It was Her.
The Thing.
It was there.
Or rather, it had been there.
And now it was everywhere.
It had come from a simple hotel, and now it was turning the whole world into its habitat.
It had come from a humanoid exoform, and now it was entering into all men.
It had come from this cube-within-a-cube—it had come from this black box open to infinity—and now it was turning every brain into an indivisible box that enclosed the self inside a process of undefined division.
It had been here; it had passed through here. It was born here.
It was born here, at the exact place and time the Metastructure died.
And I was born with it.
I was born with the death of the World.
23 > RULES AND REGULATIONS
He has been following the red Buick all morning. It wasn’t preplanned; he came across it in Junkville, and that had been enough. It is the First Rule of the Territory: missing your chance means you lose.
Chrysler had gone to see a new informer among the population of American refugees in New Arizona; Yuri was out on his motorcycle, making a tour as far as Champlain Banks. After a night like the previous one, he deserved half a day of rest. He had passed Tin Machine, and there was the car. The Buick.
The red Buick of the man looking for the Professor. The red Buick of the man who had been spying on them in Carbon City. The red Buick of the man who is snooping around far too close to their secret. The red Buick of the man whose path he is crossing much too often.
There wasn’t even a conscious decision. The walk around Lake Champlain was immediately forgotten, and the moving red glitter of the Buick became, in a split second, the sole focus of his interest. The man had broken one of the Territory’s unspoken laws. He was poking his nose into something that didn’t involve him.
Who are you? What do you want? Who are you looking for? Why?
Yuri is already imagining the barrage of questions that will be aimed at the man when he is alone between him and Chrysler. He imagines the man’s face as he stares down the barrel of the Sig Sauer P226 or the equally welcoming Beretta M92. He imagines the guy’s head after Chrysler has unloaded the first round of shot into that face.
Oh yes, he’ll talk.
He obviously has a lot of interesting stories to tell.
Chrysler will know how to stimulate the narrative flow.
* * *
Around ten o’clock the Buick, which has been parked for almost an hour in Neo Pepsico, starts north again and drives up one of the hills of the rich township of Little Congo.
Yuri consults his notes.
Nothing, except that during this morning the guy has crossed the whole city and seen more than a dozen people.
In Vortex Townships he met up with an old hooker Yuri had finally managed to place: Ariane Gallagher, an old habitué of Flesh Market, undoubtedly one of the guy’s ex-employees. In the same district, a little farther south, the man had talked with a group of young losers who sometimes worked as informants for the necro Triads.
In Carbon City, he had seen two old homosexuals who shared a Combi-Cube—Rondeau and Marston, professional blabbermouths. Nothing that happened in Junkville is unknown to them; people say they know when you get up in the middle of the night to take a leak.
East of Toy Division the man spoke briefly with a few barely postpubescent whores, and at greater length with a trio of young pimps who, it is said, will rent themselves out for a quick, well-executed hired killing here and there.
Then, in Neo Pepsico, the man met up with a bunch of people Yuri couldn’t place—except for the last one, an old cop for the municipality of Grand Junction, one Johnson Belfond, who has a reputation as one of the most pompous blowhards in the whole Territory.
All in all, it is a list of the crème de la crème of the city’s dregs, like a dinner menu from Hell, as if the Buick’s owner is getting ready to cook the worst kind of feast.
He must have started his day in Tin Machine, where Yuri ran across him. That part of his doings is still a mystery.
But here, here in Little Congo among the kings of Junkville, who is the contact of the man in the Buick? Who is his sous chef in Hell?
And why?
If Yuri was the wind blowing through the region, he would be able to float invisibly up to the peak of the butte, brush the aluminum surface of the luxury mobile home, and enter it through a half-open window. He would be able to see, to listen, to understand.
Two men. One of them is the fellow with the red Buick. And his partner in conversation has a digitally rebuilt face, a body amplified with transgenic cosmetics. Functionally androgynous. The man-woman from Neon Park.
If he was a breeze, he could just be there. He could touch them, feel their skin, dry their sweat, take on their presence, mingle with their odors, guess their most secret thoughts.
Two men, face-to-face, seated in comfortable armchairs of Italian design from the early part of the century—they must have cost a small fortune at the time, and today they are worth the price of half a township.
Two men who have sealed a pact. Two men who have set their own rules. Two men separated by everything, but brought back together by a vital principle.
“Very expensive. How does this antiviral nanogenerator work?”
“It works perfectly, Mr. Silverskin. Not a problem in a month.”
“That was my minimum guarantee, Vegas. If it had broken down any sooner I would have been much more generous.”
“It might have been worth more. … I don’t have more than a liter of gasoline left, and I have to drive a lot to finish your assignment. I’m making the rounds of Junkville several times a week.”
“Don’t worry about that. If you need a few gallons from Reservoir Can I’ll take care of it. I won’t leave you short of gas for the investigation. About that—I hope you’ve got good news for me.”
A sigh. The exchange of two gazes that come from opposite poles of the same planet. The planet of betrayal, the planet of lying monkeys, the planet where human flesh is bought and sold, certainly—but one of them is playing the dominant role here, and the other one is the dominated. We’ve regressed to tribes of animals.
“I put ten more people on the case this morning. There were already almost that many scouring Junkville and its environs to find these two young guys. I couldn’t see them too well because of the sandstorm, but we caught the other one, the big guy in black from Midnight Oil.”
“I know. You told me two weeks ago.”
“We won’t leave a stone unturned, Mr. Silverskin. We’re following him and making note of all his movements.”
“Anything new there?”
“Not really; he keeps going regularly to the north of the Territory, to the Monolith Hills strip. He also visits an area near Neon Park. We know he has some connection to the Professor, but we still don’t know where, how, or when the tie was established.”
“Neon Park … that’s in the east-central part of the Territory. It’s totally deserted and slightly radioactive. It used to be a high-tech area. A much more likely place, if you ask me, to hide what we’re looking for.”
“We don’t really know what we’re looking for, Mr. Silverskin; remember that.”
“You should get your hands on these two guys with the pickup right away, Vegas.”
“I’m sure I’ll have some news for you soon, Mr. Silverskin. I don’t know exactly what they’re making, or where they’re from, but someone will have seen them somewhere in the Territory and remembered them, and what they do, and even where they live.”
“I don’t think these men are from Junkville.”
“It’s possible, but they seem to know the city extremely well.”
“These guys are a lot more important than your fellow from Midnight Oil. I’m sure they’re sort of bodyguards for the Professor. His personal escort. If you find them, you find him. Simple as that.”
&
nbsp; If Yuri was a gust of wind, even one carrying all the fragrances of Junkville, he would immediately know that even the most adroit conspirators make mistakes. He would know that a man who lives by fear is its primary potential target. He would know that the mistake is even greater in that it hides the essential truth.
He would be able to count the seconds of silence before the man with the red Buick begins speaking again.
“You haven’t ever really explained to me, even when you first sent me on the hunt for the nanogenerator, why the Professor interests you so much.”
“For the same reason as you, Vegas.”
“But I don’t have a reason to chase him anymore—you’ve given me an entirely new biosystem—”
“Vegas, I already told you—all I know how to do is delay failure for a little while. I can’t guarantee anything beyond a few weeks. The Professor probably knows that.”
“But what does he know?”
“Haven’t you noticed that it’s been two or three years of rumors swirling around the Territory about people who are being immunized by who knows what, or who … and for months people have been talking about a mysterious ‘antimachine’ hidden somewhere in the south of the Territory … and now this Professor has arrived in Junkville who was one of the Metastructure’s designers … do you still not see, Vegas?”
“He … he’s the one who … made it?”
“Obviously. Imagine, Vegas, the power and wealth of anyone who could control this anti-machine.”
“You mean, control the Professor?”
“That is exactly why I’ve given you this mission. First we need to locate him, as fast as possible. Then we need to monitor him day and night. We have to know the smallest detail of what he does. We have to spy on him until he tells us the location of his antimachine without knowing he’s doing it. Then we act.”
Vegas understands. He nods his head, mechanically, at the obviousness.
Everything happens very fast.
First he sees the man leave a luxury mobile home of anodized aluminum.
Then he sees him get behind the wheel of his car.
Then he sees the red Buick cautiously descend an access road from the top of the butte.
The Buick drives to the road that leads from Little Congo to Vortex Townships on one side and Windtalker Alley on the other. It turns east, toward Windmill Park.
He starts up his Kawasaki.
And everything comes apart; in an instant, everything erupts:
He puts the bike in motion, his eye fixed on the red Buick as it heads east of the city—he follows it at a safe distance of barely thirty meters—in the rearview mirror is the image of a topaz yellow Toyota pickup—he has already seen it this morning, in Vortex Townships; it has the distinctive mark of the necro Triads—and he has seen it again since then, parked for five or ten minutes not far from the butte, before the Buick drove away—so he is being followed—he follows the red Buick, but someone else is following it, too—or following him, rather—yes, that’s it, dammit—the man in the red Buick must be having him watched by men trained to follow his every movement—this fucking patsy is watching his back—not like him, alone with his Kawasaki—now he’d better act, fast, very fast, and well, very, very well.
He’d better do what Campbell would do.
He’d better act without the slightest conscience.
The trap: the good old plan of the route northeast of Deadlink. Then Row 299. Then Neon Park; he’ll lose them there, leave them believing that he lives around here, or at least spends a lot of time here.
The trap has been tested. Verified. Verified again. Campbell never leaves anything to that foolish god Luck.
The trap is part of the Territory, the purest emanation of it. It uses him but in return he will use it, because in the Territory traps are a form of life. The whole Territory is a machine. A trap.
The fundamental Law of the Territory can be summed up in a few words: Cheat or be cheated. It’s no worse than any other law.
He drives behind the Buick to the junction with Tin Machine, where he lets it continue east while he turns north, toward one of the still-usable bridges that spans the old highway. In the rearview mirror he can see the Toyota swerve toward Tin Machine in its turn.
Someone is definitely following him.
He will have to lose this pickup and its occupants.
He is in danger.
There are many rules in the territory. Chrysler taught them to him a long time ago. Some of these rules let you ensure your daily survival. The ordinary ones. Others, more rare, are there to guarantee your survival in case of extraordinary events, unusual ones, out of the norm, unforeseen.
Yuri knows the territory like the back of his hand, but he quickly realizes that the occupants of the pickup aren’t amateurs, either. Nothing to do with the red Buick. Of course, the Toyota isn’t as high-performance as Campbell’s huge vehicle, but it definitely outweighs Yuri’s little motorbike.
He rapidly sees that they aren’t trying to avoid being seen. They’re sticking to him from two hundred meters behind, and they aren’t doing a thing to stay invisible. They’re fucking themselves, he thinks, as he passes in front of the abandoned interchange at Deadlink with its masses of refugees in their collapsible shelters.
And if they’re fucking themselves, they probably have a plan, too.
A plan he knows.
First rule: Always know, or guess, your adversary’s plans.
Second rule: Never let the adversary know, or guess, yours.
Third rule: Think deeply, act fast, disappear even faster.
Fourth rule: Strike first, strike hard, strike to the heart.
And finally the fifth rule, taken from the Special Forces manual: If your attack is going pretty well, it’s an ambush.
Hard cases, thinks Yuri. He has tried everything—leaving the row, taking just barely navigable roads, half-turning to the south, turning north again, regaining the road that leads west, reentering the row, and speeding east toward Neon Park.
They won’t let him go. They stick to their plan. Very well, thinks Yuri. Don’t forget the rules of survival in the Territory.
If your attack is going pretty well, it’s an ambush.
For now their attack is going pretty well. Their plan is working perfectly.
Now it’s up to him to turn it into an ambush. To set a trap for them. To make a machine.
He knows their plan; it’s the one he and Chrysler use to lose their pursuers. He knows how to act to foil this plan. All he’s missing are the things most important for a successful operation.
Weapons.
In its side compartments, the Kawasaki has only medical materials and a military Taser with a voltage controller. It would be quite a procedure to carry out emergency modifications to it. A simple Taser and a few hypodermic syringes! The others are probably armed, not to mention the fact that their vehicle could inflict devastating damage on any motorbike—and any human body.
Chrysler told him once that the fifth rule signifies that a plan, even the best one, may quickly display its limitations. And that the surest way to counteract a plan is to let your adversary believe it is working.
He approaches Neon Park, still making fruitless attempts to leave Row 299, lose his pursuers, and return. It is only a decoy, part of his counterplan. He has to make them believe he is at the end of his resources, that he no longer knows what to try, that he is vainly repeating the same maneuvers, that he has no chance to get away.
That he will end up running out of gas.
Rule number six: Jujitsu, Bushido, aikido. Use your adversary’s strength against him.
Rule number seven: Learn to see your own weaknesses as unforeseen opportunities for your adversary. Turn his shortcomings into assets. Transform his most obvious strengths into handicaps.
Rule number eight: Don’t do what is expected, especially by you. Know how to display a false repetition of routines, the better to break it at the opportune moment. Conceiv
e of the effect of surprise not as a simple thunderbolt limited in time, but as a long-lasting barrage of fire.
Rule number nine: Imagine all the possibilities, but once a decision is made, never back down.
Rule number ten: Don’t forget any of the previous rules.
The trap worked.
Hard-asses, thinks Yuri, but nobody in the Territory can fight Chrysler Campbell and his teachings.
The Kawasaki is parked in the middle of Row 299, just past a bend at the edge of Neon Park, between two wooded hills. Here there is still vegetation—chaparral bushes, trees, bindweed brambles, masses of blackberry bushes, wild roses, erigeron, ambrosia, wild mustard and Canadian goldenrod mingled together, and tumbleweeds rolling through the dust and past holes filled with tall wild grasses. Plenty of places to hide from the Toyota’s occupants. The hardy, injurious plants of the Territory can fulfill that role to perfection.
Their plan works perfectly, too. Pretty well, indeed.
The Kawasaki has broken down, and its driver must have fled into the surrounding countryside nearby.
So we get out of the pickup, our guns in plain view.
Yuri can see a machine gun in the hands of a huge African American dressed in the yellow-and-black uniform typical of the Vortex Triads who has just extricated himself heavily from the passenger seat.
A blond dressed in red from head to toe has already emerged from the driver’s side, holding a big aluminum-colored snub-nosed revolver.
The plan worked really well. If we don’t trap him right away, all we have to do is wait for him to come back. He can’t leave his bike in the middle of the road forever.
The men make a small tour of inspection around the small neighboring buttes, glancing briefly at the Kawasaki, holding a brief consultation that they continue as they head back toward their vehicle.
If your attack is going pretty well, it’s an ambush.
If man is the most terrible of predators, it is precisely because he has a strong awaresness of the morality of his actions.
This “moral conscience” serves as a natural barrier against the most murderous instincts that can arise in any animal.
Grand Junction Page 28