All Tomorrow's Parties bt-3 Page 26

  He saw the expression on her face in the glow from the flashlight. 'It's really not here anymore, she said, as if she didn't quite believe herself. 'I guess I thought it would still be here.

  'Nobody lives here now' Rydell said, not sure why he had.

  'Roof hatch is open too, Chevette said, shining the light up.

  Rydell went to the old ladder bolted to the wall and started up, feeling damp splintery wood against his palms. He was starting to get the idea this might have been a very bad idea, climbing up here, because if the whole bridge were going to burn, they probably weren't going to make it. He knew the smoke was as dangerous as the fire, and he wasn't sure she understood that.

  And the second thing he wasn't prepared for, as he stuck his head up through the hatch, was the barrel of a gun thrust into his ear.

  His buddy with the scarf.

  64. TAG

  AND as Harwood recedes, and the rest of it as well, amid this spreading cold, and Laney feels, as at a very great distance, his legs spasming within their tangle of sleeping-bags and candy wrappers, Rei Toei is there, and passes him this sigil, clockface, round seal, the twelve hours of day, twelve of night, black lacquer and golden numerals, and he places it on the space that Harwood occupied.

  And sees it drawn in, drawn infinitely away, into that place where Harwood is going; drawn by the mechanism of inversion itself, and then it is gone.

  And Laney is going too, though not with Harwood.

  'Gotcha, Laney says, to the dark in his fetid box, down amid the subsonic sighing of commuter trains and the constant clatter of passing feet.

  And finds himself in Florida sunlight, upon the broad concrete steps leading up to the bland entrance to a federal orphanage.

  A girl named Jennifer is there, his age exactly, in a blue denim skirt and a white T-shirt, her black bangs straight and glossy, and she is walking, heel to toe, heel to toe, arms outstretched for balance, as if along a tightrope, down the very edge of the topmost step.

  Balancing so seriously.

  As if, were she to fall, she might fall forever.

  And Laney smiles, to see her, remembering the orphanage's smells: jelly sandwiches, disinfectant, modeling clay, clean sheets…

  And the cold is everywhere, now, somewhere, but he is home at last.

  65. OPEN AIR

  FONTAINE, wielding the ax now, reflects that he has lived quite a long time and yet this experience is new: to lift the heavy head above his own and bring it down against the shop's rear wall, the plywood booming. He's a little surprised at how it simply bounces off, but with his next swing he's reversed the head, so that the sharp, four-inch spike, rather than the blade, contacts the wall, and this digs most satisfyingly in, and on a third blow penetrates, and he redoubles his efforts.

  'Need us some air, he says, as much to himself as to the two seated on his bunk, the gray-haired man and the boy with his head down, lost in the helmet again. To look at these two, you'd think there was no problem, that the bridge wasn't burning.

  Where'd that hologram girl go?

  Still, this chopping is getting somewhere, though his arms are already aching. Hole there the size of a saucer, and getting bigger.

  No idea what he'll do when he's got it big enough, but he likes to keep busy.

  And this is the way it always is, for Fontaine, when he knows that things are bad, very bad indeed, and very likely over. He likes to keep busy.

  66. BULKLIFT

  CHEVETTE climbs through the hatch in the roof of Skinner's room to find Rydell kneeling there in his Lucky Dragon security bib, but the critical factor here is the man from the bar, the one who shot Carson, who's got a gun pressed into Rydell's ear and is watching her, and smiling.

  He's not much older than she is, she thinks, with his black buzz cut and his black leather coat, his scarf wrapped just so, casual but you know he takes time with it, and she wonders how it is people get this way, that they'll stick a gun in someone's ear and you know they'll use it. And why does it seem that Rydell finds people like that, or do they find him?

  And behind him she can see a plume of water arcing higher than the bridge, and knows that that must be from a fireboat, because she's seen one used when a pier on the Embarcadero burned.

  God, it's strange up here, now, with the night sky all smoke, the flames, lights of the city swimming and dimmed as the smoke rolls. Little glowing red worms are falling, winking out, all around her, and the smell of burning. She knows she doesn't want Rydell hurt but she isn't afraid. She just isn't now, she doesn't know why.

  Something on the roof beside her and she sees that it's a glider up on its own little frame, staked to the asphalt-coated wooden roof with bright sharp spikes.

  And other things piled beside it: black nylon bags, what she takes to be bedding. Like someone's ready to camp here, if they need to, and she understands the buzz-cut boy wanted to be covered, if he had to stay, to hide. And it comes to her that probably he's responsible for the burning of the bridge, and how many dead already, and he's just smiling there, like he's glad to see her, his gun in Rydell's ear.

  Rydell looks sad. So sad now.

  'You killed Carson, she heard herself say.

  'Who?

  'Carson. In the bar.

  'He was doing a pretty good job putting your lights out.

  'He was an asshole, she said, 'but you didn't have to kill him.

  'Fortunately, he said, 'it isn't about who's an asshole. If it were, our work would never be done.

  'Can you fly this? Pointing at the glider.

  'Absolutely. I'm going to take this gun out of your ear now, he said to Rydell. He did. She saw Rydell's eyes move; he was looking at her. The boy with the buzz cut hit him in the head with the gun. Rydell toppled over. Lay there like a big broken doll. One of the glowing red worms fell on his stupid pink bib, burned a black mark. 'I'm going to leave you here, he said. He pointed the gun at one of Rydell's legs. 'Kneecap, he said.

  'Don't, she said.

  He smiled. 'Lay down over there. By the edge. On your stomach. The gun never moved.

  She did as she was told.

  'Put your hands behind your head.

  She did.

  'Stay that way.

  She could watch him out of the corner of her eye, moving toward the glider. The black fabric of its simple triangular wing was catching a breeze now, thrumming with it.

  She saw him duck under the kite-like wing and come up within the carbon-fiber framework extending beneath it. There was a control-bar there; she'd seen people fly these on Real One.

  He still had the gun in his hand but it wasn't pointed at Rydell.

  She could smell the asphalt caked on the roof. She remembered spreading it with Skinner on a hot windless day, how they heated the hard bucket of tar with a propane-ring.

  The world Skinner had helped build was burning now, and she and Rydell might burn now with it, but the boy with the buzz cut was ready to fly.

  'Can you make it to the Embarcadero with that?

  'Easily, he said. She saw him shove the gun into the pocket of his black coat and grip the bar with both hands, lifting the glider. The breeze caught at it. He walked into the wind, reminding her somehow of a crow walking, one of those big ravens she'd grown up seeing, in Oregon. He was within a few feet of the edge now, the side of Skinner's room that faced China Creek. 'You and your friend here caused me a great deal of trouble, he said, 'but you're either going to burn to death or asphyxiate now, so I suppose we're even. He looked out, stepped forward.

  And Chevette, without having made any conscious decision at all, found herself on her feet, moving, drawing the knife Skinner had left for her. And ripping it down, as he stepped from the edge, through the black fabric, a three-foot slash, from near the center and straight out through the trailing edge.

  He never made a sound, then, as he went fluttering down, faster, spinning like a leaf, until he struck something and was gone.

  She realized that she was standing
at the very edge, her toes out over empty air, and she took a step back. She looked at the knife in her hand, at the pattern locked there by the beaten links of motorcycle chain. Then she tossed it over, turned and went to kneel beside Rydell. His head was bleeding, from somewhere above the hairline. His eyes were open, but he seemed to be having trouble focusing.

  'Where is he? Rydell asked.

  'Don't move your head, she said. 'He's gone.

  The breeze shifted, bringing them smoke so thick the city vanished. They both started to cough.

  'What's that sound? Rydell managed, trying to crane his neck around.

  She thought it must be the sound of the fire, but it resolved into a steady drumming, and she looked out to see, just level with her, it seemed, the block-wide impossible brow of a greasy-gray bulklifter, OMAHA TRANSFER painted across it in letters thirty feet high. 'Jesus Christ, she said, as the thing was upon them, its smooth, impossibly vast girth so close she might touch it.

  And then it jettisoned its cargo, close to two million gallons of pure glacial water destined for the towns south of Los Angeles, and she could only cling to Rydell and keep her mouth shut against the weight and the surge of it, and then she was somewhere else, and drifting, and it seemed so long, so long since she'd slept.

  67. SILVER CASTLE

  IN the gray fields Silencio finds a silver castle, an empty place and somehow new. There are no people here, only empty hallways, and he wonders why someone would build such a thing.

  The system of the watches leads him deeper, deep within, each hallway like the last, and he is tired of this, but the Futurematic is there still, and he will find it.

  And when he does, at last, in a very small room at the root of the silver world, he discovers that he is not alone.

  There is a man, and the man looks at Silencio and does not believe Silencio is there, and the man's eyes fill with a fear that Silencio feels must mirror his own fear, and Silencio wishes to tell the man he has only come here to find the watch, because it is part of the system of hands and faces and applied numerals, and Silencio means no harm, but the man's eyes are like the eyes of those to whom Raton shows the knife, and someone coughs behind Silencio. And turning, Silencio sees a terrible man, whose head is a cloud of blood, and whose mouth is open in a red-toothed scream, and the mouth does not move when this man says, 'Hello, Harwood.

  But now somehow he is with the bright one again.

  She tells Silencio to remove the hat, and he does, inside it the pictures of the castle, fading, and the room is filled with smoke, and out through the broken door is more smoke, and the black man, the gray branches of his hair hanging limp now, has cut a hole in the wall with his ax. Not a big hole but he puts his head and shoulders out through it now, and Silencio sees him jerk as if something strikes him. And he draws back inside, eyes wide, and wet, wet, running with water, and water is falling past the hole and the gray hair sticks in its tangles to the man's face, and now more water comes down, into the tunnel like a street, beyond the door, so much water.

  And the man in the long coat is standing there, hands in his pockets, and he watches the water come down, and Silencio sees the lines in this man's cheeks deepen. Then this man nods to Silencio, and to the black man, and goes out through the broken door.

  Silencio wonders if it is wet in the silver castle too.

  68. THE ABSOLUTE AT LARGE

  BOOMZILLA in the Lucky Dragon, back in there for what he knows is the first time they work this Lucky Dragon Nanofax, not a game but how you copy solid shit from one store to another. Not sure he gets that but there's free candy and big drinks for the kids, of which he is opting to be very definitely one, right now, but it's gone sideways with the bridge burning, and those motherfucker bulklifters come drop a fuckload of water on it, got about a hundred fire trucks and everything here, police, tactical squads, helicopters up in the air, so Lucky Dragon can't do the special thing for the first time they use the Lucky Dragon Nanofax, manager's going lateral, walks the aisle talking to himself. But the store's doing business big-time, home office won't let him close, and Boomzilla's started eating candy bars free because the securities are watching the smoke still rise off the wet black garbage, all that's left this end, so you can see the real bridge there, the old part, black too, hanging out in the air like something's bones.

  And finally the manager comes and reads from a notebook, ladies and gentlemen, this momentous occasion, jaw, and now they are placing the first object in the unit in our Singapore branch (Boomzilla sees on TV, out on the pylon, it's a gold statue of the Lucky Dragon himself, smiling) and it will now be reproduced, at a molecular level, in every branch of our chain throughout the world.

  Checker and two securities, they clap. Boomzilla sucks on the ice in the bottom of his big drink. Waits.

  Lucky Dragon Nanofax has a hatch on the front Boomzilla could fit through, he wanted to, and he wonders would that make more Boomzillas other places and could he trust those motherfuckers? If he could, he'd have a tight posse but he doesn't trust anybody, why should they?

  Light over the hatch turns green, and the hatch slides up and out crawls, unfolds sort of, this butt-naked girl, black hair, maybe Chinese, Japanese, something, she's long and thin, not much titties on her the way Boomzilla likes but she's smiling, and everybody, the manager, checker, securities, they jaw-hang, eyes popped: girl straightening up, still smiling, and walks fast to the front of the store, past the security counter, and Boomzilla sees her reach up and open the door, just right on out, and it'll take more than a naked Japanese girl get anybody's attention out there, in the middle of this disaster shit.

  But the crazy thing is, and he really doesn't get this, standing looking out through the doors at the video pylon, so that he has to go outside and fire up his last Russian Marlboro to think about it, after, is that when he sees her walk past the screens there, he sees her on every last screen, walking out of every Lucky Dragon in the world, wearing that same smile.

  Boomzilla still thinking about this when his Marlboro's done, but thinks it's time for a Lucky Dragon Muff-Lette microwave, he thinks of that as his businessman's breakfast, and he's got the money but when he gets back in they got no Muff-Lette, fucking firemen ate them all.

  'Fuck that, he tells them. 'Why don't you fax me one from fucking Paris?

  So security throws his ass out.

  69. EVERYTHING TAKES FOREVER

  RYDELL wakes to pain, in what has been the nearest approximation of heaven he's known, this miraculously dry, brand-new, extremely high-tech sleeping bag, curled beside Chevette, his ribs on fire, and lies there listening to the helicopters swarming like dragonflies, wondering if there's maybe something bad for you in the stuff that holds duct tape on.

  They'd found this bag, hermetically sealed in its stuff sack, in the wake of the flood, snagged on one of the spikes that held the scarf's hang-glider rack to the roof. And no more welcome find there ever was, to get out of wet clothes and into dry warmth, the bag's bottom water-and probably bullet-proof as well, a very expensive piece of ordnance. And lie there watching two more bulklifters come, huge, slow-moving cargo drones diverted from their courses, it will turn out, according to a plan arrived at several years before by a team of NoCal contingency planners, to dump still more water, extinguishing the fire at the Treasure end and damping down the central span as well. And each one, depleted and limp, starting to rise immediately, free of ballast, in a sort of awkward elephantine ballet.

  And held each other, up there, into the dawn, sea breeze carrying away the smell of burning.

  Now Rydell lies awake, looking at Chevette's bare shoulder, and thinking nothing much at all although breakfast does begin to come to mind after a while, though he can wait.

  'Chevette? Voice from some tinny little speaker. He looks up to see a silver Mylar balloon straining on a tether, camera eye peering at them.

  Chevette stirs. 'Tessa?

  'Are you okay?

  'Yeah, she says, voice sleepy.
'What about you?

  'It's a feature, the voice from the balloon says. 'Action. Big budget. I've got footage you won't believe.

  'What do you mean it's a feature?

  'I'm signed. They flew up this morning. What are you doing up there?

  'Trying to sleep, Chevette says and rolls over, pulling the bag over her head.

  Rydell lies watching the balloon bob on its tether, until finally he sees it withdrawn.

  He sits up and rubs his face. Rolls out of the bag, and stands, stiffly, a naked man with a big patch of silver duct tape across his ribs, wondering how many TV screens he's making, right now. He hobbles over to the hatch and climbs down into darkness, where he relieves himself against a wall.

  'Rydell?

  Rydell starts, getting his ankle wet.

  It's Creedmore, sitting on the floor, knees up, wet-look head between his hands. 'Rydell, Creedmore says, 'you got anything to drink?

  'What are you doing up here, Buell?

  'Got in that greenhouse thing down there. Thought there'd be water there. Then I figured my ass would boil like a fucking catfish, so I climbed up here. Sons of bitches.

  'Who?

  'I'm fucked, Creedmore says, ignoring the question. 'Randy's canceled my contract and the goddamn bridge has burned down. Some debut, huh? Jesus.

  'You could write a song about it, I guess.

  Creedmore looks up at him with utter despair. He swallows. When he speaks, there is no trace of accent: 'Are you really from Tennessee?

  'Sure, Rydell says.

  'I wish to fuck I was, Creedmore says, his voice small, but loud in the hollow of this empty wooden box, sunlight falling through the square hole above, lighting a section of two-by-fours laid long way up to make a solid floor.