All Tomorrow's Parties bt-3 Page 12

  'No, Rydell said, 'I haven't.

  'That's good, she said, turning down the propane ring. 'That's one thing I can't tolerate. Raised by 'em.

  'Well, Rydell said, 'do I need a reservation to stay here or not? He was looking around the kitchen, wondering where 'here' might be; it was about seven feet on a side, and the doorway he stood in was the only apparent entrance. The wallpaper, which had buckled slightly from cooking steam, made the space look like an amateur stage set or something they'd build for children in a makeshift day care.

  'No, she said, 'you don't. You've got a handbill.

  'You have space?

  'Of course. She took the pot off the cooker, placed it on a round metal tray on the small, white-painted table, and covered it with a clean-looking dish towel. 'Go back out the way you came. Go on. I'll follow you.

  He did as she said and waited in the open door for her to catch up with him. He saw that the Ghetto Chef line had gotten longer, if anything.

  'No, she said, behind him, 'up here. He turned and saw her hauling on a length of orange nylon rope, which brought down a counter-weighted aluminum ladder. 'Go on up, she said. 'I'll send your bags.

  Rydell put down his duffel and the GlobEx box and stepped up onto the ladder.

  'Go on, she said.

  Rydell climbed the ladder to discover an incredibly tiny space he was clearly expected to sleep in. His first thought was that someone had decided to build one of those Japanese coffin hotels out of offcuts from all the cheapest stuff at a discount building supply. The walls were some kind of light-colored wood-look sheathing that imitated bad imitations of some other product that had probably imitated some now-forgotten original. The tiny square of floor nearest him, the only part that wasn't taken up by wall-to-wall bed, was carpeted with some kind of ultra-low-pale utility stuff in a weird pale green with orange highlights. There was daylight coming in from the far end, by what he supposed was the head of the bed, but he'd have had to kneel down to make out how that was possible.

  'Do you want to take it? the woman called up.

  'Sure do, Rydell said.

  'Then pull up your bags.

  He looked over and saw her loading his duffel and the GlobEx box into rusty wire hamper she'd hung on the ladder.

  'Breakfast at nine, sharp, she said, without looking up, and then she was gone.

  Rydell hauled the ladder, with his luggage, up on its orange rope. When he got his stuff out, the ladder stayed up, held by its hidden counterwright.

  He got down on his hands and knees and crawled into his bedroom, over the foam slab made up with one of those micro-furry foam-core blankets, to where some sort of multi-paned, semi-hemispherical plastic kibble, probably part of an airplane, had been epoxied into the outer wall, It was thick with salt, outside, looked like; a crust of dried spray. It let light in, but just a featureless gray brightness. It looked as though you slept with your head right up in there. Okay by him. It smelled funny but not bad. He should've asked her what she charged, but he could do that later.

  He sat down on the foot of the bed and took off his shoes. There were holes in the toes of both his black socks. Have to buy more.

  He pulled the glasses out of his jacket, put them on, and speeddialed Laney. He listened to a phone ringing somewhere in Tokyo and imagined the room it was ringing in, some expensive hotel, or maybe it was ringing on a desk the size of Tong's, but real. Laney answered, nine rings in.

  'Bad Sector, Laney said.

  'What?

  'The cable. They have it.

  'What cable?

  'The one you need for the projector.

  Rydell was looking at the GlobEx box. 'What projector?

  'The one you picked up from GlobEx today.

  'Wait a minute, Rydell said, 'how do you know about that?

  There was a pause. 'It's what I do, Rydell.

  'Listen, Rydell said, 'there was trouble, a fight. Not me, another guy, but I was there, involved. They'll check the GlobEx security recordings and they'll know I signed for you, and they'll have footage of me.

  'They don't, Laney said.

  'Of course they do, protested Rydell, 'I was there.

  'No, Laney said, 'they've got footage of me.

  'What are you talking about, Laney?

  'The infinite plasticity of the digital.

  'But I signed for it. My name, not yours.

  'On a screen, right?

  'Oh. Rydell thought about it. 'Who can get into GlobEx and alter that stuff?

  'Not me, said Laney. 'But I can see it's been altered.

  'So who did it?

  'That's academic at this point.

  'What's that mean? Rydell asked.

  'It means don't ask. Where are you?

  'In a bed-and-breakfast on the bridge. Your cough sounds better.

  'This blue stuff, Laney said. Rydell had no idea what he meant. 'Where's the projector?

  'Like a thermos? Right here.

  'Don't take it with you. Find a shop there called Bad Sector and tell them you need the cable.

  'What kind of cable?

  'They'll be expecting you, Laney said and hung up.

  Rydell sat there on the end of the bed, with the sunglasses on, thoroughly pissed off at Laney. Felt like bagging the whole deal. Get a job back at that parking garage. Sit around and watch nature in downtown Detroit.

  Then his work ethic caught up with him. He took off the glasses, put them in his jacket, and started putting his shoes back on.

  28. FOLSOM STREET

  FOOT of Folsom in the rain, all these soot-streaked RVs, spavined campers, gut-sprung vehicles of any description, provided that description included old; things that ran, if they ran at all, on gasoline.

  'Look at that, Tessa said, as she edged the van past an old Hummer, ex-military, every square inch covered with epoxied micro-junk, a million tiny fragments of the manufactured world glittering in Tessa's headlights and the rain.

  'Think there's a spot there, Chevette said, peering through the bad wiper wash. Tessa's van had Malibu-style wiper blades; old and hadn't been wet for quite a while. They'd had to creep this last block along the Embarcadero, when the rain had really started.

  It was drumming steadily on the van's flat steel roof now, but Chevette's sense of San Francisco weather told her it wouldn't last all that long.

  The black kid with the dreads had earned his fifty. They'd found him crouching there like a gargoyle on the curb, his face somehow already as old as it would ever need to be, smoking Russian cigarettes from a red-and-white pack he kept tucked into the rolled-up sleeve of an old army shirt, three sizes too big. The van still had its wheels on and the tires were intact.

  'What do you think he meant, Tessa said, maneuvering between a moss-stained school bus of truly ancient vintage and a delaminating catamaran up on a trailer whose tires had almost entirely rotted away, 'when he said somebody was looking for you?

  'I don't know, Chevette said. She'd asked him who, but he'd just shrugged and walked off. This after determinedly trying to hustle Tessa for God's Little Toy. 'Maybe if you'd given him the camera platform, he'd've told me.

  'No fear, Tessa said, killing the engine. 'That's half my share of the Malibu house.

  Chevette saw that there were lights on in the tiny cabin of the cat-boat, through little slit-like windows, and somebody moving in there. She started cranking down the window beside her, but it stuck after two turns, so she opened the door instead.

  'That's Buddy's space there, said a girl, straightening up from the catamaran's hatch, her voice raised above the rain, hoarse and a little frightened. She hunched there, under some old poncho or piece of tarp, and Chevette couldn't make out her face.

  'S'cuse us, Chevette said, 'but we need to stop for the night, or anyway till this rain lets up.

  'Buddy parks there.

  'Do you know when he'll be back?

  'Why?

  'We'll be out of here dawn tomorrow, Chevette said. 'We're just two women.
You okay with that?

  The girl raised the tarp a fraction, and Chevette caught a glimpse of her eyes. 'Just two of you?

  'Let us stay, Chevette said, 'then you won't have to worry who else might come along.

  'Well, the girl said. And was gone, ducking back down. Chevette heard the hatch dragged shut.

  'Bugger leaks, Tessa said, examining the roof of the van with a small black flashlight.

  'I don't think it'll keep up long, Chevette said.

  'But we can park here?

  'Unless Buddy comes back, Chevette said.

  Tessa turned the light back into the rear of the van. Where rain was already pooling.

  'I'll get the foam and the bags up here, Chevette said. 'Keep 'em dry till later, anyway.

  She climbed back between the seats.

  29. VICIOUS CYCLE

  RYDELL found a map of the bridge in his sunglasses, a shopping and restaurant guide for tourists. It was in Portuguese, but you could toggle to an English version.

  It took him a while; a wrong move on the rocker-pad and he'd wind up back in those Metro Rio maps, but finally he'd managed to pull it up. Not a GPS map, just drawings of both levels, set side by side, and he had no way of knowing how up-to-date it was.

  His bed-and-breakfast wasn't on it, but Ghetto Chef Beef Bowl was (three and a half stars) and Bad Sector was too.

  The lozenge that popped up when he clicked on Bad Sector described it as a source for 'retro hard and soft, with an idiosyncratic twentieth-century bent. He wasn't sure about that last part, but he could at least see where the place was: lower level, not far from that bar he'd gone in with Creedmore and the guitar player.

  There was a cabinet to put stuff in, behind the triple-faux paneling, so he did: his duffel and the GlobEx box with the thermos thing. He put the switchblade, after some thought, under the foam slab. He considered tossing it into the bay, but he wasn't sure exactly where you could find a clear shot to do that out here. He didn't want to carry it, and anyway he could always toss it later.

  It was raining when he came out beside Ghetto Chef Beef Bowl, and he'd seen it rain on the bridge before, when he'd first been here. What happened was that rain fell on the weird jumble of shanty boxes people had built up there and shortly came sluicing down through all of that in big random gouts, like someone was emptying bathtubs. There was no real drainage here, things having been built in the most random way possible, so that the upper level, while sheltered, was no way dry.

  This seemed to have thinned the line for the Ghetto Chef, so that he briefly considered eating, but then he thought of how Laney had him on retainer and wanted him to get right over to this Bad Sector and get that cable. So instead he headed down to the lower level.

  The rain had concentrated the action down here, because it was relatively dry. It felt like easing your way through a very long, very homemade rush-hour subway car, except over half the other people were doing that too, in either direction, and the others were standing still, blocking the way and trying hard to sell you things. Rydell eased his wallet out of his right rear pocket and into his right front.

  Crowds made Rydell nervous. Well, not crowds so much as crowding. Too close, people up against you. (Someone brushed his back pocket, feeling for the wallet that wasn't there.) Someone shoving those long skinny Mexican fried-dough things at him, repeating a price in Spanish. He felt his shoulders start to bunch.

  The smell down here was starting to get to him: sweat and perfume, wet clothing, fried food. He wished he was back in Ghetto Chef Beef Bowl, finding out what those three and a half stars were for.

  He couldn't take much more of this, he decided, and looked over the heads of the crowd for another stairway to the upper level. He'd rather get soaked.

  But suddenly it opened out into a wider section, the crowd eddying away to either side, where there were food stalls, cafés, and stores, and there was Bad Sector, right there, done up in what looked to him like old-fashioned aluminum furnace paint.

  He tried to shrug the crowd-induced knots out of his shoulders. He was sweating; his heart was pounding. He made himself take a few deep breaths to calm down. Whatever it was he was supposed to be doing here, for Laney, he wanted to do it right. Get all jangled, this way, you never knew what could happen. Calm down. Nobody was losing it here.

  He lost it almost immediately.

  There was a very large Chinese kid behind the counter, shaved almost bald, with one of those little lip beards that always got on Rydell's nerves. Very large kid, with that weirdly smooth-looking mass that indicated a lot of muscle supporting the weight. Hawaiian shirt with big mauvy-pink orchids on it. Antique gold-framed Ray-Ban aviators and a shit-eating grin. Really it was that grin that did it.

  'I need a cable, Rydell said, and his voice sounded breathless, and somehow it was not liking to hear himself sound that way that took him the rest of the way over.

  'I know what you need, the kid said, making sure Rydell heard the boredom in his voice.

  'Then you know what kind of cable I need, right? Rydell was closer to the counter now. Ragged old posters tacked up behind it, for things with names like Heavy Gear II and T'ai Fu.

  'You need two. The grin was gone now, kid trying his best to look hard. 'One's power: jack to any DC source or wall juice with the inbuilt transformer. Think you can manage that?

  'Maybe, Rydell said, getting right up against the front of the counter and bracing his feet, 'but tell me about this other one. Like it cables what to what exactly?

  'I'm not paid to tell you that, am I?

  There was a skinny black tool lying on the counter. Some kind of specialist driver. 'No, Rydell said, picking up the driver and examining its tip, 'but you're going to. He grabbed the kid's left ear with his other hand, pinched off an inch of the driver's shaft between thumb and forefinger, and inserted that into the kid's right nostril. It was easy hanging on to the ear, because the kid had some kind of fat plastic spike through it.

  'Uh, the kid said.

  'You got a sinus problem?

  'No.

  'You could have. He let go of the ear. The kid stood very still. 'You aren't going to move, are you?

  'No.

  Rydell removed the Ray-Bans, tossing them over his right shoulder. 'I'm getting sick of people grinning at me because they know shit I don't. Understand?

  'Okay.

  ''Okay' what?

  'Just… okay?

  'Okay is: where are the cables?

  'Under the counter.

  'Okay is: where did they come from?

  'Power's standard but lab grade: transformer, current-scrubber. The other, I can't tell you-

  Rydell moved the tool a fraction of an inch, and the kid's eyes widened. 'Not okay, Rydell said.

  'I don't know. I know we had to have it assembled to spec, in Fresno. I just work here. Nobody tells me who pays for what. He took a deep, shuddering breath. 'If they did, somebody like you'd come in and make me tell, right?

  'Yeah, Rydell said, 'and that means people are liable to come in and torture your ass into telling them things you don't even know.

  'Look in my shirt pocket, the kid said carefully. 'There's an address. Get on there, talk to whoever, maybe they'll tell you.

  Rydell gently patted the front of the pocket, making sure there wouldn't be any used needles or other surprises. The massive pad of muscle behind the pocket gave him pause. He slid two fingers in and came up with a slip of cardboard torn from something larger. Rydell saw the address of a website. 'The cable people?

  'Don't know. But I don't know why else I'd be supposed to give it to you.

  'And that's all you know?

  'Yes.

  'Don't move, said Rydell. He removed the tool from the kid's nostril. 'Cables under the counter?

  'Yes.

  'I don't think I want you to reach under there.

  'Wait, said the kid, raising his hands. 'I gotta tell you: there's a 'bot under there. It's got your cables. It just wants to give '
em to you, but I didn't want you to get the wrong idea.

  'A 'bot?

  'It's okay!

  Rydell watched as a small, highly polished steel claw appeared, looking a lot like a pair of articulated sugar tongs his mother had owned. It grasped the edge of the counter. Then the thing chinned itself, one handed, and Rydell saw the head. It got a leg up and mounted the counter, pulling a couple of heat-sealed plastic envelopes behind it. Its head was disproportionately small, with a sort of wing-like projection or antenna sticking up on one side. It was in that traditional Japanese style, the one that looked as though a skinny little shiny robot was dressed in oversized white armor, its forearms and ankles wider than its upper arms and thighs. It carried the transparent envelopes, each one containing a carefully wound cable, across the counter, put them down, and backed up. Rydell picked them up, shoved them into the pocket of his khakis, and did a pretty good imitation of the robot, backing up.

  As the kid's Ray-Bans came into his peripheral vision, he saw that they hadn't broken,

  When he was in the doorway, he tossed the black driver to the kid, who missed catching it. It hit the Heavy Gear II poster and dropped out of sight behind the counter.

  * * *

  RYDELL found a Laundromat-café combination, called Vicious Cycle, that had one hotdesk at the back, behind a black plastic curtain. The curtain suggested to him that people used this to access porn sites, but why you'd want to do that in a Laundromat was beyond him.

  He was glad of the curtain anyway, because he hated the idea of people watching him talk to people who weren't there, so he generally avoided accessing websites in public places. He didn't know why using the phone, audio, wasn't embarrassing that way. It just wasn't. When you were using the phone you didn't actually look like you were talking to people who weren't there, even though you were. You were talking to the phone. Although, now that he thought about it, using the phone in the earpiece of the Brazilian glasses would look that way too.

  So he pulled the curtain shut and stood there in the background rumble of the dryers, a sound he'd always found sort of comforting. The glasses were already cabled to the hotdesk. He put them on and worked the rocker-pad, inputting the address.