Bahia
Kerry unpockets a mixed handful of new tin and old silver and dribbles the small offering into the cupped calloused palm.
“The gods bless you, lady.”
Kerry cracks the door wider, until it nearly scrunches the beggar’s blanketed feet, and steps outside.
Dawn’s fighting vicious battalions of gunmetal clouds. Week-old snow, rendered into a semblance of soot-swirled eroded plastic, heaps against basement windows, clings in compressed sidewalk patches seemingly designed as ankle-wrenching pedestrian hazards. Kerry descends ten broken steps carefully, pulls her coat more closely around her, then begins her walk to work.
Half-reassuringly, half-worrisomely, National Guard patrols are omnipresent this morning, camouflaged stalkers in the urban jungle. In pairs and threesomes, featuring the occasional quartet, they warily make their random rounds through the neighborhood, sleek rifles carried lightly like sheaves of grains in the arms of rustic celebrants. (The four-person squads among them also lug the shared components of a crazy-foam riot-buster.) The young Guards, male and female alike, eye Kerry neutrally, and she correspondingly maintains a head-held-high, gaze-straight attitude.
Vehicular traffic is almost nonexistent, save for a lurching methanol-powered bus, a limo, and a few powered trikes.
At an intersection, Kerry flinches as the possible yet improbable sound of sniper fire reaches her, a rattle of low-caliber snaps. But the easy-striding fellow pedestrians further along her intended path do not seem to be scurrying for cover, so she cautiously proceeds. The mock-assault discloses itself: a construction crew is boarding up with plywood sheets a still-steaming building on Shepard Street, the pop of their nail-guns simulating attack.
A block from work, Kerry purchases her breakfast from a vendorless cart: a shrink-wrapped bagel, pre-sliced and -smeared, and a paper cup of herbal tea. After accepting three nudie singles from her, the cart scoots off, obeying programmatic rhythms of consumer enticement.
An innocuous office building marks her destination. A row of discreet bronze signs near the doors detail the tenants. Kerry’s eyes flick to one: DIAVERDE PARABIOLOGICALS. In the small groundfloor atrium, Kerry nods to the building’s receptionist and to several armed private guards, some roaming while two remain sealed away in a defensive booth. Resting hygienic bagel atop hot lidded cup, she thrust her free hand into a wall-mounted scanner’s mouth. Stealing a few flakes of dead skin, the scanner performs an instant verification of her dual-helixed selfhood, and confirms by several additional tests that her hand is still attached to its rightful body. As a consequence, an elevator opens and beckons her in.
Diaverde occupies the tenth through fifteenth floors of the building; Kerry disembarks on the top level, administrative. The elevator discharges directly into a second reception area. Behind a small desk sits one of Kerry’s co-workers, a pretty young black woman with glistening Josephine-Baker-revival hair and large-hooped earrings, dressed with low-budget elegance. The clock inset before the receptionist reads just eight. The black woman glances at the readout, then says, “You’re early.”
“Couldn’t sleep. He in yet, Oreesha?”
“I don’t think so. But who can be sure with the Phantom Boss?”
“Maybe I’ll take a few minutes to eat then. I feel almost faint.”
“Go for it, child. Say, you see that building got burned on Shepard?”
“Sure. What’s the story?”
“Take your pick. Top two rumors are it was either a bomb-factory that had an accident, or a honey hive.”
“If it’d been a honey hive, the Guard would’ve left nothing standing.”
Oreesha shrugs, shoulders bumping hoops. “Maybe they’re slacking off. Maybe they figure dirty honey’s no good to anyone.”
“Whatever. I’ve got too much on my mind to worry about it.”
Kerry’s small office intervenes between Oreesha’s workstation and the quarters of their boss. She sets her breakfast down on her neatly ordered desktop, powers up her computer, shucks her coat, swaps boots for shoes from her carryall, and sits. Within seconds her monitor hosts Diaverde’s Escherian corporate screen-saver: a leaf metamorphosing into a fish, fish into crab, crab into bird, bird into man, man into leaf, forever. Kerry glances over her shoulder at the golden door bearing her boss’s name and title: PETER JARIUS, DIRECTOR. Nothing stirs within. She uncaps her tea, uncondoms her bagel, and breakfasts with tidy bites and sips.
Kerry’s sorting through e-mail from the division heads, dealing with the less important memos, prioritizing and flagging the others for later reading by her boss, when she hears the door behind her open.
“Ms. Hackett, may I see you in my office, please?”
Kerry stiffens involuntarily, her hand coming up instinctively to splay across her facial maculation, slim white fingers striping purple epidermis. Heat scalds her palm. She forces herself to relax, to lower her hand. Without turning, she answers, “Yes, Mr. Jarius.” She logs off—policy when leaving one’s desk, even if only momentarily, even if under ostensibly secure conditions—picks up her PDA, and enters Jarius’s office through the unlatched door.
