The gate led into a modern airport, not much different from many I'd seen in small European cities, with clean-lined architecture, and movable seating which groups of people had arranged in inward-facing rings. There were only three airline counters, and they all displayed much smaller versions of their logos than usual, as if not wishing to attract too much attention. Booking passage here, I'd found no flights advertised openly on the net; I'd had to post a specific query in order to obtain any information. The European Federation, India, and several African and Latin American countries only enforced the minimal boycott of selected high technology which the UN demanded; these airlines were operating entirely within the laws of their home nations. Still, irritating the Japanese, Korean, Chinese and US governments— not to mention the biotech multinationals—would always carry a risk. Committing the offense discreetly wouldn't conceal anything, but no doubt it acted as a gesture of obeisance, and lessened the perceived need for examples to be made of the collaborators.
I collected my suitcase and stood by the baggage roundabout, trying to get my bearings. I watched my fellow passengers drift away, some greeted by friends, some going on alone. Most spoke in English or French; there was no official language here, but almost two-thirds of the population had migrated from other Pacific islands. Choosing to live on Stateless might always be a political decision in the end—and some Greenhouse refugees apparently preferred to spend years in Chinese detention camps instead, in the hope of eventually being accepted into that entrepreneurial dreamland—but after seeing your home washed into the ocean, I could imagine that a self-repairing (and currently increasing) landmass might hold a special attraction. Stateless represented a reversal of fortune: sunlight and biotechnology playing the whole disaster movie backward. Better than raging at the storm. Fiji and Samoa were finally growing new islands of their own, but they weren't yet habitable—and both governments were paying several billion dollars for the privilege, in license fees and consultants' charges. They'd carry the debt into the twenty-second century.
In theory, a patent lasted only seventeen years—but biotech companies had perfected the strategy of re-applying for the same coverage from a different angle when the expiration date loomed: first for the DNA sequence of a gene, and all its applications… then for the corresponding amino acid sequence… then for the
As I began to cross toward the exit, I saw Janet Walsh heading in the same direction, and I hung back. She was walking with a group of half a dozen men and women—but one man walked a few meters outside the entourage, with a practiced smooth gait and a steady gaze directed straight at Walsh. I recognized the technique at once, and the practitioner a moment later: David Connolly, a photographer with Planet Noise. Walsh needed a second pair of eyes, of course—she would hardly have let them put all that nasty dehumanizing technology inside her own body… and, worse, her own POV would have left her out of every shot. Not much point employing a celebrity journalist if she wasn't onscreen.
I followed at a discreet distance. A group of forty or fifty supporters were standing outside in the warm night air, holding up luminescent banners—more telegenic in the relative darkness than they would have been inside—which switched in synch between HUMBLE SCIENCE!, WELCOME JANET! and SAY NO TO TOE! They cheered in unison as Walsh came through the doors. She broke away from her halo of companions to shake hands and receive kisses; Connolly stood back to capture it all.
Walsh made a short speech, wisps of gray hair blowing in the breeze. I couldn't fault her skills with camera or crowd: she had the knack of appearing dignified and authoritative, without seeming stern or aloof. And I had to admire her stamina: she displayed more energy after the long flight than I could have summoned if my life had been in danger.
