Grand Junction (47 page)

With the Metastructure gone, speed had no longer been the center of the world; it had moved farther and farther into the margin.

For him, any slowing down is dangerous in an ontological sense. It threatens his very being, and it threatens the world he has built for himself. And, especially, it threatens the link that joins them. An artificial world that tries as best as it can to replicate the world of the era of the Metastructure. An umbilical cord that connects this small piece of the world from Before the Fall with what has survived of his modified organism. Input/output.

Except that the Metastructure is dead. And another entity seems to have taken possession of the Earth and of Humanity in its place. Nature abhors a vacuum. Artifice even more so.

And, more importantly still, there are people in the Territory who know how to stop this “entity.” And now he is going to know who those people are.

“Vegas, Vegas, my friend, I hope you’ve come with the news we’re so anxious for.”

This is Silverskin, in his role as member of the androgynous elite, Neon Park aristocrat, baron of the peaks of Little Congo, prince of transformist surgery, king of his own dreams.

“Tonight, Mr. Silverskin. Remember, the meeting is for tonight.”

The news is good, but everything always takes too much time.

“I hope the storm won’t cause any problems.”

It wouldn’t surprise him, a last-minute cancellation due to the unpredictable elements.

“It will be pretty late; midnight, one
A.M.
, as usual. The storm will be well over by then.”

An excellent thing, habit. It lets others easily anticipate what you are going to do.

“How did you convince Pluto Saint-Clair?”

It is a key question. From the answer, he will decide whether to keep trusting Vegas or not.

“What do you think? When I was following him, I noticed that the little man’s clients were heaping musical instruments on him.”

Surprise.

“Musical instruments?”

“Yeah, an electric guitar and some kind of keyboard in a big black box.”

“A synthesizer?”

“Maybe; I don’t know, but I recognized the guitar. So I told Pluto Saint-Clair I’d pay him in guitars.”

Silverskin watches the rain falling in slanting sheets in the gusting wind. They are going to reverse the course of things; they are going to get their hands on the man and his secret, and there will be a change in who has the power.

“Do you have any news about the two men we hired, the ones who disappeared ten days ago?”

“Still nothing. The only solid trail points to Deadlink, but we didn’t find anything there. One of our teams heard something about Neon Park, but they found nothing there, either. Some other guys are saying they fled the Territory.”

“To go where
?
And do what?”

“That’s their problem. When we’ve successfully completed our operation, we’ll be able to buy all the Triads and gangs in Junkville.”

Vegas is not a complete fool. He survived the era of the Metastructure, and he knew how to adapt when it disappeared and to prepare himself, instinctively, for the next phase. No, he isn’t a fool. But he lacks what truly moves intelligence. Willpower. In the sense of a will that can take on the dimensions of a world.

“We’ve never had a better idea than following Pluto Saint-Clair. Are you talking about the two teenagers he went to find in New Arizona? We can’t lose track of them.”

“Yeah, but they’re nomads; they never stop moving. If it turns out that they aren’t even in Junkville …”

“Then we’ll take care of them, you can be sure of that. What counts is that Pluto Saint-Clair took you where he needed to.”

“Yes, and when I went to see him, and put the deal directly in his hands, he didn’t put up any resistance. On the contrary, he seemed happy.”

“You think? What, like he won’t take out his little commission?”

Everything can be bought in Junkville. As a local proverb says,
Even what can’t be bought is for sale
.

“Of musical instruments?”

Vegas is sometimes a little slow on the uptake, thinks Silverskin, absorbed by the spectacle of the rain lashing the hills of Little Congo. But that doesn’t matter—actually, it’s better that his intelligence is relatively limited. He won’t guess what his actual purpose is. Now to explain:

“He must have made a specific arrangement with the man you saw. But—tell me, how were you able to sell electric guitars in exchange for contact?”

“Very simply, in fact. I knew a prostitute named Clarion Davis in Toy Division. He happened to have several twentieth-century electric guitars; they didn’t work anymore, but he was keeping them. I went to see him with forty liters of gasoline, the last I had, and a few trinkets. He told me to go fuck myself. ‘Two fenders and a Guild from the 1980s against your jerricans of gasoline,’ he said. ‘Wake up, you’re dreaming.’”

A good retort. The rain pounding the countryside. Power within arm’s reach.

“And?”

“And? Now he won’t wake up again, and he’ll sleep without dreams. I grabbed the three guitars, and when I talked about them to Pluto he seemed honestly stunned. ‘You’ll make an excellent impression,’ he said to me. ‘I think the best thing would be to put one aside for yourself at the next contact.’”

Vegas is not loyal; he has an interest here. His intelligence is relatively limited, remember; he acted quickly on instinct. Did he take all possible precautions?

“No witnesses?”

“Don’t worry about that. Less than none.”

“What did you do with the body?”

“Nothing. What could I have done? I don’t work for the Triads. I just started a little fire with gasoline and some starter. Then I got the hell out of there.”

“Ah, so that was the fire the other night.”

“Yep. Destroyed all the evidence. His Combi-Cube was reduced to ashes, and him with it. I couldn’t help the two or three others that burned around it.”

No matter. It might even be good, this series of collateral damages.
There are no designated police in Junkville, just private investigators, and so much the better for them to be lost in speculation for as long as possible.

“I really think you did excellently well. Do you feel ready for tonight?”

“More ready than ever. Not only will I be immunized but I’ll find out their secret, and we’ll have them right where we want them—if you’re still with me.”

“Vegas, my friend, would I have any reason not to be with you in this? Of course you will find out their secret. And then we’ll surely have them by the balls. How did it happen, this contact you spied on?”

Make him tell the story. Pick out some detail that doesn’t match with the preceding version. Test him with the lie detector of your brain—by far the best lie detector ever invented.

“As I told you before, I followed Pluto to New Arizona. He picked up the two boys and their junk in his old Mazda hatchback and they went straight toward Neon Park, and then to Lake Champlain. I saw the little man in a clump of bushes there, but from behind. I couldn’t see exactly what happened, but there was an exchange, and then the sort of strange shamanic medicine I told you about.”

“It isn’t shamanic medicine,” Jade Silverskin replies.

“Oh, no?”

“No. It’s something else. Something else we have to understand.”

Yes. And as soon as possible. Because it is on this point that everything else rests: What is the “technology” used against an entity that destroys all technology?

“Don’t worry, Mr. Silverskin; once I’ve established contact and been immunized, we’ll move on to the next phase of the plan. Believe me, they’ll quickly tell us everything we need to know. Neither Pluto Saint-Clair nor the man with the secret powers will be able to refuse us anything. It’s incredible what the simple fear of death can accomplish.”

Vegas is a patsy. A little piece of trash. He’s probably killed several men in his life. And he has probably done worse than that. He is right, of course.

“We’re going to need to ask more than that of them,” says Silverskin. “We’ll have to ask them to betray everything they believe in.”

“Everything they
believe
in? What do you mean?”

Naturally. What could a man like Vegas believe in?

“Betray their friends, in the first place. The Professor from Texas, particularly. They will do everything we want them to—because we’ll have the man with the secret powers.”

It is not Junkville of which they will become the undisputed kings, or the Territory, or Quebec, or the state of New York.

They might not rule the world.

But, Jade Silverskin muses, the role of
American Caesar
would suit him perfectly.

The power to be gained is immense, and the throne long vacant.

They reach the Territory at the time Campbell promised. The sun is just swallowing up the line of the Ontario horizon as they drive along the northern bank of Lake Champlain. Territory tumbleweeds welcome them, sweeping past in front of them like gray-green floral stars.

W
ELCOME TO THE
G
RAND
J
UNCTION
M
OHAWK
T
ERRITORY
.

During the last few hours of the return trip, there was not a word spoken in the cab. The storm had eviscerated itself above Maine and the rain had stopped, but the whole atmosphere had still been supercharged with a crystalline vapor that hid the world behind a translucent filter, in which each ray of light shimmered in a pointillist infinity of diffractions rising into the skies.

Everyone was lost in his own mystery; everyone saw his own vision of the Territory; everyone was lost in his own night, his own fire.

For Yuri, it ended by crystallizing into a strange certainty, still foreign to what he is, and yet solidified into an immovable block at the center of his being.

In the space of a few days, he has passed to the other side of the unknowable barrier. First there were the two men on Row 299. A simple introduction, an opening, a preliminary sketch. A first contact.

Then the night of the Great War, the night of starfire, the night of the ultraviolet sky, the night when he killed all those men. The Night of the red orgy.

In a week, he has gone from a zero score to a two-figure number. He is so terribly human that in the space of seven days—the time it took God to complete his entire Creation, from what he knows of Christian myth—he has erased a dozen human beings from the surface of the earth.

He has become a killer.

He is much more dangerous than he ever suspected.

He is a man.

He has come home.

To where other men like him live.

The Library. The vast marine-blue containers of the Italian air and sea force. The twelve thousand books.

They are what count more than anything else. They are why so many men had to be killed. They are why one man was lost on the journey.

Brother Francisco activates the system of jacks and hoists that allows the enormous metal cubes to slide onto large platforms pulled by four powerful Dodge Ram 3500 pickups Djordjevic, Zarkovsky, Sheriff Langlois, and one of his deputies have assembled near Bulldozer Park. The Library can thus be more easily taken to the new trailer they have just attached to their laboratory, in an area too narrow for the truck to access. The activity of a small beehive is already buzzing on the tarmac.

Introductions were made with the urgency and gravity of an impending attack. It was as if everyone already knew who everyone was, without identities being truly revealed. We are definitely back in the Territory, muses Yuri; everyone communicates secretly here.

He watches the containers move slowly onto the pickups’ platforms. He looks at Professor Zarkovsky, who has a nearly ecstatic expression on his face. He looks at Milan Djordjevic, whose gaze is lost between two worlds, the one in which the Library has just arrived, and the one it came from. He watches Gabriel Link de Nova, who arrives with his mother, the android with auburn hair who is always dressed in black. He watches Sheriff Langlois, the man of the Law of Bronze, deep in discussion with Slade Vernier, the man who knew how to ensure that it was respected, a thousand miles from his territory, and who must be giving him a detailed rundown of the operation. He looks at Campbell, who is calmly watching the whole container-loading procedure. He gazes up at the sky, dusted with vaporous points of light en route to extinction, the last wispy remnants of twilight.

He watches Brother Francisco approach the containers to unlock their heavy steel locks.

He sees the synchronous movement of Djordjevic and Zarkovsky toward the huge metal boxes, as if attracted by some secret source.

Then, he sees Judith Sevigny.

And everything else immediately fades away.

*   *   *

He has killed more than ten men and he will be twenty-three years old in a month, during the equinox.

He has killed more than ten men and he is falling in love with this girl.

He has killed more than ten men and he imagines that he will probably kill a lot more.

Brother Francisco has just opened the last container when Yuri shakes himself from his fascinated contemplation of the young woman. Can it be that Beauty has transfigured him to this extent in the space of ten days? Can it be, more exactly, that the spatial and temporal distance has created in him, and not in her, an abyss into which his entire being seems to have been thrown, like that Greek philosopher into the heart of a volcano?

Why is this happening now? Now, when the Library has come here. Now that he has killed all those men so that it could get here.

Djordjevic and Zarkovsky climb up onto the side of the platforms to get a closer look at the contents of the huge metal boxes, and to make sure that nothing was damaged during the long voyage. They examine each container in turn. Everything seems to be intact.

The Professor extracts a bright orange, almost red, volume: “Duns Scotus!” he cries. “The Prologue of the
Ordinatio
—the Principle of Individuation—it’s all here!”