Brasyl

We could do with that , Edson thinks, but then a sound, a rushing sound, makes him look up, the dread back his heart. But it is not police drones moving carefully between the branches. Edson smiles and grins: high above the treetops wind turbines are turning.

“Stay as long as you need.”

“You don’t understand … ”

“I do understand. Stay as long as you need.”

The moment Mr. Peach saw Edson on his security camera, and the girl behind him, he knew nothing would ever be simple again. Beneath the cherubic ceiling of the baroque living room, Sextinho and the girl are sprawled unconscious on the Chesterfield, i

Something has fallen from Edson’s fist. Mr. Peach lifts it. An ugly, massmanufactured icon of Exu. Crossings, gateways. He smiles as he balances it on the arm of the sofa. Watch him well, small lord. The girl sleeps on her back, arms flung back, crop top ridden up. Mr. Peach bends close to study the tattoo. Liquid protein polymer circuitry. Infinitely malleable and morphable. There must be self-organizing nanostructures. Quasi-life. Extraordinary technology. Direct neural interface; no need for the clumsy, plasticy tech of I-shades and smart-fabrics. What was the sum of the histories of her part of the polyverse that gave rise to so similar a society, so radically different a technology? But they’re all out there. There is a universe for every possible quantum state in the big bang; some as similar as this girl’s, some so different that life is physically impossible.

Edson is awake, one eye open, watching.

“Hey.”

“Hey. I’ve made you breakfast.”

OCTOBER 1-2, 1732

“Such fine design and so ingenious; yes yes, I can immediately see applications for this device in my own work.” Father Diego Gonçalves turned the crank on the Governing Engine and watched the click and flop of the card chain through the mill and the rise and fall of the harnesses. “Drudgery abollished; mere mechanical labor transformed. Men liberated from the wheel.”

“Or a subtler slavery.” Through the delicately worked wooden grille Luis Qui

“Oh, that is simplicity itself, Father Qui

Thunder boomed, closer now, as if summoned by the clack of the Governing Engine. A universe ruled by number, ru

Nossa Senhora da Várzea, Out Lady of the Floodplain: that was the name of the green saint on the ba

“You know what I am?”

Father Diego Gonçalves had smiled. “You are the admonitory of provi

So it was to be a duel, then.

“Would that news traveled as swiftly downriver as it travels up. Kindly have your men stop that immediately.”

Indio sailors, naked but for geometrical patterns of black genipapo juice on their faces, torsos, and thighs, with feather bands plaited around upper arms and calves, were unloading Qui

“Forgive me, I presumed you would accept my hospitality, Brother.”

Father Diego’s Portuguese was flawless, but Qui

“If you are aware of my task, then you must surely be aware that I ca

“As you wish.” Father Diego gave orders. Qui

“I should at the least be interested to see if the interior of your… misssion… matches its exterior.”

“You will find Nossa Senhora da Várzea a complete testimony to the glory of God in every aspect.” Gonçalves hesitated an instant on the steps. “Father Qui

“I trained under Jésus y Portugal of Leon.” Qui

“Montoya of Toledo was my master,” Father Diego said with the smallest smile, the shallowest dip of the head. “Now that would be fine exercise.”

Passing beneath the watchword of his order into the basilica, Luis Qui