William Gibson - Virtual Light

“You know that brace on Mr. Warbaby’s leg?”

“Yeah.”

“You know that bridge, the one you noticed when we were coming up here?”

“Yeah.”

“And Warbaby, he showed you that picture of that tough-ass messenger kid?”

“Yeah.”

“Well” Freddy said, “She’s the one Mr. Warbaby figures took that man’s property. And she lives out on that bridge, Rydell. And that bridge, man, that’s one evil motherfucking place. Those people anarchists, antichrists, cannibal motherfuckers out there, man…”

“I heard it was just a bunch of homeless people” Rydell said, vaguely recollecting some documentary he’d seen in Knoxville, “just sort of making do.”

“No, man” Freddie said, “homeless fuckers, they’re on the street. Those bridge motherfuckers, they’re like king-hell satanists and shit. You think you can just move on out there yourself? No fucking way. They’ll just let their own kind, see? Like a cult. With ’nitiations and shit.”

“Nitiations?”

“Black ’nitiates” Freddie said, leaving Rydell to decide that he probably didn’t mean it racially.

“Okay” Rydell said, “but what’s it got to do with that brace on Warbaby’s knee?”

“That’s where he got that knee hassled” Freddie said. “He went out there, knowing he was takin’ his life in his hands, to try and recover this little baby. Baby girl” Freddie added, like he liked the ring of that. “Cause these bridge motherfuckers, they’ll do that.”

“Do what?” Rydell asked, flashing back to the Pooky Bear killings.

“They steal children” Freddie said. “And Mr. Warbaby and me, we can’t either of us go out there anymore, Rydell, because those motherfuckers are on to us, you followin’ me?”

“So you want me to?” Rydell asked, stuffing his folded napkin into the oily white paper box that had held his two Kim Chee WaWa’s.

“I’ll let Mr. Warbaby explain it to you” Freddie said.

They found Warbaby where they’d left him, in this dark, high-ceilinged coffee place in what Freddie said was North Beach. He was wearing those glasses again and Rydell wondered what he might be seeing.

Rydell had brought his blue Samsonite in from the Patriot, his bag from Container City. He went into the bathroom to change his clothes. There was just the one, unisex, and it really was a bathroom because it had a bathtub in it. Not like anybody used it, because there was this mermaid painted full-size on the inside, with a brown cigarette butted out on her stomach, just above where the scales started.

Rydell discovered that Kevin’s khakis were split up the ass. He wondered how long he’d been walking around like that. But he hadn’t noticed it back at Container City, so he hoped it had happened in the car. He took the IntenSecure shirt off, stuffed it into the wastebasket, put on one of the black t-shirts. Then he unlaced his trainers and tried to figure out a way to change pants, socks, and underwear without having to put his feet on the floor, which was wet. He thought about doing it in the tub, but that looked sort of scummy, too. Decided you could manage it, sort of, by standing with your feet on the top of your sneakers, and then sort of half-sitting on the toilet. He put everything he took off into the basket. Wondering how much the debit-card Freddie had given him was still good for, he transferred his wallet to the right back pocket of his new jeans. Put on his new jacket. Washed his hands and face in a gritty trickle of water. Combed his hair. Packed the rest of his new clothes into the Samsonite, saving the Container City bag to keep dirty laundry in.

He wanted a shower, but he didn’t know when he’d get one. Clean clothes were the next best thing.

Warbaby looked up when Rydell got back to his table. “Freddie’s told you a little about the bridge, has he, Rydell?”

“Says it’s all baby-eatin’ satanists.”

Warbaby glowered at Freddie. “Too colorfully put, perhaps, but all too painfully close to the truth, Mr. Rydell. Not at all a wholesome place. And effectively outside the reach of the law. You won’t find our friends Svobodov or Orlovsky out there, for instance. Not in any official capacity.”

Rydell caught Freddie start to grin at that, but saw how it was pinched off by Warbaby’s glare.

“Freddie gave me the idea you want me to go out there, Mr. Warbaby. Go out there and find that girl.”

“Yes” Warbaby said, gravely, “we do. I wish that I could tell you it won’t be dangerous, but that is not the case.”

“Well… How dangerous is it, Mr. Warbaby?”

“Very” Warbaby said.

“And that girl, she’s dangerous, too?”

“Extremely” Warbaby said, “and all the more because she doesn’t always look it. You saw what was done to that man’s throat, after all…”

“Jesus” Rydell said, “you think that little girl did that?”

Warbaby nodded, sadly. “Terrible” he said, “these people will do terrible things…”

When they got out to the car, he saw that he’d parked it right in front of this mural of J.D. Shapely wearing a black leather biker jacket and no shirt, being carried up to heaven by half a dozen extremely fruity-looking angels with long blond rocker hair. There were these blue, glowing coils of DNA or something spiraling out of Shapely’s stomach and attacking what Rydell assumed was supposed to be an AIDS virus, except it looked more like some kind of rusty armored space station with mean robot arms.

It made him think what a weird-ass thing it must’ve been to be that guy. About as weird as it had ever been to be anybody, ever, he figured. But it would be even weirder to be Shapely, and dead like that, and then have to look at that mural.

YET HE LIVES IN US NOW, it said under the painting, in foot-high white letters, AND THROUGH HIM DO WE LIVE.

Which was, strictly speaking, true, and Rydell had had a vaccination to prove it.

Chevette’s mother had had this boyfriend once named Oakley, who drank part-time and drove logging trucks the rest, or anyway he said he did. He was a long-legged man with his blue eyes set a little too far apart, in a face with those deep seams down each cheek. Which made him look, Chevette’s mother said, like a real cowboy. Chevette just thought it made him look kind of dangerous. Which he wasn’t, usually, unless he got himself around a bottle or two of whiskey and forgot where he was or who he was with; like particularly if he mistook Chevette for her mother, which he’d done a couple of times, but she’d always gotten away from him and he’d always been sorry about it afterward, bought her Ring-Dings and stuff from the Seven-Eleven. But what Oakley did that she remembered now, looking down through the hatch at this guy with his gun, was take her out in the woods one time and let her shoot a pistol.

And this one had a face kind of like Oakley’s, too, those eyes and those grooves in his cheeks. Like you got from smiling a lot, the way he was now. But it sure wasn’t a smile that would ever make anybody feel good. Gold at the corners of it.

“Now come on down here” he said, stressing each word just the same.

“Who the fuck are you?” Skinner, sounding more interested than pissed-off.

The gun went off. Not very loud, but sharp, with this blue flash. She saw the Japanese guy sit down on the foor, like his legs had gone out from under him, and she thought the guy had shot him.

“Shut up.” Then up at Chevette, “I told you to get down here.”

Then Sammy Sal touched her on the back of her neck, his fingertips urging her toward the hatch before they withdrew.

The guy might not even know Sammy Sal was up here at all. Sammy Sal had the glasses. And one thing Chevette was sure of now, this guy was no cop.