i~6 ) flew off the hood in a cloud of rusty chain and odd lengths of pipe. Chevette Washington was trying to get out the passenger door, so he had to hang on to the cuff and spin the wheel one-handed, let go of her long enough to shove it into forward and tromp on it, then grab her again. The passenger door slammed shut as he took it straight for the man with the big smile, who maybe got off one more before he had to get out of the way, fast, The Patriot was fishtailing in about an inch of water, and he barely missed clipping the back of a big orange waste-hauler pulled up beside a building there. He caught this one crazy glimpse in the dash-mirror, out the back window: the bridge towering up like something wrapped in seaweed, sky graying now behind it, and Warbaby taking one stiff-legged step, another, raising the cane straight out from his shoulder, pointing it at the Patriot like it was a magic wand or something. Then whatever came out of the end of Warbaby’s cane took out the Patriot’s back window, and Rydell hung a right so tight it almost tipped them over. ‘Jesus,’ said Chevette Washington, like somebody talking in their sleep, ‘what are you doing?’ He didn’t know, but hadn’t he just gone and done it? When the lights went out, Yamazaki fumbled in the dark for his bag. Finding it, he felt through it for his flashlight. In the white beam, Skinner slept slack-jawed beneath the blankets and a ragged sleeping-bag. Yamazaki searched the several shelves above the table-ledge: small glass jars of spices, identical jars containing steel screws, an ancient Bakelite telephone reminding him of the origin of the verb ‘to dial,’ rolls of many different kinds and colors of adhesive tape, twists of heavy copper wire, pieces of what he took to be salt-water tackle, and, finally, a bundle of dusty candle-stubs secured with a rotting rubber band. Selecting the longest of these, he found a lighter beside the green campstove. Standing the candle upright on a white saucer, he lit it. The flame fluttered and went out. Flashlight in hand, he moved to the window and tugged it more tightly into its deep circular frame. Now the candle stayed lit, though the flame pulsed and swelled in drafts he could never hope to locate. Returning to the window, he looked out. The darkened bridge was invisible. Rain was driving almost horizontally against the window, tiny droplets reaching his face through cracks in the glass and corroded segments of the supporting lead. It occurred to him that Skinner’s room might be made to function as a camera ohscura. If the church window’s tiny central hull’s-eye pane were removed, and the other panes covered, an inverted image would be cast on the opposite wall. i88 24 Song of the central pier Yamazaki knew that the central pier, the bridge’s center anchorage, had once qualified as one of the world’s largest pinhole cameras. In the structure’s pitch-black interior, light shining in through a single tiny hole had projected a huge image of the underside of the lower deck, the nearest tower, and the surrounding bay. Now the heart of the anchorage housed some uncounted number of the bridge’s more secretive inhabitants, and Skinner had advised him against attempting to go there. ‘Nothin’ like those Mansons out in the bushes on Treasure, Scooter, but you don’t want to bother ’em anyway. Okay people but they just aren’t looking for anybody to drop in, know what I mean?’ Yamazaki crossed to the smooth curve of cable that interrupted the room’s floor. Only an oval segment of it was visible, like some mathematical formula barely breaking a topological surface in a computer representation. He bent to touch it, the visible segment polished by other hands. Each of the thirty-seven cables, containing four hundred and seventy-two wires, had withstood, and withstood now, a force of some million pounds. Yamazaki felt something, some message of vast, obscure moment, shiver up through the relic-smooth dorsal hump. The storm, surely; the bridge itself was capable of considerable mobility; it expanded and contracted with heat and cold; the great steel teeth of the piers were sunk into bedrock beneath the Bay mud, bedrock that had scarcely moved even in the Little Grande. Godzilla. Yamazaki shivered, recalling television images of Tokyo’s fall. He had been in Paris, with his parents. Now a new city rose there, its buildings grown, literally, floor by floor. The candlelight showed him Skinner’s little television, forgotten on the floor. Taking it to the table, he sat on the stool and examined it. There was no visible damage to the screen. It had simply come away from its frame, on a short length of multicolored ribbon. He folded the ribbon into the frame and 189 pressed with his thumbs on either side of the screen. It popped back into place, but would it still function? He bent to examine the tiny controls. ON. Lime-and-purple diagonals chased themselves across the screen, then faded, revealing some steadycam fragment, the NHK logo displayed in the lower left corner. ‘-heir-apparent to the Harwood Levine public relations and advertising fortune, departed San Francisco this afternoon after a rumored stay of several days, declining comment on the purpose of his visit.’ A long face, horselike yet handsome, above a raincoat’s upturned collar. A large white smile. ‘Accompanying him,’ mid-distance shot down an airport corridor, the slender, dark-haired woman wrapped in something luxurious and black, silver gleaming at the heels of her shining boots, ‘was Maria Paz, the Padanian media personality, daughter of film director Carlo Paz-.’ The woman, who looked unhappy, vanished, to be replaced by infrared footage from New Zealand, as Japanese peace-keeping forces in armored vehicles advanced on a rural airport. ‘-losses attributed to the outlawed South Island Liberation Front, while in Wellington-‘ Yamazaki attempted to change the channel, but the screen only strobed its lime-and-purple, then framed a portrait of Shapely. A BBC docu-drama. Calm, serious, mildly hypnotic. After two more unsuccessful attempts at locating another channel, Yamazaki let the British voiceover blot out the wind, the groaning of the cables, the creaking of the plywood walls. He focused his attention on the familiar story, its outcome fixed, comforting-if only in its certainty. James Delmore Shapely had come to the attention of the AIDS industry in the early months of the new century. He was thirty-one years old, a prostitute, and had been HIVpositive for twelve years. At the time of his ‘discovery,’ by Dr. Kim Kutnik of Atlanta, Georgia, Shapely was serving a two hundred and fifty day prison term for soliciting. (His status as HIV-positive, which would automatically have war- 190 ranted more serious charges, had apparently been ‘glitched.’) Kutnik, a researcher with the Sharman Group, an American subsidiary of Shibata Pl~armaceuticals, was sifting prison medical data in search of individuals who had been HIV-positive for a decade or more, were asymptomatic, and had entirely normal (or, as in Shapely’s case, above the norm) T-cell counts. One of the Sharmar Group’s research initiatives centered around the possibility of isolating mutant strains of HIV. Arguing that viruses obey the laws of natural selection, several Sharman biologists had proposed that the HIV virus, in its then-current genetic format, was excessively lethal. Allowed to range unchecked, argued the Sharman team, a virus demonstrating ioo percent lethality must eventually bring about the extinction oF the host organism. (Other Sharman researchers countered Fy citing the long incubation period as contributing to the suivival of the host population.) As the BBC writers were careful to make clear, the idea of locating nonpathogenic strains )f HIV, with a view of overpowering and neutralizing lethal strains, had been put forward almost a decade earlier, though the ‘ethical’ implications of experimentation with human subjects had impeded research. The core observation cf the Sharman researchers dated from this earlier work: The %irus wishes to survive, and cannot if it kills its host. The Shariian team, of which Dr. Kutnik was a part, intended to inject HIV-positive patients with blood extracted from individials they believed to be infected with nonpathogenic strains of the virus. It was possible, they believed, that the nonзathogenic strain would overpower the lethal strain. Kim KutrLik was one of seven researchers given the task of locating HIV-positive individuals who might be harboring a nonpathogenic strain. She elected to begin her search through a sectorof data concerned with current inmates of state prisons who were (a) in apparent good health, and (b) had tested HIV-positive at least a decade before. Her initial 191 search turned up sixty-six possibles-among them, J. D. Shapely. Yamazaki watched as Kutnik, played by a young British actress, recalled, from a patio in Rio, her first meeting with Shapely. ‘I’d been struck by the fact that his T-cell count that day was over i,zoo, and that his responses to the questionnaire seemed to indicated that ‘safe sex,’ as we thought of it then, was, well, not exactly a priority. He was a very open, very outgoing, really a very innocent character, and when I asked him, there in the prison visiting room, about oral sex, he actually blushed. Then he laughed, and said, well, he said he ‘sucked cock like it was going out of style’ . . .’ The actressKutnik looked as though she were about to blush herself. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘in those days we didn’t really understand the disease’s exact vectors of infection, because, grotesque as it now seems, there had been no real research into the precise modes of transmission. . .’ Yamazaki cut the set off. Dr. Kutnik would arrange Shapely’s release from prison as an AIDS research volunteer under Federal law. The Sharman Group’s project would be hindered by fundamentalist Christians objecting to the injection of ‘HIV-tainted’ blood into the systems of terminally ill AIDS patients. As the project foundered, Kutnik would uncover clinical data suggesting that unprotected sex with Shapely had apparently reversed the symptoms of several of her patients. There would be Kutnik’s impassioned resignation, the flight to Brazil with the baffled Shapely, lavish funding against a backdrop of impending civil war, and what could only be described as an extremely pragmatic climate for research. But it was such a sad story. Better to sit here by candlelight, elbows on the edge of Skinner’s table, listening for the song of the central pier. He kept saying he was from Tennessee and he didn’t need this shit. She kept thinking she was going to die, the way he was driving, or anyway those cops would be after them, or the one who shot Sammy. She still didn’t know what had happened, and wasn’t that Nigel who’d plowed into that tight-faced one? But he’d hung this right off Bryant, so she told him left on Folsom, because if the assholes were coming, she figured she wanted the Haight, best place she knew to get lost, and that was definitely what she intended to do, earliest opportunity. And this Ford was just like the one Mr. Matthews drove, ran the holding facility up in Beaverton. And she’d tried to stab somebody with a screwdriver. She’d never done anything like that in her life before. And she’d wrecked that black guy’s computer, the one with the haircut. And this bracelet on her left wrist, the other half flipping around, open, on three links of chain- He reached over and grabbed the loose cuff. Did something to it without taking his eyes off the street. He let go. Now it was locked shut. ‘Why’d you do that?’ ‘So you don’t snag it on something, wind up cuffed to the door-handle or a street sign-‘ ‘Take it off.’ ‘No key.’ She rattled it at him. ‘Take it off.’ ‘Stick it up the sleeve of your jacket. Those are Beretta ’93 25 Without a paddle cuffs. Real good cuffs.’ He sounded like he was sort of happy to have something to talk about, and his driving had evened out. Brown eyes. Not old; twenties, maybe. Cheap clothes like K-Mart stuff, all wet. Light brown hair cut too short but not short enough. She watched a muscle in his jaw work, like he was chewing gum, but he wasn’t. ‘Where we going?’ she asked him. ‘Fuck if I know,’ he said, gunning the engine a little. ‘You the one said “left” . . ‘Who are you?’ He glanced over at her. ‘Rydell. Berry Rydell.’ ‘Barry?’ ‘Berry. Like straw. Like dingle. Hey, this a big fucking Street, lights and everything-‘ ‘Right.’ ‘So where should I-‘ ‘Right!’ ‘Okay,’ he said, and hung it. ‘Why?’ ‘The Haight. Lots of people up late, cops don’t like to go there. ..’ ‘Ditch this car there?’ ‘Turn your back on it two seconds, it’s history.’ ‘They got ATM’s there?’ ‘Uh-uh.’ ‘Well, here’s one …’ Up over a curb, hunks of crazed safety-glass falling out of the frame where the back window had been. She hadn’t even noticed that. He dug a soggy-looking wallet out of his back pocket and started pulling cards out of it. Three of them. ‘I have to try to get some cash,’ he said. He looked at her. ‘You wanna jump out of this car and run,’ he shrugged, ‘then you just go for it.’ Then he reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out the glasses and Codes’s phone that she’d scooped when the lights went out in I)issidents. Because she knew from Lowell that people in trouble need a phone, most times worse than 194 anything. He dropped them in her lap, the a;shole’s glasses and the phone. ‘Yours.’ Then he got out, walked over to the AT~v1, and started feeding it cards. She sat there, watching it e~nerge from its armor, the way they do, shy and cautious, its ameras coming out, too, to monitor the transaction. He stood tkre, drumming his fingers on the side, his mouth like he was whistling but he wasn’t making any noise. She looked down at the case and the phone and wondered why she didn’t just jun~p out and run, like he said. Finally he came back, thumb-counting a fold of bills, stuck it down in his front jeans pocket, and got in He sailed the first of his cards out the open window at th~ ATM, which was pulling back into its shell like a crab. ‘Don’t know how they cancelled that one so quick, after you put that thing through Freddie’s laptop.’ Flicked another. Then the last one. They lay in front of the ATM as its lex2n shield came trundling down, their little holograms win~ing up in the machine’s halogen floods. ‘Somebody’ll get those,’ she said. ‘Hope so,’ he said, ‘hope they get ’em and go tcMars.’ Then he did something in reverse with all four wheels and the Ford sort of jumped up and backward, into the street, some other car swerving past them all brakes and horn and the driver’s mouth a black 0, and the part of her that was still a messenger sort of liked it. All the times they’d cut her off. ‘Shit,’ he sa:d, jamming the gear-thing around until he got what he needed and they took off. The handcuff was rubbing on the rash where the red worm had been. ‘You a cop?’ ‘No.’ ‘Security? Like from the hotel?’ ‘Uh-uh.’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘what are you?’ Streetlight sliding across his face. Seemed like he was thinking about it. ‘Up shit creek. Without a paddle.’ The first thing Rydell saw when he got out of the Patriot, in the alley off Haight Street, was a one-armed, one-legged man on a skateboard. This man lay on his stomach, on the board, and propelled himself along with a curious hitching motion that reminded Rydell of the limbs of a gigged frog. He had his right arm and his left leg, which at least allowed for some kind of symmetry, but there was no foot on the leg. His face, as if by some weird osmosis, was the color of dirty concrete, and Rydell couldn’t have said what race he was. His hair, if he had any, was covered by a black knit cap, and the rest of him was sheathed in a black, one-piece garment apparently stitched from sections of heavy-duty rubber inner-tube. He looked up, as he hitched past Rydell, through puddles left by the storm, headed for the mouth of the alley, and said, or Rydell thought he said: ‘You wanna talk to me? You wanna talk to me, you better shut your fuckin’ mouth…’ Rydell stood there, Samsonite dangling, and watched him go. Then something rattled beside him. The hardware on Chevette Washington’s leather jacket. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘don’t wanna hang around back in here.’ ‘You see that?’ Rydell asked, gesturing with his suitcase. ‘You hang around back in here, you’ll see worse than that,’ she said. Rydell looked back at the Patriot. He’d locked it and left the key under the driver’s scat, because he hadn’t wanted to 196 26 Colored people make it look too easy, but he’d forgotten about that back window. He’d never been in the position before of actively wanting a car to be stolen. ‘You sure somebody’ll take that?’ he asked her. ‘We don’t get out of here, they’ll take us with it.’ She started walking. Rydell followed. There was stuff painted on the brick walls as high as anyone could reach, but it didn’t look like any language he’d ever seen, except maybe the way they wrote cuss-words in a printed cartoon. They’d just rounded the corner, onto the sidewalk, when Rydell heard the Patriot’s engine start to rev. It gave him goosebumps, like something in a ghost story, because there hadn’t been anybody back in there at all, and now he couldn’t see the skateboard man anywhere. ‘Look at the ground,’ Chevette Washington said. ‘Don’t look up when they go by or they’ll kill us…’ Rydell concentrated on the toes of his black SWATs. ‘You hang out with car-thieves much?’ ‘Just walk. Don’t talk. Don’t look.’ He heard the Patriot wheel out of the alley and draw up beside them, pacing them. His toes were making little squelching noises, each time he took a step, and what if the last thing you knew before you died was just some pathetic discomfort like that, like your shoes were soaked and your socks were wet, and you weren’t ever going to get to change them? Rydell heard the Patriot take off, the driver fighting the unfamiliar American shift-pattern. He started to look up. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Those friends of yours or what?’ ‘Alley pirates, Lowell calls ’em.’ ‘Who’s Lowell?’ ‘You saw him in l)issidents.’ ‘That bar?’ ‘Not a bar. A chill.’ ‘Serves alcohol,’ Rydell said. ’97 ~A chill. Where you hang.’ “You” who? This Lowell, he hang there?’ Yeah.’ You too?’ ~No,’ she said, angry. ‘He your friend, Lowell? Your boyfriend?’ ‘You said you weren’t a cop. You talk like one.’ ‘I’m not,’ he said. ‘You can ask ’em.’ ‘He’s just somebody I used to know,’ she said. ‘Fine.’ She looked at the Samsonite. ‘You got a gun or something, in there?’ ‘Dry socks. Underwear.’ She looked up at him. ‘I don’t get you.’ ‘Don’t have to,’ he said. ‘We just walking, or you maybe know somewhere to go? Like off this street?’