Idolon (6 page)

Marta stepped from the magrail onto a platform jammed with agricultural workers from the hydroponics farms, greenhouses, warehouses, packaging plants, and distribution centers around the Pajaro Beach Flats.

Her nostrils flared, taking in the smell of sweat, brine, leaky hydrogen fuel cells, rotten 'vegetables, uncollected garbage, newly baked bread, resignation, hope, and despair. She had grown up here; she hated this place and loved it. Like everyone else, she vowed to leave, yet always returned. Every path out seemed to lead back, each step part of a convoluted series of M
ö
bius-strip events.

Marked by the crumbling smokestack of an old, coal-fueled power plant, the Flats extended from Moss Landing in the south to Watsonville in the north. A hundred years ago, crop irrigation wells along the coast had leached the soil dry and saltwater incursion from the Monterey Bay had poisoned the once-fertile farmland.

As Marta walked home, a cool breeze off the Bay carried a whiff of raw sewage across the daily bustle of beggars, fast-food vendors, warewolves, and pimps. The stink seemed to be coming from the big landfill on the northernmost edge of the Flats. In the course of excavating the sedimentary layers of old tires, scrap metal, and nonbiodegradable plastic, someone must have broken a waste treatment line.

Through the haze, Marta could just make out the canyon-walled streets cut into the landfill-like trenches in some huge archaeological dig. The dwellings there were subterrane'an
—
a warren of tunnels and rooms excavated from garbage and butttressed with sheet metal, rusted box springs, disscarded refrigerators, washing machines, stoves, and other kitchen appliances.

South of the Trenches the residences moved above ground, a hodgepodge of motor homes, semi-trailers, Quonset huts, and shipping containers annchored to reinforced concrete pads that had been set on the level, bulldozed sand.

Narrow streets· and footpaths
—
jammed with scooters, motorcycles, and bicycles
—
connected a dozen or more distinctly philmed neighborhoods. New Malecon followed the beach seawall for three kilometers, its stacked multilevel boxcars philmed to look like the famous boulevard in Havana, Cuba. The Red Lantern district of Little Shanghai butted up against Putingrad, Zona Sagrada, Al Mansur, and Carib. All philmed as places that the community's legal and illegal immigrants had either lived or wanted to live.

Her sister Concetta hated philm. After seeing what it had done to the neighborhood and the peoople, she stopped waring 'skin. In neighborhood asssociation meetings, she'd argued against the use of architectural philm to renovate the Flats.

Marta sighed and wondered if she'd ever underrstood where her sister was coming from ...

_______

It's not the same
as redevelopment," Concetta told Marta after a meeting at which the planning commisssion had decided to move forward. "It's not an improveement."

"It makes people feel better," Marta said, "about themselves and where they live. What's wrong with that?"

They sat in a secluded New Malecon cafe, sipping coffee, the crumbs of a shared blueberry scone scattered on the table between them. Soul Inheritance, a Cuban R&B band, percolated through slow-churning fans. Outside, moonlight foamed against the seawall on restless waves.

"It,s not helping." Concetta glanced at a group of TV missionaries bunched at a corner table and leaned forward, keeping her voice low in the metal-walled room. "It’s making life worse, not better."

"I know." Marta sighed. It was a familiar argument. "People don't want to see things the way they really are. They want to cover up their problems. Hide from them."

"It's more than that." Concetta sipped coffee, holding the mug with both hands. "People don't know what's real anymore, and what's not."

Marta blew on her coffee. "And you do." .

Concetta nodded at the TVs. "All I'm saying is that it makes people easy targets. Easy to program them."

"People are always looking for something better," Marta said. "There's nothing new about that. "

Concetta stared into her cup. "Philm just makes the sell job easier. Lot more innocent victims now than there used to be. All I'm saying."

Marta didn't like the tone of her sister's voice. "What have you gotten yourself into?"

Concetta shook her head but not in denial; whatever  she was doing she couldn't, or wouldn't, talk about it.

A week later her sister was gone, vanished. A week affter that, Marta discovered the refurbished shortwave hiddden in their bedroom closet.

_______

That had been three months ago. And still there has been no word from Concetta. Had she left in dissgust, fed up with the refurbished motor home thar their stepmother had philmed to resemble a Hollywood bungalow?

Or was her disappearance a symptom of some deeper malaise?

Each day Marta thought back to the period leadding up to Concetta's disappearance. Had her sister said something
—
on purpose or accidentally
—
to hint she might be leaving? She culled her memory for a stray phrase, a seemingly innocuous comment, and came up empty. There was nothing. Only the radio, which might or might not have been there all along. Looking for a missing blouse one day, she had found the top with the radio in a corner of the closet reserved for storage. No telling how long ago Concetta had put it there. Or why the blouse had been with it.

To Malta's surprise, Nguyet was home, rattling around in the little kitchenette. She'd forgotten it was Nguyet's early day. One day a week she worked an early shift at the vegetable-processing plant, gooing in at 3:00 A.M. and coming home by three in the afternoon. When Marta left for the Get Reel that morning, she hadn’t noticedNguyet was already gone.

Marta poked her head into the kitchen, where Nguyet was preparing dinner. Fish patties and fried cactus.

"
How's he doing?" Marta asked.

Nguyet looked up from the hissing skillet and shook her head, somber.

Yesterday her father hadn't been able to stand on his own. Marta had to help him to the dinner table.

"He refuses to get out of bed," Nguyet said, her mood sour. "Except to go to the bathroom."

"Again?" It was the third time that week.

"I called Don Angelo, the chiromancer. But Rocio refused to see him. Your father spat on the poor old man, and then tried to choke him."

The chiromancer was in his nineties. Hardly a match for a warehouse worker, even a bedridden one.

"What about you?" Nguyet peppered the fish.  "Are you okay? You don't look so good."

"Headache." She hadn't told either of them she wasn't feeling well, hadn't wanted them to worry.

An uneasy truce existed between them. When her  father had first started seeing Nguyet, Marta resented the woman, refused to accept her. She didn't want, or need, another mother. She'd gotten along fine for years. Even when Nguyet officially moved in with them, Marta had treated her as a guest, a temporary housemate. To accept her fully, as a permanent addition to the family, would hammer the final nail in the coffin that held the remains of her real mother.

To her credit, Nguyet didn't try to become Marta's stepmother, surrogate sister, or best friend. Quietly, yet inextricably, she slipped into the role of careetaker, an arrangement Marta could live with now that her father was on disability and antidepressants. Without Nguyet, it would be impossible to take care of him. Concetta's disappearance had hit him hard. He blamed himself. Marta's meager income wasn't enough to live on and pay for the drugs to treat his damaged spine and melancholy. Even the blackmarket generics in the Flats were high-priced.

"I have a neighborhood planning meeting toonight," Nguyet said. "From eight until ten. I can't be here to babysit him."

"Okay. I'll see what I can do. Maybe I can talk some sense into him."

"Shit." Nguyet returned her attention to the skilllet, where the cactus had started to smoke.

Typical. Marta couldn't tell if the remark was directed at her or the burning cactus. Let it go, she told herself. It wasn't worth it.

She made her way down the narrow hallway that led to the closet-sized bedrooms in back. Her father wallowed in bed. His back was uncomfortably straight, held rigid by the brace his workman's comp had paid for. He was watching a newscast on a cheap Vurtronic display he'd pasted to the ceiling so he didn't need to sit up. The d-splay was low-res graphene with equally flimsy bandwidth. Light from the d-splay peeled the color from his face and the rattan veneer on the drawn window shade next to him.

He didn't look at her when she entered the room and took a seat on the chair next to the bed. He kept his attention fixed on the news story, a preview of an upcoming Paris fashion show where the latest philm and cosmetique offerings from fashioneers like IBT and Skincense would be unveiled.

She searched his face, trying to read the thoughts behind the ferrous-hard eyes and gritty, scar-nicked stubble. "You look like shit," she said, breaking the standoff.

He rolled his head sideways on the pillow. "You don't look so great yourself," he said. ,

Marta knotted her hands into fists. "You can't just lie there."

"What a joke." Her father scoffed and returned his attention to the d-splay. "Your sister saw it comming."

Marta's throat tightened. "Saw what?" Her voice husky, barely a whisper.

"Philm."

She swallowed at the ache, trying to force it down. "What about it?"

"Everybody wants to be somebody else. They can't be satisfied with who they are anymore."

She stared at him. "What does that have to do with Concetta?"

"People think they can change from the outside in," he said. "Instead of the inside out."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"You should turn that radio down," he said. "It woke me up this afternoon. Came on a couple of times. Annoying as hell."

Marta's stomach tensed. "What"
—
she moistened er lips
—
"what are you talking about?"

He frowned, concentrating. "Someone, a woman, or a kid maybe, reading a bunch of numbers."

"What kind of numbers?"

"Beats the hell out of me. Didn't make no sense. It went on for a couple minutes each time, then stopped."  

"That's it? Just numbers?"

He grunted. "Worthless piece of shit. I tried to change the station but couldn't. Had to turn the damn thing off."

A shadow leaned into the room, spread across the floor in a stain. Marta turned. Instead of Nguyet, a man stood in the doorway. He leaned casually against the jamb, all suited up under a beige overrcoat, his hair slicked back, a gray felted Lancaster feedora in one hand. Nguyet appeared behind him, flustered, her face a bright sheen.

"Marta." The man tipped his head, first at her and then her father. "Uncle Rocio. How you been?"

Recognition kicked in. "Pelayo," she said.

He stepped into the room, out of context in the retro philm he was waring. "It's been a while."

How long had he been standing there? she wonndered. How much had he heard?

"I tried to stop him," Nguyet said. "But he barged right in."

Pelayo fixed Marta with a hard, flat gaze. "We need to talk," he said. "Now."

At six, Nadice caught a Bay Area magrail and headed northeast to Dockton.

She stared out the bubble window next to her, watching cars cross the Golden Gate Bridge in bright mercurial threads of light.

Fifteen minutes later the train passed Suisun Bay on her left, sped through Pittsburg and Antioch into the capillary network of waterways and sloughs formed by the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. According to a tourist information feed, the water had been fresh a century ago. But the rivers shriveled as the oceans lose, turning the delta of the Central Valley into an inland sea populated with pontoon-supported bridges, walkways, and buildings that spread like melanomas along the brackish slow-moving currents.

Dockton. It spread out before her, a tumorous growth of creaking, brine-encrusted epoxy board, sheets of brittle photoelectric plastic, heat-cracked tires, rust-scabbed metal, and peeling architectural philm.

Earlier, Nadice gave the train the address Mateus had made her memorize. Now, the bus section she was seated in detached from the train, shunted onto a paved loop, and dropped her off at a stop next to one of the road-accessible tributaries.

Inhaling the stench of a nearby waste-reclamation plant, Nadice climbed wooden stairs to the top of the levee. On the other side was a small marina. She couldn't see any water between the pontoon docks. But the buildings bobbed sluggishly, rising and falling to an unseen rhythm. The latest F8 hit, "The Vivisexionist," drifted from the flea-market booths set up a short distance away. Nadice squinted against the early-evening glare, shading her eyes with one hand. Most of the makeshift structures
—
motels, bars, stores, and cafes
—
were held in place by gangplanks and frayed Kevlex line. Many appeared to have been boats at one time. Other buildings had been constructed diirectly on the dock, where they clung like barnacles or limpets. The town was a hodgepodge of architectural styles
—
everything from French Quarter Bourbon Street to Pacific Tiki bar and Aegean stucco. In a few places, programmable philm appliques decorated the epoxy board and sheet-metal siding. The letters on one decal, a sign for a travel agency called Gone Fission, pulsed in toxic radioactive green. Below them, a flying fish sporting four dragonfly wings leaped up out of a pond. At the peak of its arc the scales sloughed off and the fish turned to look at her.

"Hello," it said, the voice a flat monochrome over her earfeed. With a quick flick of its tail, the fish detached from the sign and swam into the air.

Startled, Nadice stepped back.

Gossamer wings fluttered, holding the fish at eye level in front of her. It seemed to be made out of half-burned paper, something between smoke and ash.

"Would you like to book a sample-collection trip?" the fish asked.

Nadice relaxed. The fish was an advertising gimmick, no different from an ad mask. Through the dust-filmed window next to the sign, she could make out a display case filled with the preserved skeletons and husks of various mutated annimals and plants, presumably from the delta. Digital vidIOs and still-lifes papered the walls. Otherwise the place looked empty.

"Perhaps a sightseeing tour?"

Nadice shook her head. The fish sounded more like rote adware than a human-operated telepressence. But maybe it would be able to help. "I'm trying to find this place. Delta Blu's."

"It's not part of the regular package."

She shrugged
—
forget it
—
and walked away. Behind her, the whisper of the wings dimmed.

"Wait." The fish appeared next to her, its tail thrashing to match her pace. "I can help,"

Right. "I don't have any money." She turned her attention to the flea-market stalls. Most of the tables were littered with junk. Secondhand clothhing. Shoes. Dented, half-empty canisters of glues, sealants, lubricants. Old earbuds and goggles. Spare boat parts. She looked for someone who might be willing to give her directions. The faces she met were hard, the sidelong gazes they cast suspicious but opportunistic, searching for any opening or sign of weakness. She set her mouth in a tight line, jaw muscles bunching.

"I can take you there," the fish said.

She pried her gaze from the crowd and brushed at a loose strand of hair dislodged by the backwash from its tail and wings. "I already told you. I can't afford it."

"No problem," the fish said.

She shook her head. There had to be a reason, something the fish wanted from her in return.

"This way." The fish glided ahead of her, weaving its way through the open stalls the way it might a shipwreck.

A teenage boy grinned at her over a pile of elecctronic hardware, jade teeth flashing in the settting sun. A short, grizzled woman sized her up from behind racks of glass beads and handmade jewelry.

Nadice quickened her pace. "How far is it?"

"Not far."

The planks were uneven, made even more treacherous by an occasional undulation or sideeways pitch that sent her stumbling. The aroma of pickled seaweed and cumin-spiced stir-fry drifted on competing strains of music. LED lights glowed to life in boat cabins, shacks, cafes, and nighttclubs, growing brighter as the sky darkened from pale blue to periwinkle. The fish glimmered. Its white skeleton winked in and out under scales that alternated between opaque and clear, deepending on how they caught the light.

As the heat of the day retreated, local residents emerged from the ramshackle woodwork to smoke, drink beer, play cribbage. Most wore caps, loose fitting shirts, and pants, the cotton or bamboo fabric stained yellow by perspiration. A few were philmed in off the shelf downloads. Of those she recognized, F8, Forever Jung, and XXXodus were popular. Not much anim
é
. Some Russian graffitika in hard-boiled grays and black.

"How much farther?" she asked.

"Almost there."

The fish veered right, onto a narrow footbridge.

The bridge arched over a dank estuary. Two meters down, water stirred thick tangles of reeds, releassing the rank, turgid stench of garbage and organic decay. A sucking sound tugged at her, threatening to drag her into muddy depths. She quickened her pace and the bridge deposited her on an island crisscrossed with raised epoxy-board walkways
—
meandering paths that staggered from one stilt-supported hut to another.

The huts were dark, lit only by the stagnant light of the moon.

The fish took another right, onto warped planks that had been set directly on wet ground. Mud squished under her weight, releasing methane and thick, swirling clouds of mosquitoes.

Nadice stopped. Something didn't feel right.

She didn't see a sign for Delta Blu's, no indication of any activity at all. The place was completely deeserted. "Are you sure this is right?" she asked.

"It's just down here." The fish flipped in midair to face her.

Despite the muggy greenhouse heat, a sharp chill pricked Nadice's arms. "I don't think so." Throat tight, she backed away from the reed-constricted path.

A board creaked behind her. She swiveled, caught a toe on the upraised corner of one board, and stumbled.

Fingers wrapped tightly around her upper arm.

She gasped just as a hand clamped over her mouth, stifling a scream.

"Easy, gurl." The voice like honey in her ear. "Don't flip on me."

Mateus.

She steadied in his grip, calmed by the familiar voice, and felt her chest relax. "You scared me."

"No reason to get throwed."

He was in full crunk mode, wired to the philm he was 'skinning. Back in Lagos she had noticed that whenever he was tight the slang got heavier, thicker, as he slipped deeper into the pseudoself he was screening.

"I wasn't sure where to go," she explained. "1 thought I'd gotten lost."

"I feel ya."

"You could have told me about the fish," she said.

"Fish?" He shook. his head. "No fish here. Maybe farther into the delta, where it ain't so pollluted."

She looked around, but the fish was gone. "Come on." He cut a quick glance around. "Let's get inside fo things get crucial."

_______

A hand-scrawled sign on one boarded-up window advised visitors that Delta BIu's was closed. A thin man with nervous eyes and a bony Adam's apple let them into a windowless room filled with a maze of dark, soundproofed cubicles. The place reeked of mildew, sweat, and listless sex.

Something shifted in the cube closest to Nadice. She flinched as a pair of blood-red circles swiveled to look at her.

The thin man snickered. As her eyes adjusted, the rings resolved into faint coronas of light leaking from around the edges of a pair of corneal inserts.

"Snippers," Mateus explained. "Cut images from digitized celluloid and vidIO for splicing and rephilming. "

There was one snipper to a cubicle. Some lounged in chairs, others sprawled on gelfoam matttresses. Their expressions were slack, their faces spectral, as if they existed between worlds ... neiither substantial nor insubstantial, but ensnared in some hyperstantial netherworld.

Like the fish, she thought. Detached. Somehow it had gone from a flat picture to solid 3-D ..

"You're pirates," she said. "Bootleggers."

The snicker degenerated into a snort. "What we are is none of your business," the man hissed. He stared at her chest and masturbated the stubble on his chin.

"In here," Mateus said. He guided her into a room filled with d-splays. A few of the screens deepicted artistically rendered nudes and genitalia. Others were more hardcore. Across the dimly lighted hallway, through a partly open door, a naked woman lay on a futon. Japanese kanji crawled along the insides of her thighs, trickled down her abdomen like rainwater on neon-tinted glass. Instead of nipples, pink roses flowered from ceramic-smooth breasts.

Mateus appeared not to notice. She expected some lewd comment, but suddenly he was all busiiness. He closed the door, locking it.

"Sit down." He indicated a chair in the center of the room. "We need to check the status of the ware. See if it's ready." He went to a chrome equipment rack against one wall.

The chair looked clean, no obvious stains. There was even a little depression in which to rest her head. The padded armrests adjusted to her height. The chair tilted back, and she found herself staring up at a ruby-red mouth on a ceiling-mounted d-splay. She wet her lips and saw the tip of a tongue, her tongue.

"Relax," Mateus said, walking up to her. "You're tense."

He sounded different. He'd dropped the slang for some reason, the attitude. She lowered her gaze from the ceiling d-splay and saw he'd rephilmed himself. Gone were the crunk gang tattoos. The color of his 'skin had changed, too, lightened from burned coffee to pale pink.

She tightened her fingers on the armrest. "Who are you? Where's Mateus?" She hadn't heard the door open.

"Mateus is taking a short break. He'll be back as soon as we're done here."

She tried to sit up and found she couldn't. Invisible threads cobwebbed her nerves. He leaned close and his gaze pinned her, tugged on someething embedded deep inside her, as if trying to pull it out.

Nadice drew a sharp breath.

"Don't worry." The man grinned, revealing rows of triangular teeth. "This won't hurt a bit."

_______

She woke to a dull, bone-deep ache. Her mouth felt parched, her tongue swollen. It hurt to swallow, all the way to the base of her spine.

"What it do, gurl? How ya feelin'?"

Mateus bent over her. Nadice swallowed, forced a spike of air deep into her lungs. "What happened?"

"Ware ain't ready yet. Needs another day or two, I guess, before it's okay to rip it out. Too early, and it gets hulled."

"To you, I mean. Who was that guy?"

Mateus worked his jaw from side to side. "He works for the man."

"What man?"

"The one ballin' for this shit."

Her gaze drifted past him to the d-splays. "So what does that mean? What happens now?"

"Means we got to do this again in a couple days, gurl. Whenever we get the call. Feel me?"

"Then that's it, right? After that, we're done." She could put all this behind her.

"Not exactly."

Nadice stiffened. "You said this was it. All I'd have to do."

"I got another delivery to make." Mateus wet his lips. "In Singapore. You're the only mule I got availlable."

"We had an agreement."

"Shit happens, gurl." A resigned shrug in his voice. "You know how it is."

"No." Nadice went to push herself out of the chair. "You can find someone else."

Mateus gripped her arm. Hard. "You give me any trouble on this, gurl, and I turn you in to Atherton. That what you want?"

She bit her lower lip against the pain. His grip tightened, squeezing tears from her eyes, until she finally shook her head.

His grip eased. "Good." He patted her. "That's what I like to hear."