-_,that treason."

"Rizome elections are coming up soon," Yoshio said.

"You say you're economic democrats. If you believe in the

Net if you believe your own morality-you cannot escape this issue. Why not put it to a vote?"

Even at Atlanta's airport, Laura felt that hemmed-in, antsy feeling the city always gave her. The megalopolis, that edgy tempo ... So many Americans, with their clean, expensive clothes and bulging luggage. Milling under the giant, slanting openwork of multimillion-ecu geodesics, sleek designer geometries of light and space. Rose-pink abstract mobiles, reacting to the crowd flow, dipped and whirled slowly overhead. Like exploded cybernetic flocks of flamingos ...

"Wow," David said, nudging her with the baby's tote.

"Who's the fox with Emily?"

Two women approaching. One, short and round-faced, in long skirt and frilled blouse: Emily Donato. Laura felt a surge of pleasure and relief. Emily was here, Rizome's cavalry.

Laura waved.

And Emily's companion: a tall black woman with a lovely machine-curled mane of auburn hair, carrying herself like a runway model. Lean and elegant, with coffee-colored skin and cheekbones to die for. "Whoa," Laura said. "That's- what's her name-Arbright something."

"Dianne Arbright on cable news," David said, gawking.

"A media talking head. Look, she's got legs just like a real human being!"

David gave Emily a hard, crunching hug, lifting her off the floor. Emily laughed at him and kissed his cheeks. "Hi,"

Laura said to the TV journalist. She shook Arbright's cool, muscular hand. "I suppose this means we're famous."

"Yeah, this crowd's full of journos," Arbright told her.

She flicked the lapel of her saffron silk business vest. "I'm wired for sound, by the way."

"So are we, I think," Laura said. "I got a telly-rig in my carry-on. "

"I'll pool my data with the other correspondents," Arbright said. There was the faintest beading of sweat on her upper lip, below the sleek mocha perfection of her video makeup. "Not that we can air it, but ... we network behind the scenes."

She glanced at Emily. "Y'all know how it is."

Laura watched Arbright with an eerie sense of dislocation.

Meeting Dianne Arbright in person was a bit like seeing the

"real" Mona Lisa-some essential reality leached out by too many reproductions. "Is it Vienna?" she said.

Arbright allowed herself a grimace. "We ran some of

Rizome's disaster footage two days ago. We know how bad it is there-the casualty counts, the forms of attack. But since then, Grenada's -sealed its borders. And Vienna censors ev- erything we air."

"But this is too big to contain," Emily said. "And every- body knows it. This goes way past the limits-somebody just trashed an entire country, for Christ's sake."

"It's the biggest terrie operation since Santa Vicenza,"

,Arbright said.

"What happened there?" David asked innocently.

Arbright gave David the bIank look one gives to the termi- nally out-of-it. "Maybe you an tell me exactly what hap- pened at your Lodge in Galveston," Arbright said at last.

"Oh," David said. "I, uh, guess I see what you mean."

" `Damage limitation,' " Laura said. "That's what hap- pened in Galveston. "

"And in a lot of other places-for years," Arbright said.

"So you two are nonpeople, deep-background, off the record.

Kinda tough on the good old First Amendment ... " Arbright flashed some high sign at a brown-suited stranger in the crowd, who grinned and nodded at her. "But Vienna can't stop us from discovering the truth-just from publicizing it."

They filtered toward one of the exists. Arbright tapped her platinum watchphone. "I got a limo waiting...."

"The Vienna heat's here!" David said.

Arbright glanced up placidly. "Nah. It's just some guy wearin' viddies."

"How can you tell?" David said.

"He's got the wrong vibe for Vienna," Arbright told him patiently. "Viddies don't mean much-I wear 'em myself sometimes. "

"We've been wearing viddies for days," Laura said.

Arbright perked up. "You mean you've got it all? Your whole tour of Grenada? On tape?"

"Every minute," David told her. "Damn near."

"It's worth plenty," Arbright said.

"Oughta be," David grumbled. "It was a living hell."

"Emily," Arbright said, "who owns the rights, and what are you asking?"

"Rizome doesn't peddle news for money," Emily said virtuously. "That's gesellschaft stuff.... Besides, there's the little matter of explaining what Rizome personnel were doing in a pirate data haven."

"Mmm," Arbright said. "Yeah, that's a tough angle."

Glass double doors hissed open and shut for them, and

Arbright's stretch limo flung its door over curb amid a line of taxis. The limo had mirrored windows d a set of microwave beamers in its roof that looked like water-cooled ray guns. They jumped in, following Arbright's lead. The limo slid away.

"Now we're cool," Arbright announced. She popped down a sliding cabinet door and checked her makeup in a stage mirror. "My people have worked this limo over-it's surveillance-right. "

They headed down a curving access ramp. It was an ugly day, gray September overcast cutting across the Atlanta sky- line. A mountain range of skyscrapers: postmodern, neo-

Gothic, Organic Baroque, even a few boxy premillennium relics, dwarfed by their weird progeny. "Three cars are fol- lowing us," Emily said.

"Jealous of my sources." Arbright smiled, her eyes light- ing up to television wattage. David turned to look.

"They're tracking all of us," Emily said. "The whole

Rizome committee. Got our apartments staked out-and I think Vienna's tapping our lines." She rubbed her eyelids.

"Dianne-you got a wet bar in this thing?"

Arbright picked up an eyebrow pencil. "Just tell the machine. "

"Car, make me a Dirty Kimono," Emily commanded. She rubbed her neck, mashing curls. "Not much sleep lately-I'm a little wired."

"They're really after us? Vienna?" David said.

"They're after everybody. Like an anthill jabbed with a stick." The car gave Emily a cloudy mix that reeked of sake.

"This meeting we held with Kymera and Farben-'summit,'

they called it...." She blinked and sipped her drink. "Laura,

I missed you."

"Getting crazy," Laura said. An old tag line from their college. days together. How tired Emily looked-crow's feet in the fine-boned hollow of her temples, more gray threading

'in her hair-tired hell, why mince words, Laura thought, they were both in their thirties now. Not college kids. Old. An impulse struck her, and she rubbed Emily's shoulders. Emily almost dropped her glass in gratification. "Yeah," she said.

"Who are you with?" David asked Arbright.

"You mean my company?"

"I mean your basic loyalties."

"Oh," Arbright said. "I'm a professional. An American journalist."

David looked tentative. " `American?' "

"I don't believe in Vienna," Arbright declared. "Spooks and censors telling Americans what we can and can't say.

Cover-ups to deny the terries publicity-that was always a half-assed idea." She tossed her head. "Now the whole system, the whole political structure... is gonna blow to hell!" She slapped the seat with the flat of her hand. "I've been waiting for this for years! Man, I'm as happy about it as a cutworm in corn!" She looked surprised at herself. "As my granddad used to say ... "

"Sounds kind of anarchical...." David rocked the tote on his knees. Little Loretta didn't like the sound of political stridency. Her face was clouding up.

"Americans used to live like that all the time! We called it

`freedom.' "

David looked dubious. " I meant, realistically speaking the global information structure ... " He let Loretta grip his fingers and tried to shush her.