All Tomorrow's Parties bt-3 Page 15

  'Rydell?

  'Yeah?

  'Durius, man. How are you?

  'Fine, Rydell said. The glasses were acting up; weirdly elongated segments of Rio street maps were scrolling down his field of vision.

  'How are you? He heard the whine of a drill or power driver, somewhere in LA. 'You at the Dragon?

  Durius said, 'we got major construction under way here.

  'What for?

  'Don't know, Durius said. 'They're putting in a new node, back by the ATM. Where they had the baby food and child care products before, you know? Park won't say what it is; don't think he knows. All the branches gettin' 'em, whatever they are. How's your ride up? How's that Creedmore?

  'I think he's an alcoholic, Durius.

  'No shit, Durius said. 'How's the new job?

  'Well, Rydell said, 'I don't think I've figured out much about it yet, but it's getting interesting.

  'That's good, Durius said. 'Well, just wanted to see how you're doing. Praisegod, she says hi. Wants to know if you like the glasses.

  The Rio street maps shuddered, contracted, stretched again. 'Tell her they're great, Rydell said. 'Tell her thanks.

  'Will do, said Durius. 'You take care.

  'You too, Rydell said, the maps vanishing as Durius hung up. Rydell removed the glasses and put them away.

  Beef bowl. Maybe he could grab some Ghetto Chef Beef Bowl on the way back.

  Then he thought about Klaus and the Rooster and decided bed better check on the thermos first.

  34. MARKET DISCONTINUITIES

  'WHAT'S this look like to you, Martial? Fontaine asked his lawyer, Martial Matitse, of Matitse Rapelego Njembo, whose premises consisted of three notebooks and an antique Chinese bicycle.

  Martial made tooth-sucking noises on the other end of the line, and Fontaine knew he was looking at the lists the boy had pulled up. 'They seem to be lists of the contents of safety deposit boxes, as required under state law in various jurisdictions. Antiterrorist legislation. Keeps people from stashing drug precursors, nuclear warheads, like that. Plus it was supposed to help prevent money laundering, but that was when money could still be big stacks of green paper. But if I were you, Fontaine, I would be asking my lawyer a different question. To wit: am I not breaking the law by being in possession of these documents?

  'Am I? Fontaine asked.

  Martial maintained telephone silence for a few seconds. 'Yes, he said, 'you are. But it depends on how you got them. And I have just determined that the actual owners of the listed properties, in every case, are dead.

  'Dead?

  'Entirely. These are probate documents. Still protected by law, but I would say that some items on these lists are property to be auctioned off as the various estates are executed.

  Fontaine looked over his shoulder and saw the boy, still seated on the floor, down his third iced-guava smoothie.

  'How did you get these? Martial asked.

  'I'm not sure, Fontaine said.

  'You aren't supposed to be able to decrypt files like this, Martial said. 'Not unless you're the fed. If someone else does the decryption, it's merely a privacy issue insofar as you're concerned. But if you're doing this yourself, or are knowingly party to it, you are in possession of or are party to possession of proscribed technology which can earn you a stay in one of those extremely efficient prisons the private sector has done such a fine job of building and maintaining.

  'I'm not, said Fontaine.

  'Be that as it may, said Martial, 'if you were, you might be able, through judicious application, and with all due secrecy, to use said technology to reveal certain lucrative market discontinuities. Follow me, Fontaine?

  'No, said Fontaine.

  'Put it this way: if you have a way of getting hold of documents nobody else can, you might want to talk about it with someone who'd have an idea of exactly which documents might be most lucratively obtained.

  'Hey, Martial, I'm not into-

  'Fontaine, please. Anyone who sells secondhand cutlery and old rat-sucked toys, I understand it's an avocation. A calling. You are not in it for the money, I know. However, if you have a back channel into something else, I advise you to consult with your lawyer, me, at your very earliest. Hear me?

  'Martial, I don't-

  'Clarisse has been making inquiries of another partner in our firm, Fontaine. I tell you that in confidence.

  Fontaine was not happy to hear it.

  'She is talking divorce, my friend,

  'Gotta go, Martial. Customers.

  Fontaine hung up. Martial's news about Clarisse was not all that new to Fontaine, but he had been so far successful in avoiding thinking about it.

  He became aware of a soft, steady clicking and turned to see that the boy had put the eyephones back on.

  35. ON AUTOMATIC

  CHEVETTE hadn't closed her eyes when she'd pulled Creedmore down and kissed him, but with her arms locked around his neck, to hold him there and hide her from Carson, she couldn't see past the sleeve of Skinner's jacket. What she could see, past an out-of-focus view of Creedmore's cheekbone and left ear, was an adrenaline-sharp shot of Carson's progress through the crowd. This was sufficiently arresting that she had managed to ignore Creedmore's response, which had his tongue trying apparently to subdue hers with a so-far unsuccessful combination of speed and leverage, and his hands, up under Skinner's jacket, hunting frantically for nipple.

  The crystal-clear shot of Carson was eclipsed by a close-up of Tessa, eyes wide with amazement and about to burst out laughing, just as Creedmore found one of the nipples he was after, and Chevette, in pure reflex, let go of his neck with her left arm and punched him, as hard and as discreetly as possible, in the ribs, going in with all the knuckle she could leverage.

  Creedmore's eyes flew open, blue and bloodshot, and Chevette let go of him, ducked off her chair, and rolled under the table, all on automatic now. She thought she heard Creedmore's head hit the table as he tried to follow her, but now that he didn't have his mouth actually on hers, she was aware of the taste of it, and something naggingly familiar there, but that was just something her mind was doing while her body took her out of there the quickest way it saw. Which was a scramble on hands and knees, still under the table; out on the floor, still crouching but getting up speed; sprinting, still bent low, arms up to block anyone who might try to stop her; out through the door.

  Where instinct, something, some recollection, took her right, toward Oakland.

  And she didn't slow down until she felt it was safe to, but by then she'd realized what the taste in Creedmore's mouth was: dancer, and she wondered how much of that she'd taken on. Not much, probably but she could feel it in the pounding of her heart, see it in a faint aura around every source of light now, and know it in the fact that none of what had just happened actually bothered her, very much.

  Trouble could look abstract, on dancer.

  Carson, she thought, was trouble, and seeing the look on his face then, a look she'd suspected, she now thought, but had never quite managed to catch there, had made her scared of him. She'd been scared of him since the time he'd hit her, but she hadn't understood it in quite the same way. He hadn't really hurt her much, not physically, when he'd hit her. She was coming from a place where she'd seen people maimed, hurt really bad, and this cute media boy, who didn't even know how to punch, how dangerous was that?

  But now she saw, the residual drug in Creedmore's saliva having its effect, that what she'd been afraid of wasn't that he'd hit her that time, or the possibility he'd do it again, but some instinctive, underlying recognition that there was something wrong, something way worse. That he was bad news and covered it up. Always, more carefully even than he chose his clothes.

  And Tessa, when Chevette had had the conversation with her that had resulted in her moving to Malibu, had said that she envied men the inability to get it up, when there was something wrong. Even if they don't consciously know, Tessa said, it won't happen. But we don't have that, so something ca
n be just as wrong as can be, and we still stay. But you can't stay if he's hit you, because he'll do it again.

  Walking on, toward Treasure now, the bridge gone spectral, monochrome, and maybe that was the dancer too, she didn't know.

  'Out of control, she said. That was how she felt her life was now. She was just reacting to things. She stopped. Maybe she was just reacting to Carson.

  'Hey. Chevette.

  Turning to see a face she knew, though she couldn't put a name to it. Ragged pale hair above a thin hard face, bad scar snaking his left cheek. A sometime messenger from her Allied days, not part of her crew but a face from parties. 'Heron, the name came to her.

  'I thought you were gone, Heron said, displaying broken teeth.

  Maybe something broken in his head too, it struck her. Or maybe just some substance, tonight.

  'I was, Chevette said.

  'Where?

  'SoCal.

  'You ride down there? Messenger?

  'No, she said.

  'I can't ride now, Heron said and swung his left leg, rigid, forward, catching his weight on it, something wrong there with his knee. Tangled with a cage. A car, and she thought how long it had been since she'd heard that.

  'You get insurance?

  'Shit no, cage from Dog City. The Department of Justice. 'I got lawyers on it, but … Crooked shrug. 'One of my lawyers, Njembo, you know those three guys? Refugees from the African Union, right? Njembo, he knows that Fontaine. You know Fontaine, right?

  'Yeah, Chevette said, glancing back over her shoulder. 'He still out by Oakland, wives and kids?

  'No, Heron said, 'no, he's got a shop, just up there. He pointed. 'Sleeps there. Sells stuff to tourists. Njembo says his wives are after his ass. He squinted at her, the scar on his cheek catching the light. 'You look good. Hair's different.

  Something in that flash of scar catching in the edge of Creedmore's spit-high; she shivered, the dancer dealing her cards of Carson walking this way, that same expression on his face, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.

  'Good to see you, Heron.

  'Yeah, he said, something sullen and untrusting, maybe longing, evident there, and again the crooked shrug, maybe just to shake some pain from his shoulders. He looked down and set off back the way she'd come, and she saw how twisted the accident had left him, hobbling, swinging his stiff leg as he went.

  She zipped up Skinner's jacket and went looking for Fontaine's shop, wondering if she'd know it if she found it.

  36. FAMOUS ASPECT

  RYDELL bought a white foam take-out beef bowl from Ghetto Chef, then had to figure out how to get up the ladder one-handed, without spilling it.

  Climbing a ladder with something hot in one hand was one of those things that you never ordinarily thought about, but that turned out to be difficult. You can't safely tuck a hot beef bowl under your arm, and when you climb with only one hand, you've got to move that hand fast, keep catching those rungs.

  But he got up there, didn't spill any, and then he put it down while he unlocked the two-by-four and chicken-wire security grid. This had a chrome-plated Nepalese padlock on either side, and he'd found the keys, earlier, hanging on a nail. It was one of those deeply pointless arrangements, in terms of security, because anyone who wanted in could boltcut the padlocks, pry their hasps out of the wood, or just yank the chicken wire until the staples pulled out. On the other hand, if you went out, left it unlocked, and somebody took your stuff with no effort at all, he guessed you'd feel even stupider.

  When he got it open, he settled down on the foot of the bed with his beef bowl and the plastic spoon they'd given him. He was just inhaling the steam when it came to him he should check on the thermos-thing. The projector, Laney had called it. He sighed, put his beef bowl down, and got up (well, he had to crouch).

  The GlobEx box was in the cabinet there, beside his bag, and the spun-metal cylinder was in the GlobEx box.

  He sat back down, with the GlobEx box next to him on the bed, and got to work on his beef bowl, which was worth waiting for. It was strange how this kind of shaved, basically overcooked mystery meat, which he guessed really was, probably, beef, could be tastier, under the right circumstances, than a really good steak. He ate the whole thing, every last grain of rice and drop of broth and figured the tourist-trap map had put their three stars and a half in the right place.

  Then he opened the GlobEx box and got the thermos-thing out. He looked at the FAMOUS ASPECT sticker again, and it didn't tell him any more than it had before. He stood the thing up on its base, on the green-and-orange carpet, and crawled back up the bed to get the switchblade. He used that to slice open the plastic envelopes containing the two cables and sat there looking at them.

  The one that was standard power just looked like what you used to run a notebook off the wall, he thought, although the end that went into the thermos looked a little more complicated than usual. The other one though, the jacks on either end looked serious. He found the socket that one end of this obviously went into, but what was the other end supposed to fit? If the sumo kid was telling the truth, this was a custom cable, required to jack this thing into something that it might not usually be required to jack to. This one was optical, it looked like.

  The power cable, that was easy. What took a while was finding a socket up here, but it turned out there was one (well, actually the end of an industrial-grade yellow extension cord) in the storage cabinet.

  No control on the thing, that he could see, no switches. He plugged the power cable into the wall socket, then sat on the bed, the other end in his hand, looking at the silvery cylinder.

  'Hell, he said and plugged the cable into the cylinder. Just as he did, he had the clearest possible vision of the thing being, absolutely and no doubt, brimful of plastic explosive and a detonator, just waiting for this juice. But, no, if it had been, he'd be dead. He wasn't. But the cylinder wasn't doing anything either. He thought he could hear a faint hum from it, and that was it. 'I don't get it, Rydell said.

  Something flickered. Neon butterfly. Torn wings.

  And then this girl was there, kneeling, right up close, and he felt his heart roll over, catch itself.

  The bow of her not being there, then being there. Something hurt in his chest, until he reminded himself to breathe.

  If Rydell had had to describe her, he would've said beautiful, and been utterly frustrated in the attempt to convey how. He thought she had to be one of Durius' examples of hybrid vigor, but saying which races had been mixed was beyond him.

  'Where are we? she asked.

  He blinked, uncertain as to whether she saw and addressed him, or someone else, in some other reality. 'Bed-and-breakfast, he said, by way of experiment. 'San Francisco-Oakland Bay.

  'You are Laney's friend?

  'I-Well. Yeah.

  She was looking around now, with evident interest, and Rydell felt the hairs stand up along his arms, seeing that she wore an outfit that exactly mirrored his own, though everything she wore fit her perfectly, and of course looked very different on her. Loose khakis, blue workshirt, black nylon jacket with a Velcro rectangle over the heart, where you stuck the logo of your company. Right down to black socks (with holes? he wondered) and miniature versions of the black Work-'N'-Walks he'd bought for Lucky Dragon. But the hair on his arms was up because he knew, he had seen, he had, that in the first instant of her being there, she'd crouched before him naked.

  'I am Rei Toei, she said. Her hair was coarse and glossy and roughly but perfectly cut, her mouth wide and generous and not quite smiling, and Rydell put out his hand and watched it pass right through her shoulder, through the pattern of coherent light he knew she must be. 'This is a hologram, she said, 'but I am real.

  'Where are you? Rydell asked, withdrawing his hand. 'I'm here, she said.

  'But where are you really?

  'Here. This is not a broadcast hologram. It is generated by the Famous Aspect unit. I am here, with you. Your room is very small. Are you poor? She c
rawled past Rydell (he supposed she could've crawled through him, if he hadn't moved aside) to the head of his bed, examining the salt-caked hemisphere of plastic. Rydell could see now that she literally was a source of illumination, though somehow it reminded him of moonlight.

  'It's a rented room, Rydell said. 'And I'm not rich.

  She looked back at this. 'I meant no offense.

  'That's okay, Rydell said, looking from her to the projector and back. 'I mean, a lot of people, they'd think I'm poor.

  'But more would think you rich.

  'I don't know about that-

  'I do, she said. 'There are, literally, more humans alive at this moment who have measurably less than you do. You have this sleeping place, you have clothing, I see you have eaten. What is your name?

  'Berry Rydell, he said, feeling a strange shyness. But he thought he at least knew who she was, or was supposed to be. 'Look, I recognize you. You're that Japanese singer, the one who isn't… I mean, the one who…

  '… doesn't exist?

  'I didn't say that. I mean, weren't you supposed to be married to that Irish guy, Chinese, whatever? In that band?

  'Yes. She'd stretched out on the bed, on her stomach, hands propping her chin a few inches from the occluded plastic bubble. (Rydell had a flash of that seen from the water below, like the glaucous eye of some behemoth.) 'But we did not marry, Berry Rydell.

  'How do you know Laney? he asked her, hoping to bring it around to some footing that he could stand on as well, whatever that might be.

  'Laney and I are friends, Berry Rydell. Do you know where he is?

  'Not exactly, Rydell said, which was true.

  She rolled over, gorgeous and quite literally glowing, in her incongruous mirroring of what he wore, which looked, on her, like the first and purest expression of some irresistible new fashion, and fixed him with a sorrowful stare. He would, in that moment, have happily and willingly locked eyes with her for however long she wanted and have sat there, effectively, forever. 'Laney and I have been separated. I do not understand why, but I must trust that it is for our mutual and eventual good. Who gave you the projector, Berry Rydell?