True scans the misc., a bland assortment of personal calls. Didn’t Rush do anything journo-related? At list’s end are a dozen calls with no identifiable second party. Callers with sophisticated identification protection technology or whose voices were never ID’d, sources with stories for sale. Rush declines; budgetary constraints. Some rely on an auto-translator. They speak Luzonian or another tongue, Rush responds in English, and via technology, True eavesdrops. One call from outside Nerula but not originating stateside or from Japan. True keys in. No icon, just blank air, Rush on camera, talking back. The voice: Aslam. The insurgency wants to make a major announcement. We’ve decided to pass word through you. I’ll give you an exclusive.
I’ll send my number one man.
No. You. Alone. Or no exclusive. True can feel Aslam smirking through cable feed. You’ll be sorry if you pass on it. Big time careers have sprung from less.
Rush stroking his chin, hedging. How do I know you won’t kidnap me?
Why would we kidnap you? We are revolutionaries who need you to spread our message. You are a journalist who needs a message to spread. We need each another.
You have a very pragmatic world-view, Mr. Aziz.
Practically pay-for-view as the need arises.
Rush tells Aslam he’ll have to mull. Later, more calls from Aslam, settling on interview content, rendezvous-time, coordinates; Rush finalizing, OK-ing footage from the insurgency’s PR firm (for use in the promos), then a six-hour research link with WWTV’s database from Luzonia’s interior. After Rush’s return to Nerula, another flurry of calls. True accesses the latest one, from twenty minutes ago—Rush on one side, blank, the other, originating from a nearby pre-millen phone booth. No ID, no voice print. A sophisticated ID block.
Rush scratching at uneasiness, talking back. OK. OK. But no more talk over the link. Come by. Now. You’ll get what you want. But this is the last time. Rush hangs up, brings gray static to bear.
True calls to Eden. “By tapping my wrist-top, can just anyone key on my location?”
She’s touch-screening, tap-tap. Holds up a finger, so wait. Tap-tap. “Not unless you want them to. You can transmit your location to anyone you want. You can also send out a false signal. That’s always fun. Reroute it through any toaster oven in the country.”
“I’m going out.”
Eden unhitched from her post. “Where are you going?” From her, an unusual query.
“Checking into something.”
“There’s so much we need to do here.”
“It’s important.”
“Not more than tracking the war effort.”
“You’re upset. Why?”
She pulls aside. “While I’ve been scavenging computer equipment from every second-hand crap hole I know, you’ve been on the telelink.”
Curiosity prickling. What is she up to? “Journalism isn’t exact. There are no special algorithms you can rely on to pull a story together. There are lulls and breaks, followed by spasms of activity. That’s the reality. That’s why I’m going.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“What’s come over you?”
“Nothing.”
“Then”—True kisses her forehead—“I’ll see you in a while.”
He’s at the door and Eden’s sulking at her computer, trackpad-tapping with furious hands.
* * *
True’s relieved to be away. It’s not supposed to be this way, wasn’t like this before.
The streets are grim, sun-dappled plague-ees in degrees of decay. A body sweeper, a black truck that scoops up corpses, converts them to fuel, is spewing charcoal wind and bleached flakes. A perpetual motion machine. Chaotic queues at the phone bank, those in front hold off the rest. True thinks about asking to see a phone log—perhaps there’s a signature—but mayhem is not conducive to careful record-keeping. In the same building next door is a new VR shop. 3D-posters jostle for position on the front plexiglass, ads for hardware, primo-violence software, sexicles, one special offer: Dial internationally from next door, take 10 percent off any software.
A familiar sari stepping out. “Baba, I am surprised to see you. You are legendary in the shanties. Like a cat with nine lives. How many are left?” Her cancer spots have faded. Business must have picked up.
“Lost count, Rajput. Were you able to de-glitch that imaginary lover software?”
“I was indeed.”
“What did you buy?”
She shows four packages: “I borrow a little from one module, combine it with another, shape it with a third. With the proper recipe, I’ll have sizzling autumn sales.”
“Aren’t they copyrighted?”
“Do you see any CopyCops?” She tucks the package under her arm. Speaks in pianissimo. “Would you like a taste of pure FREEze?”
“How can a synth drug be pure? And no.”
“Perhaps a real woman this time? Or if you are intrigued with organ donation, I can arrange a buyer.” She writes an imaginary $-figure in her palm.
“That’s below market value.”
Leavening shoulders. “This is why we haggle. I propose a price, you tell me it is too high. Haggling helps us to feel comfortable with each other and our transaction.”
“Just the same, I’ll pass.”
“Then until we biz again.” Her sari billows as she leaves. True zooms in on the Rajput while at the same time messaging Piña, who’s reduced to a cube in the upper right-hand corner.
“You got your ass back here.” Piña smiles broadly. She’s in her arcade. VR static, missile whistles, and laser fizz, sadistic sex as ambience.
“Lying low, but I’m into some odd-frequency ozone. Can Piña meet in, say, a half hour?”
“Where are you?”
“Near home but on my way to the shanties.”
“Tailing someone?”
“Yup.”
“Piña’ll send word. A guide OK?”
An in-situ drug deal in progress. True has to accept that her business comes first. “Fine. The guide rendezvous is over the tunnel. Track me over this channel.”
“Ooooh. New equipment? That what you been spending Piña’s money on?”
“No.”
“Most guides can’t read, so Piña’ll say, Take care of the guarang.”
The Rajput cruising up the tunnel paths.
“The tailgate party has begun.” True follows the Rajput to the shanties over landfill picked clean. Milling at the entrance, a small figure in a long, black coat. Face obscured by a hood. Just two green-olive eyes. “Piña’s guide?”
Nodding cloth. True projects the map so the guide will know where to go. Through the hologram True sees a house on fire, its twig-like foundation crumbling to earth. “We’re here.” True points to a dot in the holoscreen. “We want to go there.” In the spleen of the shanties. “Can you speak?”
The hood shakes, no. True’s voice synth repeats the question in Luzonian. No again. At least True won’t have to listen to idle chatter. They follow the Rajput past huts that are luxury-less except for TVs. The Rajput enters a home fused from refrigerator crates, a fire curling from a hole in the floor. True accesses the volume visualization software and, through a series of clever algorithms he doesn’t understand, strips away crate layers until he sees inside. He filters the conversation through the translation program.
The Rajput is hugging a boxy Luzonian woman, who clears a place for the Rajput to sit. The sole chair.
“God has given me a great gift. You were able to get the money,” the woman says. “Now with both payments, I can get AIDS medicine.”
“I have a black market connection for that, as well. I can fulfill all your commercial needs.”
“Is this drug expensive?”
The Rajput emphasizes the cost by sucking air. “I can get the medicine for the same money I received on your behalf today, if we add it to the initial payment.”
“I am grateful.” She falls to her knees. The Rajput allows her to kiss her hand.
There’s something about the woman that uncorks memories for True. Has he seen her face on TV comms for ceiling fans? Escort services? Adobo sauce?
The guide holds a laser pistol to True’s head. “Off.” True, caught off-zone, spins down the VolVis program. Gun still itching, the guide unclasps True’s wrist computer, stuffs it into a pocket. “OK OK OK. You are not stupid as I had thoughtfully considered.”
That syntax. Who else?
Bong Bong pushes back his hood, bites a smile. “Good afternoon, ladies and germs. Good costume? But not as good as these softwares you see through walls with like Superman.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I have voices in the shanties, people loyal at me. They seen you escape, pull the switch with another to die in your place.”
“I didn’t know he was going to die.”
“Then you are even less of a man. Come. We will converse with this Rajput.”
CHAPTER 26
Bong Bong jabs True’s spine with the barrel of his laser. They trudge through the slums, up to the shanty’s sole landmark: a clock tower, constructed a few governments ago to illustrate the point that a cure for poverty would take time.
To the end of time, True thinks. “I’ve never seen the tower up close.”
Bong Bong stops pushing. “It’s nice. Good for tourist. All over, clocks. Lots of clocks.”
More than lots. Coated in time pieces solicited from 240 nations. And, as far as True can tell, none of them match. Thousands of seconds, none in synch.
“Well, India had its Taj Mahal, Thailand has its Grand Palace, Tokyo the Emperor’s residence, why shouldn’t Luzonia have a clock tower that doesn’t tell the right time?”
“The right time is there.” Bong Bong points to a clock on a ridge.
“Guess you just have to know where to look.”
Bong Bong knees True through a door at the landmark’s base. It takes a few breaths before True’s eyes adjust to the dim. Patchouli in the air. The Rajput brandishing a knife. When she recognizes who it is, she tucks it away. There’s creaking in the ceiling beams. Bong Bong spits Luzonian at the Rajput, who marionettes her head, and hands her a pistol, which she pegs on True. Bong Bong travels up the rotting steps.
“He wants you to keep me covered?”
“I’m sorry, Baba, but when you are a lone seed you must float with the wind.”
“And Bong Bong’s the one blowing, right?”
“A veritable hurricane.”
“He thinks someone’s up there?”
“It may perhaps be rats or other such vermin.”
“I should have known you weren’t telling me the truth about the beggar girl. It wasn’t until I saw her mother it made sense. She traded her daughter for money.”
“Not for money. For medicine.”
“She sacrificed her daughter to save herself.”
“To save her husband.”
“A brave man, to be sure.”
“If he perishes, the family perishes. He has work.”
More Bong Bong stomps; de-lurking the clock tower.
“Trading in an eleven-year-old is defensible?”
“I have seen too much death in my life to be upset by something as this. War cost me a whole people.”
“Was she aware of her sacrifice?”
“I do not know. I only ask for what I need to know. Why do you have the privilege of criticizing? You are guarang. A little rich, I think. Your country has never been invaded, you have never feared you will not have enough to eat. Or a roof to protect you. How can you possibly understand what it takes to survive these days of hell?”
“You’re guarang here, too.”
“There are different flavors of guarang. Guarang on package tours, who never venture from comfort. They know nothing of the real world. Other guarang stay at home, live their lives in isolation, as if other cultures do not exist. They soak up the world’s limited resources but add little. Then there are the do-goods. The worst guarang. Before the Paks obliterated my people, we one year received surplus wheat from America. Ah, American wheat, everyone said. Now we will have wheat forever. More wheat than we could imagine. There wasn’t enough room to store it, so much of it went bad. And since this wheat was free, our farmers could not compete and went out of business. The next year we starved. But no help this time from your government. They told us we should be more self-reliant.”
“You were pleased my friend was assassinated.”
“I was ecstatic a follower of that gutter religion died. This time I was able to make a mixture of business and pleasure.”
Bong Bong alighting. Breathing hard, he snatches the pistol from the Rajput. “Nothing nothing nothing. Some bugs. I squashed them.” He wraps True’s computer around his wrist. “I want to see that movie. Get it?” Bong Bong elbows True in the shoulder. The Rajput stands cautiously by the door.
True plays back the meeting between the Rajput and the Luzonian mother. The Rajput’s eyes narrow, terrified. Well, so’s he.
Bong Bong aims. “Stand against the wall, both guarang.”
True joins the Rajput, shirt to sari.
“Baba. You are upset because of the Muslim? Billions of Muslims have died before you or I were born. I was merely facilitating a transaction.”
“Translation: Someone wanted Aslam dead but knew conventional techniques wouldn’t work. He had corporate sponsors, which made him even tougher. That’s where you and Bong Bong came in. You needed to recruit someone to get close to Aslam so the DNA-coded missile could lock and unload. Simple.”
The Rajput eyes Bong Bong, who headshakes a warning.
True plays his hand. “You might as well tell me. Bong Bong isn’t going to let either of us live. He knows you’ve been skimming. What else explains the payment Rush handed you, a payment Bong Bong didn’t know of? You can’t extort in Nerula without going through Bong Bong. Right, Bong Bong?”
Bong Bong cackles in a distinct hyena dialect. “This is very interesting to me, but I do not have time. On behalf of the law enforcemental agency at Nerula, you are sentenced to death. Blah blah blah. OK. That’s it. That’s all I remember from these constitutions.”
“More organs.” Bong Bong nudges her with his foot. “That’s why I aim high. Also this.” He pockets her debit card. “People steal from me, they die. That’s it. Now. The show we all been waiting for. These softwares.”
“It may take a while. I’m just learning myself.”
“Then I kill you, hire the hacker. Maybe I kill you anyway.”
Re-escape: True fires brain blanks. “I can show you stuff that’ll blow your mind, Bong Bong.” True grabs the wrist-top.
Bong Bong brushes True’s hand away. “I hold this computer.”
“First thing, you turn it on. You do that by—”
“Don’t speak down at me.” Bong Bong talks through tight teeth. He jabs at a few buttons. Nothing happens.
“The on switch is here.”
Bong Bong grunts. The 3-D screen fills up their vision, and True pulls up the program menu. He’s not familiar with everything Eden added. “What do you want to see first?”
“To see through walls is handy.”
“But it’s complicated. Better to start with something simple, work our way up.”
Bong Bong’s glands emit suspicion.
“You have the gun, Bong Bong, and the wrist-top.” True selects a psychotropia file—why Eden included it, he doesn’t know—and the happy psychotropic pattern beams overhead.
Bong Bong grinning scar to scar, his eyes scotch-taped to the pattern. He’s far away, recounting life’s happier moments. “Guarang. I was born in these slums. We were poor. Have you ever seen such poverty?”
Yes, many times, True thinks. “No.”
“It kills you. Nothin
g to eat, nothing to play with except for garbage.”
If this is Bong Bong’s happy side, what would greater introspection yield? True wonders. Greek tragedy?
“I was seven. We had a gang. The Magnifico Seven, like an old movie. I found some glue and we went to the roof to sniff. It was hot. Wet like it always is.”
“Jungle sweat.”
Bong Bong looks with wild eyes at True, then his gaze settles back on the pattern. “Jungle sweat. Good.” Clasps True on the shoulder. Implying: You’re not so bad, guarang.
“What happened on the roof?”
“The roof,” Bong Bong mouths. “We make the suicide pact. Why live like pigs when we could die into our way? We got high, high as stars, then held hands and ran to the edge. One-two-three we jumped. Aaaaah—”
“How high?”
“We were fucking high.”
“The roof. How high off the ground?”
“Five, six stories.”
“I haven’t seen a building in the shanties that high.”
“Before the wars, guarang.”
“What did it feel like when you jumped?”
Bong Bong’s eyes spring tears. “Like heaven. We were flying, and the ground came toward my head and I seen the building shoot into the sky. But I was caught by the tree. That’s when they had trees here. Even flowers. People grew food sometimes. Pickled vegetables. The branches scratched my face. Maybe I broke some ribs. But it saved my life. I rolled down the hill. When I stopped I seen the Magnifico Seven, OK, six, all dead. Then I knew nothing could kill me. Then the wars. I was thirteen. I killed many enemies of Luzonia. Except a few times, I was OK. That’s why I am the Police Chief. All my enemies are dead.”
Not all, True thinks. “What about your parents?”
Bong Bong cocks his head. “My father? I don’t know. Dead when I was some baby. My mother was aliving until last year. She was like durian, outside hard and spiky, but sweet and delicious inside.”
To True, durian is the most vile fruit he’s ever smelled or tasted. “You miss her?”
True leans on the door. When Bong Bong closes his eyes, sighs deeply, True tries to bolt. But True bangs his knee on the door, which smashes into Bong Bong’s wrist, cutting off the psychotropia. True sprawls onto the deck, rolls down abridged steps, Laurel-and-Hardying into the dirt. He looks up to see Bong Bong in bent-over spasms of delight, his weapon juiced and ready.