Cybernation

simply. When a citizen’s water or power shuts off, he doesn’t care why. The reason why is not important, the only question that matters to him is, When will it be back on?

If somebody’s Internet service dies and they need or want it badly enough and there is somebody standing right there with a shiny wire that will reconnect things just like that, a lot of customers will switch, no questions asked, except maybe how much, and how soon? And the answers will be, less than you were paying before, and immediately. These were the answers they wanted to hear.

With the surge of added customers clamoring to join up, CyberNation’s political base would instantly grow stronger. Authorities would of course worry and wonder who was responsible, and they would certainly suspect CyberNation, who would benefit from such chaos. But they would have no proof, and the man in his little house in Nowhere, Indiana? That wasn’t his problem — all he wanted to do was collect his e-mail or download his pornographic pictures.

It was simple human nature. In the right place, at the right time, a bottle of water would be worth a fortune. Timing was critical.

Santos could see it when she explained it that way. People here must be very stupid, but then again, people everywhere were mostly stupid. That was how it was.

That was not his problem, either.

Berlin, Germany

When the pain got to be too much — and it was actually worse the second day, more hurtful than it had been on the first! — Keller got off the train when it stopped and went to a doc-in-the-box, in Zehlendorf, not far from the Universitat, to get some medicine for it.

The doc-in-the-box was part of a chain that stretched across Europe, centered in the U.K. They didn’t ask questions, and if you didn’t want to show them an insurance card, they didn’t care as long as your cash or credit was good.

The doctor, a gray-haired and gray-bearded old man name Konig, who looked to be in his late sixties and who resembled an old picture of Sigmund Freud, examined him, prodded and poked a little, and said, in fairly good English, “So, you fell down a flight of stairs, is that right?”

“Yah.”

The old man smiled.

“What?”

“I’ve been a doctor forty-six years, my friend. In a land where narrow and steep old stairs are common. If you fell down a riser, it was after somebody beat you.”

Keller, still bare-chested, blinked at the man, more surprised than annoyed at being called a liar. “You can tell that by looking? How?”

“Look here.” He made a fist and touched it lightly to a brownish-yellow splotch on Keller’s chest. “See? Stairs are flat and smooth. Even if you hit the edge of a step, it leaves a line — not a shape that matches perfectly a human fist like this does. Somebody punched and kicked you. Over a woman, was it?”

Keller started to deny it, then shrugged. Who cared if this old man knew? He would never see him again. “Yes.”

“Beautiful?”

“Yes.”

“Not your wife. Her husband?”

“Boyfriend. A big, stupid brute.”

“Ach. That is the problem with the beautiful ones, mein Freund. I see nothing broken, so this brute must have held back a little. Here is a prescription — you can fill it at the Apotheke out front when you leave, if you wish. It is a generic version of Vicodin 5/500— acetaminophen and hydrocodone bitartrate. Take one or two every four hours if you need them for pain. Do not drink alcohol or take sleeping pills with these. Be careful if you drive, it can make you drowsy or slow your reactions. You should be feeling much better in a few days.”

“Thank you.”

The doctor waved him off. “The cost of love is dear sometimes, yah?”

Keller stared at him. Love? Lust, maybe. Never love. Not with a woman like Jasmine Chance…

He gave the prescription to a woman in the built-in drugstore on the way out, but when he went to pay for it and the office visit, he didn’t have enough cash in deutsche marks. He shrugged and handed her his Visa card. While she was scanning the card, he unscrewed the cap and dry-swallowed two of the pills.

By the time the cab got back to the train, he was feeling pretty good. Hardly hurt at all, unless he really thought about it, and why should he? The train would be turning around to head back toward the French border in a few hours. Best he get back to work, now that he could sit without it hurting so bad.

30

Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Toni leaned back in the seat and watched the dust boil up under them as the big transport helicopter lifted from the pad. You’d think there wouldn’t be any dust, what with the choppers taking off and landing all day, not to mention the frequent rain here, but there it was.

The craft, a Sikorsky S-92, held eighteen passengers, and was full. Most of them actually were, she assumed, what she was supposed to be: tourists going to the gambling ship, which, as the flight attendant had announced, was ninety miles offshore where it was a pleasant seventy-eight degrees and sunny right now. A far cry this time of year from Ice Butt, Minnesota, where you could spit and have it freeze before it hit the ground. As long as there were winters like that, tropical resorts would have customers.

According to the posting in the hotel, they scheduled these flights on the half hour, starting at six A.M., with the last one returning from the ship to the Mainland at midnight, thirty-seven flights a day, split up among three aircraft. Which meant at capacity, they could move over six hundred and fifty people a day to and from the ship from this one heliport, and there were at least three other ports in operation just on the Florida coast, not counting those in Cuba or the other islands. At forty bucks a head for the trip, that was a hundred grand a day to pay for aviation fuel. Which also meant that if the things ran at full operation, and each of the passengers lost on average, say, only a hundred dollars each at the casinos, the gross would be over a quarter of a million dollars a day from the Mainland alone. Almost eight million a month. Assuming the Cubans had anything to lose, and anybody coming from elsewhere also did, that could work out to more than a hundred million a year, easy. Of course, they might not run to capacity day in and day out, and there would be operating costs, and even a few winners, too, but if even a quarter of that was profit, it would be a tidy sum. Better, Guru used to say, than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick…

The copter spiraled up and outward to its cruising altitude, only a few thousand feet, Toni would guess, and leaned into the rising sun. Fifteen or twenty minutes out, they passed a matching copter going the other way, a mile to port.

She looked over the passengers without staring at any one in particular. About what she’d expect. There were several couples, sporting fresh sunburns and wearing shorts and colorful Hawaiian shirts, likely going to see if they might be able to win back some of their children’s college tuition.

There were a few women who appeared to be traveling alone, most of them also middle-aged, although there were a couple of younger ones in their mid-twenties who looked as if they might be former beauty queens. Hunting for rich husbands, maybe? Or perhaps high-priced hookers going to offer their services to winners looking for a way to spend their free money?

A couple of men looked like she’d always pictured high rollers — dressing in western chic, with ostrich-skin cowboy boots and string ties, wearing Stetson hats.

There were some young guys, college-age, Toni guessed, laughing and talking among themselves, off on an adventure. Several of them had already cast appreciative glances at the ex-beauty queens.

There was a very fit-looking shaved-bald black man of thirty or so in a yellow silk T-shirt and khaki trousers,