Distress

smooth, the engine all but silent. After a while, I thought I could hear the reef-rock itself, exhaling through a distant borehole—but then I realized that it was the whine of the approaching jet.

Mosala had lost consciousness, and no one tried to rouse her. We reached the rendezvous point, and I climbed out quickly to cover the landing—more because of the promise I'd made than out of any real vestige of professionalism. The plane descended vertically, just forty or fifty meters away from us, gray fuselage lit by nothing but moonlight, the VTOL engines blasting a fine caustic dust of limestone out of the matrix of the rock. I wanted to savor this moment of victory—but the sight of the sleek military craft landing in darkness in the middle of nowhere made my heart sink. I imagined it would be the same with the naval evacuation: the outside world was going to tip-toe in, gather up its own people, and leave. The anarchists could take what was coming to them.

The two men who descended first wore officer's uniforms and side arms, but they might have been doctors. They took the medics aside and spoke in a huddle, their voices lost beneath the hum of the jets; air was still being forced through the stationary engines to keep them cool. Then a slender young man in rumpled civilian clothes emerged, looking haggard and disoriented. It took me a few seconds to recognize him; it was Mosala's husband, Makompo.

De Groot met him; they embraced silently. I stayed back as she led him to the ambulance. I turned and looked away across the gray-and-silver reef-rock; threads of scattered trace minerals caught the moonlight, shining like the foam on an impossibly tranquil ocean. When I turned back, the soldiers were carrying Mosala, bound to a stretcher, up into the plane. Makompo and De Groot followed. I suddenly felt very tired.

De Groot came down the steps and approached me, shouting, 'Are you coming with us? They say there's plenty of room.'

I stared back at her. What was there to keep me here? My contract with SeeNet was to make a profile of Mosala, not to record the fall of Stateless. The invisible insect had forbidden me to join the flight—but would the mercenaries have any way of knowing, if I did? Stupid question: outdoors, military satellites could just about fingerprint people and lip-read their conversations, all in infrared. But would they shoot down the plane— undermining the whole PR exercise, and inviting retribution—just to punish one obscure journalist? No.

I said, 'I wish I could. But there's someone here I can't leave behind.'

De Groot nodded, needing no further explanation, and shook my| hand, smiling. 'Good luck to both of you, then. I hope we'll see you in Cape Town, soon.'

'So do I.'

The two medics were silent as we rode back to the hospital. I felt certain that they wanted to talk about the war—but not in front of a foreigner. I scanned through the footage I'd taken with the shoulder camera, not yet trusting the unfamiliar technology, then dispatched it to my console at home.

The city was more crowded than ever, though there were fewer people on their feet now. Most were camping out on the streets, with sleeping bags, folding chairs, portable stoves, and even some small tents. I didn't know whether to feel encouraged by this, or depressed at the pathetic optimism it implied. Maybe the anarchists were prepared to make the best of it, if the city's infrastructure was seized. And I'd still seen no evidence of panic, riots, or looting—so maybe Munroe was right, and their education in the origins and dynamics of these revered human cultural activities was enough to empower them with the ability to think through the consequences, and decline to take part.

But in the face of a billion dollars' worth of military hardware, they were going to need a lot more than stoves, tents, and sociobiology to avoid being slaughtered.

27

I was woken by the shelling. The rumbling sounded distant but the bed was shaking. I dressed in seconds then stood in the middle of the room, paralyzed by indecision. There were no basements here, no bomb shelters, so where was the safest place to be? Down on the ground floor? Or out on the street? I balked at the prospect of exposure, but would four or five storeys over my head offer any real protection, or just a heavier pile of rubble?

It was just after six, barely light. I moved to the window cautiously, fighting down an absurd fear of snipers—as if anyone from either side would bother. Five columns of white smoke hung in the middle distance, tunneling out from hidden apexes like languid tornadoes. I asked Sisyphus to scan the local nets for close-up vision; dozens of people had posted footage. Reef-rock was resilient and non-flammable, but the shells must have been spiked with some chemical agent tailored to inflict damage beyond the reach of mere heat and percussion, because the results looked less like shattered buildings than mine tailings dumped on empty lots. I couldn't imagine anyone surviving inside—but the adjacent streets hadn't fared much better, buried meters deep in chalk dust.

The people camped outside the hotel showed no sign that they'd been taken by surprise; half of them were already packed and moving, the rest were taking down their tents, rolling up blankets and sleeping bags, disassembling stoves. I could hear young children crying, and the mood of the crowd was visibly tense—but no one was being trampled underfoot. Yet. Looking further along the street, I could make out a slow, steady flow of people north, away from the heart of the city.

I'd been half expecting something deadly and silent—EnGeneUity were bioengineers, after all—but I should have known better. A rain of explosions, buildings reduced to dust, and a stream of refugees made far better pictures for Anarchy Comes to Stateless. The mercenaries weren't here to take control of the island with clinical efficiency; they were here to prove that all renegade societies were doomed to collapse into telegenic mayhem.

A shell went off somewhere east of the hotel, the closest yet. White powder rained down from the ceiling; one corner of the polymer window popped loose from its frame, and curled up like a dead leaf. I squatted on the floor, covering my head, cursing myself for not leaving with De Groot and Mosala—and cursing Akili for ignoring my messages. Why couldn't I accept the fact that I meant nothing to ver? I'd been of some use in the struggle to protect Mosala from the heretic ACs and I'd brought ver the news which supposedly revealed the truth behind Distress… but now that the great information plague was coming, I was irrelevant.

The door swung open. An elderly Fijian woman stepped into the room; the hotel staff wore no uniforms, but I thought I'd seen her before, working in the building. She announced curtly, 'We're evacuating the city. Take what you can carry.' The floor had stopped moving, but I rose to my feet unsteadily, unsure if I'd heard her correctly.

I'd already packed my clothes. I grabbed my suitcase, and followed her out into the corridor. My room was just past the stairs, and she was heading for the next door along. I gestured at the other half of the corridor, some twenty rooms. 'Have you checked—?'

'No.' For a moment, she seemed reluctant to entrust me with the task, but then she relented. She held up her pass key and let my notepad clone its IR signature.

I left my suitcase by the stairs. The first four rooms were empty. More shells were exploding all the time now, most of them mercifully distant. I kept one eye on the screen as I waved my notepad at the locks; someone was collating all the damage reports and posting an annotated map of the city. So far, twenty-one buildings had been demolished—mainly apartment blocks. There was no question that if strategic targets had been chosen, they would have been hit; maybe the most valuable infrastructure was being spared—saved for the use of a puppet government to be installed by a second wave of invaders, who'd 'rescue' the island from 'anarchy'? Or maybe the aim was simply to level as many residential buildings as possible, in order to drive the greatest number of people out into the desert.

I found Lowell Parker—the Atlantica journalist I'd seen at Mosala's media conference—crouched on the floor, shaking… much as the woman from the hotel had found me. He recovered quickly, and seemed to accept the news of the evacuation gratefully—as if all he'd been waiting for was word of a definite plan, even if it came from someone else who didn't have a clue.

In the next ten or twelve rooms, I came across four more people— journalists or academics, probably, but no one I recognized—most of them already packed, just waiting to be told what to do. No one stopped to question the wisdom of the message I was passing on—and I badly wanted to get away from the bombing, myself—but the