“That’s true – but there are other interests, with other agendas. It’s not as simple as you make it sound.”

We were alone now, on a large stretch of flat but unpaved reef-rock, prepared but not yet built-upon; some small-scale construction machinery was clustered in the distance, but it appeared to be idle. Munroe had told me that no one could own land on Stateless – any more than they could own air – but equally, there was nothing to stop people fencing off and monopolizing vast tracts of it. That they chose not to made me distinctly uneasy; it seemed like an unnatural exercise of restraint – a delicately balanced consensus poised ready to collapse into a spate of land grabs, the creation of de facto titles, and an outraged – probably violent – backlash from those who hadn’t got in first.

And yet … Why come all the way out here, just to play Lord of the Flies? No society chooses to destroy itself. And if an ignorant tourist was capable of imagining how disastrous a land rush would be, the residents of Stateless must have thought it through themselves, in a thousand times more detail.

I spread my arms to encompass the whole renegade island. “If you really think the biotech companies can get away with murder, tell me why they haven’t turned Stateless into a fireball?”

“Bombing El Nido made that solution unrepeatable. You need a government to do it for you – and no government, now, would risk the backlash.”

“Sabotaged it, then? If EnGeneUity can’t come up with something to dissolve their own creation back into the sea, then the Beach Boys were lying.”

“The Beach Boys?”

“‘Californian biotechnologists are the best in the world.’ Wasn’t that one of theirs?”

Kuwale said, “EnGeneUity are selling versions of Stateless all over the Pacific. Why would they sabotage their best demonstration model – their best advertisement, unauthorized or not? They might not have planned it this way, but the truth is, Stateless has cost them nothing – so long as no one else goes renegade.”

I wasn’t convinced, but the argument was going nowhere. “Do you want to show me your gallery of alleged corporate assassins? And then explain to me, very carefully, exactly what you plan to do if I tell you that I’ve sighted one of these people? Because if you think I’m entering into a conspiracy to murder – even in defense of the Keystone herself, even on Stateless—”

Kuwale cut me off. “There’s no question of violence. All we want to do is watch these people, gather the necessary intelligence, and tip off conference security as soon as we have something tangible.”

Vis notepad beeped. Ve halted, took it out of vis pocket and gazed at the screen for several seconds, then carefully paced a dozen meters south. I said, “Do you mind if I ask what you’re doing?”