All Tomorrow's Parties

40. YELLOW RIBBON

REI Toei could make herself very small.

Six inches tall, she sat on Rydell's pillow, in the salt-frosted plastic dome of his room at the bed-and-breakfast, and he felt like a child.

When she was small, the projection seemed more concentrated; she was brighter, and it made him think of fairies in old anime, those Disney things. She could as easily have had wings, he thought, and fly around, trailing glowing dust if she wanted. But she only sat there, even more perfect at six inches tall, and talked with him.

And when he'd close his eyes, not intending to sleep but only to rest them, he could hear that her voice was actually coming from the projector at the foot of his bed. She was telling him about Rez, the singer she'd wanted to marry, and why that hadn't worked, but it was difficult to follow. Rez had been very interested in Rez, Rydell gathered, and not much else, and Rei Toei had become more interested in other people (or, he guessed, if you were her, in other things). But he kept slipping out of focus, falling asleep really, and her voice was so beautiful.

Before he'd stretched out here, and she'd shown him how she could get small, he'd pulled the chicken-wire gate into place and spread the curtains that were thumbtacked to it, some kind of faded fabric printed with a pattern of ornate keys and strange, long-necked cats (he thought they were).

He didn't know how long the sunglasses had been ringing, and it took him several rings to locate his jacket in the dark. He was fully dressed, shoes and all, otherwise, and he knew he'd been deep asleep.

'Hello? He put the glasses on with his left hand. With his right he reached up and touched the ceiling. It's paneling gave, slightly, when he did that, so he didn't do it again.

'Where are you? It was Laney.

'Bed-and-breakfast, Rydell told him. With the sunglasses on, it was totally dark. He watched the low spark of his own optic nerve, colors without names.

'Did you get the cables?

'Yeah, Rydell said. He remembered being harsh with the sumo kid and felt stupid. He'd lost it. That claustro thing he got in crowds sometimes. Tara-MayAllenby had told him that was called agoraphobia, and it meant 'fear of the mall, but it wasn't actually malls that did it to him. But he couldn't stand those little under-lip beards either. 'Two of them.

'Use them yet?

'Just the power, Rydell said. 'The other one, I don't know what it jacks with.

'Neither do I, said Laney. 'Is she there?

'She was, Rydell said, looking around in the dark for his fairy star, then remembering he was wearing sunglasses.

His hand found a switch that dangled from a wire near his head. He clicked it. A bare fifty-watt bulb came on. He slid the glasses down his nose and peered over them, finding the projector still there and still plugged in. 'The thermos-thing's still here.

'Don't let that out of your sight, Laney said. 'Or the cables. I don't know what we need her to do there, but it's all around her.

'What's all around her?

'The change.

'Laney, she said you told her the world was going to end.

'Is going to end, Laney corrected.

'Why'd you tell her that?

Laney sighed, the deep end of his sigh becoming a cough, which he seemed to choke off. 'As we know it, okay? he managed. 'As we know it. And that's all I or anyone else can tell you about that. It's not what I want you thinking about. You're working for me, remember?

And you're crazy, Rydell thought, but I've got your credit chip in my pocket. 'Okay, he said, 'what's next?

'You have to go to the site of a double homicide, one that took place last night, on the bridge.

'What do you want me to try to find out?

'Nothing, Laney said. 'Just look like you're trying to find something out. Pretend. Like you're investigating. Call me when you're ready to go, I'll give you the GPS fix for the spot.

'Hey, Rydell said, 'what if I do find something out?

'Then call me.

'Don't hang up, Rydell said. 'How come you haven't been in touch with her, Laney? She said you two were separated.

'The people who, well, 'own' her, that's not quite the term, really, but they'd like to talk to me, because she's missing. And the Lo/Rez people too. So I need to be incommunicado at the moment, as far as they're concerned. But she hasn't tried to reach me, Rydell. She'll be able to, when she needs to. He hung up.

Took the glasses off, left them folded on the pillow, and crawled to the end of the bed. 'Hey, he said to the thermos-thing, 'you there? Nothing.

He started getting himself together. He unpacked his duffel, used the switchblade to cut a couple of slits in it, took off his nylon belt and threaded it through the slits, using it as a strap, so he could sling the bag over his shoulder.

'Hey, he said again to the thermos-thing, 'you there? I'm gonna unplug you now. He hesitated, did. He put it in the duffel, along with the power cable, the other cable, and his Lucky Dragon fanny pack, this last because the thing had already saved his ass once, and it might be lucky. He put his nylon jacket on, put the sunglasses in his pocket, and, as an afterthought, gingerly put the switchblade in his right front trouser pocket. Then he imagined it opening there, thought about its lack of a safety catch, and, even more gingerly, fished it out and put it in the side pocket of his jacket.

AND found the place without too much trouble, though Laney's mode of GPS-by-phone was pretty basic. Laney had a fix on the spot (Rydell had no idea how) but no map of the bridge, so he triangulated Rydell's sunglasses somehow and told him to walk back toward San Francisco, lower level, keep walking, keep walking, getting warmer. Okay, turn right.

Which had left Rydell facing a blank plywood partition plastered with rain-stained handbills, in a European language he didn't recognize, for a concert by someone named Ottoman Badchair. He described this to Laney.

'That isn't it, Laney said, 'but you're really close.

There was a shop next door, closed, and he couldn't figure out what it sold when it was open, and then a gap. Rolls of plastic back in there. Lumber. Someone was building another shop, he thought. If this was it, the crime scene, there ought to be a yellow plastic ribbon with SFPD stapled up, but then he remembered that the police didn't come out here all that much, and he wondered what they did when they had a body to dispose of. Flipping them over the side wouldn't make the city too happy, although of course there was no way the city could prove a particular corpse had come off the bridge. Still, it bothered Rydell that there wasn't any yellow ribbon. He guessed he thought of it as a mark of respect.

He moved in, edging past the rolls of plastic, climbing over a low stack of plywood, and spotted, in the harsh light slung from the scavenged fluorescents closer to the pedestrian stroll, two frosty-looking white marks, something aerosoled over two darker stains, and he knew what that was. Kil'Z, this stuff you sprayed where bodily fluids had gotten out, in case the person who'd lost them was seropositive. He knew what Kil'Z looked like over blood, and this was that.

Not much of a crime scene. He stood there staring down at it and wondering how Laney expected him to look like he was conducting an investigation. He put the duffel with Rei Toei's projector down on the rolls of plastic.

Kil'Z residue was fairly waterproof, so the rain hadn't washed it away. But then he knew that the victims, whoever they had been, had died the night before.

He felt like an idiot. He really had wanted to be a cop once, and he'd dreamed of crossing the yellow line and looking at the scene. And being able to do something. And now here he was.

He took out the glasses and called Laney. But now Laney, in whatever fine hotel he might be in, in Tokyo, wouldn't answer.

'No shit, Sherlock, Rydell said to himself, listening to a phone ring in Tokyo.

'You do have a sense of humor, Harwood says, behind him. 'I know it.

Leaning closer to the window, looking down. Foreshortened perspective up the side of this obelisk, this pyramid so-called, and midway the dark bulge of that Japanese material, placed to counter old quake damage. This is new, replacing earlier splines of polycarbon, and the subject of architectural and aesthetic scandal. Briefly fascinated, he watches as reflections of the lights of surrounding buildings shudder slightly, the thing's glossy surface tensing in response to winds he cannot feel. The truss is alive.

Turning to face Harwood, who is seated behind a broad dark plain of nonreflective wood, across which an accumulation of architectural