Virtual Light

“Yeah? So what we got?”

“We?” Freddie whistled. “You just drivin’.” He pulled his feet back and sat up. “But it ain’t exactly classified: IntenSecure and DatAmerica more or less the same thing.”

“No shit.” Svobodov seemed to be doing most of the talking. “What’s that mean?”

“Means we tight with a bigger data-base than the police. Next time ol’ Rubadub needs him a look-see, he’ll be glad he did us a favor. But tonight, man, tonight it just burrs his Russian ass.”

Rydell remembered the time he’d gone over to ‘Big George’ Kechakmadze’s house for a barbecue and the man had tried to sign him up for the National Rifle Association. “You get a lot of Russians on the force, up here?”

“Up here? All over.”

“Kinda fu

“Think about it, man. Had ’em a whole police state, over there. Maybe they just got a feel for it.”

Svobodov and Orlovsky climbed into the gray whale. Warbaby walked to the Patriot, using his alloy cane. The police car rose up about six inches on hydraulics and began to moan and shiver, rain dancing on its long hood as Orlovsky revved the engine.

“Jesus” Rydell said, “they don’t care who sees ’em comin’, do they?”

“They want you see ’em coming” Freddie said, obscurely, as Warbaby opened the right rear passenger door and began the process of edging his stiff-legged bulk into the back seat.

“Take off” Warbaby said, slamming the door. “Protocol. We leave first.”

“Not that way” Freddie said. “That’ll get us Candlestick Park. That way.”

“Yes” said Warbaby, “we have business downtown.” Sad about it.

Downtown San Francisco was really something. With everything hemmed in by hills, built up and down other hills, it gave Rydell a sense of, well, he wasn’t sure. Being somewhere. Somewhere in particular. Not that he was sure he liked being there. Maybe it just felt so much the opposite of L.A. and that feeling like you were cut loose in a grid of light that just spilled out to the edge of everything. Up here he felt like he’d come in from somewhere, these old buildings all around and close together, nothing more modern than that one big spikey one with the truss-thing on it (and he knew that one was old, too). Cold damp air, steam billowing from grates in the pavement. People on the streets, too, and not just the usual kind; people with jobs and clothes. Kind of like Knoxville, he tried to tell himself, but it wouldn’t stick. Another strange place.

“No, man, a left, a left” Freddie thumping on the back of his seat. And another city-grid to learn. He checked the cursor on the Patriot’s dash-map, looking for a left that would get them to this hotel, the Morrisey.

“Don’t bang on Mr. Rydell’s seat” Warbaby said, a sixfoot scroll of fax bunched in his hands, “he’s driving.” It had come in on their way here. Rydell figured it was the jacket on Blix, the guy who’d gotten his throat cut.

“Fassbinder” Freddie said. “You ever hear of this Rainer Fassbinder?”

“I’m not in a joking mood, Freddie” Warbaby said. “No joke. I ran Separated at Birth on this Blix, man, sca

Warbaby sighed. “Freddie…”

“Well, German, anyway. Clicked with the nationality—”

“Mr. Blix was not German, Freddie. Says here Mr. Blix wasn’t even Mr. Blix. Now let me read. Rydell needs quiet, in order to adjust to driving in the city.”

Freddie grunted, then Rydell heard his fingers clicking over the little computer he carried everywhere.

Rydell took the left he thought he was looking for. Combat zone. Ruins. Fires in steel cans. Hunched dark figures, faces vampire white.

“Don’t brake” Warbaby said. “Or accelerate.”

Something came spi

Red at the intersection.

“Run the light” Warbaby instructed. Rydell did, amid horns of protest. The yellow stuff still there.

“Pull over. No. Right up on the sidewalk. Yes.” The Patriot’s Goodyear Streetsweepers bouncing up and over the jagged curb. “In the glove compartment.”

A light came on as Rydell opened it. Windex, a roll of gray paper towels, and a box of throwaway surgical gloves.

“Go on” Warbaby said. “Nobody bother us.”

Rydell pulled a glove on, took the Windex and the towels, got out. “Don’t get any on you” he said, thinking of Sublett. He gave the yellow smear a good shot of Windex, wadded tip three of the towels in his gloved hand, wiped until the glass was clean. He ski

“Just toss it” Warbaby said from inside. Rydell did. Then he walked back from the car, five paces, and threw up. Wiped his mouth with a clean towel. He got back in, shut the door, locked it, put the Windex and the towels in the glove compartment.

“You go

“Shut up, Freddie” Warbaby said. The Patriot’s suspension creaked as Warbaby leaned forward. “Leavings from a slaughterhouse, most likely.” he said. “But it’s good you know to take precautions.” He settled back. “Had us a group here once called Sword of the Pig. You ever hear of that?”

“No” Rydell said, “I never did.”

“They’d steal fire-extinguishers out of buildings. Re-charge them with blood. Blood from a slaughterhouse. But they let it out, you understand, that this blood, well, it was human. Then they’d go after the Jesus people, when they marched, with those same extinguishers.”

“Jesus” Rydell said.

“Exactly” Warbaby said.

“You see that door, there?” Freddie said.

“What door?” The lobby of the Morrisey made Rydell want to whisper, like being in church or a funeral home. The carpet was so soft, it made him want to lie down and go to sleep.

“That black one” Freddie said.

Rydell saw a black-lacquered rectangle, perfectly plain, not even a knob. Now that he thought about it, it didn’t match anything else in sight. The rest of the place was polished wood, frosted bronze, panels of carved glass. If Freddie hadn’t told him it was a door, exactly, he would have taken it for art or something, some kind of painting. “Yeah? What about it?”

“That’s a restaurant” Freddie said, “and it’s so expensive, you can’t even go in there.”

“Well” Rydell said, “there’s lots of those.”

“No, man” Freddie insisted, “I mean even if you were rich, had money out your ass, you could not go in there. Like it’s private. Japanese thing.”

They were standing around by the security desk while Warbaby talked to somebody on a house phone. The three guys on duty at the desk wore IntenSecure uniforms, but really fancy ones, with bronze logo-buttons on their peaked caps.

Rydell had parked the Patriot in an underground garage, floors down in the roots of the place. He hadn’t seen anything like that before: teams of people in chef’s whites putting together a hundred plates of some ski

The Executive Suites, where he’d stayed in Knoxville with Karen Mendelsohn, had had these Korean robot bugs that cleaned up when you weren’t looking. They’d even had a special one that ate dust off the wallscreen, but Karen hadn’t been impressed. It just meant they couldn’t afford people, she said.

Rydell watched as Warbaby turned, handing the phone to one of the guys in the peaked caps. Warbaby gestured for Freddie and Rydell. Leaned on his cane as they walked toward him.