PlanetGalileo.com, the Puppet Kings project, his last stab at the big time, had acquired powerful allies. The webspyders had spread their nets well. Backers and sponsors were eager to get in on the ground floor of this important new launch by the creator of the legendary Little Brain. Major production, distribution, and marketing agreements with key players—Mattel, Amazon, Sony, Columbia, Banana Republic were already in place. A universe of toys was in the pipeline, everything from soft stuffed dolls to life-size robots with voices and flashing lights, to say nothing of Halloween-special costumes. There were boxed games and jigsaw puzzles and nine kinds of spacecraft and cyborg neutralizers and scale models of the entire planet Galileo-1, and, for the real nuts, its entire solar system, too. Amazon’s pre-orders for the back-story book Revolt of the Living Dolls were close to the Little Brain phenomenon’s record-breaking fever-pitch levels. A Playstation game was close to being shipped and was already being heavily marketed; a new fashion line bearing the Galileo label was ready to show during the 7th on Sixth fashion week; and, driven by the fear of a major actors’ and writers’ strike in the coming spring, a big-budget movie was on the verge of being green-lit. Banks competed with each other to lend money, sending the interest rate on the huge loans required spinning daily lower and lower. The largest mainland Chinese ISP had asked to come in and talk. Mila, as the webspyders’ front-woman, was working around the clock, with extraordinary results. Solanka’s relations with her remained on ice, however. Plainly, she was far angrier at being dumped than she had initially allowed herself to appear. Solanka was kept well informed by her of all developments and instructed to prepare himself for a media blitz, but as far as human contact was concerned, barbed wire might as well have stretched across the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, with duplicated, three-headed versions of Eddie Ford guarding over both. In the electronic world, Solanka and the webspyders worked closely together for hours a day. Outside it, they were strangers. That was, apparently, how it had to be.
Fortunately, Neela was still in town, though the reason for her continued presence was disturbing, and greatly distracted her. There had been a coup in Lilliput-Blefuscu, led by a certain Skyresh Bolgolam, an indigenous Elbee merchant whose argosies had all failed and who accordingly detested the prosperous Indo-Lilly traders with a passion that could have been called racist if it had not been so obviously rooted in professional envy and personal pique. The coup seemed spectacularly unnecessary; under pressure from the Bolgolamites, the country’s liberal president, Golbasto Gue, who had pushed through a program of constitutional reform designed to give Indian-Lilliputians equal electoral and property rights, had already been obliged to reverse course and throw out the new constitution only weeks after it had come into being.
Bolgolam, however, suspected a ruse and at the beginning of September marched into the Lilliputian Parliament in the city center of Mildendo, accompanied by two hundred armed ruffians, and took hostage around fifty Indo-Lilly parliamentarians and political staff members, as well as President Gue himself. At the same time, Bolgolamite goon squads attacked and imprisoned leading members of the Indo-Lilly political leadership. The country’s radio and television stations and the main telephone switchboard were seized. At Blefuscu International Aerodrome the runways were blockaded; the sea-lanes into Mildendo harbor were likewise blocked. The islands’ main Internet server, Lillicon, was closed down by the Bolgolam gang. However, some limited e-activity continued.
The whereabouts of Neela’s friend from the New York demonstration were not known; but as news slowly filtered out of Lilliput in spite of Bolgolam’s gags, it was established that Babur was not among those held hostage in the Parliament or in jail. If he hadn’t been killed, then he had gone underground. Neela decided this was the likelier alternative. “If he was dead, this rogue Bolgolam would have released the news, I’m sure. Just to demoralize the opposition even more.” Solanka saw very little of her during these post-coup days as she attempted, often in the small hours of the night on account of the thirteen-hour time difference, to make contact via World Wide Web and satphone links with what was now the Filbistani Resistance Movement (the FRM, or “Fremen”). She also busily researched ways and means of effecting an illegal entry into Lilliput-Blefuscu from Australia or Borneo, accompanied by a skeleton camera crew. Solanka began to fear greatly for her safety and, in spite of the greater historical importance of the matters presently claiming her attention, for his newfound happiness as well. Suddenly jealous of her work, he nursed imaginary grievances, told himself he was being slighted and ignored. At least his fictional Zameen of Rijk, arriving covertly on Baburian soil, had been looking for her man (though with what intent, he granted, was unclear). A dreadful further possibility presented itself. Perhaps Neela was looking for a man in Lilliput as well as a story. Now that history’s mantle had fallen on the inadequate shoulders of the hairless, bare-chested flag-waver she so admired, was it not possible that Neela had begun to think this muscle-bound Babur an altogether more attractive proposition than a sedentary middle-aged merchant of fairy tales and toys? For what other reason would she plan to risk her life by sneaking into Lilliput-Blefuscu to find him? Just for a documentary film? Ha! That rang false. There was a pretext, if you liked. And Babur, her burgeoning desire for Babur, was the text.
One night, late, and only after he’d made a big deal of it, she came to visit him at West Seventieth Street. “I thought you’d never ask,” she laughed when she arrived, trying, by sounding lighthearted, to dispel the thick cloud of tension in the air. He couldn’t tell her the truth: that in the past, Mila’s presence next door had inhibited him. They were both too tense and exhausted to make love. She had been pursuing her leads, and he had spent the day talking to journalists about life on Galdeo-1, an unnerving, hollowing kind of work, during which he could hear himself sounding false, knowing also that a second layer of falsehood would be added by the journalists’ responses to his words. Solanka and Neela watched Letterman without speaking. Unused to difficulties in their relationship, they had forged no language for dealing with trouble. The longer the silence between them lasted, the uglier it grew. Then, as if the bad feeling had burst out of their heads and taken physical form, they heard a piercing shriek. Then the sound of something shattering. Then a second, louder screech. Then, for a long time, nothing.
They went out into the street to investigate. The vestibule of Solanka’s building had an inner door that could usually only be opened with a key, but its metal frame was warped at present and the lock wouldn’t engage. The outer door, the street door, was never locked. This was worrying, even in the new, safer Manhattan. If there was danger out there, it could in theory come inside. But the street was quiet and empty, as if nobody else had heard a thing. Certainly, nobody else had come out to see what was going on. And in spite of the loud crash, there was nothing whatsoever on the pavement, no broken plant pot or vase. Neela and Solanka looked around, bemused. Other lives had touched theirs and then vanished. It was as though they had overheard the quarreling of ghosts. The sash window of what had been Mila’s apartment was wide open, however, and as they looked up, the silhouette of a man appeared and pulled it firmly shut. Then the lights went out. Neela said, “It’s got to be him. It’s like he missed her the first time but got her the second.” And the breaking noise, Solanka asked. She just shook her head, went indoors, and insisted on calling the police. “If I was being murdered and my neighbors did nothing, I’d be pretty disappointed, wouldn’t you?”