MRS. QUAH: Second the motion.
MR. JEYARATNAM: It is so ordered.
DR. RAZAK: Mr. Chairman, I wish to be recorded as objecting to this foolish act of censorship.
MRS. WEBSTER: Singapore could be next! I saw it happen! Legalisms-that won't help you if they sow mines through your city and firebomb it!
MR. JEYARATNAM: Order! Order, please, ladies and gentlemen.
DR. RAZAK:... a kind of innkeeper?
MRS. WEBSTER: We in Rizome don't have "jobs, Dr.
Razak. Just things to do and people to do them.
DR. RAZAK: My esteemed colleagues of the People's
Innovation Party might call that "inefficient."
MRS. WEBSTER: Well, our idea of efficiency has more to do with personal fulfillment than, uh, material possessions.
DR. RAZAK: I understand that large numbers of Rizome employees do no work at all.
MRS. WEBSTER: Well, we take care of our own. Of course a lot of that activity is outside the money economy.
An invisible economy that isn't quantifiable in dollars.
DR. RAZAK: In ecu, you mean.
MRS. WEBSTER: Yes, sorry. Like housework: you don't get any money for doing it, but that's how your family survives, isn't it? Just because it's not in a bank doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Incidentally, we're not "employ- ees," but "associates."
DR. RAZAK: In other words, your bottom line is ludic joy rather than profit. You have replaced "labour," the humiliating specter of "forced production," with a series of varied, playlike pastimes. And replaced the greed motive with a web of social ties, reinforced by an elective power structure.
MRS. WEBSTER: Yes, I think so ... if I understand your definitions.
DR. RAZAK: How long before you can dispose of "work"
entirely?
Singha Pura meant "Lion City." But there had never been lions on Singapore island.
The name had to make some kind. of sense, though. So local legend said the "lion" had been a sea monster.
On the opposite side of Singapore's National Stadium, a human sea lifted their flash cards and showed Laura their monster. The Singapore "merlion," in a bright mosaic of cardboard squares.
Loud, patriotic applause from a packed crowd of sixty thousand.
The merlion had a fish's long, scaled body and the lion head of the old British Empire. They had a statue of it in
Merlion Park at the mouth of the Singapore River. The thing was thirty feet high, a genuinely monstrous hybrid.
East and West like cats and fishes-never the twain shall meet. Until some bright soul had simply chopped the fish's head off and stuck the lion's on: And there you had it:
Singapore.
Now there were four million of them and they had the biggest goddamn skyscrapers in the world.
Suvendra, sitting next to Laura in the bleachers, offered her a paper bag of banana chips. Laura took a handful and knocked back more lemon squash.. The stadium hawkers were selling the best fast food she'd ever eaten.
Back across the field there was another practiced flurry. A
big grinning face this time, flash-card pixels too big and crude, like bad computer graphics.
"It is the specimen they are showing," Suvendra said helpfully. Tiny little Malay woman in her fifties, with oily hair in a chignon and frail; protuberant ears. Wearing a yellow sundress, tennis hat, and a Rizome neck scarf. Next to her a beefy Eurasian man chewed sunflower seeds and care- fully spat the hulls into a small plastic trash bag.
"The what?" Laura said.
"Spaceman. Their cosmonaut."
"Oh, right." So that was Singapore's astronaut, grinning from his space helmet. It looked like a severed head stuck in a television.
A roar from the western twilight. Laura cringed. Six matte- black pterodactyls buzzed the stadium. Nasty-looking things.
Combat jets from the Singapore . Air Force, the precision flyers, Chrome Angels or whatever they called themselves.
The jets spat corkscrewed plumes of orange smoke from their canted wing tips. The crowd jumped gleefully to their feet, whooping and brandishing their programs.
The Boys and Girls Brigades poured onto the soccer field, in red-and-white T-shirts and little billed caps. They assumed formation, twirling long, ribbony streamers from broomsticks.
Antiseptic marching school kids, of every race and creed, though you wouldn't guess it to look at them.
"They are very well trained, isn't it?" Suvendra said.
"Yeah,
A video scoreboard towered at the eastern end of the field.
It showed a live feed of the televised coverage from the
Singapore Broadcasting Service. The screen flashed a closeup from within the stadium's celebrity box. The local bigwigs, watching the kids with that beaming, sentimental look that politicos reserved for voters' children.
Laura studied them. The guy in the linen suit was S. P.
Jeyaratnam, Singapore's communications czar. A spiky- eyebrowed Tamil with the vaguely unctuous look of a sacred
Thuggee strangler. Jeyaratnam was formerly a journalist, now chief hatchet man for the People's Innovation Party. He had a talent for invective. Laura hadn't liked tangling with him.
Singapore's prime minister noticed the camera. He tipped his goldbridged sunglasses down his nose and peered at the lens. He winked.
The crowd elbowed each other and squirmed with delight.
Chuckling amiably, the P.M. murmured to the woman beside him, a young Chinese actress with high-piled hair and a gold chiton. The girl laughed with practiced charisma. The
P.M. flicked back the smooth, dark wing of hair across his forehead. Gleam of strong, young teeth.
The video board left the celebs and switched to the plung- ing, bootclad legs of a majorette.
The kids left the stadium to fond applause, and two long lines of military police marched in. White chin-strapped hel- mets, white Sam Browne belts, pressed khakis, spit-polished boots. The soldiers faced the stands and began a complex rifle drill. Snappy over-the-shoulder_ high toss, in a precisely timed cascade.
"Kim looks good today," Suvendra said. Everybody in
Singapore called the prime minister by his first name. His name was Kim Swee Lok-or Lok Kim Swee, to his fellow ethnic Chinese.
"Mmm," Laura said.
"You are quiet this evening." Suvendra put a butterfly touch on Laura's forearm. "Still tired from testimony, isn't it?
"He reminds me of my husband," Laura blurted.
Suvendra smiled. "He's a good-looking bloke, your husband."
Laura felt a tingle of unease. She'd flown around the world with such bruising speed-the culture shock had odd side effects. Some pattern-seeking side of her brain had gone into overdrive. She'd seen Singapore store clerks with the faces of pop stars, and street cops who looked like presidents. Even
Suvendra herself reminded Laura somehow of Grace Web- ster, her mother-in-law. No physical resemblance, but the vibe was there. Laura had always gotten on very well with Grace.
Kim's practiced appeal made Laura feel truly peculiar. His influence over this little city-state had a personal intimacy that was almost erotic. It was as if Singapore had married him.
His People's Innovation Party had annihilated the opposition parties at the ballot box. Democratically, legally-but the
Republic of Singapore was now essentially a one-party state.
The whole little republic, with its swarming traffic and cheerful, disciplined populace, was now in the hands of a thirty-two-year-old visionary genius. Since his election to
Parliament at twenty-three, Kim Lok had reformed the civil service, masterminded a vast urban development scheme, and revitalized the army. And while carrying on a series of highly public love affairs, he had somehow managed to pick up advanced degrees in engineering and political science. His rise to power had been unstoppable, buoyed by a strange mix of menace and playboy appeal.
The soldiers finished with a flourish, then snapped to atten- tion, saluting. The crowd rose to sing the national anthem: a ringing ditty called "Count On Me, Singapore." Thousands of smiling, neatly dressed Chinese and Malays and Tamils- all singing in English.