by Ian McDonald
Patiently, politely, Little Snoop works up the spiral. As the trash-deliverers and collectors never rest, neither do the work-shops and the disassemblers. The kids running handcarts of parts to the grill plates and ovens barely glance at the video. Have you seen her, have you seen her? The chippers and smelters bent over in the hissing light of bottled gas shake their heads, irritated at the distraction.
‘Her parents, eh?’ The woman is big, easy, rolls of fat lapping generously as she sits, one leg outstretched, on the step of the gold refinery. Her wealth is in her teeth, around her neck, on her fingers, the stubby, sweet-smelling cigar she smokes with simple relish. ‘And they hired you? Son, you’re no private detective. But you’re not anything else either, so I’ll answer your question. Yes. I know this face.’ Edson’s heart kicks inside so hard she must hear it: a meaty knock. ‘She was selling stuff, tech stuff; gear, good gear. Gear like I’ve never seen before, like no one had ever seen before. And some jewelry.’
‘In the last month?’
‘In the last twenty-four hours, son.’
Beyond the shotgun shacks, the dark trash mountains crawl with stars; LED head-torches and candle lanterns flickering like fireflies. The miasma the dump constantly exudes glows blue and yellow. It is radiantly beautiful. Weird stuff here by superstition, street legend. Whispers of night visions; strange juxtapositions of this city with other, illusory landscapes; angels, visitations, UFOs, orixás. Ghosts.
‘Do you know who bought them?
‘Son, there’s always someone buying something around here. Some of the usual dealers - you won’t catch them here this time of night. They’ve more sense.’
‘Do you know if she’s staying around here?’
‘She’d be a bigger fool than you if she were. I got one set of eyes, son, and a failing memory. Count your blessings.’
Descending the spiral Little Snoop calls in at the futebol bar and has a bottle of good import whiskey sent up to bling woman. It’s expensive, but that’s the way his city works. A favor given, a favor returned. And his Yamaha is intact, untouched, absolutely flawless.
Eleven thirty-eight and Edson’s ass feels like a spill of hardened concrete. There’s one safe little niche on the hotel roof, but it’s small, uncomfortable and ball-freezingly cold. This is an unglossy neighborhood, forgotten like discarded underwear behind the kanji frontages and Harajuku pinks of the sushi bars and theatrical teppanyaki eateries. Hardpoint sensors and an aerial drone on a three-minute orbit supplement the bored teen with the stupid near-moustache crewing the security barrier. Edson watches the HiLux pickup laden with vegetables drive through the gates into the cul-de-sac. Close behind the scooped red-tile roof the pencil-thin apartment towers rise, crowned in moving ads for beer and telenovelas. He’s never been so close to the mythical heart of the city. Praça de Sé is ten blocks away.
She grew up here, Edson thinks. Her life was shaped in this long, bulb-ended street like a vagina. She pedalled that pink kiddie-bike with the streamers from the handlebars around this turning circle. She put up a stall made from garden tools and sheets to sell doces and ice tea to the neighbors. She tongue-kissed her first boyfriend just around that step in the build-line where the segurança couldn’t watch her. Her parents are unloading the truck now, boxes bursting with green and dark red so soft you could imagine rolling over in them to sleep.
‘Ghosts. Like, the way you mean ghost?’ he had said to Mr Peach, the gun hard against the crack of his ass.
‘Go on.’ There was a way Mr Peach carried himself - eager, leaning, hands tense - when he expected more than affection and sex from Sextinho.
‘There are millions of other Fias out there in other universes, other parts of the multiverse.’
‘Yes.’
‘And one of them . . .’
‘Go on.’
‘Has come through.’
‘That’s a nice expression. Come through.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘What you think is impossible and what quantum theory says is impossible are very different things. What’s impossible is covered by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the Pauli Exclusion Principle. The rest is just shades of probable. Quantum computing relies on what we call a “superposition”: a linkage between the same atom in different states in different universes. An answer comes through from somewhere out in those universes. And sometimes something more than an answer.’
To the right. On the roof of the garage. Movement, a figure. Edson’s heart thumps so hard it hurts. He needs to hurl. He moves to the low parapet, leans over. He can’t make out any detail in this damn yellow light. His hand goes to click up the zoom on his Chillibeans; then the figure sets a can of paint on the parapet. Some kid, a pichaçeiro, leaning over the edge to roller his tag. The heart eases, but the nausea peaks.
On the left. Walking slowly down the street, hood up, hands folded in the front pocket of a weird knitted short hoodie thing, like a street-nun. Skinny gray leggings tucked into fuck-me boots. Boots. Good boots, but who wears boots with leggings? He knows that too-tight walk, those too-short steps. Her face is shadowed by the hood, but the highlights, the glances are identification enough for Edson. Fia/Not Fia. Her hair is longer. But this is Fia. A Fia. Another Fia. She stops to glance down the guarded street. You were born there too, in that other Liberdade, weren’t you? The city, the streets, the houses are the same. What brought you? Curiosity? Proof? What are you feeling? Why are you in this world at all? The guard stirs in his booth. The Fia turns away, walks on. Edson drops from his surveillance, sits back to the coaming, panting, knees drawn up to thin chest. He has never been so scared, not even when he went up the hill to The Man to get his blessing to open De Freitas Global Talent, not even the night when Cidade Alta exploded around Emerson and Anderson.
You’ve identified her. Now get off this roost, get down there. Edson falls in thirty meters behind the Fia. The security kid checks him. Edson closes with the Fia. She glances over her shoulder. Twenty paces now. He knows how to do it. It’s all there in his head. Then the car stops across the end of the road.
‘Fia!’
The car door opens; men step out. Fia turns at the sound of the name no one should speak. Edson pulls the big chrome gun out of the back of his pants. The security guard leaps to his feet. All in a bubble of space-time, beautiful, motionless.
‘Fia! To me! Run to me. Fia, I knew you, do you understand? I knew you.’
She makes the decision in the instant it takes Edson to bring the gun up two-handed. She flees toward him, a tight-elbowed, flapping girl-run. The two men pelt after her. They are big; they know how to run; their jacket tails flap. Edson snatches Fia’s hand, drags her in his wake. He stops dead. Fia slams into him. From the other end of the street comes a third running man, a little flicker of blue light dancing around his right hand where the naked tip of his Q-blade wounds space-time. And the stupid stupid security-kid has his gun gripped in both hands like something he’s seen in a game and he’s shouting, ‘Don’t move! Don’t fucking move! Put the gun down! Put the gun down!’
‘Don’t be stupid, they’ll kill us all,’ Edson shouts. ‘Run now!’ The kid panics, throws away the piece, and flees up the street into the palm-creaking dekasegui gardens. Lights come on behind bamboo blinds as Edson snatches Fia down the side alley where he has parked the Yam. Jesus and all the Saints this is going to be tight . . . . Her arms close around his waist. Start. Start. Start. The engine yells into life. Edson steers one-handed down the alleyway, dodging trash cans and junk.
‘Take the gun take the gun. Anything you see in front of you, shoot it.’
‘But . . .’
But he’s already flying. The gun crash/flashes twice by the side of his head; he hears shells scream off walls and girderwork. He sees two dark shapes whirl away from him. Gone. But the third man, the man with the knife, blocks the exit from the alley. An arc of blue. He holds the Q-blade level; the bisecting stroke. This is how it was; let them come
to you; let their own velocity cut them in half. Bang bang. The knifeman anticipates, dives, comes up with the blade ready. Crying with fear, Edson kicks out. The backhand slash shaves rubber swarf from the heel of his Nikes, but the man goes down. Edson guns the throttle and wheelies out into the street. Behind him, the two other killers are up. A whisper of jets: security drones are arriving on-scene and deploying antipersonnel arrays. Sirens close from all sides, but Edson is through them, out into the light and the endless traffic of his Sampa.
The muzzle creeps cold into the hollow behind his ear on Rua Luís Gama.
‘There’s no bullets in that thing.’
He feels Fia’s breath warm against the side of his head.
‘Are you sure? Did you count them?’
‘You’re going to shoot me in this traffic?’
She reaches round and locks one hand on the throttle, beside his. ‘I’ll take that risk.’
Tetchy. So her. So Fia.
‘So who the hell are you?’
‘Put that thing away and I’ll tell. God alone knows how many cameras have seen it.’
‘Cameras?’
‘You really aren’t from round here, are you?’
Cold muzzle is replaced by hot whisper: ‘Yes I am.’
‘I’m Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything. That’s just a name. Who are you with? The Order?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Did she know you? My . . . alter?’
‘We were, she was my girlfriend.’
She says quickly, harshly, ‘I’m not her. You must know that.’
‘But you are Fia Kishida.’
‘Yes. No. I am Fia Kishida. It was you on the rodovia, wasn’t it? Where are we going?’
‘Somewhere. Safe.’ Not home. Some things, even more than guns, cannot be explained to Dona Hortense. Emerson can put a couple of mattresses down in the office; that will do until Edson thinks of what to do with a murdered girlfriend’s double come through from a parallel São Paulo and being hunted by pistoleiros and Q-blades. He feels Fia’s arms tight around his waist as he blurs through the wash of taillights. Behind him in the slipstream she says nothing. She knows where she is. It’s always São Paulo.
Her grip tightens as he turns off the highway onto the serpentine road that is the gut of Cidade de Luz. She takes in the moto-taxis, the buses, the grand pillared frontage of the Assembly of God Church like a jerry-built heaven, the swags of power cables and tripping runs of white water pipes clambering up through the houses and walled yards into the glowing, chaotic mass of the high city, the true, unrepentant favela.
The road takes another wind; then Edson hauls on the brakes. There’s someone in the road, right under his wheel. The bike skids; the Fia - Fia II, he thinks of her - slides across the oily concrete to hit the high curb. The fool in the road: it’s Treats who has dashed out from his usual roost at the Ipiranga station where he hassles drivers into letting him clean their windshields while they fill up.
‘Edson Edson Edson, Petty Cash! He’s dead, man, they’ve killed him, came right in.’
Edson seizes Treats by the scruff of his too-too-big basketball vest and drags him round the back of the fuel station, out of the light, among the gas cylinders.
‘Shut up with my name, you don’t know who’s listening or looking.’
‘Petty Cash, they—’
‘Shut up. Stay there.’
He picks up the beautiful, delicate Yamaha and wheels it over to Fia II. You have to stop calling her that, like she’s a movie. Fia. But it’s not right.
‘You all right?’ She goes to say something about her torn top, but Edson hasn’t time for that. ‘Keep your hood up, stay out of the cameras, and lock yourself in the women’s toilet. There are people here could recognize you. I will come for you. There’s a matter I have to deal with right now.’
Edson orders Treats to go round to Dona Hortense and ask for his go-bag.
‘She’ll know what that means. And show my mother some manners, uneducated boy.’
He goes up the alleys and ladeiros beneath the swags of power cable and bougainvillea. Moto-taxis hoot past, pressing him to the walls in the steep narrow lanes. The ambulance is still outside the house. Edson can hear police drones circling overhead. The small crowd has the patient, resting body language of people who have passed from witness to vigil. A man-sized hole has been cut sheer through the gate and part of the wall. It matches another through the door and doorframe. And it is like a storm of dark birds flying out of that hole, flying at Edson’s head, blinding him with their wings and claws and beaks, bird after bird after bird, too many too fast, he swipes, slaps at them but there are always more and they keep coming, wing after wing after wing, and he knows that if he misses, once, he will go down and their claws will be in his back.
‘What happened?’ Edson asks Mrs Moraes seated on the side of the road in her shorts and flip-flops, hair still up in foil and her hand frozen to her mouth. Her neighbors stand around her.
‘They came on a motorbike. The one on the back, he did that. Jesus love my boy my boy my poor boy, what did he ever do to anyone?’
Now he sees Old Gear his antique dealer by the ambulance. All Edson’s alibis are there in the crowd. They all have the same look: He died for you.
What if you get killed ? Petty Cash had joked. But he did. That is what the ambulance crews are taking away in their black bag: a body wearing a pair of I-shades that say Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas. Edson is an unperson now. There is no place for him in Cidade de Luz. At the Ipiranga station he sees the ambulance pass, lights rotating, sirens hushed. Treats has his go-bag.
‘One more thing, Treats. Go back and tell Dona Hortense I’m with the Sisters.’
‘The Sisters.’
‘She’ll know. Good man.’ The jeitinho is fully paid. Next time, it will be Edson owes Treats.
The Yamaha heads west through the contrails of light. Edson calls back to Fia on the pillion. ‘Have you any money?’
‘Some cash from selling tech and jewelry and stuff, but I’ve spent most of it on food and a capsule to stay. Why?’
‘I don’t have anything. I don’t exist. That ambulance that went past, that was me in the back.’
She asks no questions as Edson explains his world. Carbon-fiber angels watching the city by day and night, never ceasing, never hasting. Universal arfid tagging and monitoring where the clothes on your back and the shoes on your feet and the toys in your pocket betray you. Total surveillance from rodovia toll cameras to passersby’s T-shirts or I-shades snatching casual shots; only the rich and the dead have privacy. Information not owned but rented; date-stamped music and designer logos that must be constantly updated: intellectual property rights enforceable with death but murder pay-per-view prime-time entertainment and pay-per-case policing. Every click of the Chillibeans, every message and call and map, every live Goooool! update, every road toll and every cafezinho generates a cloud of marketing information, a vapor trail across Sampa’s information sphere. Alibis, multiple identities, backup selves - it is not safe to be one thing for too long. Speed is life. She will be trying to work out how she can exist - must exist - in this world of Order and Progress, with no scan no print no number, a dead girl come back to life. As he is a dead man, driving west through the night traffic.
SEPTEMBER 16-17, 1732
Robert Francois St Honore Falcon: Expedition Log
A wonder a day and I do not doubt we should all live forever! I am comfortably domiciled in the College adjoining the Carmelite Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, shaved, in clean linen, and anticipating my first decent dinner in weeks, but my mind returns to the phenomenon I witnessed today at the meeting of the waters.
Captain Acunha, desiring to show a proud Frenchman a marvel of his land, called me to the prow to observe the extraordinary sight of two rivers, one black, one milky white, flowing side by side in the same channel; the bl
ack current of the Rio Negro, its confluence still two leagues distant, running parallel to the silty flow of the Solimões. We steered along the line of division - I filled page after page with my sketchings and I saw that, closely observed, the black and the white waters curled around each other like intricate silhouette work; curls within curls within curls of ever-diminishing scale, as I have seen in the pattern of ferns and the leaves of certain trees. I wonder, does it decrease in its self-similarity ad infinitum? Am I prejudiced to the macroscopic? Is there an implicit geometry, a mathematical energy in the very small, that cascades up into the greater, an automotive force of self-ordering? I do think that there is a law here, in river flow and in fern and leaf.