No idea what he’ll do when he’s got it big enough, but he likes to keep busy.
And this is the way it always is, for Fontaine, when he knows that things are bad, very bad indeed, and very likely over. He likes to keep busy. 261 66. BULKL]FT CHEVETTE climbs through the hatch in the roof of Skinner’s room to find Rydell kneeling there in his Lucky Dragon security bib, but the critical factor here is the man from the bar, the one who shot Carson, who’s got a gun pressed into Rydell’s ear and is watching her, and smiling.
He’s not much older than she is, she thinks, with his black buzz cut and his black leather coat, his scarf wrapped just so, casual but you know he takes time with it, and she wonders how it is people get this way, that they’ll stick a gun in someone’s ear and you know they’ll use it. And why does it seem that Rydell finds people like that, or do they find him?
And behind him she can see a plume of water arcing higher than the bridge, and knows that that must be from a fireboat, because she’s seen one used when a pier on the Embarcadero burned.
God, it’s strange up here, now, with the night sky all smoke, the flames, lights of the city swimming and dimmed as the smoke rolls. Little glowing red worms are falling, winking out, all around her, and the smell of burning. She knows she doesn’t want Rydell hurt but she isn’t afraid. She just isn’t now, she doesn’t know why.
Something on the roof beside her and she sees that it’s a glider up on its own little frame, staked to the asphalt-coated wooden roof with bright sharp spikes.
And other things piled beside it: black nylon bags, what she takes to be bedding. Like someone’s ready to camp here, if they need to, and she understands the buzz-cut boy wanted to be covered, if he had to stay, to hide. And it comes to her that probably he’s responsible for the burning of the bridge, and how many dead already, and he’s just smiling there, like he’s glad to see her, his gun in Rydell’s ear.
Rydell looks sad. So sad now.
“You killed Carson,” she heard herself say.
“Who?” 262 “Carson. In the bar.”
“He was doing a pretty good job putting your lights out.”
“He was an asshole,” she said, “but you didn’t have to kill him.”
“Fortunately,” he said, “it isn’t about who’s an asshole. If it were, our work would never be done.”
“Can you fly this?” Pointing at the glider.
“Absolutely. I’m going to take this gun out of your ear now,” he said to Rydell. He did. She saw Rydell’s eyes move; he was looking at her. The boy with the buzz cut hit him in the head with the gun. Rydell toppled over. Lay there like a big broken doll. One of the glowing red worms fell on his stupid pink bib, burned a black mark. “I’m going to leave you here,” he said. He pointed the gun at one of Rydell’s legs. “Kneecap,” he said.
“Don’t,” she said.
He smiled. “Lay down over there. By the edge. On your stomach.” The gun never moved.
She did as she was told.
“Put your hands behind your head.”
She did.
“Stay that way.
She could watch him out of the corner of her eye, moving toward the glider. The black fabric of its simple triangular wing was catching a breeze now, thrumming with it.
She saw him duck under the kite-like wing and come up within the carbon-fiber framework extending beneath it. There was a control-bar there; she’d seen people fly these on Real One.
He still had the gun in his hand but it wasn’t pointed at Rydell.
She could smell the asphalt caked on the roof. She remembered spreading it with Skinner on a hot windless day, how they heated the hard bucket of tar with a propane-ring.
The world Skinner had helped build was burning now, and she and Rydell might burn now with it, but the boy with the buzz cut was ready to fly.