She was unable to sleep. The day tossed through her mind, over and over. And the cramps were bad. At half past mid- night she gave up and put on a robe.
David had made Loretta a crib-a little square corral, padded all around with blankets. Laura looked over her little girl and cradled her with a glance. Then back at David. It was funny how much they looked alike when they slept. Father and daughter. Some strange human vitality that had passed through her, that she'd nurtured within herself. Wonderful, painful, eerie. The house was still as death.
She heard distant thunder. From the north. Hollow, re- peated booms. It was going to rain. That would be nice. A
little tropic rain to soothe her nerves.
She walked silently through the living room onto the porch.
She and David had cleared the junk away and swept the place; it was comfortable there now. She swung out the arms of an old Morris chair and reclined in it, propping up her tired legs. Warm garden air with the heavy-lidded perfume reek of ylang-ylang. No rain yet. The air was full of tension.
The distant lights at the gate flashed on. Laura winced and lifted her head. The two night guards-she didn't know their names yet-had come out and were conferring over their belt phones.
She heard a pop overhead. Very quiet, unobtrusive, like a rafter settling. Then another one: a faint metallic bonk, and a rustle. Very quiet, like birds landing.
Something had dropped onto the roof. Something had hit the top of one of the turrets-bonked off its tin roof onto the shingles.
White glare sheeted over the yard, silently. White glare from the top of the mansion. The guards looked up, startled.
They flung their arms up in surprise, like bad actors.
The roof began crackling.
Laura stood up and screamed at the top of her lungs.
She dashed through the darkened house to the bedroom.
The baby had jerked awake and was howling in fear. David was sitting up in bed, dazed. "We're on fire," she told him.
He catapulted out of bed and stumbled into his pants.
"Where?"
"The roof. In two places. Fire bombs, I think."
"Oh, Jesus," he said. "You grab Loretta and I'll get the others. "
She strapped Loretta into her tote and tossed their decks into a suitcase. She could smell smoke by the time she'd finished. And there was a steady crackling roar.
She hauled the baby and the suitcase out into the yard. She left Loretta in her tote, behind the fountain, then turned to look. One of the turrets was wrapped in flames. A leaping ulcer of fire spread over the west wing.
Rajiv and Jimmy came out, half carrying a coughing, weeping Rita. Laura ran to them. She sank her nails into
Rajiv's naked arm. "Where's my husband, you stupid bastard!"
"Very sorry, madam," Rajiv whimpered. He tugged ner- vously at his drooping pants. "Sorry, madam, very sorry... "
She shoved him aside so hard' that he spun and fell. She vaulted the stairs and rushed back in, ignoring their yells.
David was in the bedroom. He was crouched almost dou- ble, with a wet washcloth pressed to his face. He was wearing his videoglasses, and had hers propped on his head. The bedside clock was clamped under his armpit. "Just a sec," he muttered, fixing her with blank, gold-etched eyes. "Gotta find my toolbox."
"Fuck it, David, go!" She hauled at his arm. He went reluctantly, stumbling.
Once outside, they had to back away from the heat. One by one, the upper rooms were beginning to explode. David dropped his washcloth, numbly. "Flashover," he said, staring.
A fist of dirty flame punched out an upstairs window.
Shards of glass fountained across the lawn. "The heat builds up," David muttered clinically. "The whole room ignites at once. And the gas pressure just blows the walls out."
The soldiers pushed them back, holding their stupid, use- less tangle-guns at chest level, like police batons. David went reluctantly, hypnotized by destruction. "I've run simulations of this, but I've never seen it happen," he said, to no one in particular. "Jesus, what a sight!"
Laura shoved one of the teenage soldiers as he trampled her bare foot. "Some help you are, asshole! Where in hell is the fire department or whatever you use in this godforsaken place?"
The boy backed off, trembling, and dropped his gun. "Look at the sky!" He pointed northeast.
Low scud of burning clouds on the northern horizon. Lit like dawn with ugly, burning amber. "What the hell," David said, marveling. "That's miles away.... Laura, that's Point
Sauteur. It's the whole fucking complex off there. That's a refinery fire!"
"Brimstone fire," the soldier wailed. He started sobbing, dabbing at his face. The other soldier, a bigger man, kicked him hard in the leg. "Pick up you weapon, bloodclot!"
A distant dirty flash lit the clouds. "Man, I hope they haven't hit the tankers," David said. "Man, I hope the poor bastards on those rigs have lifeboats. " He tugged at his earpiece. "You getting all this, Atlanta?"
Laura pulled her own rig off his head. She backed away and fetched Loretta in her tote. She pulled the screaming baby free of the thing and cradled her against her chest, rocking her and murmuring.
Then she put the glasses on.
Now she could watch it without hurting so much.
The mansion burned to the ground. It took all night. Their little group huddled together in the guardhouse, listening to tales of disaster on the phones.
Around seven A.M., a spidery military chopper arrived and set down by the fountain.
Andrei, the Polish émigré, hopped out. He took a large box from the pilot and joined them at the gates.
Andréi's left arm was wrapped in medicinal gauze, and he stank of chemical soot. "I have brought shoes and uniforms for all survivors," he announced. The box was full of flat, plastic-wrapped packs: the standard cadre's jeans and short-sleeved shirts. "Very sorry to be such bad hosts," Andrei told them somberly. "The Grenadian People apologize to you."
"At least we survived," Laura told him. She slipped her bare feet gratefully into the soft deck shoes. "Who took credit?"
"The malefactors of the F.A.C.T. have broken all civilized bounds. "
"I figured," Laura said, taking the box. "We'll take turns changing inside the guardhouse. David and I will go first."
Inside, she shucked out of her flimsy nightrobe and buttoned on the stiff, fresh shirt and heavy jeans. David put on a shirt and shoes.
They stepped out and Rita went in, shivering. "Now, you will please join me in the helicopter," Andrei said. "The world must know of this atrocity...."
"All right," Laura said. "Who's online?"
["Practically everybody,"] Emily told her. ["We got you on a live feed throughout the company, and to a couple of news services. Vienna's gonna have a hard time holding this one.... It's just too big."]
Andrei paused at the chopper's hatchway. "Can you leave the baby?"
"No way," David said flatly. They climbed into two crash couches in the back, and David held Loretta's tote in his lap.
Andrei took the copilot's seat and they buckled in.
Up and away in a quiet hiss of rotor blades.
David glanced out the bulletproof window at the mansion's black wreckage. "Any idea what hit our house?"
"Yes. There were many of them. Very small, cheap planes-paper and bamboo, like children's kites. Radar- transparent. Many have crashed now, but not before they dropped their many bombs. Little thermite sticks with flaming jelly."
"Were they hitting us in particular? Rizome, I mean?"
Andrei shrugged in his shoulder harness. "It is hard to say.
Many such houses have burned. The communiqué does men- tion you.... I have it here." He passed them a printout.
Laura glanced at it: date and tag line, and block after block of the usual Stalinist garbage. "Do you have a casualty count?"