Free Brasyl by Ian McDonald Page B

first, I need
you to help me."
    "I thought there'd be a price."
    "The commission's dependent on finding Barbosa. Do you know how
I might go about that?"
    "Well, I don't .... "
    "But you know someone who might." The standard joke of
journalists and lawyers.
    "Try this guy." Heitor inscribed a pink Post-it. "He
can be a bit hard to find, but he knows Rio like no one else. Try
catching him on Flamengo Beach, early."
    "How early?"
    "Whatever you call early, earlier than that. He says it's the
beach's best time." Heitor turned away and grimaced as e-mail
flurried into his in-box. "It's bread, definitely. I'm going to
give it up. You should read this." A harddback book lay prone,
praying on the desk. Heitor read aggressively, trying to find in
printed pages ideas he might weave into an excuse for this mad world
he found himself presenting twice a day. He pressed a book a week on
Marcelina, who passed them on unread to Dona Bebel. Reading text was
so static, so last century. "It's about information theory,
which is the latest theory of everything. It says the universe is
just one huge quantum computer, and we are all programs running on
it. I find that very comforting, don't you?"
    "Try and make it, Heitor. You need a lot of beer and hot hot
sex." He lifted a hand, absorbed with the incoming world.
    Her car was not waiting outside on Rua Muniz Barreto. Marcelina
looked up, Marcelina looked down, then went into reception.
    "Did you call my taxi?"
    "Called, came, went," said Robson on the door, who was a
glorious creature, tall, killer cheekbones, swimmer's muscles, so
black he glowed, and regularly voted Most Lickable in the Christmas
Awards. Marcelina could not believe he was natural.
    "What do you mean, went?"
    "You tell me. You went off in it."
    "I went off in the taxi? I only just got here now."
    Robson looked at his hands in that way that people do when confronted
by the publicly insane.
    "Well, you came out of the elevator and said just what you said
to me there now, 'Did you call my taxi?' And I said, yes, there it is
outside, and you got in it and drove off."
    "I think that one of us is on very strong drugs." It could
be her. This could all be a guarana and speed flashback from the
all-nighter. The pressure is off, you get the result of results, and
your brain geysers like Mentos in Diet Coke.
    "Well, I know what I saw." The people who voted Robson Most
Lickable had never spoken to him when riled, when a tone of camp
petulance entered his voice.
    "What was I wearing?" Marcelina said. Time was ticking.
"Aw, fuck it, I'll walk."
    Mysteries could wait. She had an appointment with the thin steel
needle of love.
    "Black suit," Robson called after her. "You were in a
black suit, and killer shoes."

SEPTEMBER 25, 2032
    Hot hot hot in skinny-heel knee boots, high-thigh polo neck body, and
a cutie little black biker's jacket cut bolero style, Efrim stalks
the gafieira. Cidade de Luz is bouncing. This is a wedding gafieira,
and they're the best. The open end of José's Garage is now the
sound stage; the speakers hauled up on engine-tackles. A kid DJ
wearing the national flag like Superman's cape spins crowd-pleasers.
A rollscreen displays a shifting constellation of pattterned lights,
the arfids of the gafieira tracked through the Angels of Perrpetual
Surveillance and displayed as a flock of beauty. Kid DJ sticks his
fingers in the air, gets a small roar, claps his hands and holds them
aloft, gets a big roar. Senhors, senhoras . . . Her entrance is lost
in the dazzle of swinging lights and the opening drum-rush of
"Pocotocopo," this year's big hit, but the audience sees
the silver soccer ball lob into the air, freckled with glitterrspots.
Milena Castro, Keepie-Uppie Queen, volleys her ball across the stage
and back; head tits ass and knees. A smile with every bounce. The V
of her thong bears the blue lozenge and green globe of Brasil. Ordem
e Progresso. She rurns her back to the crowd, shakes her booty.
There's a ragged cheer.
    Good