“A long way, a very long way. I don’t know how long I’ll be away, but it will be a long time.”
“Oh Edson, oh my love. But call me, pick up the phone, let me know you’re all right.”
“I can’t do that, Mama.” The light was fast fading, and in the dark of the car, behind polarized windows by Cidade’s de Luz’s happenstance street lighting, Edson thought his mother might be crying silently.
“What, they’ve no phones this place you’re going? A letter, something.”
“Mama … ”
“Edson what is this? You’re scaring me.”
“I’ll be all right, and I’ll be back. I promise you, I’ll find a way back. Don’t put me in the Book just yet.”
“Is there anything I can say?”
“No. Not a thing. Now, kiss me and I’ll drop you back at the house, or do you want me to leave you back with the girls?”
“Oh, in a big flash car like this, drop me back at the house,” said Dona Hortense.
And again, good-bye.
“This is probably the most romantic notion I have heard in my entire life,” said Mr. Peach. Geography is not always a subject of the vast and slow, of eons and crustal plates. It can spring up in a night; the new green space opened one afternoon by the next morning is crisscrossed by footpaths, always mystically following the shortest routes to the shops or the bus stop. In the days that Fia has been a refugee at Fazenda Alvaranga, the old drying shed where the sun loungers are stored in winter has been Sextinho and Mr. Peach’s Place.
“It’s the last place they would think we’d go; back to where she came from.”
“And you, Sextinho? It sounds like a hard world, hers. Gray skies, pollution, wrecked climates.”
Fia’s world was strange and challenging, but in those differences lie opportunities a man of business and wit can exploit to make money. As long as there was still an Ilhabela, and an ocean to wash the feet of the house, he would make it there. His dreams had moved sideways.
“But no Angels of Perpetual Surveillance.”
“No angels. You going to get one of those computers tattooed on your belly?” It was a joke. Mr. Peach knows well Edson’s abhorrence of anything violating the sanctity of his skin. “But one thing: you will be there.”
“Of course I’ll be there.”
“No, I mean, there will be an Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas somewhere in that city.”
It was one of the first things that Edson had thought when he made the decision to flee with Fia back to her São Paulo. He never could resist a mirror: how would it reflect him? Richer, more successful, a man of big business, marrried, dead? Worst, just some dust-poor favelado? He could not bear that. It could not be any kind of good luck to meet your ghost-self, but how could he fail to intervene in a life like that? Closer than any twin or freaky clone-thing but further than the farthest star. Him, in every atom. He owed it to himself.
“It won’t be the first time I’ve had to get a new identity,” Edson said flipppantly, but he was spooked, iced in the vein. “Maybe I’ll even become Sextinho.”
“Do you know what’s so silly, and so impossible? I want to go too. All my life I’ve been teaching the multiverse. I know the theory, I know the math; they prove it more accurately and beautifully than any gross human sense, bur I want to see it with my eyes. I want to experience it, and then I’ll truly know. If I taught you one thing about physics, Sextinho, it’s passion. Physics is love. Why would anyone do this thing, beat their lives against truths we can barely understand, if not for love? Fia says that when you enter superposition, you experience all the other universes at once. So many questions answered. But you, you little bastard, you won’t even appreciate what you’re seeing. Go on, hero, do well.”
Among the moldering showerheads and aluminum nets and scoops for fishing leaves out of the pool, by the cleaning robot’s little hutch, Mr. Peach hugged Edson to him. The kid was so small, so thin and frail-looking, but strong beneath, all sinews and wires. Hard to embrace.
“Just one question,” Edson said. “When you cross over, do you think it hurts?”
Treats and Turkey-Feet bowl in eighteen minutes late, laughing and swaggering and acting cool cool cool. Edson is ice with them; they make to laugh at his anger but then see that none of the others are smiling.
“Why are you late?”
“We were starving, so we got something to eat and a couple of Chopps.”
“You’ve been drinking?”
“Oh, come on Edson … ”
“You’re drawing attention to yourselves and to me. We are friends meeting up for a meal after work. Now, whether you’ve eaten or not, go up and get something from the buffet. No beer. This is an alcohol-free operation.”
All the while he watches the policemen go up to the counter for seconds.
They’re fat, ordinary cops, civils; they’re just out like Edson and his team for a bite with friends after work. Edimilson and Jack Chocolate the mechanics tell track-side tales from Interlagos. Edson hardly hears them; every second that ticks away on the countdown in the corner of his I-shades is slower than the one before until they freeze like drips in an icebox.
I can’t do it. I can’t do it. It’s all just something I made up.
Then he sees himself pushing his plate away from him, standing up, straightening his cuffs, spiking up his hair, and hears his voice say, “Are we all done? Then let’s go.”
Tremendous scuff, that corajoso.
The lift hits as he pulls the bandana up over his face. His heart kicks; his breath is shallow and fast and fills him with fire. It’s not the corajoso; it’s old hot liquid adrenaline, molten in his skull. It’s hitting the best deal; it’s that Number One Business plan clicking into place.
Turkey-Feet has the Q-blade out. Two searing passes and the rear gate is free from its hinges. Emerson and Big Steak lower it lightly to the ground. The guys are already moving as the lasers try to get retina lock. No luck there, militars: everyone’s I-shades are stacked with stolen eye-scans. As the alarms kick off woo woo woo, the drone goes in so low over Edson’s head he can feel its downdraft muss up his careful gel-spikes. It’s an old Radio Sampa traffic-report drone that Hamilcar and Mr. Smiles got in a jeitinho deal and recondiitioned to their own gray purposes. It circles like a little spook from a kids’ cartoon, pumping out enough variant DNA to bust the budget of any forensics company that tries to profile the crime scene. Lovely boys, clever boys.
It might only be graveyard shift at the car pound, but the militars are quick — nothing on Globo Futebol tonight, then — and tooled for general assault. Firing from cover, Big Steak and Emerson Taser the first two out of the trap. Unlike his kid-times-six brother, Emerson enjoyed his army service. Even as the cops hit the ground twitching, Treats and Turkey-Feet are on top of them. Turkey Feet has his Q-blade at the dazed, dazzled policeman’s throat. The guy can’t move, can’t speak, can only follow the dancing blade with his eyes. Blue on blue. Edson smells piss: the Tasers do that, he’s heard. So does fear. It’s a hostage situation now: the remaining four nightwatch throw down their weapons and up their hands. They can read the time and geography as well as Edson: twenty seconds, maybe thirty if they’ve had a big dinner, for the regional headquarters to assess the threat. Another thirty to establish level of response, another twenty to alert units. They won’t tender out to seguranças. The military police enjoy a good fire fight too much. Surveillance drones will be over the target within two minutes of the general alert. Surface units will converge within five minutes. But Edson has it timed to the tick, and the garage van is bowling in over the felled gate, pulling up beside the maimed Cook/Chill Meal Solutions trailer. Edimilson has already run the hydraulic jack in and is easing up the left side like he is a superhero: Captain Pitstop. Jack Chocolate takes a wheel off in fifteen seconds with the power wrench. Emerson and Big Steak drag the slashed, hemi-tires away and roll the new ones out of the back of the van. The militars boggle at the skill and speed.