Distress

This was what the people of Stateless had in common: not merely the island itself, but the firsthand knowledge that they stood on rock which the founders had crystallized out of the ocean—and which was, forever, dissolving again, only enduring through a process of constant repair. Beneficent nature had nothing to do with it; conscious human effort, and cooperation, had built Stateless—and even the engineered life which maintained it couldn't be treated as God-given, infallible; the balance could be disturbed in a thousand ways: mutants could arise, competitors could move in, phages could wipe out bacteria, climate change could shift vital equilibria. All the elaborate machinery had to be monitored, had to be understood.

In the long run, discord could literally sink the place. If it was no guarantee of harmony that nobody on Stateless wanted their society to disintegrate… maybe it helped focus the attention to realize that the land beneath their feet might do the same.

And if it was naive to think of this understanding as any kind of panacea, it had one undeniable advantage over all the contrived mythology of nationhood.

It was true.

I copied everything from the camera's memory, to give me the scene in high resolution. When Rajendra had calmed down slightly, I asked for his permission to use the footage for broadcast; he agreed. I had no definite plans, but at the very least I could always smuggle it into the interactive version of Violet Mosala.

Munroe came with me, still shouldering his folded easel and rolled-up canvas, as I headed back for the terminus.

I said sheepishly, 'I might try it for myself once the conference is over. Right now, it looks too… intense. I just don't want to be distracted. I have a job to do.'

He faked bewilderment. 'It's entirely your decision. You don't have to justify anything to anyone, here.'

'Yeah, sure. And I've died and gone to heaven.'

At the terminus, I hit the call button; the box predicted a ten-minute wait.

Munroe fell silent for a while. Then he said, 'I suppose you have all the inside information about everyone attending the conference?'

I laughed. 'Not exactly. But I'm sure I'm not missing out on much. Soap operas staring physicists are just as dull as any other kind; I really don't care who's screwing whom, or who's stealing whose brilliant ideas.'

He frowned amiably. 'Well, neither do I—but I wouldn't mind knowing if the rumor about Violet Mosala has any substance.'

I hesitated. 'Which rumor did you have in mind? There are so many.' It sounded pitiful even as I said it; I might as well have come right out and admitted that I had no idea what he was talking about.

'There's only one serious question, isn't there?'

I shrugged. Munroe looked irritated, as if he believed I was being disingenuous, and not just trying to conceal my ignorance.

I said candidly, 'Violet Mosala and I aren't exactly swapping intimate secrets. The way things are going, if I make it through to the end of the conference with decent coverage of all her public appearances, I'll count myself lucky. Even if I have to spend the next six months chasing her between appointments in Cape Town, trying to flesh things out.'

Munroe nodded with grim satisfaction, like a cynic whose opinions had just been confirmed. 'Cape Town? Right. Thanks.'

'For what?'

He said, 'I never believed it; I just wanted to hear it put to rest by someone in a position to be sure. Violet Mosala—Nobel-prize-winning physicist, inspiration to millions, twenty-first-century Einstein, architect of the TOE most likely to succeed… 'abandons' her home country— just when the peace in Natal is starting to look more solid than ever— not for Caltech, not for Bombay, not for CERN, not for Osaka… but to join the rabble on Stateless?

'Not in a million years.'

14

Back at the hotel, climbing the stairs to my room, I asked Sisyphus:

'Can you name a group of political activists—with the initials AC—who might have taken an interest in Violet Mosala emigrating to Stateless?'

'No.'

'Come on! A is for anarchy… ?'

'There are two thousand and seventy-three organizations with 'anarchy' or a related word in their title, but they all contain more than two words.'

'Okay.' Maybe AC itself was shorthand, like US for USA. But then, if Munroe was to be believed, no serious anarchist would ever use the A-word.

I tried a different angle. 'What about A for African, С for culture… with any number of other letters?'

'There are two hundred and seven matches.'

I scrolled through the list; AC didn't seem like a plausible abbreviation for any of them. One name was familiar, though; I replayed a section of the audio log from the morning's press conference:

'William Savimbi, Proteus Information. You speak approvingly of a convergence of ideas which has no respect for ancestral cultures—as if your own heritage were of no importance to you at all. Is it true that you received death threats from the Pan-African Cultural Defense Front, after you publicly stated that you didn't consider yourself to be an African woman?'

Mosala had put the quote in context—but she hadn't answered the question. If a comment like that had been enough to result in death threats, what might rumors of 'defection'—baseless or not—bring down on her?

I had no idea; I knew even less about South African cultural politics than I knew about ATMs. Mosala would hardly be the first prominent scientist to leave the country, but she would be one of the most celebrated—and the first to emigrate to Stateless. Chasing money and prestige at a world-class institution was one thing, but it would be hard to read a move to Stateless (which could offer neither) as anything but a deliberate renunciation of her nationality.

I paused on the landing, and stared at my useless electronic teat. AC? Mainstream AC? Sisyphus was silent. Whoever they were, Sarah Knight had managed to find them. I was beginning to feel an ache in the pit of my stomach every time I thought about what I'd done to her. It was clear that she'd prepared for this job meticulously, researching every issue surrounding Mosala—and coming from politics, where nothing on the nets was true, she'd probably gone out and talked to everyone in the flesh. Someone must have told her about the rumors, and put her on the trail which led to Kuwale—all off the record, of course. I'd stolen the project, walked in cold, and now I couldn't even tell whether I was making a documentary about an emigrant anarcho-physicist in fear of her life… or whether I was jumping at shadows, and the only threat anyone on Stateless faced was being goaded into giving Janet Walsh some long overdue career advice.

I had Hermes call every hotel on the island, and inquire about a guest called Akili Kuwale.

No luck.

In my room, I turned up the windows' sound insulation, and tried to psych myself into doing some work. The next morning I was scheduled to film a lecture by Helen Wu, chief advocate of the view that Mosalas methodology verged on circular logic. Before letting Munroe talk me into filming the inland divers, I'd been planning to spend the whole afternoon reading Wu's previous papers; I had a lot of catching up to do.

First, though…

I scanned the relevant databases (eschewing help from Sisyphus, and taking three times as long). The Pan-African Cultural Defense Front turned out to be a loose affiliation of fifty-seven radical traditionalist groups from twenty-three nations, with a council of representatives which met each year to decide