Virtually True (14 page)

“Assume I’m dead?” True holds the thought. Turns to the Rajput. “No. How did you stay in contact with Piña? I scanned you and didn’t pick up anything.”

“There are many forms of communication, baba. There are the tribes that speak through clicks. There are those who speak through their lovemaking. Others speak through art and music. We use sign language, since I do not trust portable transmitters.”

Chalk up a victory for low-tech, True thinks.

“Piña’s got people around. That’s how she knew Bong Bong was waiting for you last night.” She takes True’s hand, her own calloused from years of pavement propulsion and iron hoisting. “Most people just take, but you treat Piña straight up.” She produces a package.

True takes it. Stuffed into a synthetic paper bag, almost weightless. “What’s this?”

“Since you’re not a mindreader...”

He tears it open to reveal a black designer protecto-vest with an ornate tattoo on the back. A snake chewing its own tail, weaving in and out of a fiery wreath. A name on it: Ramos.

“What happened to Ramos?”

“Eh, he don’t need it. Put it on. A boy’s gotta protect himself.” Pina absently plays with her eyebrow ring. “You could stay. Be Piña’s assistant. No one’s going to fuck with you then. And Piña needs someone smart. The bizzing get so big sometimes.”

But True has a better plan. Piña says, “It’s fucking perfect to hide out in. A guy could get lost there for a while.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

Pinatubo takes True’s hand and jerks him down to her level. Eye to eye, nose to nose, she kisses him, playfully nips his lower lip. Whispers: “The hologram means it was a professional hit.

PART TWO

THE VIRTUALOSO

CHAPTER 11

Narita airport is redolent with the scent of a desperate people on the move but getting nowhere. The terminal buildings are in jigsaw pieces: glass shards, cement crumbs, twisted sticks of steel laying in hastily swept piles, support beams wrapped in gauze to increase their tensile strength. True studies the gauze, stops to touch it, feel the rough fibers with his thumb and fingers, is tempted to bandage himself.

Japanese wander—some aimlessly, others with purpose—in search of food, water, or medical aid. They wait in lines that tail out of the videophone bank, the government aid center, the food bank for twice-a-day rations; they suffer sleep fever, bodies draped over plastic fast-food-colored chairs and couches, and then bad dreams, negative karma prodding them into a quasi-waking state.

They’ve been waiting days, not hours, their lives crammed into shopping bags or stuffed into wilting rice sacks or waterlogged boxes. And that smell, the odor of malaise, hopelessness, overcrowding, stagnation. True knows it threatens to trap him, too, if he lets it.

He has to step over an old man lying flat-boarded, his back brushing the floor.

“Mizu. Mizu.”
The man is trembling, administered to in rusted whispers by a woman.

The woman: “Shhhh.” She’s old, too—his wife?—stoop-backed and haggard.

True’s sure the man’s voice is of another. But it’s not, couldn’t be, the old refugee he interviewed on Nerula’s pier. Just another ancient man not yet ready to take leave from this life but being shown the door nonetheless. True offers a bottle of water. Leaves before he can be thanked.

The quake split and spat out gobs of airport, formed one-of-a-kind architectural wonders, wonders that ceased, ending in jagged lines and crumpled walls. The second floor lacks confidence, teeters uneasily; glass not shattered is taped dull brown. Departing flights quintupled in recent days. A diaspora ensued, is ensuing, to McSingapore, McBangkok, McSeoul, places known for fast food and technology, already Eden to clusters of Japanese expatriate salary-
tachi
.

True searches for a means to town, but service centers are unwomanned and unmanned, as if these once banally smiling figures had cut and run, leaving counters spread with dust. Through holes punched out behind the counters, he peers out to the parking lot, where crunched cars and buses are piled in heaps. He knows not to rent a car, even if any are available; that would render him traceable.

“I knew you’d get your ass here, True Ailey.” A woman’s voice behind him, familiar, yet not one he recognizes in a split.

True pirouettes. “Reiner Jacobi. This
is
a coincidence.”

Reiner scrunches her forehead, amused or disappointed, it’s hard to tell. She looks every bit and byte as good as her broadcast image: long, spiraling strands of cordovan hair, buff physique, skin moist and thick, as if in her line of work she requires more than the usual seven layers. “Yeah, right, a coincidence.” Surrounds her words with a drafty sigh. “Perhaps I could interest you in some prime pieces of Tokyo real estate. At bargain-basement prices? Oh, shit.” Spits the final t. “Basements are all we have left in quake-ee-yo. Give me your wrist-top.”

“What?”

“Believe me, I’m doing you a favor.” She snatches his wrist-top and transfers the data to another miniature computer. Seconds later, the light pulses green, transference complete. “I can’t decide whether you have a death wish or you’re just
molto retardo
. I did a story once on a dude on the run from the yakuza? Innocent kind of guy, a lot like you? Lasted about a fucking week before they found him skewered, charred like
yakitori
.” She smiles sweetly. “Be right back, darling.”

Reiner taps keys percussively while striding to a family waiting for transit to Luzonia, a post-quake launch pad to other lands. She talks with the boy, maybe eight, takes his hands into hers, wraps them around the wrist-top. And as he watches this, True realizes he can actually smell Reiner’s perfume—flowers: roses, marigolds, lilacs, petals ground to powder and stirred in alcohol, misting down, a dab behind the knee, a smudge behind the ear. And this is remarkable; extraordinary, really, because True hasn’t been able to smell anything in a year-plus, 400 days of silent odors, smell-less scents, conducting his life in a world he could see, feel, hear, but not smell or taste.

The child accesses the wrist-top video games and is instantly enmeshed in a 3-D graphic net, spaceships firing salvos as he ducks and fires back. True gives the family the once-over, guesses middle-class with nothing now save for tattered clothes, tattered boxes, tattered lives.

Reiner hands True another wrist-top. A newer model. More RAM, more memory, more power, more features than his own. Someone else had the same type. Seconds later, the answer: Aslam.

True snaps it on. “Will the kid have access to all my files, too, or just games?”

“Unh-uh. I erased everything except the games. It’s all he wants anyway.”

True’s files are in order. “What was wrong with mine? It doesn’t have all these features, but it was getting the job done.”

“You mean setting you up for the kill. It’s amazing you’re not toast already. I heard about Rush on Aussie Beat. When I heard you were missing, I figured you’d pull some
Fugitive
shit. Judging by the pizza stains on the wall, Rush isn’t going to be irritating viewers with his formica personality anymore.”

“How’d you know I was coming to Tokyo?”

“I tracked you.”

“How?”

She taps on his wrist-top. “You’ve been leaving a beeping trail of electronic breadcrumbs since you fled.”

Every WWTV wrist-top is equipped with a location key, for use in kidnappings or other emergencies. He’s sure his wasn’t activated, though.

“It’s not like you’d left your location beam on,” she says, almost reading his thoughts. “I accessed your code through the WWTV data guide and homed in that way. When I discovered the signal was moving this way, I knew you were coming. I mean, it made sense, right? Where else could you hide? I simply checked the air scheds. And—what the hell?—there was a flight from Nerula arriving right about now.”

No wonder she ditched his wrist-top. The thought occurs he shouldn’t let the kid have it, but fear—fear of dying, fear of pissing off Reiner (he hates to admit)—crams these misgivings back. “Thanks.” What else can he say?

“For meeting your plane? Don’t mention it. It’s not like I have a lot to do around here.”

“No. Listen—” True searches for a soft spot, anywhere. “I should have ditched the wrist-top before I left Nerula. It was—”

“—stupid.”

“OK.”

“You know what the definition of a good journo is?”

“Tell me.”

“Someone who comes down from the hills after the battle is over and courageously shoots the wounded. That’s how you get stories. And the story is that Rush is now two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese. I want to know why the fuck.”

True isn’t sure he wants to work with her.

“I
know
shit’s going down, and you and me, we’re going to hash it out.” Then Reiner, as quickly as she heats up, ices cool. “True, we’re pros. I’m not doing this just because you’re WWTV and it’s part of my responsibility to save your ass. Frankly, I could use your help.” She tugs him toward the exit. “I need you. There’s too much here for one reporter. What do you say? We need to work together on this.”

Spelunking through a hole in the terminal, over to an abandoned runway where vehicles are parked. To prevent theft, armed hoods sprawl lazily on car hoods; except in one case, a big, clunking electric Ford, all hood, a jet-black Labrador leashed to the front bumper. True remembers the dog from Reiner’s hovercraft broadcast, the day the earthquake jiffy-popped Tokyo.

“Don’t worry Rue—uh, True—well now that’s a slip,” Reiner says. She reaches into her pocket for a dog biscuit. “No, it wasn’t a slip, True. I was acting like an asshole. Don’t mind the bitch.”

“Which one?”

Reiner ignores the insult and turns her attention to the dog, which is straining against the leash. True is amused by the puffs of fur floating into the air. “Sit. Shed. Breathe. Breathe. Drool. Good girl.” Reiner says this in a monotone, cramming the biscuit into the gaping maw, squeezing it shut, and pats the dog on the head. “It’s not that she’s dumb, I figure, it’s just that expectations of her abilities may have been inflated.”

“Is she going to pull us into town?”

“The car works. But there’s so much shit in the atmosphere the solar panels on the roof are useless for energy storage. But I have my ways for recharging it. At least the car won’t get stolen with the dog here.”

“What’s her name?” True tentatively pats its snout.

“Just ‘Dog.’ I found her wandering around outside my condo on my way to grab a hovercraft to cover the quake. I figure she came from a nearby pet store. I was going to bring her back but there was no pet store anymore. She has good karma. Some animals are hard to kill.”

“Some people, too.” True remembering the Rajput’s words.

Reiner punches wrist-top buttons and the car doors chatter spasmodically, like plastic novelty teeth. “I didn’t say the car was without its charms.” She unleashes Dog. After a brief but energetic struggle, she crams the animal into the back seat. Shuts the door. “One good thing about the quake is that navigation systems don’t work. All the roads are fucked up. God knows how many detours we’ll have to take, so you’ll have to trust my driving.”

She peels out of the parking lot, swerves right then left, past a pile of wrecked cars; then, flooring it, shoots out onto what True assumes is an expressway, empty except for abandoned hunks of metal along the shoulders.

Sweat dribbles into True’s eye. “The A/C doesn’t work?”

“Cuts down on mileage. I can’t rely on getting a charge, so I conserve.”

“Fair enough.” True hits the switch to roll down the window.