6

Twas a nightmarish flight-like a cattle car. Luggage crammed everywhere, every seat taken, and refugees crouching in the aisles. Nothing to eat or drink. An instant black market, packed into a flying aluminum jail.

There were five armed Cuban flight marshals onboard.

They kept fending back entrepreneurs-sweaty hustlers trying to scrape together some global cash. Their tinker-toy Grenadian roubles were meaningless now; they needed ecu and were selling anything-pinky rings, strips of drug stickers, sisters if they had them... . Cut off from the world, thirty thousand feet above the Caribbean, but still going through the ritual motions. But faster now, senselessly, jumping and flickering .. ' .

"Like a lizard throwing off its tail," Laura said. "That's what the Bank did with these people. Let the Net have 'em, let the Vienna heat work 'em over. To distract attention."

"You told Andrei you'd go to Singapore," David said.

"Yeah."

"No way," David said. In his toughest voice.

"We're in too deep to back out now."

"The hell," he said. "We could have been killed today.

This isn't our problem-not anymore. It's way too big for us.

"So what do we do? Go back to our Lodge and hope they forget all about us?"

"There's lots of other Lodges," David said. "We could go into a Retreat. You and I, we could do with a good Retreat sabbatical. Relax a little, get away from the televisions. Get our thoughts together."

A Retreat. Laura didn't like the idea. Retreats were for

Rizome's retired people, or failures, or blunderers. A place to rusticate while other people made the decisions. "That won't wash," she said. "It would discredit Rizome's attempt to negotiate. But we were right to try it. We have to do something. It's coming to a head-this proves it.

"Then it should be the U.S. State Department," David said. "Or the Vienna heat-somebody global. Not our company. "

"Rizome is global! Besides, Grenada would shoot a Yan- kee diplomat on sight. State Department-come on, David, you might as well send in guys with big placards around their neck that say `hostage.' " She sniffed. "Besides, the Feds don't have any clout."

"This is a war. Governments run wars. Not corporations."

"That's premillennium talk," Laura said. "The world's different now."

"You could have been one of those dead bodies in the water. Or me, or the baby. Don't your realize that?"

"I know it better than you," she said grimly. "You weren't standing next to me when they killed Stubbs."

David flushed. "That's a shitty thing to say. I'm standing next to you now, aren't I?"

"Are you?"

His jaw muscles clenched and he stared at his hands as if willing them not to punch her. "Well, I guess that depends, doesn't it? On what you think you're doing."

"I know my long-term goals, Laura said. "Which is more than you can say." She touched the baby's cheek. "What kind of world will she live in? That's what's at stake."

"That sounds really noble," he said. "And just a hair away from megalomania. The world's bigger than the two of us.

We don't live in the `globe,' Laura. We live with each other.

And our child."

He took a deep breath, let it out. "I've had it, that's all.

Maybe my number came up once--okay, I'll stand in the front lines for Rizome. I'll do one tour of duty. I'll watch dead bodies, I'll have my house burned over my head. But they don't pay me enough to die."

"Nobody's ever paid that much," Laura said. "But we can't watch people be murdered, and say it's fine and dandy and none of our business."

"We're not indispensable. Let somebody else have a shot at playing Joan of Arc."

"But I know what's happening," she said. `.'That makes me valuable. I've seen things other people didn't. Even you,

David. "

"Oh, great," David said. "So now you're going to start in on how I walk through life in a fog. Listen, Mrs. Webster, I saw more of the real Grenada than you ever did. The real things-not this trivial power-play bullshit that you run with your old girls' network. Goddamn it, Laura! You've got to learn to take some setbacks and accept your limits!"

"You mean your limits," Laura said.

He stared. "Sure. If you want to see it that way. My limits. I've reached them. That's it. End of discussion."

She sank back into her seat, raging. Fine. He'd given up listening. Let's see how some silence suited him.

After a few hours of silence she realized she'd made a mistake. But it was too late to go back then.

Police boarded the plane at Havana Airport. The passen- gers were marched off-not exactly at gunpoint, but close enough not to matter much. It was dark and raining. Behind a distant line of striped sawhorses, the Spanish-language press lifted cameras and shouted questions. One exile tried to wan- der in their direction, waving his arms-he was quickly herded back.

They entered a wing of the terminal, surrounded by jeeps. It was crawling with customs men. And the Vienna heat- exquisitely dressed plainclothesmen with their portable termi- nals and speckled glasses.

Police began hustling the refugees into ragged lines. Cuban cops, locals, demanding ID. They escorted a group of trium- phantly grinning techs past the glowering Viennese. Law - enforcement turf battles. Cuba had never been all that hot about the Convention.

Someone called out in Japanese. "Laura-san ni o-banashi shitai no desu ga!"

"Koko desu," she answered. She spotted them--a young

Japanese couple, standing near an exit door beside a uni- formed Cuban cop. "C'mon," she told David-her fast word to him in hours and walked toward them. "Donata ni goyo desu ka?"

The woman smiled shyly, bowing, "Rara Rebsta?"

"Hai," Laura said. "That's me." She gestured at David.

"Kore wa David Webster to iu mono desu."

The woman reached for Loretta's tote. Surprised, David let her take it. The woman wrinkled her nose. "0-mutsu o torikaetea hoga iito omoimasu."

"Yeah, we ran out of them," Laura said. Blank looks.

"Diapers. Eigo wa shabere masuka?" They shook their heads glumly. "They don't speak English," she told David.

"Que tal?" David said. "Yo no hablo japones-un poquito solo. Uhh ... iquien es Ustedes? j su amigo interesante?"

"Somos de Kymera Havana," the man said happily. He bowed and shook David's hand. "Bienvenidos a Cuba, Senor

Rebsta! Soy Yoshio, y mi esposa, Mika. Y el Capitan Reyes, del Habana Securidad ... "

"It's Kymera Corporation," David said.

"Yeah, I know."

"Looks like they've made some kind of arrangement with the local police." He paused. "Kymera-they're with us, right? Economic democrats."

"Solidaridad," Yoshio told him, holding up two fingers.

He winked and opened the door.

Kymera had a car waiting.

Kymera was very well prepared. They had everything.

New passports for them-legal ones. New decks. Diapers and baby formula. A change of clothes that almost fit, or would have if they hadn't been eating Rita's banquets. And they'd cooled things with the Cuban police. Laura thought it was best not to ask how.

They spent a quiet evening in miraculous, cozy safety at one of Kymera's Havana compounds. And off the Net, in privacy-a kind of ecstasy, like getting over an illness. Their rooms were smaller and everything was closer to the floor, but otherwise it was like old home week in a Rizome Lodge.

They chatted in Japanese and Spanish over seafood and sake, and met the Takedas' adorable four-year-old.

"Rizome has shown us some of your tapes," Yoshio said, pausing for translations. "We are coordinating. Putting all cards on the table between us."

"You saw the-terrorist attack, then," Laura said.