by Ian McDonald
Your weaknesses her weaknesses.
The creak of the wrought-iron gate, footsteps on the floor tiles. The kitchen door opened. An old man, hair gone grizzle-gray but his skin still bright and black and his bearing upright and glowing with energy, entered. He wore a light linen suit, pants taper-cuffed, high-waisted, and an open-necked silk shirt. Mestre Ginga followed. It was evident in every motion and muscle that he held the visitor in the greatest reverence. Marcelina felt compelled to rise. The old man shook her hand and settled himself heavily on a kitchen chair. ‘Good evening to you, Senhora Hoffman. I am very pleased to see you well. I am the man who made all Brazil cry.’
FEBRUARY 12, 2033
Two by cab. Two on the Metro Linea 4, on separate trains. Two in the van, the biggest risk; two already out and running in the rig. Edson by moto-taxi. Last of all, Fia. In one hour she will take a minibus cab to the rendezvous at the dead mall. No different from a show, Edson thinks. It’s all choreography. Each player is equipped with a one-shot cloned identity and has been rigorously dearfided. Hamilcar and Mr Smiles’ bill had taken the jaguar’s share of the A World Somewhere prize money; even so, Edson, clinging to the moto boy as he accelerates between two lines of traffic, imagines the talons of the Angels of Perpetual Surveillance reaching for his kidneys.
Efrim checked the restaurant thirty-six hours before go-day. Long tables, clean tiled floors, good food, and no one put their thumbs on the scales. Now in his Edson persona, he picks the big table by the window. The car pound runs from front to back on the block opposite; they’ll make their entrance from the rear.
Emerson and Big Steak first. Shake hands, a little high-carb, low protein dinner. Then Edimilson and Jack Chocolate, that’s the garage team on-site. First real risk here: their gear is in a false-registration van parked out on the street. No one should get curious, but Edson taps his long, tapered fingers together in anxiety.
‘Here, eat something.’ Edson passes a roll of reis to the mechanics. He’s not eating, himself; he took a little corajoso when he paid the moto-boy, and it kicks in with an accompanying swooping nausea. His stomach lurches as he watches the mechanics load up on meat from the churrascaria. Keep it down, Edson. Waguinho and Furação in the rig will arrive on target at the designated time. Where are Turkey-Feet and Treats? He flicks the time up in the corner of his I-shades. Fia will already have set off from the fazenda. Mr Peach will drop her by the rodoviaria in Itaparacá; there is something headed into town every two minutes. He picked the old mall because it is enclosed and free from the eyes of cameras, but it’s big and out of the way and full of weirds and he doesn’t love the idea of her hanging around among them too long.
Where are Turkey-Feet and Treats?
Then Edson’s corajoso flickers and is snuffed out. Six cops have just come in, sat down at a table, big guns at their thighs, and are studying the menu.
Two good-byes.
‘Hey, my mama.’
The custom in Cidade de Luz is that every sunset the women come out of their houses to walk. Singly or in pairs, by three or fours, feet encased in sports shoes worn only for this social occasion, elbows pumping to maintain aerobic capacity, they pace a time-hallowed route: the winding main road, the old High Road that runs parallel to the rodovia, the long slow ascent of Rua Paulo Manendes where by some economic gravitation only car-part factors and veterinarian supply stores have taken root. Men too walk the walk. They set out half an hour after the women and always walk widdershins, to meet the women face-to-face. They are invariably younger men, or fresh divorcees.
In the fast German car, Edson caught up with Dona Hortense and her walking friends outside the Happy Cats Veterinarian Supply Company and cruised in to the curb beside her. Dona Hortense peered under the brim of the white pimp’s hat.
‘Edson? That you? Kind of you to come over and see me rather than sending that uneducated Treats round to my door to collect your laundry.’
‘Come on, Mama, you know the trouble I’m in.’
‘I don’t know, that’s the thing.’ The girlfriends are looking at him as they might a cop or a debt collector.
‘Mama, this is not the place.’ Edson opened the door; Dona Hortense slid into the car, ran her hand over the leather upholstery.
‘This is nice. Is it yours? Where did you get it?’
‘A man. Mama, I have to go away.’
‘I thought you might.’
‘A long way, a very long way. I don’t know how long I’ll be away, but it will be a long time.’
‘Oh Edson, oh my love. But call me, pick up the phone, let me know you’re all right.’
‘I can’t do that, Mama.’ The light was fast fading, and in the dark of the car, behind polarized windows by Cidade de Luz’s happenstance street lighting, Edson thought his mother might be crying silently.
‘What, they’ve no phones this place you’re going? A letter, something.’
‘Mama . . .’
‘Edson what is this? You’re scaring me.’
‘I’ll be all right, and I’ll be back. I promise you, I’ll find a way back. Don’t put me in the Book just yet.’
‘Is there anything I can say?’
‘No. Not a thing. Now, kiss me and I’ll drop you back at the house, or do you want me to leave you back with the girls?’
‘Oh, in a big flash car like this, drop me back at the house,’ said Dona Hortense.
And again, good-bye.
‘This is probably the most romantic notion I have heard in my entire life,’ said Mr Peach. Geography is not always a subject of the vast and slow, of eons and crustal plates. It can spring up in a night; the new green space opened one afternoon by the next morning is crisscrossed by footpaths, always mystically following the shortest routes to the shops or the bus stop. In the days that Fia has been a refugee at Fazenda Alvaranga, the old drying shed where the sun loungers are stored in winter has been Sextinho and Mr Peach’s Place.
‘It’s the last place they would think we’d go; back to where she came from.’
‘And you, Sextinho? It sounds like a hard world, hers. Gray skies, pollution, wrecked climates.’
Fia’s world was strange and challenging, but in those differences lie opportunities a man of business and wit can exploit to make money. As long as there was still an Ilhabela, and an ocean to wash the feet of the house, he would make it there. His dreams had moved sideways.
‘But no Angels of Perpetual Surveillance.’
‘No angels. You going to get one of those computers tattooed on your belly?’ It was a joke. Mr Peach knows well Edson’s abhorrence of anything violating the sanctity of his skin. ‘But one thing: you will be there.’
‘Of course I’ll be there.’
‘No, I mean, there will be an Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas somewhere in that city.’
It was one of the first things that Edson had thought when he made the decision to flee with Fia back to her São Paulo. He never could resist a mirror: how would it reflect him? Richer, more successful, a man of big business, married, dead? Worst, just some dust-poor favelado? He could not bear that. It could not be any kind of good luck to meet your ghost-self, but how could he fail to intervene in a life like that? Closer than any twin or freaky clone-thing but further than the farthest star. Him, in every atom. He owed it to himself.
‘It won’t be the first time I’ve had to get a new identity,’ Edson said flippantly, but he was spooked, iced in the vein. ‘Maybe I’ll even become Sextinho.’
‘Do you know what’s so silly, and so impossible? I want to go too. All my life I’ve been teaching the multiverse. I know the theory, I know the math; they prove it more accurately and beautifully than any gross human sense, but I want to see it with my eyes. I want to experience it, and then I’ll truly know. If I taught you one thing about physics, Sextinho, it’s passion. Physics is love. Why would anyone do this thing, beat their lives against truths we can barely understand, if not for love? Fia says that when you enter superpositio
n, you experience all the other universes at once. So many questions answered. But you, you little bastard, you won’t even appreciate what you’re seeing. Go on, hero, do well.’
Among the moldering showerheads and aluminum nets and scoops for fishing leaves out of the pool, by the cleaning robot’s little hutch, Mr Peach hugged Edson to him. The kid was so small, so thin and frail-looking, but strong beneath, all sinews and wires. Hard to embrace.
‘Just one question,’ Edson said. ‘When you cross over, do you think it hurts?’
Treats and Turkey-Feet bowl in eighteen minutes late, laughing and swaggering and acting cool cool cool. Edson is ice with them; they make to laugh at his anger but then see that none of the others are smiling.
‘Why are you late?’
‘We were starving, so we got something to eat and a couple of chopps.’
‘You’ve been drinking?’
‘Oh, come on Edson . . .’
‘You’re drawing attention to yourselves and to me. We are friends meeting up for a meal after work. Now, whether you’ve eaten or not, go up and get something from the buffet. No beer. This is an alcohol-free operation.’
All the while he watches the policemen go up to the counter for seconds. They’re fat, ordinary cops, civils; they’re just out like Edson and his team for a bite with friends after work. Edimilson and Jack Chocolate the mechanics tell track-side tales from Interlagos. Edson hardly hears them; every second that ticks away on the countdown in the corner of his I-shades is slower than the one before until they freeze like drips in an icebox.
I can’t do it. I can’t do it. It’s all just something I made up.
Then he sees himself pushing his plate away from him, standing up, straightening his cuffs, spiking up his hair, and hears his voice say, ‘Are we all done? Then let’s go.’
Tremendous stuff, that corajoso.
The lift hits as he pulls the bandana up over his face. His heart kicks; his breath is shallow and fast and fills him with fire. It’s not the corajoso; it’s old hot liquid adrenaline, molten in his skull. It’s hitting the best deal; it’s that Number One Business plan clicking into place.
Turkey-Feet has the Q-blade out. Two searing passes and the rear gate is free from its hinges. Emerson and Big Steak lower it lightly to the ground. The guys are already moving as the lasers try to get retina lock. No luck there, militars: everyone’s I-shades are stacked with stolen eye-scans. As the alarms kick off woo woo woo, the drone goes in so low over Edson’s head he can feel its downdraft muss up his careful gel-spikes. It’s an old Radio Sampa traffic-report drone that Hamilcar and Mr Smiles got in a jeitinho deal and reconditioned to their own gray purposes. It circles like a little spook from a kids’ cartoon, pumping out enough variant DNA to bust the budget of any forensics company that tries to profile the crime scene. Lovely boys, clever boys.
It might only be graveyard shift at the car pound, but the militars are quick - nothing on Globo Futebol tonight, then - and tooled for general assault. Firing from cover, Big Steak and Emerson Taser the first two out of the trap. Unlike his kid-times-six brother, Emerson enjoyed his army service. Even as the cops hit the ground twitching, Treats and Turkey-Feet are on top of them. Turkey Feet has his Q-blade at the dazed, dazzled policeman’s throat. The guy can’t move, can’t speak, can only follow the dancing blade with his eyes. Blue on blue. Edson smells piss: the Tasers do that, he’s heard. So does fear. It’s a hostage situation now: the remaining four nightwatch throw down their weapons and up their hands. They can read the time and geography as well as Edson: twenty seconds, maybe thirty if they’ve had a big dinner, for the regional headquarters to assess the threat. Another thirty to establish level of response, another twenty to alert units. They won’t tender out to seguranças. The military police enjoy a good firefight too much. Surveillance drones will be over the target within two minutes of the general alert. Surface units will converge within five minutes. But Edson has it timed to the tick, and the garage van is bowling in over the felled gate, pulling up beside the maimed Cook/Chill Meal Solutions trailer. Edimilson has already run the hydraulic jack in and is easing up the left side like he is a superhero: Captain Pitstop. Jack Chocolate takes a wheel off in fifteen seconds with the power wrench. Emerson and Big Steak drag the slashed, hemi-tires away and roll the new ones out of the back of the van. The militars boggle at the skill and speed.
‘You should see them at Interlagos,’ says Treats, gun trained on his close knot of hostages.
‘Fuck up,’ says Turkey-Feet.
The first wheel is on. The second. Edson glances at the timer: the truck should be arriving now. And there it is, rounding the intersection with two fragrant biodiesel belches from its chromed exhausts. Waguinho swings it through the gap in the fence, wheels round and backs up close as a kiss to the trailer. Last wheel is on; the Interlagos brothers throw their gear in the back of the van; Emerson and Big Steak jump in behind it. Edson hauls himself up into the truck cab beside Waguinho and Furação. The trailer locks, Waguinho engages, and Cook/Chill Meal Solutions rolls. As they sweep out through the gate Edson sees Treats and Turkey-Feet back toward the open rear of the van. At the last minute Emerson and Big Steak scramble them in. The militars at once go for their guns, but Edimilson spins the wheels and roars out of the pound onto the street. In the wing-mirror Edson watches the van turn in the opposite direction. They’ll burn it and scatter on foot from the drop-point. Edson sees the DNA-drone skip over the cab roof, climb vertically, and vanish among the rooftop water tanks. He pulls off his bandana, leans back into the seat. The butt of the gun is hard and unexpected against his belly muscles as an erection. He never drew it. He kept that honor; he never showed the gun. Edson pushes his head back into the seat-rest, stares at the rosary and the icon of St Martin dangling from the interior light fitting. Joy beyond utterance cracks through him; he can barely hold himself still from the huge, shaking energy. He did it. He did it. He stole four quantum computers from the São Paulo Zona Norte Military Police car pound. He wants Fia. He wants her waiting for him at the pickup point with nothing but him in her manga eyes; he wants her spread and begging on the hood of Waguinho and Furação’s truck saying, You’re The Man, Edson, malandro of malandros, you are Lord of the Crossings. What you did will be talked up and down the ladeiras for years; that Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas, that was wit, that was malicia.
That Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas, Dona Hortense’s crazy son; whatever happened to him? That is what they will say. Where did he go?
Edson pulls one knee up onto the seat, hugs his knee to him. The in-cab display shows police cars converging on the car pound. They may not have an arfid lock, but they have a description of the trailer and an idea where it might be headed. Can he hear sirens? Woo woo all you like, militars. In a moment I will pull my last, best trick. On the far side of the city, parked up behind a bakery that does good pão de queijo, Hamilcar and Mr Smiles glance at an icon on their I-shades and scatter Cook/Chill Meal Solutions’ cloned arfid ID around fifty vehicles in the truck’s immediate vicinity. A smart trick and an expensive one, but there had been enough change from Hamilcar and Mr Smiles to convert into six cut Amazonian emeralds. They nestle in lubricated, folded latex in Edson’s colon. When he gets to the other side, he’s going to require some convertibility.
And there she is, sitting on the wall where the light from the soccer ground next door falls brightest. She registers the truck swinging in across the stream of taillights; she jumps up and down in unself-conscious joy. Her little pack bounces on her back. Edson cannot rid himself of the image of her Hello Kitty panties. The truck bowls across the parking lot past the decaying glass and steel hulk of the food court, draws up under the lights and stops in a gasm of airbrakes.
‘Great choice of location, Edson,’ Fia says. ‘Between soccer jocks over there whistling at me and alcos and junkies.’ Then she runs and kisses him hard full right then right there where he’s dropped to the hardtop, standing on her tiptoes. M
aybe it’s relief, maybe it’s the blaze of success, maybe its his corajoso leaving him, but Edson feels as if the soccer ground floods have broken into a shower of light raining down on him; photons, actual and ghost, pounding him cleaning him, bouncing softly from the stained concrete, entangled as kitten-wool with other lives, other histories. The city and its ten thousand towers spin around him: he is the axis of Sampa, of all Brasil, of the whole wide planet and all its manifestations across the multiverse in this instant in the parking lot of a dead mall.
Fia runs her finger along the flank of the trailer, stops at the great circular hole cut out of the side. She leans carefully in to stare up into the trailer interior. Edson knows she is thinking, I died in there.
‘The back’s open,’ he says.
Memory is such a little Judas. So many times Edson has recalled the interior of Cook/Chill Meal Solutions, and now, as Fia finds the light switches and illuminates the décor, the sofa isn’t where he remembered and it’s bigger and a different color, and the coffee machine is on the other side of the counter, and the footstools are zebra skin not jaguar, and the spiral staircase is more Kung-fu Kitsch than Guangzhou-Cybercool. Yet Edson feels as if he’s on a first date: this is his place and he’s invited her back. She walks around the furnishings touching, stroking, deeply fascinated by the trails her fingers leave in the dust that has accumulated on the plastic surfaces.