The Bridge Trilogy Part 101

DRIFT.

Laney is in drift.

That is how he does it. It is a matter, he knows, of letting go. He admits the random.

The danger of admitting the random is that the random may admit the Hole.

The Hole is that which Laney's being is constructed around. The Hole is absence at the fundamental core. The Hole is that into which he has always stuffed things: drugs, career, women, information.

Mainly.-lately-information.

Information. This flow. This. . . corrosion.

Drift.

ONCE, before he'd come to Tokyo, Laney woke in the bedroom of his suite in the Chateau.

It was dark, only a shush of tires up from Sunset; m.u.f.fled drumming of a helicopter, hunting the hills behind.

And the Hole right there, beside him in the lonely queen-size expanse of his bed.

The Hole, up close and personal.

40.

9. SWEEP SECOND.

pRIGHT pyramids of fruit, beneath buzzing neon.

* He watches as the boy drains a second liter of the pulped drink. swallowing the entire contents of the tall plastic cup in an unbroken stream, with no apparent effort.

"You should not drink cold things so quickly."

The boy looks at him. There is nothing between the boy's gaze and his being: no mask. No personality. He is not, apparently, deaf, because he has understood the suggestion of the cold drink. But there is no evi= dence, as yet, that he is capable of speech.

"Do you speak Spanish?" This in the language of Madrid, unspoken for many years.

The boy places the empty cup beside the first one and looks at the man There is no fear in him 'The men who attacked me they were your friends~ Raising an eyebrow Nothing at all 'How old are yo& Older, the man guesses, than his emotional age. Touches of razored stubble at the corners of his upper lip Brown eyes clear and placid The boy looks at the two empty plastic cups on the worn steel Counter. He looks up at the man.

'Anoth& You wish to drink another~ The boy nods.

The man signals to the Italian behind the counter He turns back ~: to the boy.

Do you have a name?"

Nothing Nothing moves in the brown eyes The boy regards him as calmly as might some placid dog.

The silver pulping machine chugs briefly amid the stacked fruit Shaved ice whirs into the pulp.

The Italian transfers the drink to a plastiC cup and places it before the boy The boy looks at it

41.

The man s.h.i.+fts on the creaking metal stool, his long coat draped like resting wings. Beneath his arm, carefully cleaned now, the knife in its magnetic sheath swings free, sleeping.

The boy raises the cup, opens his mouth, and pours the thick sludge of ice and fruit pulp down his throat.

Defective, the man thinks. Syndromes of the city's tragic womb. The signal of life distorted by chemicals, by starvation, by blows of fortune. Yet he, like everyone else, like the man himself, is exactly where, exactly what, exactly when he is meant to be. It is the Tao: darkness within darkness.

The boy places the empty cup beside the other two.

The man straightens his legs, stands, b.u.t.toning his coat.

The boy reaches out. Two fingers touch the watch the man wears on his left wrist. He opens his mouth as if to speak.

"The time?"

Something moves in the affectless brown depths of the boy's eyes. The watch is very old, purchased from a specialist dealer in a fortified arcade in Singapore. It is military ordnance. It speaks to the man of battles fought in another day. It reminds him that every battle will one day be as obscure, and that only the moment matters, matters absolutely.

The enlightened warrior rides into battle as if to a loved one's funeral, and how could it be otherwise?

The boy leans forward now, the thing behind his eyes seeing only the watch.

The man thinks of the two he leaves tonight on the bridge. Hunters of sorts, now they will hunt no more. And this one, following them. To pick up sc.r.a.ps.

"You like this?"

Nothing registers. Nothing breaks the concentration, the link between that which has surfaced behind the boy's eyes and the austere black face of the watch.

The Tao moves.

The man unfastens the steel buckle that secures the strap. He hands the watch to the boy. He does this without thought. He does this

with the same unthinking certainty with which, earlier, he killed. He does this because it fits, is fitting; because his life is alignment with the Tao.

There is no need to say good-bye.

He leaves the boy lost in contemplation of the black face, the hands.

He leaves now. The moment in balance.

43.

I.

10. AMERICAN ACROPOLIS.

RYD ELI managed to get part of the San Francisco grid on the Brazilian gla.s.ses coming in, but he still needed Creedmore to tell him how to get to the garage where they were leaving the Hawker- Aichi. Creedmore, when Rydell woke him for that, seemed uncertain as to who Rydell was, but did a fairly good job of covering it up. He did know, after consulting a folded business card he took from the watch pocket of his jeans, exactly where they should go.

It was an old building, in the kind of area where buildings like that were usually converted to residential, but the frequency of razor wire suggested that this was not yet gentrified territory.

There were a couple of Universal square badges controlling entry, a firm that mostly did low-level industrial security. They were set up in an office by the gate, watching Real One on a flatscreen propped up on a big steel desk that looked like someone had gone over every square inch of it with a ball peen hammer. Cups of take-out coffee and white foam food containers. It all felt kind of homey to Rydell, who figured they'd be going off s.h.i.+ft soon, seven in the morning. Wouldn't be a bad job, as bad jobs went.

"Delivering a drive-away," Rydell told them.

There was a deer on the flatscreen. Behind it the familiar shapes of the derelict skysc.r.a.pers of downtown Detroit. The Real One logo in the lower right corner gave him the context: one of those nature shows.

They gave him a pad to punch in the reservation number on Creedmore's paper, and it came up paid.

Had him sign on the pad, there. Told him to put it in slot twenty-three, level six. He left the office, got back into the Hawker, swung up the ramp, wet tires squealing on concrete.

Creedmore was conducting a grooming operation in the illuminated mirror behind the pa.s.senger-side sun visor. This consisted of running his fingers repeatedly back through his hair, wiping them on his jeans, then rubbing his eyes. He considered the results. "Time for a drink," he said to the reflection of his bloodshot eyes.

"Seven in the morning," Rydell said.

"What I said," Creedmore said, flipping the visor back up. Rydell found the number twenty-three painted on the concrete,

between two vehicles shrouded in white dustcovers. He edged the Hawker carefully in and started shutting it down. He was able to do this without having to go to the help menu.