Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling Read Free Book Online

Galveston Seawall. They were passing a suburb, once a commuter’s haven with fresh green lawns and a golf course. Now it was a barrio, with sprawling houses subdivided, converted into bars and Latin groceries.
    â€œThe people who built this suburb knew they were running out of oil,” Laura said. “But they wouldn’t plan for it. They built everything around their precious cars, even though they knew they were turning the downtowns into ghettos. Now the cars are gone, and everyone with money has rushed back downtown. So the poor are shoved out here instead. Only they can’t afford the water bills, so the lawns are full of scrub. And they can’t afford air conditioning, so they swelter in the heat. No one even had the sense to build porches. Even though every house built in Texas had porches, for two hundred years!”
    Her mother stared obediently out the window. It was noon, and windows were flung open from the heat. Inside them, the unemployed sweated before their subsidized televisions. The poor lived cheap these days. Low-grade scop, fresh from the vats and dried like cornmeal, cost only a few cents a pound. Everyone in the ghetto suburbs ate scop, single-cell protein. The national food of the Third World.
    â€œBut that’s what I’m trying to tell you, dear,” her mother said. “Things change. You can’t control that. And bad luck happens.”
    Laura spoke tightly. “Mother, people built these crappy tract homes, they didn’t grow there. They were built for rip-off quick profit, with no sense of the long term. I know those places, I’ve helped David smash them up. Look at them!”
    Her mother looked pained. “I don’t understand. They’re cheap houses where poor people live. At least they have shelter, don’t they?”
    â€œMother, they’re energy sieves! They’re lathwork and sheetrock and cheap tinsel crap!”
    Her mother shook her head. “I’m not an architect’s wife, dear. I can see you’re upset by these places, but you talk as if it were my fault.”
    The van turned west up 83rd Street, heading for the airfield. The baby was asleep against her chest; Laura hugged her tighter, feeling depressed and angry. She didn’t know how she could make it any clearer to her mother without being bluntly rude. If she could say: Mother, your marriage was like one of these cheap houses; you used it up and moved on.… You threw my father out of your life like last year’s car, and you gave me to Grandmother to raise, like a house plant that no longer fit your decor.… But she couldn’t say that. She couldn’t force the words out.
    A shadow passed low overhead, silently. A Boeing passenger plane, an intercontinental, its tail marked with the red and blue of Aero Cubana. It reminded Laura of an albatross, with vast, canted, razor-like wings on a long, narrow body. Its engines hummed.
    The sight of planes always gave Laura a nostalgic lift. She had spent a lot of time in airports as a child, in the happy times before her life as a diplomat’s kid fell apart. The plane dropped gently, with computer-guided precision, its wings extruding yellow braking films. Modern design, Laura thought proudly, watching it. The Boeing’s thin ceramic wings looked frail. But they could have cut through a lousy tract house like a razor through cheese.
    They entered the airport through gates in a chain-link fence of red plastic mesh. Outside the terminal, vans queued up in the taxi lane.
    Laura helped her mother unload her bags onto a waiting luggage trolley. The terminal was built in early Organic Baroque, with insulated, fortresslike walls and double sliding doors. It was blessedly cool inside, with a sharp reek of floor cleaner. Flat display screens hung from the ceiling, shuffling arrivals and departures. Their luggage trolley tagged along at their heels.
    The crowd was light. Scholes Field was not a major