All Tomorrow's Parties

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.

There was a brief and probably entirely symbolic passage through some kind of neon rain, heavy on the pinks and greens, and then he was there.

Looking into that same empty space that he'd glimpsed in Tong's corridor: some kind of dust-blown, sepulchral courtyard, lit from above by a weird, attenuated light.

This time though, he could look up. He did. He seemed to be standing on the floor of a vast empty air shaft that rose up, canyon-like, between walls of peculiarly textured darkness.

High above, a skylight he guessed to be the size of a large swimming pool passed grimy sunlight through decades of soot and what he took, at this distance, to be drifts of something more solid. Black iron mullions divided long rectangles, some of them holed, as by gunfire, through what he guessed was archaic wire-cored safety glass.

When he lowered his head, they were there, the two of them, seated in strange, Chinese-looking chairs that hadn't been there before.

One of them was a thin, pale man in a dark suit from no particular era, his lips pursed primly. He wore glasses with heavy, rectangular frames of black plastic and a snap-brim hat of a kind that Rydell knew only from old films. The hat was positioned dead level on his head, perhaps an inch above the black frames. His legs were crossed, and Rydell saw that he wore black wingtip oxfords. His hands were folded in his lap.

The other presented in far more abstract form: an only vaguely human figure, the space where its head should have been was coronaed in a cyclical and on-going explosion of blood and matter, as though a sniper's victim, in the instant of impact, had been recorded and looped. The halo of blood and brains flickered, never quite attaining a steady state. Beneath it, an open mouth, white teeth exposed in a permanent, silent scream. The rest, except for the hands, clawed as in agony around the gleaming arms of the chair, seemed constantly to be dissolving in some terrible fiery wind. Rydell thought of black-and-white footage, ground zero, atomic hurricane.

'Mr. Rydell, said the one with the hat, 'thank you for coming. You may call me Klaus. This, and he gestured with a pale, papery-looking hand, which immediately returned to his lap, 'is the Rooster.

The one called the Rooster didn't move at all when it spoke, but the open mouth flickered in and out of focus. Its voice was either the sound collage from Tong's or another like it. 'Listen to me, Rydell. You are now responsible for something of the utmost importance, the greatest possible value. Where is it?

'I don't know who you are, Rydell said. 'I'm not telling you anything.

Neither responded, and then Klaus coughed dryly. 'The only proper answer. You would be wise to maintain that position. Indeed, you have no idea who we are, and if we were to reappear to you at some later time, you would have no way of knowing that we were, in fact, us.

'Then why should I listen to you?

'In your situation, said the Rooster, and its voice, just then, seemed composed primarily of the sound of breaking glass, modulated into the semblance of human speech, 'you might be advised to listen to anyone who cares to address you.

'But whether or not you choose to believe what you are told is another matter, said Klaus, fussily adjusting his shirt cuffs and refolding his hands.

'You're hackers, Rydell said.

'Actually, said Klaus, 'we might better be described as envoys. We represent, he paused, 'another country.

'Though not, of course, said the perpetually disintegrating Rooster, 'in any obsolete sense of the merely geopolitical-

''Hacker, ' interrupted Klaus, 'has certain criminal connotations-

'Which we do not accept, the Rooster cut in, 'having long since established an autonomous reality in which-

'Quiet, said Klaus, and Rydell had no doubt where the greater authority lay. 'Mr. Rydell, your employer, Mr. Laney, has become, for want of a better term, an ally of ours. He has brought a certain situation to our attention, and it is clearly to our advantage to come to his aid.

'What situation is that?

'That is difficult to explain, Klaus said. He cleared his throat. 'If indeed possible. Mr. Laney is possessed of a most peculiar talent, one which he has very satisfactorily demonstrated to us. We are here to assure you, Mr. Rydell, that the resources of the Walled City will be at your disposal in the coming crisis.

'What city, Rydell asked, 'what crisis?

'The nodal point, the Rooster said, its voice like the trickle of water far down in some unseen cistern.

'Mr. Rydell, said Klaus, 'you must keep the projector with you at all times. We advise you to use it at the earliest opportunity. Familiarize yourself with her.

'With who?

'We are concerned, Klaus went on, 'that Mr. Laney, for reasons of health, will be unable to continue. We number among us some who are possessed of his talent, but none to such an extraordinary extent. Should Laney be lost to us, Mr. Rydell, we fear that little can be done.

'Jesus, said Rydell, 'you think I know what you're talking about?

'I'm not being deliberately gnomic, Mr. Rydell, I assure you. There is no time for explanations now, and for some things, it seems, there may actually be no explanations. Simply remember what we have told you, and that we are here for you, at this address. And now you must return, immediately, to wherever you have left the projector.

And they were gone, and the black courtyard with them, compacted into a sphere of pink and green fractal neon that left residuals on Rydell's retinas, as it shrank and vanished in the dark behind the Brazilian sunglasses.