Virtually True (35 page)

The Rajput is hugging a boxy Luzonian woman, who clears a place for the Rajput to sit. The sole chair.

“God has given me a great gift. You were able to get the money,” the woman says. “Now with both payments, I can get AIDS medicine.”

“I have a black market connection for that, as well. I can fulfill all your commercial needs.”

“Is this drug expensive?”

The Rajput emphasizes the cost by sucking air. “I can get the medicine for the same money I received on your behalf today, if we add it to the initial payment.”

“I am grateful.” She falls to her knees. The Rajput allows her to kiss her hand.

There’s something about the woman that uncorks memories for True. Has he seen her face on TV comms for ceiling fans? Escort services? Adobo sauce?

The guide holds a laser pistol to True’s head. “Off.” True, caught off-zone, spins down the VolVis program. Gun still itching, the guide unclasps True’s wrist computer, stuffs it into a pocket. “OK OK OK. You are not stupid as I had thoughtfully considered.”

That syntax. Who else?

Bong Bong pushes back his hood, bites a smile. “Good afternoon, ladies and germs. Good costume? But not as good as these softwares you see through walls with like Superman.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I have voices in the shanties, people loyal at me. They seen you escape, pull the switch with another to die in your place.”

“I didn’t know he was going to die.”

“Then you are even less of a man. Come. We will converse with this Rajput.”

CHAPTER 26

Bong Bong jabs True’s spine with the barrel of his laser. They trudge through the slums, up to the shanty’s sole landmark: a clock tower, constructed a few governments ago to illustrate the point that a cure for poverty would take time.

To the end of time,
True thinks. “I’ve never seen the tower up close.”

Bong Bong stops pushing. “It’s nice. Good for tourist. All over, clocks. Lots of clocks.”

More than lots. Coated in time pieces solicited from 240 nations. And, as far as True can tell, none of them match. Thousands of seconds, none in synch.

“Well, India had its Taj Mahal, Thailand has its Grand Palace, Tokyo the Emperor’s residence, why shouldn’t Luzonia have a clock tower that doesn’t tell the right time?”

“The right time is there.” Bong Bong points to a clock on a ridge.

“Guess you just have to know where to look.”

Bong Bong knees True through a door at the landmark’s base. It takes a few breaths before True’s eyes adjust to the dim. Patchouli in the air. The Rajput brandishing a knife. When she recognizes who it is, she tucks it away. There’s creaking in the ceiling beams. Bong Bong spits Luzonian at the Rajput, who marionettes her head, and hands her a pistol, which she pegs on True. Bong Bong travels up the rotting steps.

“He wants you to keep me covered?”

“I’m sorry, Baba, but when you are a lone seed you must float with the wind.”

“And Bong Bong’s the one blowing, right?”

“A veritable hurricane.”

“He thinks someone’s up there?”

“It may perhaps be rats or other such vermin.”

“I should have known you weren’t telling me the truth about the beggar girl. It wasn’t until I saw her mother it made sense. She traded her daughter for money.”

“Not for money. For medicine.”

“She sacrificed her daughter to save herself.”

“To save her husband.”

“A brave man, to be sure.”

“If he perishes, the family perishes. He has work.”

More Bong Bong stomps; de-lurking the clock tower.

“Trading in an eleven-year-old is defensible?”

“I have seen too much death in my life to be upset by something as this. War cost me a whole people.”

“Was she aware of her sacrifice?”

“I do not know. I only ask for what I need to know. Why do you have the privilege of criticizing? You are guarang. A little rich, I think. Your country has never been invaded, you have never feared you will not have enough to eat. Or a roof to protect you. How can you possibly understand what it takes to survive these days of hell?”

“You’re guarang here, too.”

“There are different flavors of guarang. Guarang on package tours, who never venture from comfort. They know nothing of the real world. Other guarang stay at home, live their lives in isolation, as if other cultures do not exist. They soak up the world’s limited resources but add little. Then there are the do-goods. The worst guarang. Before the Paks obliterated my people, we one year received surplus wheat from America.
Ah, American wheat,
everyone said.
Now we will have wheat forever.
More wheat than we could imagine. There wasn’t enough room to store it, so much of it went bad. And since this wheat was free, our farmers could not compete and went out of business. The next year we starved. But no help this time from your government. They told us we should be more self-reliant.”

“You were pleased my friend was assassinated.”

“I was ecstatic a follower of that gutter religion died. This time I was able to make a mixture of business and pleasure.”

Bong Bong alighting. Breathing hard, he snatches the pistol from the Rajput. “Nothing nothing nothing. Some bugs. I squashed them.” He wraps True’s computer around his wrist. “I want to see that movie. Get it?” Bong Bong elbows True in the shoulder. The Rajput stands cautiously by the door.

True plays back the meeting between the Rajput and the Luzonian mother. The Rajput’s eyes narrow, terrified. Well, so’s he.

Bong Bong aims. “Stand against the wall, both guarang.”

True joins the Rajput, shirt to sari.

“Baba. You are upset because of the Muslim? Billions of Muslims have died before you or I were born. I was merely facilitating a transaction.”

“Translation: Someone wanted Aslam dead but knew conventional techniques wouldn’t work. He had corporate sponsors, which made him even tougher. That’s where you and Bong Bong came in. You needed to recruit someone to get close to Aslam so the DNA-coded missile could lock and unload. Simple.”

The Rajput eyes Bong Bong, who headshakes a warning.

True plays his hand. “You might as well tell me. Bong Bong isn’t going to let either of us live. He knows you’ve been skimming. What else explains the payment Rush handed you, a payment Bong Bong didn’t know of? You can’t extort in Nerula without going through Bong Bong. Right, Bong Bong?”

Bong Bong cackles in a distinct hyena dialect. “This is very interesting to me, but I do not have time. On behalf of the law enforcemental agency at Nerula, you are sentenced to death. Blah blah blah. OK. That’s it. That’s all I remember from these constitutions.”

True is bumming silence. Bong Bong whirls, fires on the Rajput who spasms and avalanches to the floor. Her head is a meld of blood and brains. Dead on her side, arms pinned underneath, folded in prayer.

“More organs.” Bong Bong nudges her with his foot. “That’s why I aim high. Also this.” He pockets her debit card. “People steal from me, they die. That’s it. Now. The show we all been waiting for. These softwares.”

“It may take a while. I’m just learning myself.”

“Then I kill you, hire the hacker. Maybe I kill you anyway.”

Re-escape: True fires brain blanks. “I can show you stuff that’ll blow your mind, Bong Bong.” True grabs the wrist-top.

Bong Bong brushes True’s hand away. “I hold this computer.”

“First thing, you turn it on. You do that by—”

“Don’t speak down at me.” Bong Bong talks through tight teeth. He jabs at a few buttons. Nothing happens.

“The
on
switch is here.”

Bong Bong grunts. The 3-D screen fills up their vision, and True pulls up the program menu. He’s not familiar with everything Eden added. “What do you want to see first?”

“To see through walls is handy.”

“But it’s complicated. Better to start with something simple, work our way up.”

Bong Bong’s glands emit suspicion.

“You have the gun, Bong Bong, and the wrist-top.” True selects a psychotropia file—why Eden included it, he doesn’t know—and the happy psychotropic pattern beams overhead.

Bong Bong grinning scar to scar, his eyes scotch-taped to the pattern. He’s far away, recounting life’s happier moments. “Guarang. I was born in these slums. We were poor. Have you ever seen such poverty?”

Yes, many times
, True thinks. “No.”

“It kills you. Nothing to eat, nothing to play with except for garbage.”

If this is Bong Bong’s happy side, what would greater introspection yield?
True wonders.
Greek tragedy?

“I was seven. We had a gang. The Magnifico Seven, like an old movie. I found some glue and we went to the roof to sniff. It was hot. Wet like it always is.”

“Jungle sweat.”

Bong Bong looks with wild eyes at True, then his gaze settles back on the pattern. “Jungle sweat. Good.” Clasps True on the shoulder. Implying:
You’re not so bad, guarang.

“What happened on the roof?”

“The roof,” Bong Bong mouths. “We make the suicide pact. Why live like pigs when we could die into our way? We got high, high as stars, then held hands and ran to the edge. One-two-three we jumped. Aaaaah—”

“How high?”

“We were fucking high.”

“The roof. How high off the ground?”

“Five, six stories.”

“I haven’t seen a building in the shanties that high.”

“Before the wars, guarang.”

“What did it feel like when you jumped?”

Bong Bong’s eyes spring tears. “Like heaven. We were flying, and the ground came toward my head and I seen the building shoot into the sky. But I was caught by the tree. That’s when they had trees here. Even flowers. People grew food sometimes. Pickled vegetables. The branches scratched my face. Maybe I broke some ribs. But it saved my life. I rolled down the hill. When I stopped I seen the Magnifico Seven, OK, six, all dead. Then I knew nothing could kill me. Then the wars. I was thirteen. I killed many enemies of Luzonia. Except a few times, I was OK. That’s why I am the Police Chief. All my enemies are dead.”

Not all
, True thinks. “What about your parents?”

Bong Bong cocks his head. “My father? I don’t know. Dead when I was some baby. My mother was aliving until last year. She was like durian, outside hard and spiky, but sweet and delicious inside.”

To True, durian is the most vile fruit he’s ever smelled or tasted. “You miss her?”

True leans on the door. When Bong Bong closes his eyes, sighs deeply, True tries to bolt. But True bangs his knee on the door, which smashes into Bong Bong’s wrist, cutting off the psychotropia. True sprawls onto the deck, rolls down abridged steps, Laurel-and-Hardying into the dirt. He looks up to see Bong Bong in bent-over spasms of delight, his weapon juiced and ready.