Distress

Stateless seemed to run on the principle of people agreeing to do the same thing for entirely different reasons. It was a sum over mutually contradictory topologies which left the calculus of pre-space for dead; no imposed politics, philosophy, religion, no idiot cheer-squad worship of flags or symbols—but order emerged nonetheless.

And I still couldn't decide if that was miraculous, or utterly unmysterious. Order only arose and survived, anywhere, because enough people desired it. Every democracy was a kind of anarchy in slow motion: any statute, any constitution could be changed, given time; any social contract, written or unwritten, could be dishonored. The ultimate safety nets were inertia, apathy and obfuscation. On Stateless, they'd had the— possibly insane—courage to unravel the whole political knot into its simplest form, to gaze at the undecorated structures of power and responsibility, tolerance and consensus.

I said, 'You kept me from drowning. So how do I repay you?' Vunibobo glanced at me, measuring my seriousness. 'Swim harder. Help us all to stay afloat.'

'I'll try. If I ever have the chance.'

She smiled at this crudely hedged half-promise, and reminded me, 'We're heading straight into a storm, right now. I think you'll get your chance.'

I'd expected, at least, deserted streets in the center of the island, but at first sight little seemed to have changed. There were no signs of panic— no queues of hoarders, no boarded-up shopfronts. When we passed the hotel, though, I saw that the Mystical Renaissance carnival had gone to ground; I wasn't the only tourist who was suffering from a sudden desire to be invisible. Back on the boat, I'd heard that one woman had been injured slightly when the airport was captured, but most of the staff had simply walked away. Munroe had spoken of a militia on the island, and no doubt they outnumbered the invaders—but how their equipment, training and discipline compared, I had no idea. The mercenaries seemed content, so far, to dig themselves in at the airport— but if the ultimate aim was not to take power, but to bring 'anarchy' to Stateless, I had a queasy suspicion that there'd be something a lot less palatable than the bloodless seizure of strategic assets, very soon.

The atmosphere at the hospital was calm. Vunibobo helped me get Kuwale into the building; ve smiled dreamily and tried to limp forward, but it took the two of us to keep ver from falling flat on vis face. Prasad Jwala had sent the scan of Kuwale's bullet wound ahead, and an operating theater was already prepared. I watched ver being wheeled in, trying to convince myself that I felt nothing but the same anxiety that I would have felt for anyone else. Vunibobo bid me farewell.

After waiting my turn in casualty, I was sewn up under local anesthetic. I'd managed to kill the bioengineered graft—which would have accelerated healing and formed a good seal—but the medic who treated me packed the wound with a spongy antibacterial carbohydrate polymer, which would slowly degrade in the presence of the growth factors secreted by the surrounding flesh. She asked what had made the hole. I told her the truth, and she seemed greatly relieved. 'I was beginning to wonder if something had eaten its way out.'

I stood up carefully, numb at the center, but feeling the pinched absence of skin and muscle tug on every part of me. The medic said, 'Try to avoid strenuous bowel movements. And laughter.'

I found De Groot and Mosala in the anteroom to the Medical Imaging suite. Mosala looked drawn and nervous, but she greeted me warmly, shaking my hand, clasping my shoulder. 'Andrew, are you all right?'

'I'm fine. But the documentary may have a small gap in it.'

She managed to smile. 'Henry's being scanned right now. They're still processing my data; it could take a while. They're looking for foreign proteins, but there's some doubt as to whether the resolution's up to it. The machine's second-hand, twenty years old.' She hugged herself, and tried to laugh. 'Listen to me. If I'm planning to live here, I'd better get used to the facilities.'

De Groot said, 'No one I've spoken to has seen Helen Wu since early last night. Conference security checked out her room; it's empty.'

Mosala still seemed stunned by the revelation of Wu's allegiance. 'Why would she get involved with the Anthrocosmologists? She's a brilliant theorist in her own right—not some pseudoscientific hanger-on! I can understand how… a certain kind of person might think there's something mystical about working on TOEs, when they find they can't grasp the details, themselves… but Helen understands my work almost better than I do!' I didn't think it was a good time to point out that that was half the problem. 'As for these other thugs, who you think killed Yasuko… I'll be giving a media conference this afternoon, outlining the problems with Henry Buzzo's choice of measure and what it means for his TOE. That should concentrate their tiny minds.' Her voice was almost calm— but she held her arms crossed in front of her, one hand clasped around the other wrist, trying to mask the faint tremor of rage. 'And when I announce my own TOE on Friday morning… they can kiss their transcendence goodbye.' 'Friday morning?'

'Serge Bischoff's algorithms are working wonders. All my calculations will be finished by tomorrow night.'

I said carefully, 'If it turns out that you've been infected with a bioweapon—and if you become too sick to work—is there anyone else who could interpret these results, and put the whole thing together?'

Mosala recoiled. 'What are you asking me to do? Anoint a successor to be targeted next?'

'No! But if your TOE is completed and announced, the moderates will have to admit that they've been proven wrong—and there's a chance they might hand over the antidote. I'm not asking you to publicize anyone's name! But if you can arrange for someone to put the finishing touches—'

Mosala said icily, 'I have nothing to prove to these people. And I'm not risking someone else's life, trying.'

Before I could pursue the argument any further, De Groot's notepad chimed. The head of security for the conference, Joe Kepa, had viewed the copy De Groot had sent him of my call from the fishing boat, and he wanted to talk to me. In person. Immediately.

In a small meeting room on the top floor of the hotel—with two large umale associates looking on—Kepa grilled me for almost three hours, questioning everything right back to the moment when I'd begged SeeNet to give me the documentary. He'd already seen reports from some of the farmers about events on the ACs' boat (they'd posted their accounts directly onto the local news nets), and he'd seen the cholera analysis—but he was still angry and suspicious, he still seemed to want to tear my story to pieces. I resented the hostile treatment, but I couldn't really blame him. Until the seizure of the airport, his biggest problem had been buskers in clown suits; now it was the threat of anything up to a full-scale military engagement around the hotel. Talk of information theorists armed with amateur bioweapons targeted at the conference's highest profile physicists must have sounded like either a sick hoax, or proof that he'd been singled out for divine punishment.

By the time Kepa told me the interview was over, though, I believed I'd convinced him. He was angrier than ever.

My testimony had been recorded to international judicial standards: each frame stamped with a centrally generated time code, and an encrypted copy lodged with Interpol. I was invited to scan through the file to verify that there'd been no tampering, before I electronically signed it. I checked a dozen points at random; I wasn't going to view the whole three hours.

I went to my room and took a shower, instinctively shielding the freshly bandaged wound although I knew there was no need to keep it dry. The luxury of hot water, the solidity of the plain elegant decor, seemed surreal. Twenty four hours before, I'd planned to do everything I could to help Mosala smash the boycott, reshaping the documentary around the news of her emigration. But what could I do for technoliberation, now? Buy an external camera, and proceed to document her meaningless death, while Stateless collapsed in the background? Was that what I wanted? To claw back my delusions of objectivity, and calmly record whatever fate befell her?

I stared at myself in the mirror. What use was I to anyone now? The room had a wallphone; I called the hospital. There'd been no problems with the operation, but Akili was still sleeping off the anesthetic. I decided to visit ver anyway.

I walked through the hotel lobby just as the morning sessions were breaking up. The conference was still running on schedule—although screens announced a memorial for Yasuko Nishide later in the day—but the participants were visibly nervous and subdued, talking quietly in small groups, or looking around furtively as if hoping to overhear some vital piece of news about the occupation, however unreliable.

I spotted a group of journalists, all people I knew slightly, and they let me join in as they swapped rumors. The consensus seemed to be that foreigners would be evacuated by the US (or New Zealand, or Japanese) navy