“Okay.” The Rajput pulls down her hood.
“Okay,” Piña says.
“She working with Piña?” True’s sitting up now.
“Duh.”
“Hello, baba,” the Rajput says. “As always, a pleasure.”
Piña nudges True in the ribs. “You’re lucky Piña found you. Word says you into mountains of shit. You look like you landed in it already. Bong Bong really fucked you up, huh? Then that bomb. Piña thought you were dead, but the Rajput saw you leave the building alive.”
The Rajput peers out the porthole. “Some men are difficult to kill. They live their lives while those around perish. It is their karma. Perhaps it is your karma, baba.”
Piña shakes her head. “Don’t get all mystical. He’s just lucky his fucking karma wasn’t blown into the Pacific. You the target? Or that other guy?”
“Me.”
“How you know?”
“There was a hologram of me at the scene.”
“You are fucking lucky. That kind of missile doesn’t make many mistakes.”
“Any ideas who it is?” True asks.
“No. But if they go to that apartment and don’t find any of your DNA dripping down the walls, they’ll come after you again.”
“Or they’ll assume I’m dead already.”
Piña pats True on his head. “Would you?”
“Assume I’m dead?” True holds the thought. Turns to the Rajput. “No. How did you stay in contact with Piña? I scanned you and didn’t pick up anything.”
“There are many forms of communication, baba. There are the tribes that speak through clicks. There are those who speak through their lovemaking. Others speak through art and music. We use sign language, since I do not trust portable transmitters.”
Chalk up a victory for low-tech, True thinks.
“Piña’s got people around. That’s how she knew Bong Bong was waiting for you last night.” She takes True’s hand, her own calloused from years of pavement propulsion and iron hoisting. “Most people just take, but you treat Piña straight up.” She produces a package.
True takes it. Stuffed into a synthetic paper bag, almost weightless. “What’s this?”
“Since you’re not a mindreader...”
He tears it open to reveal a black designer protecto-vest with an ornate tattoo on the back. A snake chewing its own tail, weaving in and out of a fiery wreath. A name on it: Ramos.
“What happened to Ramos?”
“Eh, he don’t need it. Put it on. A boy’s gotta protect himself.” Pina absently plays with her eyebrow ring. “You could stay. Be Piña’s assistant. No one’s going to fuck with you then. And Piña needs someone smart. The bizzing get so big sometimes.”
But True has a better plan. Piña says, “It’s fucking perfect to hide out in. A guy could get lost there for a while.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
Pinatubo takes True’s hand and jerks him down to her level. Eye to eye, nose to nose, she kisses him, playfully nips his lower lip. Whispers: “The hologram means it was a professional hit.
THE VIRTUALOSO
CHAPTER 11
Narita airport is redolent with the scent of a desperate people on the move but getting nowhere. The terminal buildings are in jigsaw pieces: glass shards, cement crumbs, twisted sticks of steel laying in hastily swept piles, support beams wrapped in gauze to increase their tensile strength. True studies the gauze, stops to touch it, feel the rough fibers with his thumb and fingers, is tempted to bandage himself.
Japanese wander—some aimlessly, others with purpose—in search of food, water, or medical aid. They wait in lines that tail out of the videophone bank, the government aid center, the food bank for twice-a-day rations; they suffer sleep fever, bodies draped over plastic fast-food-colored chairs and couches, and then bad dreams, negative karma prodding them into a quasi-waking state.
They’ve been waiting days, not hours, their lives crammed into shopping bags or stuffed into wilting rice sacks or waterlogged boxes. And that smell, the odor of malaise, hopelessness, overcrowding, stagnation. True knows it threatens to trap him, too, if he lets it.
He has to step over an old man lying flat-boarded, his back brushing the floor.
“Mizu. Mizu.” The man is trembling, administered to in rusted whispers by a woman.
The woman: “Shhhh.” She’s old, too—his wife?—stoop-backed and haggard.
True’s sure the man’s voice is of another. But it’s not, couldn’t be, the old refugee he interviewed on Nerula’s pier. Just another ancient man not yet ready to take leave from this life but being shown the door nonetheless. True offers a bottle of water. Leaves before he can be thanked.
The quake split and spat out gobs of airport, formed one-of-a-kind architectural wonders, wonders that ceased, ending in jagged lines and crumpled walls. The second floor lacks confidence, teeters uneasily; glass not shattered is taped dull brown. Departing flights quintupled in recent days. A diaspora ensued, is ensuing, to McSingapore, McBangkok, McSeoul, places known for fast food and technology, already Eden to clusters of Japanese expatriate salary-tachi.
True searches for a means to town, but service centers are unwomanned and unmanned, as if these once banally smiling figures had cut and run, leaving counters spread with dust. Through holes punched out behind the counters, he peers out to the parking lot, where crunched cars and buses are piled in heaps. He knows not to rent a car, even if any are available; that would render him traceable.
“I knew you’d get your ass here, True Ailey.” A woman’s voice behind him, familiar, yet not one he recognizes in a split.
True pirouettes. “Reiner Jacobi. This is a coincidence.”
Reiner scrunches her forehead, amused or disappointed, it’s hard to tell. She looks every bit and byte as good as her broadcast image: long, spiraling strands of cordovan hair, buff physique, skin moist and thick, as if in her line of work she requires more than the usual seven layers. “Yeah, right, a coincidence.” Surrounds her words with a drafty sigh. “Perhaps I could interest you in some prime pieces of Tokyo real estate. At bargain-basement prices? Oh, shit.” Spits the final t. “Basements are all we have left in quake-ee-yo. Give me your wrist-top.”
“What?”
“Believe me, I’m doing you a favor.” She snatches his wrist-top and transfers the data to another miniature computer. Seconds later, the light pulses green, transference complete. “I can’t decide whether you have a death wish or you’re just molto retardo. I did a story once on a dude on the run from the yakuza? Innocent kind of guy, a lot like you? Lasted about a fucking week before they found him skewered, charred like yakitori.” She smiles sweetly. “Be right back, darling.”
Reiner taps keys percussively while striding to a family waiting for transit to Luzonia, a post-quake launch pad to other lands. She talks with the boy, maybe eight, takes his hands into hers, wraps them around the wrist-top. And as he watches this, True realizes he can actually smell Reiner’s perfume—flowers: roses, marigolds, lilacs, petals ground to powder and stirred in alcohol, misting down, a dab behind the knee, a smudge behind the ear. And this is remarkable; extraordinary, really, because True hasn’t been able to smell anything in a year-plus, 400 days of silent odors, smell-less scents, conducting his life in a world he could see, feel, hear, but not smell or taste.
The child accesses the wrist-top video games and is instantly enmeshed in a 3-D graphic net, spaceships firing salvos as he ducks and fires back. True gives the family the once-over, guesses middle-class with nothing now save for tattered clothes, tattered boxes, tattered lives.
Reiner hands True another wrist-top. A newer model. More RAM, more memory, more power, more features than his own. Someone else had the same type. Seconds later, the answer: Aslam.
True snaps it on. “Will the kid have access to all my files, too, or just games?”
“Unh-uh. I erased everything except the games. It’s all he wants anyway.�
��
True’s files are in order. “What was wrong with mine? It doesn’t have all these features, but it was getting the job done.”
“You mean setting you up for the kill. It’s amazing you’re not toast already. I heard about Rush on Aussie Beat. When I heard you were missing, I figured you’d pull some Fugitive shit. Judging by the pizza stains on the wall, Rush isn’t going to be irritating viewers with his formica personality anymore.”
“How’d you know I was coming to Tokyo?”
“I tracked you.”
“How?”
She taps on his wrist-top. “You’ve been leaving a beeping trail of electronic breadcrumbs since you fled.”
Every WWTV wrist-top is equipped with a location key, for use in kidnappings or other emergencies. He’s sure his wasn’t activated, though.
“It’s not like you’d left your location beam on,” she says, almost reading his thoughts. “I accessed your code through the WWTV data guide and homed in that way. When I discovered the signal was moving this way, I knew you were coming. I mean, it made sense, right? Where else could you hide? I simply checked the air scheds. And—what the hell?—there was a flight from Nerula arriving right about now.”
No wonder she ditched his wrist-top. The thought occurs he shouldn’t let the kid have it, but fear—fear of dying, fear of pissing off Reiner (he hates to admit)—crams these misgivings back. “Thanks.” What else can he say?
“For meeting your plane? Don’t mention it. It’s not like I have a lot to do around here.”
“No. Listen—” True searches for a soft spot, anywhere. “I should have ditched the wrist-top before I left Nerula. It was—”
“—stupid.”
“OK.”
“You know what the definition of a good journo is?”
“Tell me.”
“Someone who comes down from the hills after the battle is over and courageously shoots the wounded. That’s how you get stories. And the story is that Rush is now two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese. I want to know why the fuck.”
True isn’t sure he wants to work with her.
“I know shit’s going down, and you and me, we’re going to hash it out.” Then Reiner, as quickly as she heats up, ices cool. “True, we’re pros. I’m not doing this just because you’re WWTV and it’s part of my responsibility to save your ass. Frankly, I could use your help.” She tugs him toward the exit. “I need you. There’s too much here for one reporter. What do you say? We need to work together on this.”
Spelunking through a hole in the terminal, over to an abandoned runway where vehicles are parked. To prevent theft, armed hoods sprawl lazily on car hoods; except in one case, a big, clunking electric Ford, all hood, a jet-black Labrador leashed to the front bumper. True remembers the dog from Reiner’s hovercraft broadcast, the day the earthquake jiffy-popped Tokyo.
“Don’t worry Rue—uh, True—well now that’s a slip,” Reiner says. She reaches into her pocket for a dog biscuit. “No, it wasn’t a slip, True. I was acting like an asshole. Don’t mind the bitch.”
“Which one?”
Reiner ignores the insult and turns her attention to the dog, which is straining against the leash. True is amused by the puffs of fur floating into the air. “Sit. Shed. Breathe. Breathe. Drool. Good girl.” Reiner says this in a monotone, cramming the biscuit into the gaping maw, squeezing it shut, and pats the dog on the head. “It’s not that she’s dumb, I figure, it’s just that expectations of her abilities may have been inflated.”
“Is she going to pull us into town?”
“The car works. But there’s so much shit in the atmosphere the solar panels on the roof are useless for energy storage. But I have my ways for recharging it. At least the car won’t get stolen with the dog here.”
“What’s her name?” True tentatively pats its snout.
“Just ‘Dog.’ I found her wandering around outside my condo on my way to grab a hovercraft to cover the quake. I figure she came from a nearby pet store. I was going to bring her back but there was no pet store anymore. She has good karma. Some animals are hard to kill.”
“Some people, too.” True remembering the Rajput’s words.
Reiner punches wrist-top buttons and the car doors chatter spasmodically, like plastic novelty teeth. “I didn’t say the car was without its charms.” She unleashes Dog. After a brief but energetic struggle, she crams the animal into the back seat. Shuts the door. “One good thing about the quake is that navigation systems don’t work. All the roads are fucked up. God knows how many detours we’ll have to take, so you’ll have to trust my driving.”
She peels out of the parking lot, swerves right then left, past a pile of wrecked cars; then, flooring it, shoots out onto what True assumes is an expressway, empty except for abandoned hunks of metal along the shoulders.
Sweat dribbles into True’s eye. “The A/C doesn’t work?”
“Cuts down on mileage. I can’t rely on getting a charge, so I conserve.”
“Fair enough.” True hits the switch to roll down the window.
Reiner, clipping along at ninety-five, dodging potholes, fissures, and other obstacles, takes her eyes off the road. “You have to pull the thing down manually. I turned off all the electrical gadgets except the engine.”
True tries to pull down the window down. It stays stubborn, shut. “How?”
“I rigged it. Hold the switch down and pull on the window at the same time, it’ll open.”
True does, and dank air hums in, clouded in burnt rubber, chemicals, and singed earth. There’s fire in the sky, pockets of blood on the horizon mixed with darker hues—brown, deep purple, sticky sickly green, mauve.
“See that?” Reiner points through the front glass. “There’s a cult here that sees that kind of atmospheric disturbance as proof there’s a new world order. Old Tokyo, old Edo, is dead. Long live Tokyo. These Hari-Krishna Rajaneeshy Sun Myung Meow Bows think the quake was more than a quake. Like God’s way of wiping out the old and foisting upon this world the new.”
“Maybe they’re right.”
“Maybe.” Reiner offers this doubtfully.
The night’s not dark. Fires lick spastically at buildings and rubble. The car’s lights wash out tracts of road as Reiner slaloms around potholes, turns hard to the left, to the right. Dog skitters and slides in the back. True can tell Reiner enjoys playing race car driver. They exit onto another expressway, the Kosoku Dori, and after swerving around a ramshackle shack constructed on a tiny island separating the Tokyo’s two main road arteries, they’re surrounded by a motorcycle gang, matching Reiner’s frantic speed. Rising Sun flags parachute behind the dozen or so bikes, engines rattling. Gas engines. No electric whirrs here. No helmets either, just pompadours.
Reiner looks back. “Shit. Bosozoku.”
“What?
“Speed Tribes. Nipponese Hell’s Angels.”
Reiner drops an anvil on the accelerator and the car leaps over a gaping pothole, hits the ground skidding, and maneuvers around a snaking fissure that takes up most of the highway’s six lanes. When she straightens out the car, True hears a knock on his door. There: a bosozoku, close enough to touch, his hair crafted to his head, frozen in gel even as wind rages around him. Even his ponytail stays stiff. The biker reaches into his jacket.
True paws at the window.
Reiner screams, “Pull up the fucking window!”
As True’s about to seal them safe, the biker pulls a pistol. Reiner veers; there’s a crunching thud and the bosozoku’s sent sprawling. There’s a moment where the wheels turn on the flipped-over bike, and True thinks he sees a leg twitch through the rear view mirror. Then an explosion.
Other speed tribesmen pull up behind, slowing to fire old-style rifles, machine guns, grenades. An explosion rattles the car. But since they can’t ride and shoot at the same time, and with the windows closed, the car is bullet- and laser-resistant, True and Reiner, for now, are safe. The last of the bikers recede into
the distance.
Reiner says, “You don’t have much of a survival instinct, do you? How did you get by in a DMZ like Luzonia? Here are Reiner’s Rules of Order for a successful holiday in post-quake Japan. Take notes. Rule one: Do exactly as I say. I do not want to have my head blown off because you cannot roll up a fucking window. Rule two: Do exactly as I say. Tell me everything you know about what happened to Rush. Rule three: Do exactly as I say. I call the shots here. It’s my turf.”
She checks the rear mirror, then enters a code in the car’s keyboard. “Hate to waste the power, but this should tell us if anyone else is packing weapons nearby. Finding charges ain’t easy.” Almost as an afterthought: “So, tell me. Was Rush the target, or were you?”
“What makes you think I was?”
“You’re here twenty minutes and already there’s trouble. Besides, Rush couldn’t stir up trouble if he was the lone man in a women’s prison. Figure you were on to something but the hit went awry.”
True lets his eyes mist, his vision blur around a pachinko parlor, shiny chrome and electric lights dazzling, an elongated blur. Reiner’s words catch his attention.
“Rush is like a cat I once had. Whenever I’d come home, he’d race out, jump in front of me while I walked down the path to my door. It was funny. He’d be looking back at me as I walked, slowed to a crawl, until I stepped on him.”
“You sound like an ASPCA poster girl, Reiner. What other fun things have you done? Changed channels on Alzheimer patients to see if they’d notice?” True senses Reiner’s feelings can’t be hurt. Rumpled perhaps, but never hurt.
“C’mon. What were you on to?” Her voice drips insistence.
True stares through the window again. Another glassed-in pachinko parlor. The only lighted buildings around. “How come pinball parlors get power while the rest of Tokyo is dark?”
“They’re run by yakuza. Practically the only places open for business are run by organized crime. Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not sure what I was on to yet.”