The Bridge Trilogy Part 150

-We're going to try to stop you.

-Of course. That's the shape of things tonight, isn't it? I couldn't expect otherwise.

Now Laney feels two things simultaneously: a coldness, physical and inescapable, rising beneath his heart, and the secret, ranked presence of the individual inhabitants of the Walled City, arrayed behind him like clay soldiers set to march forever across the floor of an emperor's tomb.

Yet these will move, should Laney require them, and he senses as well the presence of Rei Toei, and he knows that the configuration is not yet complete.

251.

-She's here, Laney. She's in the flow. You've done that, you and your friends. But it won't help now, because I'm going where you won't find me. For the duration. Till the deal is done. Your friends aren't the only ones who learned how to secede.

And with the cold rising around his heart, Laney knows that this is true, that Harwood is going now, inverting himself into an informational wormhole of the sort the Walled City exists within- And reaches down (it seems like down, though in this place there

is neither direction nor ordination), a legion reaching with him, to find- 252.

62. LOS PROJECTOS.

SILENCIO is remembering the rusting cans of fire, in the yards of los projectos, how the men stand and spit and warm their hands. Playboy and Raton he had met around such a fire, and now there is the smell of the cans in this room, and he is frightened, and even this kind one, who makes her own light and speaks to him in the language of his mother (but kind) will not keep the fear away, and he wishes only to return to the watches, to their faces and conditions and values, this universe that has discovered him, this mode of being, without which there is only the fear.

Crouching here on the black man's bed, the kind one glowing beside him, he feels the fear come very big, and the black man in the closet, throwing things out, and Silencio wants only the watches.

At the edge of his mind wait men with dog's teeth and wings, their faces blacker than the face of the black man with the watches. Their faces are the black of the drug men rub into their gums.

"Bring the projector closer," she tells the man, this one who stilled Playboy and Raton, and Silencio sees that for the time she speaks she is another, her hair smooth gold, the bones of her face another's bones. "Bring the notebook. Be very careful of the cable." And the man shifts the silver thing Silencio fears (now Silencio fears everything) closer, and brings the watch finder to the bed, still on its wire.

"Connect the eyephones. Quickly!" The man puts the wire from the hat into the watch finder and hands Silencio the hat. Inside, Silencio sees, are the pictures that fit against the eyes, and they are pictures of the watch on the screen of the finder, and Silencio feels relief, the fear moving away, back to the edge of things where the dog-toothed men are. He puts the hat over his eyes.

And is in another place, nothing up or down, but something spreading forever, wider than the yards of los projectos or any other. s.p.a.ce he has ever seen.

But the one who shines is there, and beside her another, less clear.

253.

"This is Mister Laney," she says, in the language of Silencio's mother. "You must help him. He needs to find a watch. This watch." And she holds in her palm the watch Silencio had seen on the screen. It is a LeCoultre "Futurematic," a back-winder, black dial, with wind reserve. Silencio knows its serial number, its bid history, its number in today's auction. "Someone is taking it away, and you must follow it."

Silencio looks from the beautiful face of the Futurematic to the face of the woman.

"You must find it for him-"

And the watch is gone, and she is gone, and the other with her, leaving Silencio in that place that is only wide, and without color or shape, and Silencio thinks he might cry now.

But very far away, he feels it, the watch. He knows it, and it is there still, but only this distance, these gray fields of light. Gone again.

No. There is the system: the system of all the watches. Similarities. Differences. The words. A coding. Nothing is lost within the system, and the Futurematic rises inside as though it were lifting through clear water. It is within his grasp.

And gone again. Blankness.

No. He wants it. He enters the system again.

He crosses the gray fields, seeing only the Futurematic. Where it has gone...

254.

RYDELL had had a certain amount of riot-control training in Knoxville and knew something, in theory anyway, about fires and natural disasters, but nothing had prepared him for the weirdness of clinging one-handed to the back of an ATV, while Elmore, the meshback Chevette's friend had somehow talked into driving, gunned it back toward Bryant Street through the bridge's upper level.

Rydell had never seen a vehicle here before, aside from bicycles, and he suspected that under normal circ.u.mstances they wouldn't have been allowed to get very far.

But these were not normal circ.u.mstances, nor was this in any way a normal place. People were boiling out of the upper parts of the squatter's community like ants out of a broken nest, and what struck Rydell about it now was the quiet with which they were doing it. These were not, in some sense, civilians, but hardened survivors used to living on their own in a community of similar people. There were a few people screaming, and probably running the wrong way, or in circles, but from the moving vantage point of the bucking, pitchingATV~ it was hard to tell.

Rydell's impression was mainly of determination; they'd decided that the place was burning, and they'd decided they were getting out. Most people seemed to be carrying something. A few were carrying small children, more carried household goods, and Rydell had seen at least three carrying guns.

Elmore's style of getting through the crowd was straightforward; he'd gun it toward whoever was in his way, sounding an irritating little horn that Rydell suspected n.o.body was hearing anyway, and trust that people would get out of his way. Which they managed to do, some just barely, until the ATV's right back wheel clipped a stack of yellow plastic vegetable crates and brought that down on top of a couple of heavily tattooed characters in lederhosen and paint-splattered construction boots. Elmore had to hit the brakes then, and Rydell saw Chevette flip off; he couldn't grab her, because he had the chain gun in the hand nearest her and no way to put it down.

Blocked by the pile of empty yellow crates, Elmore whipped it into 255.

63. FUNICULAR.

reverse, pulled back about four feet, and popped it, plowing into the crates and the men in lederhosen, who promptly went lateral, swarming over the pile of crates and grabbing Elmore, who didn't look to Rydell like fighting material. "Get off him," Chevette's girlfriend shouted, trying to keep from being pulled from the saddle with the driver. Rydell slung the chain gun up and put it in the face of one of the tattooed men. The guy blinked at it, looked

Rydell in the eye, and started to go after him, but some cop reflex caused Rydell to bellow "LAPD!

Get on the ground!"-which made absolutely no sense under the circ.u.mstances, but seemed to work.

"This is a gun," he added, and remembered Fontaine's advice that the chain gun was anything but directional.

"You people are crazy," snapped one of the tattooed men, barechested and elaborately inked, scrambling over the yellow crates, the light catching on a round steel stud in his lower lip. His partner was right behind him.

Rydell jumped down and found Chevette struggling to extricate herself from what seemed to be a pile of squashed eggplant. As he was turning back to the ATV, he saw a woman with a crew cut and serious biceps tackle Elmore, who went over into the crates.

"Where's Tessa?"

"I don't know," said Rydell, taking Chevette's hand. "Come on." As soon as they were away from the ATV, which in any case wasn't going anywhere, Rydell began to get the idea that something was seriously wrong here. While most of the way from Fontaine's, people had been running toward Bryant, now he saw they were running back, and now you could see the fear. "I think it's burning there, by the ramp," Rydell said. You could see the smoke now, and Rydell noticed how quickly it was thickening.

"Where's Tessa?"

"Lost her."

A young girl came running, screaming, with her shirt on fire, from the direction of the city.

Rydell tripped her, handed Chevette the chain gun, and bent to roll the girl over, smothering the flames. The girl just kept screaming, and then she was up and running, though Rydell saw that her shirt had been extinguished. He took the chain gun back from 256.

Chevette. "We don't want to try that way," he said. He didn't want to think about what might be happening there, if the crowd was trying to force its way through flame. "Come on, let's try this." He tugged her through the doorway of a cafe, deserted, cups of coffee on the tables, music playing calmly, steam rising from a pot of soup on a hotplate behind the counter. He pulled her behind the counter, and into the tight little kitchen, but found that while there were windows, they'd been barred against thieves with elaborately welded grids of rebar. "s.h.i.t," he said, leaning to peer through the salt-crusted pane, trying to estimate the drop here, in case they could find a way.

Now it was her turn to grab him, pull him out, but she pulled him out into the path of a fresh batch of panicked bridge people, fleeing whatever was happening toward Bryant. They both went down, and Rydell saw the chain gun drop through a hole sawn in the deck to admit a bundle of sewage-tubing. He braced for an explosion when the thing hit bottom, but none came.

"Look," Chevette said, getting to her feet, pointing, "we're at the foot of Skinner's tower. Let's try to get up there."

"There's no way off that," Rydell protested, his side killing him as he got up.

"There's nothing to burn, either," she said, "once you're past the 'ponics operation."

"Smoke'll get us."

"You don't know that," she said, "but down here it'll get us for sure." She looked at him. "I'm sorry, Rydell."

"Why?"

"Because I was trying to make all this your fault."

"I sure hope it's not," he said.