"You may proceed," Gresham announced.
Mrs. Wu froze the tape. "Laura, you're our situation expert. Is it him?"
"It's him," Laura said. "He's been to a laundry, but that's
Jonathan Gresham, all right."
"Do they always look like that?" de Valera asked.
Laura laughed. "They wouldn't last five minutes like that, out on operations. Those silly swords, all that hardware- they've got everything but flyswatters. Gresham's trying to put the voodoo on her."
"I've never seen a more terrifying figure," said Mrs. Wu, sincerely. "Why is he hiding his face? His photo. must be on file somewhere anyway."
"He's wearing the tagelmoust," Laura said. "That veil and turban-it's traditional for male Tuaregs. A kind of male chador."
"That's a switch," McIntyre said. Deliberate lightness.
She was scared, too.
"Thank you, Colonel Gresham." Arbright was shaken but she was going to tough it out. A professional. "Let me begin by asking, Why did you agree to this interview?"
"You mean why you-or why at all?"
"Let's begin with why at all."
"I know what's happened in your world," Gresham said.
"We blew Vienna's shell game, and the Net wants to know why. What's in it for us? Who are we, what do we want?
When the Net wants to know, it sends its army journalists.
So I'm willing to meet with exactly one-you. I depend on you to warn the rest off.' "I'm not sure I follow you, Colonel. I can't speak for my media colleagues, but I'm certainly not a soldier."
"The Malian regime gave us a war of extermination. We understand that. We also understand the far more insidious threat that you pose, with your armies of cameramen. We don't want your world. We don't respect your values and we don't care to be touched. We are not a tourist attraction-we are a revolution, not a zoo. We will not be tamed or assimi- lated. By your very nature, by your very presence, you would force assimilation on us. That will not be allowed."
"Colonel, you've been a journalist yourself, as well as a soldier, and, ah, cultural theorist. You must be aware that popular interest in you and your activities is very intense."
"Yes, I am. That's why I fully expect to litter this desert with the bones of your colleagues in years to come. But I'm a soldier-not a terrorist. When our enemies-your colleagues are killed in our liberated zones, they'll die knowing the reason. Assuming, that is, that I can trust you to do your job."
"I won't censor you, Colonel. I'm not Vienna, either."
"Yes-I know that. I know you pushed the coverage of the
Grenada terror attack well past Vienna's limits, at some risk to your career. That's why I chose you-you have some spine."
The second cameraman had now wandered into range and got a reaction shot. Arbright smiled at Gresham. Dimples.
Laura knew what she was feeling. She was fairly tight with
Arbright these days. Had done an interview with her, a good one. She even knew the name of Arbright's hairdresser.
"Colonel, did you know that your book on the Lawrence
Doctrine is now a best-seller?"
"It was pirated," Gresham said. "And expurgated."
"Could you explain a bit of the doctrine for our viewers?"
"I suppose it's preferable to having them read it," Gresham said reluctantly. Feigned reluctance, Laura thought. "Over a century ago, Lawrence ... he was British, First World War
... discovered how a tribal society could defend itself from industrial imperialism.... The Arab Revolt stopped the Turkish cultural advance, literally in its tracks. They did this with guerrilla assaults on the railroads and telegraphs, the Turkish industrial control system. For success, however, the Arabs were forced to use industrial artifacts-namely, guncotton, dynamite, and canned food. For us it is solar power, plastique, and single-cell protein."
He paused. "The Arabs made the mistake of trusting the
British, who were simply the Turks by another name. The
First World War was a proto-Net civil war, and the Arabs were thrust aside. 'Til oil came-then they were assimilated.
Brave efforts like the Iranian revolt of 1979 were too little too late ... they were already fighting for television."
"Colonel-you speak as if you don't expect anyone to sympathize."
"I don't. You live by your system. Vienna, Mali, Azania- it's all imperial hardware, just different brand names."
"The British political analyst Irwin Craighead has described you as `the first credible right-wing intellectual since T. E.
Lawrence.' "
Gresham touched his veil. "I'm a postindustrial tribal anarchist.
Is that considered `right-wing' these days? You'll have to ask Craighead."
"I'm sure Sir Irwin would be delighted to discuss definitions."
"I'm not going to Britain-and if he tries to invade our zones, he'll be ambushed like anyone else."
Mrs. Wu froze the tape. "This litany of death threats is very annoying."
"Arbright's got him rattled," de Valera gloated. "Typical right-winger-full of bullshit!"
"Hey!" Garcia-Meza objected. "You should talk, de
Valera-you and your socialist internal-money system-"
"Please don't start on that again," Kaufmann said. "Anyway, he's interesting, is he not? Here's a fellow who could be a world hero-not to everyone perhaps, but enough of us- and not only is he staying out there in hell, but he's talked these other poor souls into joining him!"
"His ideology sucks," de Valera said. "If he wants to be a desert hermit, he could move to Arizona and stop paying his phone bills. He doesn't need the shoulder-launched- rockets and the whole nine yards."
"I'm with de Valera on this one," McIntyre said. "And I still don't see how the Russian space station fits in."
"He's confused," Laura said. "He's not sure what he's doing is right. It's like-he wants to be as different from us as he can, but he can't get us out of himself. He's full of some kind of self-hatred I can't understand."
"Let's give him his say," Garcia-Meza said.
They ran more tape. Arbright asked Gresham about FACT.
"The Malian regime is finished," Gresham said, "the sub- marine is just a detail," and he began talking about Azanian
"imperialism." Detailing how roads could be land-mined, convoys ambushed, communication links cut, until Azanian
"expansionism" was "no longer economically tenable."
Then without warning he started in on plans to heal the desert. "Agriculture is the oldest and most vicious of humani- ty's bio-technologies. Rather than deracinated farmers in
Azanian sterilization camps, there should be wandering tribes of eco-decentralized activists...."
"He's a screwball," de Valera said.
"I think we're all agreed on that," Mrs. Wu said. She turned down the sound. "The question is, what is our policy?
Is Gresham any less threatening to us than Grenada or Singa- pore? He certainly cultivates a line in aggressive bluster."
"Grenada and Singapore were pirates and parasites," Laura said. "Grant him this much-he only wants to be left alone."
"Come on," de Valera said. "What about all that high- tech hardware? He didn't get that by selling handmade jewelry."
"Aha!" said Garcia-Meza. "Then that is where he's vulnerable. "
"Why we should harm someone who fought the F.A.C.T.?".
Suvendra said. "And if they could not frighten or defeat his people, could we?"
"Good point," said Mrs. Wu. They watched Gresham lean back briefly in his peacock chair and mutter an order to the lieutenant on his left. The Tuareg saluted smartly and swag- gered away, off-camera.
"He is in a desert no one wants," Suvendra said. "Why force him to come after us?"
"What the hell could he do to us?" de Valera said. "He's a Luddite."