All Tomorrow's Parties

41. TRANSAM

'HIS name is Rydell, Harwood says. 'Image matching gave us that immediately. He was briefly associated with Cops in Trouble.

'Associated with whom? The knife, with its sheath and harness, was secured in a twilit alcove off the central elevator stack, approximately eight hundred feet below.

'Cops in Trouble, Harwood says. 'A cultural treasure. Don't you watch television?

'No. He is looking east, from the forty-eighth and ultimate floor of the city's tallest building, toward the shadow of the ruined Embarcadero, the gypsy glow of the bridge, the feral darkness of Treasure Island.

Stepping closer to the window, he touches his belt. Stitched between two layers of black calf is concealed a ribbon of a very particular, very expensive material. Under certain circumstances, it ceases to behave as though it were some loosely woven, tissue-thin fabric, something a child might accidentally pull to pieces, and becomes instead thirty inches of something limber, double-edged, and very sharp. Its texture, in that state, its sleek translucency, has reminded him of fresh cuttlebone models and hillocks of documents suggest the courses of imaginary rivers: a topography in which might be read change in the world beyond the window, if meanings were known, and one were sufficiently concerned with outcomes.

Harwood's eyes are the most present thing about him, the rest giving an impression of existing at one remove, in some other and unspecific dimension. A tall man, he seems to occupy relatively little space, communicating from elsewhere via deliberately constricted channels. He is slender, with that agelessness of the aging rich, his long face free of tension. His eyes, enlarged by archaic lenses, are seldom still. 'Why do you pretend to not be interested in this former policeman visiting the site of your recent activities? On his wrist, gold and titanium catches the light; some multitasking bauble with intricate displays.

'I don't pretend. On the large flatscreen that stands to the left of the desk, four cameras present angles on a tall, sturdy-looking man who stands, chin down, as if brooding. The cameras would be no larger than roaches, but the four images, in spite of inadequate light, offer excellent resolution. 'Who placed these cameras?

'My bright young things.

'Why?

'Against exactly this eventuality: that someone might visit the site of these two utterly forgettable deaths and stand there, thinking. Look at him. He's thinking.

'He looks unhappy.

'He's trying to imagine you.

'You imagine he is.

'The fact that he's found his way to that spot at all is indicative of knowledge and motive. He knows that two men died there.

Amid the various models on Harwood's desk stands one in glossy red and white, rendered with functioning miniature video screens on the trademark pylon. Tiny images move and change there, in liquid crystal.

'Do you own the company that built this thing? indicating the model with his index finger.

The eyes behind Hardwood's glasses register surprise, from their peculiar distance. Then interest. 'No. We advise them. We are a public relations firm. We did, I believe, advise on impact. We advised the city as well.

'It's horrible.

'Yes, says Harwood, 'aesthetically, I agree. And that was an expressed concern of the municipal authorities. But our studies indicated that positioning it there would encourage walk-on tourism, and that is a crucial aspect of normalization.

'Normalization?

'There is an ongoing initiative to bring the bridge community back into the fold, as it were. But the issue is sensitive. A matter of image really, and that of course is where we come in. Harwood smiles. 'A number of major cities have these autonomous zones, and how a given city chooses to deal with the situation can impact drastically on that city's image. Copenhagen, for instance, was one of the first, and has done very well. Atlanta, I suppose, would be the classic example of what not to do. Harwood blinks. 'It's what we do now instead of bohemias, he says.

'Instead of what?

'Bohemias. Alternative subcultures. They were a crucial aspect of industrial civilization in the two previous centuries. They were where industrial civilization went to dream. A sort of unconscious R&D, exploring alternate societal strategies. Each one would have a dress code, characteristic forms of artistic expression, a substance or substances of choice, and a set of sexual values at odds with those of the culture at large. And they did, frequently, have locales with which they became associated. But they became extinct.

'Extinct?

'We started picking them before they could ripen. A certain crucial growing period was lost, as marketing evolved and the mechanisms of recommodification became quicker, more rapacious. Authentic subcultures required backwaters, and time, and there are no more backwaters. They went the way of geography in general. Autonomous zones do offer a certain insulation from the monoculture, but they seem not to lend themselves to recommodification, not in the same way. We don't know why exactly. The little images shift, flickering.

'They shouldn't have put it there.

Harwood's eyes come in from their private distance. 'I don't believe I've ever heard you express so specific an opinion.

No reply.

'You'll have a second chance to see it. I want you to find out what our pensive friend here is thinking about.

'Is this concerned with what you implied when we spoke earlier, that something is on the verge of happening?

'Yes.

'And what would that be?

Harwood considers him from the distance behind his glasses. 'Do you believe in forces of history?

'I believe in what brings us to the moment.

'I seem to have come to believe in the moment myself. I believe we are approaching one, drawn to it by the gravity of its strangeness. It is a moment in which everything and nothing will change. I am seeking an outcome in which I will retain viability. I am seeking an outcome in which Harwood Levine will not have become four meaningless syllables. If the world is to be reborn, I wish to be reborn in it, as something akin to what I am today.

Thinking of the possible number and variety of crosshairs that must be trained on him now, hidden telepresent weapons platforms. He is fairly certain, nonetheless, that he could kill Harwood, if the moment required, though he also knows that he would almost certainly predecease him, if only by some fraction of a second. 'I think you have become more complicated, since we last met.

'Complex, Harwood says, and smiles.