Virtual Light

�Oh, I guess you could say I knew him. I knew him. I knew him like you shouldn�t have to know anyone, Rydell. I knew everything he did. I�d go to sleep, nights, listening to the sound of him breathing. It got so I could judge how many he�d had, just by his breathing.�

�He�d had?�

�He drank. Serbian. You were a policeman, weren�t you?�

�Yeah.�

�Ever have to watch anybody, Rydell?�

�I never got that far.�

�It�s a funny thing, watching someone. Traveling with them. They don�t know you. They don�t know you�re there. Oh, they guess. They assume you�re there. But they don�t know who you are. Sometimes you catch them looking at someone, in the lobby of the hotel, say, and you know they think it�s you, the one who�s watching. But it never is. And as you watch them, Rydell, over a period of months, you start to love them.�

Rydell saw a shiver go through Chevette Washington�s tensed white thigh.

�But then, after a few more months, twenty flights, two dozen hotels, well, it starts to turn itself around..

�You don�t love them?�

�No. You don�t. You start to wait for them to fuck up, Rydell. You start to wait for them to betray the trust. Because a courier�s trust is a terrible thing. A terrible thing.�

�Courier?�

�Look at her, Rydell. She knows. Even if she�s just riding confidential papers around San Francisco, she�s a courier. She�s entrusted, Rydell. The data becomes a physical thing. She carries it. Don�t you carry it, baby?�

She was still as some sphinx, white fingers deep in the gray fabric of the center bucket.

�That�s what I do, Rydell. I watch them carry it. I watch them. Sometimes people try to take it from them.� He finished the Coke. �I kill those people. Actually that�s the best part of the job. Ever been to San Jose, Rydell?�

�Costa Rica?�

�That�s right.�

�Never have.�

�People know how to live, there.�

�You work for those data havens� Rydell said.

�I didn�t say that. Somebody else must�ve said that.�

�So did he� Rydell said. �He was carrying those glasses to somebody, up from Costa Rica, and she took �em.�

�And I was glad she did. So glad. I was in the room next to his. I let myself in through the connecting door. I introduced myself. He met Loveless. First time. Last time.� The gun never wavered, but he began to scratch his head with his hand in the surgical glove. Scratch it like he had fleas or something.

�Loveless?�

�My nom. Nom de thing.� Then a long rattle of what Rydell took to be Spanish, but he only caught nombre de something. �Think she�s tight, Rydell? I like it tight, myself.�

�You American?�

His head sort of whipped sideways, a little, when Rydell said that, and his eyes unfocused for a second, but then they came back, clear as the chromed rim around the muzzle of his gun. �You know who started the havens, Rydell?�

�Cartels� Rydell said, �the Colombians.�

�That�s right. They brought the first expert systems into Central America, nineteen-eighties, to coordinate their shipping. Somebody had to go down there and install those systems. War on drugs, Rydell. Lot of Americans on either side, down there.�

�Well� Rydell said, �now we just make our own drugs up here, don�t we?�

�But they�ve got the havens, down there. They don�t even need that drug business. They�ve got what Switzerland used to have. They�ve got the one place in the world to keep what people can�t afford to keep anywhere else.�

�You look a little young to have helped put that together.�

�My father. You know your father, Rydell?�

�Sure.� Sort of, anyway.

�I never did. I had to have a lot of therapy, over that.�

Sure glad it worked, Rydell thought. �Warbaby, he work for the havens?�

A sweat had broken out on the man�s forehead. Now he wiped it with the back of the hand that held the gun, but Rydell saw the gun click back into position like it was held by a magnet.

�Turn on the headlights, Rydell. It�s okay. Left hand off the wheel.�

�Why?�

�Cause you�re dead if you don�t.�

�Well, why?�

�Just do it, okay?� Sweat running into his eyes.

Rydell took his left hand off the wheel, clicked the lights, double-clicked them to high beams. Two cones of light hit into a wall of dead shops, dead signs, dust on plastic. The one in front of the left beam said THE GAP.

�Why�d anybody ever call a store that?� Rydell said.

�Trying to fuck with my head, Rydell?�

�No� Rydell said, �it�s just a weird name. Like all those places look like gaps, now��

�Warbaby�s just hired help, Rydell. IntenSecure brings him in when things get too sloppy. And they do, they always do.�

They were parked in a sort of plaza, in a mall, the stores all boarded or their windows whitewashed. Either underground or else it was roofed over. �So she stole the glasses out of a hotel had IntenSecure security, they brought in Warbaby?� Rydell looked at Chevette Washington. She looked like one of those chrome things on the nose of an antique car, except she was getting goosebumps down her thigh. Not exactly warm in here, which made Rydell think it might be underground after all.

�Know what, Rydell?�

�What?�

�You don�t know shit about shit. As much as I tell you, you�ll never understand the situation. It�s just too big for someone like you to understand. You don�t know how to think in those terms. IntenSecure belongs to the company that owns the information in those glasses.�

�Singapore� Rydell said. �Singapore own DatAmerica, too?�

�You can�t prove it, Rydell. Neither could Congress.�

�Look at those rats over there��

�Fucking with my head��

Rydell watched the last of the three rats vanish into the place that had been called The Gap. In through a loose vent or something. A gap. �Nope. Saw �em.�

�Has it occurred to you that you wouldn�t be here right now if Lucius fucking Warbaby hadn�t taken up rollerblading last month?�

�How�s that?�

�He wrecked his knee. Warbaby wrecks his knee, can�t drive, you wind up here. Think about it. What does that tell you about late-stage capitalism?�

�Tell me about what?�

�Don�t they teach you anything in that police academy?�

�Sure� Rydell said, �lots of stuff.� Thinking: how to talk to crazy fuckers when you�re being held hostage, except he was having a hard time remembering what they�d said. Keep �em talking and don�t argue too much, something like that. �How come the stuff in those glasses has everybody�s tail in a twist, anyway?�

�They�re going to rebuild San Francisco. From the ground up, basically. Like they�re doing to Tokyo. They�ll start by layering a grid of seventeen complexes into the existing infrastructure. Eighty-story office/residential, retail/residence in the base. Completely self-sufficient. Variable-pitch parabolic reflectors, steam-generators. New buildings, man; they�ll eat their own sewage.�

�Who�ll eat sewage?�

�The buildings. They�re going to grow them, Rydell. Like they�re doing now in Tokyo. Like the maglev tunnel.�

�Sunflower� Chevette Washington said, then looked like she regretted it.

�Somebody�s been look-ing�� Gold teeth flashing.

�Uh, hey�� Go for that talking-to-the-armed-insane mode.

�Yes?�

�So what�s the problem? They wanna do that, let �em.�

�The problem� this Loveless said, starting to unbutton his shirt, �is that a city like San Francisco has about as much sense of where it wants to go, of where it should go, as you do. Which is to say, very little. There are people, millions of them, who would object to the fact that this sort of plan even exists. Then there�s the business of real estate��

�Real estate?�

�Know the three most important considerations in any purchase of real estate, Rydell?� Loveless�s chest, hairless and artificially pigmented, was gleaming with sweat.

�Three?�

�Location� Loveless said, �location, and location.�

�I don�t get it.�

�You never will. But the people who know where to buy, the people who�ve seen where the footprints of the towers fall, they will, Rydell. They�ll get it all.�