And a girl was there, pale and slim, glowing with her own light, naked for an instant between them. And then she wore Skinner’s jacket, faded horsehide. Black jeans, a black sweatshirt, lug-soled runners. Everything cleaner and somehow sharper than what Chevette wore, but otherwise identical.
“I am Rei Toei,” the girl said. “Berry Rydell, you must leave the bridge now. It is burning.”
“You said that you knew my name,” the man in the overcoat said, the long thin scratch on his face black in the light she gave off. “In the tavern.”
“Konrad,” the glowing girl said, “with a ‘K.'”
The man’s eyebrows rose, above his round gold glasses. “And how do you know that?”
“I know many things, Konrad,” the girl said, and as she said it,
245 became, for a few seconds, another girl, blonde, the irises of her blue eyes ringed with black.
The man seemed carved from some incredibly dense wood, heavy and inert, and Chevette thought for some reason of dust motes floating in sunlight in an old museum, something she’d seen once but could not remember where or when. “Lise,” he said, a name as if dredged from some deep place of pain. “Yesterday. I dreamed I saw her, in Market Street.”
“Many things are possible, Konrad.”
Rydell had taken a pink fanny pack from his duffel and was strapping it around his waist. It had a grinning cartoon dragon screened on the front. As Chevette watched, he zipped it open and unfolded a pink bib, which he fastened around his neck. The bib said LUCKY DRAGON SECURITY in square black letters. “What’s that?” Chevette asked him.
“Bulletproof,” Rydell said. He turned to the glowing girl. “Laney says I should leave the projector here. But that means we leave you-”
“That is what I want,” she said. “We are about to find our way to the heart of Harwood’s plan. And change it. And change everything.” She smiled at Rydell then, and Chevette felt a twist of jealousy.
Chevette became aware of noise approaching, the revving and whining of overtaxed electric engines. There was a crashing of metal on wood, and Fontaine sprang away from the door. A three-wheeled ATV slammed to a halt outside, Tessa straddling its seat behind a moon-faced boy who wore a black meshbacked cap, backward, and a black T-shirt. Tessa was wearing her input glasses and had a control glove on either hand. She pulled off the glasses and pushed hair back from her eyes. “Come on, Chevette.”
“Get off the damn trike, honey,” the round-faced boy said. “Don’t have a lot of turning radius in here.”
Tessa hopped off the bike and stepped into the shop, looking up at God’s Little Toy. “I’m not getting any audio,” she said.
The boy punched the engines mounted in the ATV’s rear hubs, reversing one. The trike lurched around and back, then forward, turning so that he faced back toward San Francisco. “Come on, honey,” he said. 248 “I’m picking up flames on two cameras,” Tessa said. “This sucker’s on fire.”
“Time to go,” Rydell said, putting his hand on Chevette’s shoulder. “Mr. Fontaine, you get you a ride here with Chevette.”
“I’m not going anywhere, son,” Fontaine said.
“It’s on fire, Mr. Fontaine.”
“It’s where I live.”
“Come on, Rydell,” Chevette said, grabbing him by his waistband.
Tessa had climbed back on, behind her meshbacked driver, and was putting her input glasses on. “Jesus,” Tessa said, “I don’t believe the angles I’m getting. .
Chevette tugged Rydell through the door and climbed on the back of the ATV~ sort of sidesaddle, leaving room for Rydell. “Wait,” Rydell said, “we can’t just leave them here.
“We’? Hey, boy, I’m not carrying you-” But the moon-faced boy saw the chain gun then and stopped.
“Go on,” said Fontaine, who stood now with his arm around the shoulder of the boy who’d worn the helmet, whose eyes regarded Rydell with a sort of animal calm. “Go on. We’ll be okay here.”
“I’m sorry,” Rydell said. “I’m sorry about your shop
“Your ass be sorry, you don’t get out of here.”
Chevette heard a woman start screaming, toward San Francisco. She yanked his waistband, hard. The fly button popped off his khakis. He climbed on the back of the ATV opposite her, hanging on with one hand, the chain gun in the other.