“Okay,” says Mr. Smiles after Edson explains that he really can’t let his dumb brother get killed even over a woman’s handbag. “I think you’re all dead, but you could try the quantumeiros.”
“Who are these? What-eiros?”
“Quantumeiros. You know, those new quantum computers? No? Codes you can’t break? They can. They’re the physicists. I can give you their code; they move around even more than we do. Careful with them, though. Weird shit happens round these people.”
A map of the São Caetano rodovia network appears on Edson’s Chilllibeans; a license plate is flagged, heading north on R118. Edson wonders how many chippers and crackers and quantumeiros are nomadic on the highways of great Sampa at any instant.
“I shall try them.”
“What did Gerson ever do he should have a brother like you?” says Mr. Smiles. “All the same, I wouldn’t hang around too long.”
The Yamaha starts to Edson’s thumbprint. He slips a concentration enhancer from his travel pack, pops it, and as the world sharpens and clariifies around him, rides slow through the alleys back of the crente church. He doesn’t want mud splashes from the lingering night’s rain on his white flares.
The brothers de Freitas meet twenty-three minutes later on the on-ramp at Intersection 7. Twenty-three minutes for the Brooklin Bandeira to close in, to narrow the circle of possibility down to machine-pistol range. Edson’s been checking his custom-fit rearview cameras for oil-slick-black segurança hunting bikes. He could get away from them on the Yam, take it places their big bulky machines could not, but not Gerson, flogging the ako engine on that shitty little putt-putt. Edson can hardly believe he once rode that thing. Gantry cameras read his license plate; hurtling satellites debit his account. They don’t make it easy for legitimate men of business.
And there it is, looming out of the traffic, the barquentine of the quantumeiros: a big forty-tonner standing at a steady hundred in the outside lane. The cab is pimped with Fleshbeck Crew — style cherubim and a battery of airhorns on the roof chromed and sweet as the trumpets of archangels. Cook/Chill Meal Solutions , says the trail. Fine cover. No cop is ever going to stop and search bad cuisine. Edson weaves Gerson into the truck’s slipstream. A touch on the I-shades calls up the address Mr. Smiles gave him. The truck flashes its hazard lights in acknowledgment and sways into the slow lane, drops to seventy sixty fifty forty. The back shutter rolls up, a middle-aged guy in a Black Metal muscle top swings from a chain and manages to smoke at the same time. He beckons them close, closer. The loading ramp extends, lowers. Steel hits road. Sparks shower around the brothers Oliveira. Black Metal beckons them again: Come on, come on, on the ramp. Sparks peel away round Edson as he lines up the run. He’s a businessman, not a stunt-rider. Edson edges forward: the concentration pill gives him micro-accelerations and relative velocities. Wheel on wheel off wheel on wheel off, wheel on; then Edson throttles hard, surges forward, and brakes and declutches simultaneously.
Smoking metalhead applauds.
Thirty seconds later Gerson skids to a halt on the platform, pale and shaking. Edson tries to imagine what the commuters on the São Caetano rodovia make of a male with a pink handbag around his neck driving onto the back of a moving truck. Probably reckons it’s the telenovelas and are looking round for the flittercams: Hey! We’re on A World Somewhere, we really are!
Death Metal raises the ramp and pulls the shutter down with a clatter.
Recessed mood-lights flood on. Edson feels his eyes widen behind his wraparound I-shades: The rear of the container is docking space; the forward twothirds is split-level business accommodation. The lower floor-reception-is Karma Cafe kitsch, all shag rugs, leather beanbags, inflatable chairs, and zebra-skin sofas on spindly legs. There a battery of rollscreens tuned to sports and news channels, a complex coffee engine with attendant barista and lowlaid bossa nova. Upstairs is the office, a transparent cube of plastic, harshly neon-lit to the downbeat downlighting of the club below. The cube is stacked ceiling-high with server farms, wiring alleys, and tanks conspicuuously marked liquid nitrogen. Edson makes out a figure moving among the racked boxes, a glimpse of swinging red hair. Heaven and clubland are connected by a spiral staircase of glowing blue plastic.
A floppy-haired queen in a good suit and shiny shirt unfolds from a sofa.
He has pointy pirate shoes, immaculately polished.
“So this is the handbag?” The bicha turns it over in his hands. “I suppose it was going to happen sooner or later as quantum technology gets cheaper. It would have been a lot simpler just to have thrown it away.”
“My brother can make money out of this.”
The truck accelerates; the seguranças have a fix on the arfid and are runnning them out of road.
“We can certainly blank this for you. It’s not the most up-to-date model. Fia.” You can fall in love with someone for their shoes. These are gold jacaré-skin wedge heels, strappy at the ankle. They descend the top rum of the spiral staircase. Above them, slim ankles, good calves not too full, Capri-cut tapered pant-bottoms with a little dart in the side and white piping running up to a matching jacaré belt. The pants belong to a black jumpsuit, confrontationally retro in its cut, shoulder pads, trim and kitschy tit-zips. All this detail gleams in Edson’s edged perception. Then the head descends from the suite upstairs. Third-generation Japonesa cheekbones and nose — she’s had the eyes done, round anime doe-eyes. Hair that super-silky straightness that all aspire to but only the Japanese have the DNA to achieve. Bobbed so severely it might have been measured with a spirit level. Red is the color again, this year. She wears top-marque Blu Mann I-shades pushed up on it.
“Good bag,” she comments.
Edson opens his mouth and nothing comes out. It’s not love. It’s not even lust. The closest emotion to it he can recognize is glamour. If he had a religious cell in his body, he might know it as worship, in that word’s oldest, truesr sense: worth-ship. She fascinates him. She is all the things he hopes to be. He wants to orbit in her gravity, circle her thrilling world and thrilling clothes and thrilling friends and thrilling places to go and do and be and see. She takes the jeito he thinks he has earned and spreads it all over the road behind her like a mashed cat. She makes him feel like favela scum. That’s all right. Compared to her he is, he is.
“They’re about two minutes out,” chides the bicha. “You want to give me that bag?”
“Um, can I watch?”
“There’s nothing to see. You’ll be disappointed.”
“I don’t think I will. I’d like to see.”
“You will. Everybody is.”
“About a minute and a half,” says bicha-boy. Gerson is having a cafezinho.
She lets him carry the bag upstairs.
“Fia? Fia what’”
There’s barely space for the two swivel chairs among the technology. The cubicle is swagged with enough cable to rig a suspension bridge.
“Kishida.” She says it fast, with Japanese emphases though her accent is pure Paulistana. Fia sets the Giorelli on an illuminated white plastic tray under a set of micromanipulator arms. She sweeps her Blu Manns down over her face. Her hands dance in air; the robot arms gavotte over the handbag, seeking the arfid chip. Edson sees ghosts and circuitry in increasing magnifications flicker across Fia’s shades.
“I know this tune, I really like it. Do you like baile’” Edson says, twitching his muscles to the house beat. “There’s a gafieira on Friday; I’ve a client doing a set.”
“Could you just shut up for thirty seconds while I try and do some work?”