She felt like she’d split in half, the part of her that was ragging Rydell for getting her into this kind of crazy shit again, and the part of her that just kept looking around and wanting to say: look at this, and how come I’m alive?
But something started beeping, in Rydell’s pocket, and he took out a pair of sunglasses, black frames with cheap chrome trim, and put them on. “Hello?” he said. “Laney?”
She looked over as the one who’d talked Fontaine out of his gun opened the door, glass grating beneath it, and stepped in, looking exactly the same as when he’d left, except he had a long fresh scratch down the side of his face, where blood was beading. He took the skinny little revolver out of his pocket and handed it to Fontaine, holding it sideways
243 with his hand around the thing you put the bullets in. “Thank you,” he said.
Fontaine brought the gun up beneath his nose, sniffed at it, and raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“I’ve adjusted the windage,” the man said, whatever that meant. “No need now to compensate for the pull.”
Fontaine clicked the bullet-thing out and ejected five empty brass cartridges into his palm. He looked at these, looked up at the man. “How’d you do?”
“Three,” the man said.
“I think they’ve got one,” Rydell was saying. “There’s this kid here on it. You want me to try the cable? You talk to her, Laney? She told me you used to talk with her a lot. . .” Rydell looked idiotic, standing there talking to the ~ir in front of him, one hand up to hold the ear bead in, the other letting that crazy-ass gun hang down. She wished he’d put it somewhere, back in the wall, anywhere.
“Come on, Rydell,” she said, but then she saw that God’s Little Toy was up against the ceiling in the front of the shop, watching her. “Tessa? Tessa, you hear me?”
There was a burst of squawky static, like a parrot trying to talk.
“Tessa?”
“I’m sorry,” the man in the long coat said. “The men who attacked you communicate on a number of specific channels. I am employing a jammer at those frequencies.” He looked at God’s Little Toy. “This device’s control frequencies are unaffected, but voice communication is currently impossible.”
“Tessa!” Chevette waved frantically at the balloon, but it only continued to stare at her with its primary lens.
“What do you mean, burn it?” she heard Rydell say. “Now? Right now?” Rydell pulled the sunglasses off. “They’re setting fire to the bridge.”
“Fire?” She remembered Skinner’s caution around that, how careful people were with cooking gas, matches; how a lit butt thrown down could earn you a broken nose.
But Rydell had the sunglasses on again. “I thought you said to get 244 out? What do you mean, leave her? Damn, Laney, why don’t you make some sense for once? Why-Laney? Hey?” She saw Rydell’s tension as he took off the glasses. “Listen up. Everybody. We’re leaving now. Laney says they’re setting fire to the bridge.” Rydell bent, wincing, and opened his bag, hauling this silver thing out. She saw it glint in the light from outside. Like a big steel thermos. He pulled out some coiled cables and tossed her a length. “Find a socket.” He had another cable in his hand now and was standing over the boy with the old military eye-phone rig. “Hey. Kid? We have to borrow the notebook. Hear me?” The helmet came up and seemed to regard him blindly but sentiently, like the head of a giant termite. Rydell reached down and took the notebook, unhooking the lead to the helmet. Chevette saw the boy’s mouth close. The notebook’s screen showed the black dial of a clock. No, Chevette saw, it was an old-fashioned watch, enlarged to the size of a baby’s face.
Rydell studied the two ends of the cable he held, then tried a socket on the back of the notebook. Another. It fit. Chevette had found an outlet, set crookedly into one of Fontaine’s walls. She plugged the cable in and passed Rydell the other end. He was plugging the cable from the notebook into the silver canister. He plugged the power cable in beside it. She thought she heard it start to hum.