.
Now they had the home they'd built and the child they'd
wanted. Special things, rare things, treasures.
It had brought her mother back into her life, but that would
pass. Basically, things were sound, they were happy. Nothing
wildly ecstatic, Laura thought, but a solid happiness, the kind
she believed they had earned.
Laura picked at the part in her hair, watching the mirror.
That light threading of gray-there hadn't been so much
before the baby. She was thirty-two now, married eight years.
She touched the faint creases at the corners of her eyes,
thinking of her mother's face. They had the same eyes-set
wide, blue with a glimmer of yellow-green. "Coyote eyes,"
her grandmother had called them. Laura had her dead father's
long, straight nose and wide mouth, with an upper lip that fell
a little short. Her front teeth were too big and square.
Genetics, Laura thought. You pass them on to the next
generation. Then they relax and start to crumble on you. They
do it anyway. You just have to pay a little extra for using the
copyright.
She lined her eyes, touched on lipstick and video rouge.
She put on hose, knee-length skirt, long-sleeve blouse in
patterned Chinese silk, and a dark blue business vest. She
stuck a Rizome logo pin through the vest's lapel.
She joined David and her mother in the Lodge's dining
room. The Canadians, here for the last day, were playing
with the baby. Laura's mother was eating the Nipponese
breakfast, little cakes of pressed rice and tiny popeyed fish
that smelled like kerosene. David, on the other hand, had
fixed the usual: cunningly disguised food-oid stuff. Fluffy
mock scrambled eggs, soybean bacon, pancakes from batter
made of thick, yellow scop.
David was a health-food nut, a great devotee of unnatural
foods. After eight years of marriage, Laura was used to it. At
least the tech was improving. Even the. scop, single-cell
protein, was better these days. It tasted all right, if you could
forget the image of protein vats crammed with swarming bacteria.
David wore his overalls. He was going out house wrecking
today. He had his heavy toolbox and his grandfather's old
oil-company hard hat. The prospect of bashing up houses-
filthy, crowbar-swinging muscle work-always filled David
with childlike glee. He drawled more than usual and put hot
sauce on his eggs, infallible signs of his good mood.
Laura's mother,. Margaret Alice Day Garfield Nakamura
Simpson, wore a Tokyo original in blue crepe de chine, with
a trailing waist sash. Her woven-straw sun hat, the size of a
bicycle wheel, was tied across her back. She called herself
Margaret Day, since she had recently divorced Simpson, a
man Laura scarcely knew.
"It's not the Galveston I remember anymore," Laura's
mother said.
David nodded. "You know what I miss? I miss the wreck-
age. I mean, I was ten when the big disaster hit. I grew up in
the wreckage down the island. All those beach homes, snapped
off, washed up, tossed around like dice... It seemed infi-
nite, full of surprises."
Laura's mother smiled. "That's why you stayed here?"
David sipped his breakfast juice, which came from a pow-
dered mix and was of a color not found in nature. "Well,
after '02, everyone with sense pulled out. It left all the more
room for us diehards. We BOI's, Born on the Island folks,
we're a weird breed." David smiled self-consciously. "To
live here, you have to have a kind of dumb love for bad luck.
Isla Malhaldo, that was Galveston's first name, you know.
Isle of Bad Luck."
"Why?" Laura's mother said obligingly. She was humoring him.
"Cabeza de Vaca called it that. His galleon was ship-
wrecked here in 1528. He was almost eaten by cannibals.
Karankawa Indians."
"Oh? Well, the Indians must have had some name for the place. "
"Nobody knows it," David said. "They were all wiped
out by smallpox. True Galvestonians, I guess-bad luck."
He thought it over. "A very weird tribe, the Karankawas.
They used to smear themselves with rancid alligator grease-
they were famous for the stench."
"I've never heard of them," Margaret Day said.
"They were very primitive," David said, forking up an-
other scop pancake. "They used to eat dirt! They'd bury a
fresh deer kill for three or four, days, until it softened up,
and--
"David!" Laura said.
"Oh," David said. "Sorry." He changed the subject.
"You ought to come out with us today, Margaret. Rizome
has a good little side, biz with the city government. They
condemn it, we scrap it, and it's a lot of fun all around. I
mean, it's not serious money, not by zaibatsu standards, but
there's more to life than the bottom line-"
" `Fun City,' " her mother said.
"I see you've been listening to our new mayor," Laura said.
"Do you ever worry about the people drifting into Galves-
ton these days?" her mother said suddenly.
"What do you mean?" Laura said.
"I've been reading about this mayor of yours. He's quite a
strange character, isn't he? An ex-bartender with a big white
beard who wears Hawaiian shirts to the office. He seems to
be going out of his way to attract-what's the word?-fringe
elements. "
"Well, it's not a real city anymore, is it?" David said.
"No more industry. Cotton's gone, shipping's gone, oil went
a long time ago. About all that's left is to sell glass beads to
tourists. Right? And a little, uh, social exotica is good for
tourism. You expect a tourist burg to run a little fast and loose."
"So you like the mayor? I understand Rizome backed his
campaign. Does that mean your company supports his policies?"
"Who's asking?" Laura said, nettled. "Mother, you're on
vacation. Let Marubeni Company find their own answers."
The two of them locked eyes for a moment. "Aisumimasen."
her mother said at last. "I'm very sorry if I seemed to pry. I
spent too much time in the State Department. I still have the
reflexes. Now that I'm in what they laughingly call private
enterprise." She set her chopsticks across her plate and reached
for her hat. "I've decided to rent a sailboat today. They say
there's an offshore station-an OPEC, or something like that."
"OTEC," David corrected absently. "The power station.
Yeah, it's nice out there."
"I'll see you at supper then. Be good, you two."
Four more Canadians came in for breakfast, yawning. Mar-
garet Day filtered past them and left the dining room.
"You had to step on her toes," David said quietly. "What's
wrong with Marubeni? Some creaky old Nipponese trading
company. You think they sent Loretta's grandma here to
swipe our microchips or something?"
"She's a guest of Rizome," Laura said. "I don't like her
criticizing our people."
"She's leaving tomorrow," David said. "You could go a
little easier on her." He stood up, hefting his tool chest.
"All right, I'm sorry," Laura told him. There wasn't time
to get into it now. This was business.
She greeted the Canadians and took the baby back. They
were part of a production wing from a Rizome subsidiary in
Toronto, on vacation as a reward for increased production.
They were sunburned but cheerful.
Another pair of guests came in: Senor and Senora Kurosawa,
from Brazil. They were fourth-generation Brazilians, with
Rizome-Unitika, a textile branch of the firm. They had no
English, and their Japanese was amazingly bad, laden with
Portuguese loan words and much Latin arm waving. They
complimented Laura on the food. It was their last day, too.
Then, trouble arrived. The Europeans were up. There were
three of them and they were not Rizome people, but bankers
from Luxembourg. There was a banker's conference in the
works tomorrow, a major do by all accounts. The Europeans
had come a day early. Laura was sorry for it.
The Luxembourgers sat morosely for breakfast. Their leader
and chief negotiator was a Monsieur Karageorgiu, a tawny-
skinned man in his fifties, with greenish eyes and carefully
waved hair. The name marked him as a Europeanized Turk;
his grandparents had probably been "guest workers" in Ger-
many or Benelux. Karageorgiu wore an exquisitely tailored
suit of cream-colored Italian linen.
His crisp, precise, and perfect shoes were like objets d'art,
Laura thought. Shoes engineered to high precision, like the
power plant of a Mercedes. It almost hurt to see him walk in
them. No one at Rizome would have dared to wear them; the
righteous mockery would have been merciless. He reminded
Laura of the diplomats she'd seen as a kid, of a lost standard
in studied elegance.
He had a pair of unsmiling companions in black suits:
junior executives, or so he claimed. It was hard to tell their
origins; Europeans looked more and more alike these days.
One had a vaguely Corte d'Azur look, maybe French or
Corsican; the other was blond. They looked alarmingly fit and
hefty. Elaborate Swiss watchphones peeked from their sleeves.
They began complaining. They didn't like the heat. Their
rooms smelled and the water tasted salty. They found the
toilets peculiar. Laura promised to turn up the heat pump and
order more Perrier.
It didn't do much good. They were down on hicks. Espe-
cially doctrinaire Yankees who lived in peculiar sand castles
and practiced economic democracy. She could tell already
that tomorrow was going to be rocky.
In fact the whole setup was fishy. She didn't know enough
about these people-she didn't have proper guest files on
them. Rizome-Atlanta was being cagey about this bankers'
meeting, which was most unusual for headquarters.
Laura took their breakfast orders and left the three bankers
trading sullen glares with the Rizome guests. She took the
baby with her to the kitchen. The kitchen staff was up and
banging pans. The kitchen staff was seventy-year-old Mrs.
Delrosario and her two granddaughters.
Mrs. Delrosario was a treasure, though she had a mean
streak that bubbled up whenever her advice was taken with
anything less than total attention and seriousness. Her grand-
daughters mooched about the kitchen with a doomed, submis-
sive look. Laura felt sorry for them and tried to give them a
break when she could. Life wasn't easy as a teenager these days.
Laura fed the baby her formula. Loretta gulped it with
enthusiasm. She was like her father in that-really doted on
goop no sane person should eat.
Then Laura's watchphone beeped. It was the front desk.
Laura left the baby with Mrs. Delrosario and took the back
way to the lobby, through the staff rooms and the first-floor
office. She emerged behind the desk. Mrs. Rodriguez looked
up in relief, peering over her bifocals.
She had been talking to a stranger-a fiftyish Anglo woman
in a black silk dress and a beaded choker. The woman had a
vast mane of crisp black hair and her eyes were lined dramati-
cally. Laura wondered what to make of her. She looked like a
pharaoh's widow. "This is her," Mrs. Rodriguez told the
stranger. "Laura, our manager."
"Coordinator," Laura said. "I'm Laura Webster."
"I'm the Reverend Morgan. I called earlier."
"Yes. About the City Council race?" Laura touched her
watch, checking her schedule. The woman was half an hour
early. "Well," she said. "Won't you come around the desk?
We can talk in my office."
Laura took the woman into the cramped and windowless
little suboffice. It was essentially a coffee room for the staff,
with a data-link to the mainframe upstairs. This was where
Laura took people from whom she expected the squeeze. The
place looked suitably modest and penurious. David had dec-
orated it from his wrecking expeditions: antique vinyl car
seats and a modular desk in aged beige plastic. The ceiling
light shone through a perforated hubcap.
"Coffee?" Laura said.
"No, thank you. I never take caffeine."
"I see." Laura put the pot aside. "What can we do for
you, Reverend?"
"You and I have much in common," Reverend Morgan
said. "We share a confidence in Galveston's future. And we
both have a stake in the tourist industry." She paused. "I
understand your husband designed this building."
"Yes, he did."
"It's `Organic Baroque,' isn't it? A style that respects
Mother Earth. That shows a broad-minded approach on your
part. Forward-looking and progressive."
"Thank you very much." Here it comes, Laura thought.
"Our Church would like to help you expand services to
your corporate guests. Do you know the Church of Ishtar?"
"I'm not sure I follow you," Laura said carefully. "We at
Rizome consider religion a private matter."
"We Temple women believe in the divinity of the sexual
act." Reverend Morgan leaned back in her bucket seat, strok-
ing her hair with both hands. "The erotic power of the
Goddess can destroy evil."
The slogan found a niche in Laura's memory. "I see,"
Laura said politely. "The Church of Ishtar. I know your
movement, but I hadn't recognized the name."
"It's a new name-old principles. You're too young to
remember the Cold War." Like many of her generation, the
reverend seemed to have a positive nostalgia for it the good
old bilateral days. When things were simpler and every morn-
ing might be your last. "Because we put an end to it. We
invoked the Goddess to take the war out of men. We melted
the cold war with divine body heat. " The reverend sniffed.
"Male power mongers claimed the credit, of course. But the
triumph belonged to our Goddess. She saved Mother Earth
from the nuclear madness. And She continues to heal society
today."
Laura nodded helpfully.
"Galveston lives by tourism, Mrs. Webster. And tourists
expect certain amenities. Our Church has come to an arrange-
ment with the city and the police. We'd like an understanding
with your group as well."
Laura rubbed her chin. "I think I can follow your reason-
ing, Reverend."
"No civilization has ever existed without us," the reverend
said coolly. "The Holy Prostitute is an ancient, universal
figure. The Patriarchy degraded and oppressed her. But we
restore her ancient role as comforter and healer."
"I was about to mention the medical angle," Laura said.
"Oh, yes," said the reverend. "We take the full range of
precautions. Clients are tested for syphilis, gonorrhea,
chlamydia, and herpes, as well as the retroviruses. All our
temples have fully equipped clinics. Sexual disease rates drop
dramatically wherever we practice our art-I can show you
statistics. We also offer health insurance. And we guarantee
confidentiality, of course."
"It's a very interesting proposal," Laura said, tapping her
desk with a pencil. "But it's not a decision I can make on my
own. I'll be happy to take your ideas to our Central Commit-
tee." She took a breath. The air in the tiny room held the
smoky reek of the reverend's patchouli. The smell of mad-
ness, Laura thought suddenly. "You have to understand that
Rizome may have some difficulties with this. Rizome favors
strong social ties in its associates. It's part of our corporate
philosophy. Some of us might consider prostitution a sign of
social breakdown."
The reverend spread her hands and smiled. "I've heard
about Rizome's policies. You're economic democrats-I ad-
mire that. As a church, a business, and a political movement,
we're a new-millennium group ourselves. But Rizome can't
change the nature of the male animal. We've already ser-
viced several of your male associates. Does that surprise you?"
She shrugged. "Why risk their health with amateur or criminal
groups? We Temple women are safe, dependable, and eco-
nomically sensible. The Church stands ready to do business."
Laura dug into her desk. "Let me give you one of our
brochures. "
The reverend opened her purse. "Have a few of ours. I
have some campaign pamphlets-I'm running for City
Council."
Laura looked the pamphlets over. They were slickly printed.
The margins were dotted with ankh symbols, yin-yangs, and
chalices. Laura scanned the dense text, spotted with italics
and words in red. "I see you favor a liberal drug policy."
"Victimless crimes are tools of Patriarchal oppression."
The reverend dug in her purse and produced an enameled
pillbox. "A few of these will argue the case better than I
can." She dropped three red capsules on the desktop. "Try
them, Mrs. Webster. As a gift from the Church. Astonish
your husband."
"I beg your pardon?" Laura said.
"Remember the giddiness of first love? The sense that the
whole world had new meaning, because of him? Wouldn't
you like to recapture that? Most women would. It's an intoxi-
cating feeling, isn't it? And these are the intoxicants."
Laura stared at the pills. "Are you telling me these are love
potions?"
The reverend shifted uncomfortably, with a whisper of
black silk against vinyl. "Mrs. Webster, please don't mistake
me for a witch. The Church of Wicca are reactionaries. And
no, these aren't love potions, not in the folklore sense. They
only stir that rush of emotion-they can't direct it at anyone.
You do that for yourself."
"It sounds hazardous," Laura said.
"Then it's the sort of danger women were born for!" the
reverend said. "Do you ever read romance novels? Millions
do, for this same thrill. _ Or eat chocolate? Chocolate is a
lover's gift, and there's reason behind the tradition. Ask a
chemist about chocolate and serotonin precursors sometime."
The reverend touched her forehead. "It all comes to the
same, up here. Neurochemistry." She pointed to the table.
"Chemistry in those pills. They're natural substances, cre-
ations of the Goddess. Part of the feminine soul."
Somewhere along the line, Laura thought, the conversation
had gently peeled loose from sanity. It was like falling asleep
on an air raft and waking up far out to sea. The important
thing was not to panic. "Are they legal?" Laura said.
Reverend Morgan picked up a pill with her lacquered nails
and ate it. "No blood test would show a thing. You can't be
prosecuted for the natural contents of your own brain. And
no, they're not illegal. Yet. Praise the Goddess, the Patriar-
chy's laws still lag behind advances in chemistry."
"I can't accept these," Laura said. "They must be valu-
able. It's conflict of interest." Laura picked them up and
stood, reaching over the desk.
"This is the modern age, Mrs. Webster. Gene-spliced bacte-
ria can make drugs by the ton. Friends of ours can make them
for thirty cents each." Reverend Morgan rose to her feet.
"You're sure?" She slipped the pills back in her purse.
"Come and see us if you change your mind. Life with one
man can go stale very easily. Believe me, we know. And if
that happens, we can help you." She paused meditatively.
"In any of several different ways."
Laura smiled tightly. "Good luck with your campaign,
Reverend."
"Thank you. I appreciate your good wishes. As our mayor
always says, Galveston is Fun City. It's up to all of us to see
it stays that way."
Laura ushered her outside. She watched from the walkway
as the reverend slipped into a self-driven van. The van whirred
off. A flock of brown pelicans crossed the island, headed for
Karankawa Bay. The autumn sun shone brightly. It was still
the same sun and the same clouds. The sun didn't care about
the landscape inside people's heads.
She went back in. Mrs. Rodriguez looked up from behind
the front desk, blinking. "I'm glad my old man is no young-
er, " she said. "La puta, eh? A whore. She's no friend to us
married women, Laurita."
"I guess not," Laura said, leaning against the desk. She
felt tired already, and it was only ten o'clock.
"I'm going to church this Sunday," Mrs. Rodriguez de-
cided. "Que brujeria, eh? A witch! Did you see those eyes?
Like a snake." She crossed herself. "Don't laugh, Laura."
"Laugh? Hell, I'm ready to hang garlic." The baby wailed
from the kitchen. A sudden Japanese phrase leapt into Laura's
head. "Nakitsura ni hachi," she blurted. "It never rains but
it pours. Only it's better in the original. `A bee for a crying
face.' Why can't I ever remember that crap when I need it?"
Laura took the baby upstairs to the tower office to deal
with the day's mail.
Laura's corporate specialty was public relations. When
David had designed the Lodge, Laura had prepared this room
for business. It was equipped for major conferences; it was a
full-scale node in the global Net.
The Lodge did most of its business as telex, straight print
sent by wire, such as guest dossiers and arrival schedules.
Most of the world, even Africa, was wired for telex these.
days. It was cheapest and simplest, and Rizome favored it.
"Fax" was more elaborate: entire facsimiles of documents,
photographed and passed down the phone lines as streams of
numbers. Fax was good for graphics and still photos; the fax
machine was essentially a Xerox with a phone. It was great
fun to play with.
The Lodge also took plenty of traditional phone traffic: voice
without image, both live and recorded. Also voice with im-
age: videophone. Rizome favored one-way prerecorded calls
because they were more efficient. There was less chance of
an expensive screwup in a one-way recorded call. And re-
corded video could be subtitled for all of Rizome's language
groups, a major advantage for a multinational.
摘要：

IslandsintheNetbyBruceSterling1Thesealayinsimmeringquiet,aslate-greengumboseasonedwithwarmmud.Shrimpboatstrawledthehorizon.Pilingsroseinclusters,likeblackenedfingers,yardsoutinthegentlesurf.Once,Galvestonbeachhomeshadcrouchedonthosetar-stainedstilts.Nowbarnaclesclusteredthere,gullswheeledandscreeche...

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