John took out his wallet and carefully counted ten twenty-dollar bills. “Now put those in your shoe, in case you get mugged and they take your credit card. And tell the driver to have you back here by four. We got a show tomorrow, and I’ve got some stuff to discuss with you all.”
He walked Trip to the door of his hotel room, his hand on Trip’s shoulder. “And listen—”
Trip halted. He looked at John’s face but couldn’t meet his eyes. “You be careful, okay? Use your head, don’t do anything stupid.” And John hugged him, his unshaven cheek brushing Trip’s as he kissed him on the forehead.
The limo arrived, petrol-driven with an array of small solar cells atop it like so many black parasols, and monstrous tires, the better to hydroplane through the messier parts of the Merritt Parkway. The interior was clean but worn, smelling strongly of Viconix and stale cigarette smoke. The uniformed driver was a former marine whose Medal of Honor hung beside her ID card on the dashboard. Her mouth was hidden behind a utilitarian blue-and-gray mask embossed with the limo service’s logo.
“You going to the Pyramid?”
Trip shrugged and glanced nervously back at the shining outlines of the Stamford Four Seasons, fading into the rubescent streets behind them. “I guess. The GFI building?”
The driver nodded. “That’s the Pyramid. Ever been there?”
“Uh-uh.”
“It’s something else, man. Like Disney World, ever been to Disney World? But this Pyramid, miracle they even got it built, you know? All this shit coming down, they still throw that thing up in two years. Fucking Japanese, man, they can do anything. It’ll be a few hours before we get there. Want to hear some music?” Trip shook his head. “Sure? Okay. Let me know if you want anything.” She pressed a button and disappeared behind a plasmer shield.
He dozed most of the way, exhausted by expectation. He didn’t wake until they were on Riverside Drive, stalled in traffic beside a park, trees holding on to withered brown leaves, swing sets with no swings, some kind of playground structure that had been so vandalized its original purpose could only be guessed at. Broken blacktop and scuffed brown earth, no grass; but there were benches, and there were people: lots of them, faces protected from killing sky and viruses by hats or cheap plastic masks. Even through the car’s closed windows Trip could smell smoke, meat cooking—meat! The scent made Trip dizzy; he couldn’t recall where he had last smelled meat. Was it Austin? A radio blasted music that sounded like gunfire. Mothers watched children, dogs strained at leashes. A group of men and women sat cross-legged in a circle, chanting, heads tilted to the sky so that he could see the soft fleshy outlines of faces beneath their masks. Along the edge of the cracked sidewalk, people sold things from rickety card tables or blankets laid upon the ground. The crimson sky gave it all a harsh, premonitory glow.
Sudden loud tapping at the passenger window. Trip edged nervously into the center of the car seat as a maskless woman pressed her face against the glass.
“I will pray for you,” she shouted. She had sun-ravaged skin, gray-blond hair, and a red dot in the middle of her forehead. “Pray for me—”
He stared after her as the limo lurched forward. Several well-dressed black men in suits and ties and kente-cloth robes crossed the street in front of them, tending a small group of children. Boys on Rollerblades swept past, and the men smiled, calling out names: Robert, Fayal, Assad.
Trip turned away and watched as the park slid by them. On the broken sidewalk a man was selling coffins made of plywood, with a small and more elegant model of carved pine set atop them with a sign: Will Make To Order. Children hawked plastic shoelaces. Where the sidewalk trailed off into rubble, there were people selling food. Canned goods mostly, but one woman had a case of peanut butter. Trip stared longingly at the red and blue jars, touched the pocket where his wallet formed a reassuring square. Another woman was selling water from a blue five-gallon container, measuring shots into a chipped plastic mug, filling milk containers and those Day-Glo plastic drinktubes that kids wore around their necks.
Then the hired car turned onto a side street where the alleys had become canals, the main avenues a yellow churn of taxis and hired vehicles. They were approaching midtown. The driver lowered her shield and pointed out a few landmarks to him: Grand Central Terminal’s sandbagged facade, the never-completed Disney Towers. Trip rubbed his eyes and mimed interest.
His mouth was dry, his palms damp. The limo stopped abruptly, in front of a seemingly endless line of other limousines and expensive hired cars. The driver smiled and adjusted her mirrored sunglasses.
“Okay. Here she is. Got any idea how long you’ll be?”
It took him a minute to grasp the fact that here was the headquarters of GFI Worldwide Inc. He stuck his face against the window and peered upward, but could make out nothing but some kind of flashing marquee and, above that, a blinding slant of glass or metal that reflected the rippling sky. Beyond the line of waiting limos an immense crowd passed in and out of enormous revolving doors, like a huge deck of cards being endlessly shuffled.
The Pyramid itself was so huge it seemed almost extraneous, a monolithic backdrop to the street. He thought of what he had heard someone say on TV, shortly after the Pyramid opened but before the first waves of failed terrorist attacks directed at what had, so far, proved to be an inviolable structure. That it was like a hive, that the Pyramid had been constructed with hivelike precision and efficiency and speed. That, despite the myriad restaurants and boutiques and studios inside, despite the theaters and offices and all the galleria trappings of upscale commerce, it did not seem to have been designed with human beings in mind.
“Sir?”
Another moment before Trip remembered that he was “sir.” “Uh, I dunno. I mean, probably not long. I’m just picking someone up. We’re going to the museum.”
The driver nodded, then popped her door and slid into the street. An instant later Trip’s door opened and, with a flourish, she beckoned him out.
“They’re expecting you, sir? Security’s tight here.”
Trip’s throat contracted. “Yeah.” His voice came out in a whisper, but the driver seemed satisfied. She smiled again and pointed at the building’s immense maw, the doors changing color to keep pace with the rainbow sky.
“Well, I’ll be here!” Once more she took her place behind the wheel. Trip swallowed, shoved his hands into his pockets, and forged on into the building.
He had to go through a metal detector and a crowded disinfectant chamber, where a yawning woman in a surgical mask gave him a perfunctory blast of Viconix.
“Any recent infections?” She glanced at his face and hands. A masked guard held a dog that sniffed Trip perfunctorily. Trip smiled at the dog; then, as the guard motioned him on, went through the door, into the Pyramid. And outside.
He gasped, stopping so quickly that he was immediately buffeted by more people hurrying by.
“Watch it, asshole,” someone hissed. Trip stepped aside, blinking in amazement.
Overhead, the sun shone radiantly in a blue sky. Golden sun like the first day of summer vacation, sky so brilliant it was like blue paint thrown into his eyes. A faint warm wind was blowing, just enough that Trip could feel the hair on the back of his neck stir. The breeze smelled sweetly of earth and pine needles, and fresh water. Beneath his feet the ground felt uneven. But it was all there, branches of trees moving against very high thin white clouds, light exploding behind leaves and limbs in a thousand rayed parhelions. There were people everywhere, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, walking and running and talking animatedly. Most of them were expensively dressed and masked, in what looked to Trip like evening clothes, or outfits for a costume party; but other people were wearing ostentatiously casual outdoor clothing, the kind you bought at L.L. Bean once upon a time, or from catalogs that pretended to outfit expeditions.