"He is `lazy' and 'stupid,' " the Rizome kid hinted. Like the rest of Suvendra's local crew, the Rizome kid was not
Singaporean, but a Maphilindonesian, from Djakarta. His name was Ali.
"Huh?" Laura said.
"I am `unfit for conventional employment,' " the messen- ger said, meaningfully.
"Oh. Right," Laura said, realizing. The kid was from the local opposition. The Anti-Labour Party.
Suvendra had scraped up a little solidarity with the leader of the Anti-Labourites. His name was Razak. Like Suvendra,
Razak was a Malay, a minority group in a city 80 percent
Chinese. He had managed to cobble together a fragile local mandate: part ethnic, part classbased, but mostly pure lunatic fringe.
Razak's political philosophy was bizarre, but he had held out stubbornly against the assaults of Kim's ruling party.
Therefore, he was now in a position to raise embarrassing questions on the floor of Parliament. His interests partly coincided with Rizome's, so they were allies.
And the Anti-Labourites made full use of the alliance, too.
Ragged bands of them hung out at the Rizome godown, cadg- ing handouts, using the phones and bathroom, running off peculiar handbills on the company Xerox. In the mornings they grouped together in the city parks, eating protein paste and practicing martial arts in their torn paper pants. People gathered to laugh at them.
Laura gave the kid her best conspiratorial glance. "Thanks for coming so late. I appreciate your, uh, dedication."
The boy shrugged "No problem, madam. I am the ob- server for your civil rights."
Laura glanced at Ali. "What?"
"He is staying this place all night," Ali said. "He is observing for our civil rights."
"Oh. Thank you," Laura said vaguely. It seemed as good an excuse to loiter as any. "We could send down some food or something."
"I eat only scop," the boy said. He plucked a crumpled envelope from a hidden slot under his rickshaw seat. Parliamentary stationery.: THE HONORABLE DR. ROBERT RAZAK, M.P. (Anson).
"It's from Bob," Laura told them, hoping to retrieve some lost prestige. She opened it.
A hasty scrawl of red ink above a printout.
Despite our well-founded ideological opposition we of the Anti-Labour Party do of course maintain files in the
Yung Soo Chim Islamic Bank, and this message arrived at 2150 hrs local time, tagged for you. If reply is necessary, do not use local phone system. Wishing you the best of luck in these difficult times. Message fol-
IOWS: YDOOL EQKOF UHFNH HEBSG HNDGH QNOQP LUDOO.
JKEIL KIFUL FKEIP POLKS DOLFU JENHF HFGSE! IHFUE KYFEN
KUBES KUVNE KNESE NHWQQ KVNEI? JEUNF HFENA OBGHE
BHSIF WHIBE. QHIRS QIFES BEHSE IPHES HBESA HFIEW HBEIA!
DAVID
"It's from David," Laura blurted. "My husband."
"Husband," the Party kid mused. He seemed sorry to hear that she had one.
"Why this? Why didn't he just phone me?" Laura said.
"The phones being out of order," the boy said. "Full of spooks. "
"Spooks?" Laura said. "You mean spies?"
The boy muttered something in Malay. "He means demons," Ali translated. "Evil spirits."
"You kidding?" Laura said.
"It tell me they are evil spirits, said the boy calmly.
" `Uttering terrorist threats intended to sow panic and dissen- sion.' A felony under Article 15, Section 3." He frowned.
"But only in English, madam! It did not use Malay language although use of Malay is officially mandated in Singapore
Constitution. "
"What did the demon say?" Laura demanded.
" `The enemies of the righteous to burn with brimstone fire,' " the boy quoted. " 'Jah Whirlwind to smite the oppressor.' Much else in similar bloody vein. It call me by name." He shrugged. "My mother cried."
"His mother thinks he should get a job," Ali confided.
"The future belong to the stupid and lazy," the boy de- clared. He doubled up his legs and perched expertly on the bamboo strut of his rickshaw.
Ali rubbed his chin. "Chinese and Tamil languages-were these also neglected?"
A gust of wind blew in from offshore. Laura rubbed her arms. She wondered if she should tip the kid. No, she remembered-the A-L.P. had some kind of strange phobia against touching money. "I'm going back inside."
The boy examined the sky. "Sumatra monsoon coming, madam." He popped hinges and pulled up the accordioned canopy of his rickshaw. The white nylon was painted in red, black, and yellow: a Laughing Buddha, crowned with thorns.
Inside the godown, Mr. Suvendra squatted on a quilted gray loading mat under the watery light of the geodesics. He had a television and a pot of coffee. Laura joined him, sitting cross-legged. "I am not like this graveyard shift," he said.
"Your message, it is saying?"
"What do you make of this? It's from my husband."
He examined the paper. "Not English.... A computer cipher. "
A dock robot rolled in with a shipping container on its back. It stacked the box with a powerful wheeze of hydrau- lics. Mr. Suvendra ignored it. "You and husband have a cipher, yes? A code. For hiding the meaning, and showing the message is truly from him."
"We never used anything like that! That's Triad stuff."
"Triad, tong." Suvendra smiled. "Like us, good gemeineschaft .
"Now I'm worried! I've got to call David right now!"
Suvendra shook his head. "The telly say the phones are bloody down. Subversives. "
Laura thought it over. "Look, I can take a taxi across the causeway and call from a phone in Johore. That's Malaysian territory. Maphilindonesian, I mean."
"In the morning," Suvendra said.
"No! David could be hurt. Shot! Dying! Or maybe our baby ..." She felt a racing jolt of guilt and fear. "I'm calling a taxi right now. " She accessed the tourist data on her watchphone.
"Taxis," the phone announced tinnily. "Singapore has over twelve thousand automated taxis, over eight thousand of them air-conditioned. Starting fare is two ecu for the first fifteen hundred meters or part thereof .. .
"Get on with it," Laura grated.
.. hailed in the street or called by telephone: 452-5555..."
"Right." Laura punched numbers. Nothing happened.
"Shit!"
"Have some coffee," Suvendra offered.
"They've killed the phones!" she said, realizing it again, but with a real pang this time. "The Net's down! I can't get on the goddamn Net!"
Suvendra stroked his pencil mustache. "So very important, is it? In your America."
She slapped her own wrist, hard enough to hurt. "David should be talking here right now! What kind of jerkwater place is this?" No access. Suddenly it seemed hard to breathe.
"Look, you must have another line out, right? Fax machine or telex or something."
"No, sorry. Is a bit rough and ready here in Rizome
Singapore. Just lately we move into this wonderful palace."
Suvendra waved his arm. "Very difficult for us." He shrugged.
"You are relaxing, having some coffee, Laura. Could be message is nothing. A trick by the Bank."
Laura smacked her forehead. "I bet that Bank has a line out. Sure. Guarded fiber-optics! Even Vienna can't crack them. And they're right downtown on Bencoolen Street."
"Oh, dear me," said Suvendra. "Very bad idea."
"Look, I know people there. Old Mr. Shaw, a couple of his guards. They were my house guests. They owe me."
"No, no." He put a hand to his mouth.
"They owe me. Stupid bastards, what else are they good for? What are they going to do, shoot me? That'd look great in Parliament, wouldn't it? Hell, I'm not afraid of them-I'm going down there right now." Laura stood up.