Distress

And—though we weren't going out in real-time—she'd brought her audience with her. Under the potential scrutiny of ten million people, what else could I do but think what they expected me to think, give in to their consensus, conform?

Akili, too, seemed to relax—but whether Sarah's presence anchored ver in the same way, or merely served as a welcome distraction, I couldn't tell.

Sarah guided us deftly through our roles in Violet Mosala: Victim of Anthrocosmology. The deposition I'd made for Joe Kepa had stuck to the legally pertinent facts; this interview pretended to probe the moral and philosophical depths of the ACs' conspiracy. But Akili and I both talked of the fishing boat, and the moderates' insane beliefs, as if we had no doubt that their whole world view—as much as their violent methods—deserved only contempt; as if nothing remotely similar could have crossed our own minds in a thousand years.

And it all became news. It all became history. Sarah was doing her job flawlessly—but for the record, the three of us willingly steam-rollered flat every unspoken fear, every qualm, every trace of doubt that the world could ever be different from the nets' pale imitation of it.

We were almost finished—I was on the verge of recounting the events in the ambulance—when my notepad chimed. It was a coded trill for a call to be taken only in private. If I answered, the communications software would shift to deepest encryption, automatically—but if the notepad sensed other people within earshot, it would refuse to maintain the connection.

I excused myself, and left the tent. The sky showed a faint wash of gray over the stars. Music and laughter still flooded out of the square behind the markets, and people were still roaming the camp, but I found a secluded spot nearby.

De Groot said, "Andrew? Are you all right? Can you talk?" She looked haggard and tense.

"I'm fine. A little bruised by the quake, that's all." I hesitated; I couldn't bring myself to ask the question.

"Violet died. About twenty minutes ago." De Groot's voice faltered, but she steeled herself and pushed on wearily. "No one knows exactly why, yet. Some kind of trap sprung by one of the anti-viral magic bullets—maybe an enzyme in concentrations too weak to detect, which converted it into a toxin." She shook her head, disbelieving. "They turned her body into a minefield. What did she ever do to deserve that? She tried to find a few simple truths, a few simple patterns to the world."

I said, "They've been caught. They'll stand trial. And Violet will be remembered… for centuries." It was all hollow comfort, but I didn't know what else to say.

And I'd thought I'd been prepared for this news, ever since I'd heard she was in coma—but it still came like a sudden blow to the head… as if the anarchists' astonishing reversal of fortune, and Sarah's miraculous reappearance, had somehow rewritten the odds. I covered my eyes with my forearm for a moment, and saw her sitting in her hotel room beneath the skylight, raked by the sun, reaching out and taking my hand. Even if I'm wrong… there has to be something down there. Or nobody could even touch.

De Groot said, "How soon can you get off the island?" She sounded more than a little concerned—which was touching, but strange. We'd hardly been that close.

I laughed dismissively. "Why? The anarchists have won, the worst is over. I'm sure of that." De Groot did not look sure at all. "Have you heard something? From… your political contacts?" There was a sudden chill in my bowels, like the disbelief I'd felt before each new spasm from the cholera: It can't be happening again.

"This isn't about the war. But—you're stuck, aren't you?"

"For now. Are you going to tell me what this—?"

"We had a message. Just after Violet died. A threat from the Anthrocosmologists." Her face contorted with anger. "Not the ones on the boat, obviously. So it must have come from the ones who killed Buzzo."

"Saying what?"

"Shut down all of Violet's calculations. Present them with a verified audit trail for her supercomputer account, proving that all the records of her TOE work have been erased without being copied or read."

I made a sound of derision. "Yeah? Where do they think that will get them? All her methods and ideas have been published already. Someone else will duplicate everything… in a year at the most."

De Groot seemed indifferent to the ACs' motives; she just wanted an end to the violence. "I've shown the message to the police, here—but they say there's nothing anyone can do, with Stateless the way it is." She caught herself; she still hadn't spelled it out. "The threat is, we post the audit trail within an hour—or they kill you."