The tram slid on, displaced dust hissing softly. Munroe had a point: nationalists – political and cultural – who claimed to be the voice of their nation could disenfranchise those they “represented” just as effectively as sexists who claimed to be the voice of their sex. A handful of people pretending to speak for forty million – or five billion – would always wield disproportionate power, merely by virtue of making the claim.

So what was the solution? Move to Stateless? Become asex? Or just stick your head in a Balkanized corner of the net, and try to believe that none of it mattered?

Munroe said, “I would have thought that the flight from Sydney was enough to make anyone want to leave for good. Physical proof of the absurdity of nations.”

I laughed dryly. “Almost. Being petty and vindictive with the East Timorese is understandable; imagine dirtying the bayonets of our business partners for all those years, and then having the temerity to turn around and take us to court. What the problem is with Stateless, though, I have no idea. None of the EnGeneUity patents were Australian-owned, were they?”

“No.”

“So what’s the big deal? Even Washington doesn’t go out of its way to punish Stateless quite so … comprehensively.”

Munroe said, “I do have one theory.”

“Yeah?”

“Think about it. What’s the biggest lie the political and cultural ruling class tells itself? Where’s the greatest disparity between image and truth? What are the attributes which any self-respecting Professional Australian boasts about the most – and possesses the least?”

“If this is a cheap Freudian joke, I’m going to be very disappointed.”

“Suspicion of authority. Independence of spirit. Nonconformity. So what could they possibly find more threatening than an island full of anarchists?”

Chapter 13

We walked north from the terminus, across a plane of marbled gray-green – in places still imprinted with faint hints of stubby branched tubing: coral from the shores of a decade ago, incompletely digested. Knowing the time scale made the sight curiously shocking; it was a bit like stumbling across fossils of distinctive forties artifacts – clunky old-model notepads, quaint shoes which had been alpha fashion in living memory – converted into nothing but mineralized outlines. I thought I could feel the rock yielding beneath my feet more than the dense, cured paving of the city – but we left no visible imprints behind us. I paused and crouched to touch the ground, wondering if it would be palpably moist; it wasn’t – but there was probably a plasticized skin beneath the surface to limit evaporation.