You can take your call from Alain here, he said. We have arranged to reroute it from your friends apartment. He drew a chair out for her, an automatic bit of professional courtesy that made her wonder if he might actually once have been a waiter, and placed his bag on the tabletop.
But hell see that Im not there, she said. If I blank the video, hell become suspicious.
But he wont see that Weve generated a digital image of your face and the required background Well key that to the image on this phone He took an elegant modular unit from the bag and placed it in front of her. A paper thin polycarbon screen unfurled silently from the top of the unit and immediately grew rigid. She had once watched a butterfly emerge into the world, and seen the transformation of its drying wings. How is that done? she asked, tentatively touching the screen. It was like thin steel.
One of the new polycarbon variants, he said, one of the Maas products...
The phone purred discreetly He positioned it more carefully in front of her, stepped to the far side of the table, and said, Your call. Remember, you are at home! He reached forward and brushed a titanium-coated stud.
Alains face and shoulders filled the little screen. The image had the smudged, badly lit look of a public booth. Good afternoon, my dear, he said.
Hello, Alain.
How are you, Marly? I trust youve gotten the money we discussed? She could see that he was wearing a jacket of some kind, dark, but she could make out no details. Your roommate could do with a lesson in housecleaning, he said, and seemed to be peering back over her shoulder.
Youve never cleaned a room in your life, she said
He shrugged, smiling. We each have our talents, he said. Do you have my money, Marly?
She glanced up at Paco, who nodded. Yes, she said, of course.
Thats wonderful, Marly. Marvelous We have only one small difficulty. He was still smiling.
And what is that?
My informants have doubled their price. Consequently, I must now double mine.
Paco nodded. He was smiling, too.
Very well. I will have to ask, of course... He sickened her now. She wanted to be off the phone.
And they, of course, will agree.
Where shall we meet, then?
I will phone again, at five, he said. His image shrank to a single blip of blue-green, and then that was gone as well.
You look tired, Paco said as he collapsed the screen and replaced the phone in his bag You look older when youve talked with him.
Do I? For some reason, now, she saw the panel in the Roberts, all those faces Read Us the Book of the Names of the Dead. All the Marlys, she thought all the girls shed been through the long season of youth.
16 LEGBA
HEY, SHITHEAD. RHEA poked him none too lightly in the ribs Get your ass up.
He came up fighting with the crocheted comforter, with the half-formed shapes of unknown enemies. With his mothers murderers. He was in a room he didnt know, a room that might have been anywhere. Gold plastic gilt frames on a lot of mirrors. Fuzzy scarlet wallpaper. Hed seen Gothicks decorate rooms that way, when they could afford it, but hed also seen their parents do whole condos in the same style Rhea flung a bundle of clothes down on the temperfoam and shoved her hands in the pockets of a black leather jacket.
The pink and black squares of the comforter were bunched around his waist. He looked down and saw the segmented length of the centipede submerged in a finger-wide track of fresh pink scar tissue. Beauvoir had said that the thing accelerated healing. He touched the bright new tissue with a hesitant fingertip, found it tender but bearable. He looked up at Rhea. Get your ass up on this, he said, giving her the finger.
They glared at each other, for a few seconds, over Bobbys upraised middle finger. Then she laughed Okay, she said, you got a point. Ill get off your case But pick those clothes up and get em on. Should be something there that fits Lucas is due by here soon to pick you up, and Lucas doesnt like to be kept waiting.
Yeah? Well, he seems like a pretty relaxed guy to me. He began to sort through the heap of clothing, discarding a black shirt with a paisley pattern printed on it in laundered-out gold, a red satin number with a fringe of white imitation leather down the sleeves, a black sort of leotard thing with panels of some translucent material... Hey, he said, where did you get this stuff? I cant wear shit like this.
Its my little brothers, Rhea said. From last season, and you better get your white ass dressed before Lucas gets down here. Hey, she said, thats mine, snatching up the leotard as though he might be about to steal it.
He pulled the black and gold shirt on and fumbled with domed snaps made of black imitation pearl. He found a pair of black jeans, but they proved to be baggy and elaborately pleated, and didnt seem to have any pockets This all the pants you got?
Jesus, she said. I saw the clothes Pye cut off you, man. You arent anybodys idea of a fashion plate. Just get dressed, okay? I dont want any trouble with Lucas. He may come on all mellow with you, but that just means you got something he wants bad enough to take the trouble. Me, I sure dont, so Lucas got no compunctions, as far as Im concerned.
He stood up unsteadily beside the bedslab and tried to zip up the black jeans. No zip, he said, looking at her.
Buttons In there somewhere. Its part of the style you know?
Bobby found the buttons. It was an elaborate arrangement and he wondered what would happen if he had to piss in a hurry He saw the black nylon thongs beside the slab and shoved his feet into them. What about Jackie? he asked, padding to where he could see himself in the gold-framed mirrors. Lucas got any compunctions about her? He watched her in the mirror, saw something cross her face.
Whats that mean?
Beauvoir, he told me she was a horse
You hush, she said, her voice gone low and urgent. Beauvoir mention anything like that to you, thats his business. Otherwise, its nothing you talk about, understand? Theres things bad enough, youd wish you were back out there getting your butt carved up.
He watched her eyes, reflected in the mirror, dark eyes shadowed by the deep brim of the soft felt hat. Now they seemed to show a little more white than they had before.
Okay, he said, after a pause, and then added, Thanks. He fiddled with the collar of the shirt, turning it up in the back, down again, trying it different ways.
You know, Rhea said, tilting her head to one side, you get a few clothes on you, you dont look too bad. Cept you got eyes like two pissholes in a snowbank...
Lucas. Bobby said, when they were in the elevator, do you know who it was offed my old lady? It wasnt a question hed planned on asking, but somehow it had come rushing up like a bubble of swamp gas.
Lucas regarded him benignly, his long face smooth and black. His black suit, beautifully cut, looked as though it had been freshly pressed. He carried a stout stick of oiled and polished wood, the grain all swirly black and red, topped with a large knob of polished brass. Finger-long splines of brass ran down from the knob, inlaid smoothly in the canes shaft. No, we do not. His wide lips formed a straight and very serious line. Thats something wed very much like to know...
Bobby shifted uncomfortably. The elevator made him self-conscious. It was the size of a small bus, and although it wasnt crowded, he was the only white Black people, he noted, as his eyes shifted restlessly down the things length, didnt look half dead under fluorescent light, the way white people did.
Three times, in their descent, the elevator came to a halt at some floor and remained there, once for nearly fifteen minutes. The first time this happened, Bobby had looked questioningly at Lucas. Something in the shaft, Lucas had said. What? Another elevator. The elevators were located at the core of the arcology, their shafts bundled together with water mains, sewage lines, huge power cables, and insulated pipes that Bobby assumed were part of the geothermal system that Beauvoir had described. You could see it all whenever the doors opened; everything was exposed, raw, as though the people who built the place had wanted to be able to see exactly how everything worked and what was going where. And everything, every visible surface, was covered with an interlocking net of graffiti, so dense and heavily overlaid that it was almost impossible to pick out any kind of message or symbol.