William Gibson - Virtual Light

And somebody in the Russians’ car, hunched down knees-up in the shotgun seat.

The Russians closing in tight on either side of Rydell and the girl, walking them out. Rydell could feel them responding to the presence of the crowd. Shouldn’t’ve left the car out there like that.

Svobodov, this close, sort of creaked when he walked, and that was the armor under his shirt that Rydell had noticed before, back in that greasy spoon. Svobodov was smoking one of his Marlboro cigarettes, hissing out clouds of blue smoke. Had the gun out of sight now.

And right up to Warbaby, Freddie shining the whole scene on with a grin that made Rydell want to kick him, but Warbaby looking sad as ever.

“Get this fucking cuff off” Rydell said to Warbaby, raising his wrist, Chevette Washington’s coming up with it. The crowd saw the cuffs then; there was a ripple of reaction, voices.

Warbaby looked at Svobodov. “You get it?”

“Here.” Svobodov touched the front of his London Fog.

Warbaby nodded, looked at Chevette Washington, then at Rydell. “Good then.” To Orlovsky: “Take the cuffs off.”

Orlovsky took Rydell’s wrist, slid a mag-strip into the slot in the cuff.

“Get in the car” Warbaby said to Rydell.

“They haven’t read her any Miranda” Rydell said.

“Get in the car. You’re driving, remember?”

“She under arrest, Mr. Warbaby?”

Freddie giggled.

Chevette Washington was holding her wrist up for Orlovsky, but he was putting the mag-strip away.

“Rydell” Warbaby said, “get in the car now. We’ve done our part here.”

The passenger-side door of the gray car opened. A man got out. Black cowboy boots and a long black waterproof. Sandy hair, no particular length. He had those deep smile-creases down his cheeks, like somebody had carved them there. Light-colored eyes. Then he did smile, and it was about two-thirds gum and a third teeth, with gold at the corners.

“That’s him” Chevette Washington said, in this hoarse voice, “he killed Sammy.”

And that was when the big longhair, the one in the dirty shirt, the one Rydell had noticed back on the bridge, plowed this bicycle square into Svobodov’s back. Not any regular bicycle, either, but this big old rusty coaster-brake number with a heavy steel basket welded in front of the bars. The bike and the basket probably weighed a hundred pounds between them, and there must’ve been another hundred pounds of scrap metal piled up in the basket when Svobodov got nailed. Put him face-down across the hood of the Patriot, Freddie jumping like a scalded cat.

The longhair landed on top of Svobodov and all that junk like a bear with rabies, grabbed him by the ears, and starting slamming his face into the hood. Orlovsky was pulling out his H & K and Rydell saw Chevette Washington bend down, tug something out of the top of one SWAT shoe, jab it into Orlovsky’s back. Looked like a screwdriver. Hit whatever armor he was wearing, but it put him off-balance as he pulled the trigger.

Nothing in the world ever sounded like caseless ammunition, at full-auto, out of a floating breech. It wasn’t the sound of a machine gun, but a kind of ear-shattering, extended whoop.

The first burst didn’t seem to hit anything, but with Chevette Washington clawing at his gun arm, Orlovsky tried to turn it on her. Second burst went in the general direction of the crowd. People screaming, grabbing up kids.

Warbaby’s mouth was just open, like he couldn’t believe it.

Rydell was behind Orlovsky when he tried to bring the gun up again, and, well, it was just one of those times.

He side-kicked the Russian about three inches below the back of his knee, that third burst whooping almost straight up as Orlovsky went down.

Freddie tried to grab Chevette Washington, seemed to see the screwdriver for the first time, and just managed to bring his laptop up with both hands. That screwdriver went right through it. Freddie yelped and dropped it.

Rydell grabbed the loose cuff, the one that had been around his wrist, and just pulled.

Opened the passenger-side door of the Patriot and hauled her right in after him. Getting into the driver’s seat, he had a grandstand view of the longhair pounding Svobodov’s bloody face into the hood, all these pieces of rusty junk jumping each time he did it.

Key. Ignition.

Rydell saw Chevette Washington’s phone and the case with the VL glasses fall out of Svobodov’s flak vest. Powered down the window and reached around. Somebody shot the longhair off Svobodov, pop, pop, pop, and Rydell, stomping it in reverse, saw the man from the cop car swinging a little gun around, two-handed. just like they taught you in FATSS. The back of the Patriot slammed into something and Svobodov flew off the hood in a cloud of rusty chain and odd lengths of pipe. Chevette Washington was trying to get out the passenger door, so he had to hang on to the cuff and spin the wheel one-handed, let go of her long enough to shove it into forward and tromp on it, then grab her again.

The passenger door slammed shut as he took it straight for the man with the big smile, who maybe got off one more before he had to get out of the way, fast,

The Patriot was fishtailing in about an inch of water, and he barely missed clipping the back of a big orange waste-hauler pulled up beside a building there.

He caught this one crazy glimpse in the dash-mirror, out the back window: the bridge towering up like something wrapped in seaweed, sky graying now behind it, and Warbaby taking one stiff-legged step, another, raising the cane straight out from his shoulder, pointing it at the Patriot like it was a magic wand or something.

Then whatever came out of the end of Warbaby’s cane took out the Patriot’s back window, and Rydell hung a right so tight it almost tipped them over.

“Jesus” said Chevette Washington, like somebody talking in their sleep, “what are you doing?”

He didn’t know, but hadn’t he just gone and done it?

When the lights went out, Yamazaki fumbled in the dark for his bag. Finding it, he felt through it for his flashlight.

In the white beam, Skinner slept slack-jawed beneath the blankets and a ragged sleeping-bag.

Yamazaki searched the several shelves above the table-ledge: small glass jars of spices, identical jars containing steel screws, an ancient Bakelite telephone reminding him of the origin of the verb ‘to dial,’ rolls of many different kinds and colors of adhesive tape, twists of heavy copper wire, pieces of what he took to be salt-water tackle, and, finally, a bundle of dusty candle-stubs secured with a rotting rubber band. Selecting the longest of these, he found a lighter beside the green campstove. Standing the candle upright on a white saucer, he lit it. The flame fluttered and went out.

Flashlight in hand, he moved to the window and tugged it more tightly into its deep circular frame.

Now the candle stayed lit, though the flame pulsed and swelled in drafts he could never hope to locate. Returning to the window, he looked out. The darkened bridge was invisible. Rain was driving almost horizontally against the window, tiny droplets reaching his face through cracks in the glass and corroded segments of the supporting lead.

It occurred to him that Skinner’s room might be made to function as a camera obscura. If the church window’s tiny central hull’s-eye pane were removed, and the other panes covered, an inverted image would be cast on the opposite wall.

Yamazaki knew that the central pier, the bridge’s center anchorage, had once qualified as one of the world’s largest pinhole cameras. In the structure’s pitch-black interior, light shining in through a single tiny hole had projected a huge image of the underside of the lower deck, the nearest tower, and the surrounding bay. Now the heart of the anchorage housed some uncounted number of the bridge’s more secretive inhabitants, and Skinner had advised him against attempting to go there. “Nothin’ like those Mansons out in the bushes on Treasure, Scooter, but you don’t want to bother ’em anyway. Okay people but they just aren’t looking for anybody to drop in, know what I mean?”