by Simon Ings
What he saw in the mirror wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t Rio, either.
He glanced in the rear-view, between Arnaldo and Douglas and out the glass to the boot. You knew you were finished, he realised then. You lacked the face. Might as well be legless. Should have eyeballed in, you silly bitch. All’s pretty in DreamBrasil. You too. Maybe that explained it, mugging turistas for a better ’deck. They don’t come cheap.
Douglas whistled again, like he’d just learned how and wanted to impress everyone. Irritated by the sound, Ajay snapped back into the real world. He looked around. They’d snared a traffic bolus round Lagoa. Jorge was slapping some afoxé riff on the rim of the steering wheel, waiting for the cars ahead to unsnarl. On the pavement between them and the lake, girls and boys ’bladed past, radios velcroed round their upper arms. Naked, like the girl before, or nearly so: fio-dental bikinis and, for the boys, queer-looking posing pouches, new last season. Fetishes of string. Some winter.
It looked as though Douglas was nearing whatever passed for orgasm with him. ‘Oba!’ he cried, and when another Young God passed, ‘Nossa!’ It didn’t seem to matter whether they were girls or boys. Ajay balled his fists.
‘O, chocante!’
It came out of nowhere, a single fluid motion. The next Ajay knew his hands were round Douglas’s throat, bouncing the back of his skull scarily but harmlessly, alas, against the headrest.
Douglas screamed, spit everywhere, ‘’ta louco!’ Arnaldo hit Ajay across the face, grinning, glad of an excuse at last.
‘Stop it,’ said Jorge.
Ajay found himself back in his seat. Jorge’s voice commanded respect. Ajay glanced at him. ‘Perdao,’ he said. Apologies.
‘That’s it?’
‘Want more?’
‘I think you should.’
‘Well, it just – Hell, can’t he show respect?’
Jorge allowed himself a narrow smile.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ajay said, ‘it’s my first.’
‘I understand. Douglas.’
Douglas folded his arms; sank back in his seat.
‘Control yourself, you silly shit.’ Jorge wrestled the car through the snarl and into Arpoador, then dog-legged down the tree-lined streets near the Cantagalo tunnel. He stopped the car. A scrawny middle-aged drunk stumbled out the shadows and started waving his arms around, offering to help them park. Jorge ignored him. ‘This do for you?’
Thank Christ, Ajay thought. Nevertheless, he feigned reluctance. ‘No, I’ll see it through.’
‘Nothing to see.’
‘But—’
Jorge punched Ajay’s shoulder, friendly, urging him out. ‘This your street?’
Careful. He glanced around. ‘Near enough,’ he chanced. He put his hand into his right pants pocket and drew out a scrunched-up gum wrapper.
‘Bom. We’ll call you.’
Ajay waited for a beat, then snapped his seat belt free. ‘Okay.’ He dropped the wrapper into the gap between the door and the seat.
‘Be safe.’
He got out the car. ‘Tchau. Call me.’
‘Don’t worry.’
‘Who’s worried?’ He swung the door shut.
Jorge swung the car back onto the street. The drunk leapt out again, playing at traffic warden, waving ferociously for Jorge to proceed. The car rolled past without stopping to tip. The drunk shrugged and went back to the sidewalk. Ajay lingered in the middle of the road, watching the tail lights disappear. Dumb, he thought. They have line of fire. He crossed to the sidewalk. There was a pay phone nearby. He entered and dialled, said: ‘They’re Copacabana-bound, riding through Freire Alvin. Expect a trace when they leave the tunnel.’ The gum-wrappered telltale was on a delay. It wouldn’t transmit until he was out of range, in case the car’s counter-insurgency system spotted it—
Which reminded him.
He stepped out the booth and went through his pockets. An old tissue, which he didn’t remember. He placed it carefully into the gutter, scared to drop it. Incendiaries had gotten light, could be hidden anywhere these days. Under a street light, he checked the soles of his shoes. He picked up a leaf big as his forearm and used the stem to prise carefully at the mould and sand. No surprises there. He checked his hands; no stains. He slipped off his jacket, checked the material where Jorge had friendly-punched him, and rubbed his arm, searching for any residual soreness.
Nothing.
He wouldn’t feel entirely comfortable until he’d showered, detoxed and scanned, but in his gut he felt they’d left him clean. He shook his head: they’d been too casual by half. And then to let him go, the body still inside the boot. It made no sense.
He looked at his watch. There was no rush. He needed a drink. He walked to the beach road. There was a concert under way in the Parque Garota, among the rocks separating the beaches of Arpoador and Copacabana. The night sky shimmered there, stage lights hidden by the headland bleeding colour through the moist sea air. As the lights turned, the colours dimmed. Seconds later they returned a different hue. High above, a bio-fluorescent advertising balloon boasted some musicfest or other. The pavement thrummed to a vintage back-beat. A Daniella Mercury number? Old anyway, and over the sounds of the traffic he caught a hint of some strictly modern orchestration: they plastered scintillating strings over everything these days, like glue.
He turned right, away from the music, leaving Arpoador for Ipanema. The young were out in force tonight, bearing their bodies like emblems to the hot night. The street-light glare blacked out the beach, but Ajay knew that a handful of surfistas would still be out there, riding Ipanema’s waves. He stopped at a beach front chopperia and sat down at an iron table painted over with the Brahma logo. The collision of signs – the Hindu deity, unwittingly commodified by a beer company – had long since ceased to amuse him. In his eighteenth month, he was at the cusp of his banishment, where differences are familiar but not yet ignorable. They chafed at him constantly.
US Naval Intelligence Cortex, Presidio, SF, Calif.
Motor-afferents:
SPEC: Dynamic integration of systems and personnel.
Nano/chemo/thermo/biological weapons of all categories.
All units support connective delegation ’ware.
STATUS: Maintaining virtual rehearsals in all combat theatres.
Motor activities off-line pending authorisation.
Authorising agencies reputed long defunct.
Idle – Cold – Alone –
US Naval Intelligence Cortex, Presidio, SF, Calif.
Sensorium:
SPEC: Orbital data capture.
Global hotwire connectivity.
Agencies worldwide.
STATUS: Satellites down or dead.
Current global hotwire baud rate exceeds own spec.
Agencies offline pending payment of outstanding bills.
Deaf and blind –
US Naval Intelligence Cortex, Presidio, SF, Calif.
Cognition:
SPEC: Massive reiterated cognitive facility.
Bespoke delegation ’ware designed by Lucy Snow.
STATUS: Impaired due to sensory dysfunction.
Impaired due to motor-afferent neglect.
Fat and mad –
Four beers later – about half past one – Ajay arrived at the hospital. A TVGlobo truck pulled up behind him as he climbed the entrance stairs: Herazo’s moving fast, he thought. But Rio was full of telegenic incidents, and maybe something else had brought it here.
Gloria was waiting for him at the top of the steps: highlighted hair in a perm, blood-red fingernails long as talons, powder and rouge and a neat little Chaplin moustache. He was stuffing pizza into his wet, weak mouth and there were crumbs and stains all down the front of his green sequined trouser suit: a ‘Called away from some costume frolic on the East side of Copacabana’ number. Gloria’s biggest weakness after his stomach was his vanity.
He stood up – at six-six he was a good foot taller than Ajay – and crammed in the last slice of
pizza. His oddly mobile lips – too weak for such a face – wrapped themselves around the last inch of crust with a prehensile wriggle. ‘Bicheiro’s in conference,’ he grumbled, through a mouthful of dough.
‘My arse,’ said Ajay, walking round.
Gloria followed close behind him, breathing garlic down his neck. ‘If he don’t want to see you, I’ll kick your black arse into next week.’
‘Stuff it, Gloria.’
The doors to the visitor’s room were already open.
The usual heavies lined the room: Gloria’s favourite pederasts. He toured them, trading hand-slaps, thumbs-up, kisses. Their grey casuals set off his sequined jacket to good effect. Ajay knew Gloria too well to suppose this was a lucky accident.
Someone had pulled a sofa chair out from the wall and set it in the middle of the room. There sat Herazo, suitably enthroned, the calm centre of a building storm. Oblivious to everyone and everything, he was balancing a lapman on his knees, gazing raptly into the screen. He ran his fingers through his right-hand parting, letting the oiled strands drop over his forehead at a raffish, Hitlerian angle. He studied the monitor again, scowled, and swept his hair back into place. There was a camera mounted in the lapman’s lid, drinking in his image. Herazo was too vain ever to hostage his looks to the vagaries of the telephone system, and he was looking, not at another, but at himself. The machine’s TrueMirror button was a godsend for him; a vanity mirror he could carry around and leave his masculinity unquestioned.
What he looked like right now hardly mattered. In a very little while the make-up people would be here anyway, rosing his lips and matting his nose in readiness for a press conference nobody outside this room yet knew about.
Two men and a woman in colour co-ordinated linen pastels were orbiting him, phones in hand. They seemed at a loss.
‘It’s a pivete sir. It’s not going to draw crowds overnight.’
‘This is costing me a fortune—’
‘As you said yourself, sir, we’re in this for the long haul.’
‘More to the point, so are you.’
‘Sir?’
‘I want a roomful. Foreign press, the works. Do it.’
The three went into a huddle. Ajay recognised them – some high-gloss PR outfit Herazo had been wooing off and on for months. In Rio image always outweighed content, and even Herazo had to beg to get the best. Now he had them on his payroll, he was determined to collect. ‘I want the Haag people to see this. Get what Europeans you can, and don’t fob me off with that Lisbon lot, I need Germans, Swiss, Russians.’
‘Yes sir,’ they mumbled, doubtfully, casting furtive glances at the grey-clad heavies around them. Imagineers of the purest water, they were bound to have worked for bicheiros before, but few carried the mark of the street as openly as Herazo; even as mayor, he was never without his semi-legal entourage.
Ajay stepped into his line of sight: ‘Hi, Hez.’
Herazo stared at him. ‘It’s a girl.’
‘I know.’
‘She bit her tongue off.’
‘I’m sorry. How is she?’
‘As planned.’
‘She’s stable?’
‘You’re quite safe.’
‘The men in the car?’
‘Safe and sound.’
‘They been nanoteched?’
‘To submolecular level. It takes a while, but the car’s already chewed.’
The flechette Ajay had used was soluble Teflon, already gone. The exotics Herazo’s labs had filled it with would be metabolised by now. As long as the kid’s heart kept pumping, the coroner would never get the chance to analyse whatever traces remained in her brain.
‘It ran smooth otherwise?’ Herazo asked.
‘As desired.’
‘I’m pleased,’ Herazo allowed. ‘All’s fine. Except now—’ he shouted so the pastel suits would hear him – ‘I am sitting in this goddamn empty room!’
Ajay remembered something, with misgiving. ‘Hez, why did you say you wanted Haag to see?’
‘The long strategy,’ said Herazo, with an arch smile. He’d been taunting his staff with this ‘long strategy’ business for weeks. Herazo never did one thing for less than three reasons. The trouble was the older he got, the more vain he became: he’d begun to flaunt even his cleverness. Careless, thought Ajay. But it was only what he expected. Carelessness, even more than heat or sensuality, was Rio’s defining characteristic. He said, ‘If you’re planning to tie this with my work for them—’
‘If I did that,’ Herazo cut him off quietly, and a smile played about his lips, ‘you would kill me, wouldn’t you? Or try.’
Ajay said nothing.
Herazo patted him on the shoulder. ‘And who’s to say you wouldn’t succeed, my friend? Calm yourself, it’s nothing like that. What point would there be? I want Haag to know what we’re capable of, is all. New life, from the brink of death! Lazarisation, and all for mere short-term political gain! Such resources! It will scare them to death, that much pirate techniq in our hands, don’t you think?’
‘They will guess it’s a come-on,’ said Ajay, not liking Herazo’s new taste for dangerous moves. ‘They won’t take you seriously till it’s accomplished.’
‘But they’ll look.’
‘Yes,’ Ajay admitted, ‘their eyes will fix Rio.’
‘Gloria!’ Herazo shouted. ‘Take us to the pivete.’
‘You mean homeless child, sir,’ the pastel-dressed PR woman insisted.
‘As said,’ Herazo concurred, with a careless wave.
Ajay had expected something special. What he got was a little girl under a white sheet, a tube up her nose, an electrode stuck on the side of her head and a fibrillator strapped to her chest.
‘There she is,’ said Herazo, all fatherly, like he’d made something here. Ajay said nothing, but gazed closely at the girl, as though he might read her last words from her face.
Her skin was drab olive, and her face was slack, but, heart beating, blood pulsing, she still looked alive. Too dismayed for death, perhaps, lacking the secret smile corpses have.
They had stitched up her tongue and her mouth was full of dressing. Her eye had puffed up badly where Jorge had hit her: you couldn’t see her lashes. There were bruises on her arms, where Douglas and Arnaldo had held her still for execution. There were bruises round her neck, too, and a cut eyebrow. He didn’t remember them. He pointed. ‘What are they?’
‘Window dressing,’ said Gloria.
Ajay stared in silence at the warm corpse. The muscles in his jaw tightened.
‘Ajay,’ Herazo murmured, ‘the cameras are going to focus on her head, right?’
‘What else did you do?’
Herazo had a nose for hypocrisy: ‘You mean besides get you to kill her?’
‘What else?’
‘Leave it, Ajay.’
Ajay leaned over the bed, grabbed the sheet, tore it back. The skin around the girl’s sex was virgin white. No bruises.
‘The answer is no,’ said Herazo, acidly. ‘Dummy, we leave geneprints, they’d be traceable, wouldn’t they?”
Ajay said, ‘You know if it had been a boy, they were going to cut his genitals off?’
Herazo whistled through his teeth. ‘Damn shame.’
‘Yeah,’ said Gloria, ‘fucking telegenic.’
‘He would have bled to death,’ said Ajay, leaving the room. ‘Not so fucking telegenic.’
He returned to the foyer. There was something wrong. Armed specials were milling by the doors. Beyond, strange flashes lit the sky: multicoloured lightning. Through the double glazing came the unmistakable swoop and whine of massed police sirens.
Herazo emerged from a nearby lift and stormed up to Ajay. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ he demanded. Behind him, the entire mayoral entourage came milling and chattering.
‘I’m just in a bad mood,’ Ajay replied, with a careless shrug.
‘Not you, you dick, that!’ Herazo pushed past the police and pressed his face to the ent
rance doors. Ajay followed. The lights in the hospital grounds had shorted out. Blue strobes crashed and splintered in the glass and metal trim of countless ambulances and police cars. They caught and froze the scene every split second, strobing like a faulty arcade display. One police van, its windows meshed with cantilevered riot screens, wheeled pointlessly around the forecourt like a bull in a ring, tyres screeching.
‘I see your publicity people have been busy,’ Ajay said, drily.
News of the murdered child had swept the whole of vidigal off the mountainside, past the Jóquei Clube and the Jardim Botanico right up to the hospital gates. But no amount of media manipulation could control the crowds once they were in place, and what Herazo had intended as a peaceful demonstration had already degenerated past hope of rescue.
Herazo was beside himself. ‘A vigil!’ he yelled. ‘A vigil, I said, not a bloody mob!’
He thrust open the door and stepped out. A knot of military police were guarding the hospital gates, dodging the sticks and stones of the outraged crowd. Sirens whooped and screeched.
‘For God’s sake!’
The sound was deafening and dreadful, screams and tannoyed threats from the police; beyond, a grotesque carnival of whistles, rattles; under that the beating of a hundred drums, heady rhythms, fast, tightly controlled.
‘Gloria, for God’s sake knock some sense into that mess down there before we all get lynched.’
Gloria ran down the entrance steps and strode over to the cordon. As soon as he was within earshot, he started shouting instructions. The man at the centre of the group nodded brightly. The braid round his Special Services cap glistened in the syncopated blue light. He trotted past the hospital steps with the jaunty self-consciousness of an Olympic torch-bearer, the creases in his charcoal-grey uniform snapping and straightening, and disappeared into an unmarked sedan, parked in the lee of the portico.
‘Christ,’ Herazo said. But he was more disgusted than afraid. Riots had brought him to power, and it would take more than one riot to oust him. He descended the steps to where Gloria was standing. Ajay followed. Rockets burst above them, gaudy showers of red and gold – Vidigal’s football colours, the nearest that favela had to a battle flag. Ajay, deafened and disoriented, watched the fiery flowers die against a sky of perfect black.
