Brasyl (45 page)

"Careful," Barbosa warned.

The blade drew like silk over glass. It seemed to Marcelina that it
did not actually touch the inside of the sheath bur was suspended in
some kind of invisible filmlike oil. The blade was long, curved,
beautifully dangerous. She held it up before her eyes. The only sound
in the barracão was the clock-tock of the agogô.
Marcelina looked closely; the edge was blurred, she could not focus
on it, it appeared to fizz and boil, a heat-haze on the edge of
vision. Marcelina made a sudden cut. The egbé let out a great
coo of wonder. She smelled electricity, saw blue burn across the line
of her slash.

''I've seen one of these before."

"It's the standard-issue ritual weapon of the Order,"
Fisico said. "It looks like a knife, but we think it's an
information weapon. It cuts down to the quantum level. It undoes the
braids of quantum loop gravity. This is technology beyond us, beyond
any of the worlds of the multiverse. I think it may always be beyond
us; it's part of the fabric of the universal quantum computer
itself."

Marcelina spun with the knife in a wheeling capoeira armada. Did she
hear the shriek of fundamental computations coming apart?

"Where did you get this?"

"It came with the book. The annexes say that Our Lady of All
Worlds brought it up from the bottom of the Rio Negro."

Again the multiverse pulsed around Marcelina. Cut. Edit. You are not
unarmed now. You are not a victim. She held the knife high over head.
The egbé roared. The iâos whirled, petticoats held out.
The bateria took up the argument of the agogô as Marcelina
strutted around the altar, blade held high.

"Zemba!" Mestre Ginga roared, and the terreiro rook it up.

"Zemba! Zemba! Zemba!"

The weather closed in as the Rocinha Taxi Company cab took Marcelina
up over the top of the town and down toward the floodlit oval of the
Jockey Club. Fingers of low cloud that joined together into a great
palm of stratus blew in from the west and pressed down on the morros.
By the time the taxi reached the lagoon it was raining steadily.
Marcelina itched and fidgeted in the middle of the backseat, burning
still with the brief vision of the curupairá. Every flash of
passing headlights, every flicker of pink and yellow street neon cast
shadows of other universes. With the quantum blade tucked into the
top of her white Capri pants and her clingy top, Marcelina could have
conned free entry to any club in Rio. She was death. She was the
hunter. She was beyond cool. The driver had been instructed to take
her to a safe house Mestre Ginga knew in Santa Teresa, but as he
cruised the Avenida Borges de Medeiros, the lagoon dark, rain-pocked
reflections, Marcelina leaned forward between the front seats and
said, "Can you take me a detour?"

"I don't know. I mean the mestre said—"

"I just want to drop something in; it'll not take five minutes.
It's just down on Rua Tabatinguera; it's not even really out of your
way."

"I suppose I could, then."

Marcelina took the steep concrete steps that rose almost sheer up the
face of the morro a reckless two at a time. Love does that. Rain
punished her. Good rain. Sweet rain. She pressed the PDA close to her
chest, protecting it from water. Pools were already forming on
Heitor's gloomy garden patio, a lightless concrete rectangle between
the rear of the apartment tower and the dripping raw rock. His
light—and love—starved climbing plants shed rain like
sweat. Marcelina knew the key code by heart. Her finger stopped a
millimeter above the chrome button.

The door was open a crack.

Marcelina slipped back from the door and pressed herself against the
wall. She called up the live Canal Quatro newsfeed on her cellular.

" ... and the police report that Mare and Parada de Lucas are
quiet tonight, with armed incidents returning to normal levels,"
Fagner "Deathand-Destruction" Meirelles reported Live! from
a militar cordon. Hissing through her teeth, Marcelina thumbed the
volume down. "And back to the studio." And there was Heitor
standing in front of the giant green-screen map of Brazil. The only
newsreader who has to worry about the color of his socks, he always
said.

Marcelina sent him into darkness. In one G3 call elation turned to
dread, to more fear than she imagined anyone could know and live.
Every part of her ached. It would be very very good to be sick, even
if it was only hot bile, cold coffee, and terreiro drugs. She could
feel the multiverse flickering around her, a cloud of orixás
and angels. Now. This was the time. She drew the blade, crouched into
a fighting ginga stance. Slowly slowly she pushed the door open.
Cat-careful, Marcelina advanced through the lobby of books. Stiff, so
stiff, and no time to warm up. She would have to go from cold into
explosive action. This was no jogo, no game.

No lights, but squatting in cocorinha by the side of the living-room
door Marcelina saw a silhouette cross the glittering panorama of the
lagoa. The destruction was to be total: her career, her family, her
friends, her lover. Then, one by one, Fisico, Mestre Ginga, Barbosa
the goalkeeper: the entire terreiro, any and all who knew the secret
shape of the multiverse, and about the Order that protected it. And
at some point, Marcelina Hoffman. That point was now.
Malandros
mestres corda vermelhas all you great fighters and dancers, give me
malicia
. She stood up, flicked on the main light, and
cartwheeled into the room in a one-handed aú. Marcelina came
up into ginga, blade ready.

She stood momentarily dazed in the light by the kitchen annex, black
to Marcelina's white. Of course. This was elemental battle. Her. More
than any twin could ever be. Curupairá vision flickered around
Marcelina, and for an instant she saw herself through her enemy's
eyes, loira angel, white capoeirista. We are each other. One mind
shattered across a hundred billion universes. Then the anti-Marcelina
came like a jaguar. Marcelina dropped under the blow in a simple
resistencia, spun out in a wheeling S-dobrado kick. Her foot grazed
her enemy's head; then Marcelina rolled into a waistbend, one hand on
the floor, the other gripping the quantum blade for all love, and
came up into the dancing, defensive ginga.

The anti-Marcelina advanced on her in a blinding weave of cuts that
struck small lightnings from the air in the apartment. Marcelina
ducked, rolled, dived, flipped away from the burning blade. One
thing, one edge in malicia. Her enemy did not play capoeira. She did
not know jeito.

A scything blow left the glass coffee table in two capsized halves.
Marcelina backflipped over one of the leather sofas into ginga.

"Say something, will you! Say my fucking name."

Her enemy smiled and in three strokes reduced the sofa to hide and
spring and stuffing. Now Marcelina realized that she had
underestimated the power of her enemy's weapon. She could run, she
could dance, but the anti-Marcelina would cut, cut, keep cutting
through anything and everything, keep cutting, keep coming until she
was too exhausted to play capoeira anymore.
You have lost the
initiative. Time to stop playing defensive. But I'm not a killer. Yes
you are. Look
.

Marcelina aimed an asfixiante punch at her enemy's nose, then brought
the blade in a scything sweep. The anti-Marcelina dodged the punch
and brought her own blade cutting down onto the flat of Marcelina's.
There was a flash of light, a cry of reality maimed. Marcelina saw
the severed blade of her knife flash up into the air, fall point
first into the floor and vanish. She imagined it dropping through the
apartments below, level by level. Even solid concrete and rock could
not resist it. She hoped there was no one directly beneath.

The anti-Marcelina smiled sweetly, held up her own intact blade. Then
she beckoned.
Finish it.

Marcelina Hoffman ran. Jeito. Street smart. The true malandro knows
when and where to fight. A gashed sofa, a bisected coffee table—these
Heitor could explain on an insurance claim. A corpse that looked like
your lover and disgraced TV producer: that was a career killer.

Marcelina knocked off the lights (these silly tricks worked, but that
was the essence of malandragem, the pant-pull boca de calça
that had felled arrogant Jair—the stupid and obvious was the
last-seen) and ducked out the elevator lobby door. The slam would
betray her, but the few seconds it took for the anti-Marcelina to cut
through the lock would give her time and space. Marcelina pelted up
the emergency stairs. Two flights up she heard the door crash onto
concrete.
I'm a dancer not a runner
, she shouted at herself.
Footsteps slapping on bare concrete.
Up up up
. But Jesus and
Mary the curupairá had taken it out of her. The curupairá
and every other torment and mystery and threat and revelation of the
past two weeks. From Blue Sky Friday to Fight-for-your Life Sunday.
She fell through the door onto the roof. Room to move. Space to
fight. Heitor had brought her up here with champagne and coke when
she won the commission for
UFO Hunt: Live!
By night, in the
rain, it was moltenly beautiful, strips and clouds of soft light, the
flow of head- and taillights along the lagoon road, the soft shurr of
tires in the wet, and beyond all, above all, the dark look of the
morros.

The door crashed open. Her enemy was here. Marcelina rolled into a
defensive stance. The anti-Marcelina hefted her blade to a killing
grip. Back and forth they fought, strike and counterstrike, across
the puddled rooftop, slipping on the loose gravel, tripping on the
satellite cables and water pipes. Feint by feint Marcelina drew her
assassin to the sheer face of the morro, pressing to within
centimeters of the parapet. Above her concrete pillars rose like
organ pipes, stabilizing the rock face. There were service ways up to
those piers. She hopped on to the edge and leaped across the gap on
to the hill itself. Her enemy followed but Marcelina was already up
on to the service path, a precipitous ledge with only a chain for
handrail. A sudden tug almost pulled her from the path; Marcelina
reeled back hard against the wet rock. The chain that had almost
dragged her down fell away into the dark between the flat roofs of
the apartment blocks below. Her enemy looked up into her face. With
the last of her strength Marcelina ran up the steps onto the top of
the morro. Rio lay beneath her, the lagoon an oval of darkness, a jet
jewel set in gold. Leblon, Gávea, the shining spill of
Rocinha; Ipanema a line of light interrupted by dark hills, beyond it
the glowing scimitar of the Barra da Tijuca. To her left the lights
of the Copacabana were a golden necklace between the shouldering
morros.

The anti-Marcelina appeared over the top of the steps, panting.

"Let's have it out," Marcelina said. "Here. No more
running or clever stuff. Let's do it here."

The anti-Marcelina shook her head. Rain flew from her golden hair.

Marcelina was shivering, wet to the bone, but it would end here, far
from the eyes of the world, high above Rio de Janeiro. The enemy
launched at her. She was good, but she had no jeito, no malandragem.
Marcelina dropped into a banda, caught her enemy's legs between her
own, and twisted. The anti-Marcelina went sprawling. Marcelina
followed with a down-and-dirty kick to the side of the head. The
anti-Marcelina howled but rolled into a knife-fighting crouch. She
menaced, jabbing, feinting with the quantum-blade.
You picked the
wrong martial art
, Marcelina thought, floating in ginga, coiled
like a jaguarundi.
The true capoeirista will always appreciate a
good dodge more than a good blow.

"You know," she said, "that you don't give a damn
about anything that gets in your way, the casual cruelty, I can
understand. I've done that myself. But what I can never, ever ever
forgive is that part of me that wants to be a fucking cop."

The anti-Marcelina struck. The tip of the Q-blade grazed the inside
of Marcelina's forearm. There was no pain, no shock; then Marcelina
saw blood well from the long, shallow line. The anti-Marcelina
reversed her grip, came in again. Marcelina ducked into a defensive
cocorinha and saw it. It was simple, it was beautiful, it was
malandragem. She grabbed the cuffs of the anti-Marcelina's pants and
pulled up. With a cry the anti-Marcelina went back over the edge of
the morro.

Marcelina watched her own face, eyes wide, drop through the spears of
rain. There was no cry, no scream, but the quantum-blade cut a line
of blue light through the air. She watched her other self strike the
edge of a rooftop and bounce, spinning into the greater darkness
beneath.

Marcelina stood a long time in the hammering rain, counting breaths.
Breathing was good, count them, slow the heart.
Count the breaths
one two three. Don't think about what you did. Don't think about the
look in your eyes as you fell down into the dark between the
apartment blocks. You died there. You lost. You won; but in winning,
you lost. The multiverse pulled a final malicioso move on you. That's
your body down there.
Even now she could hear the police sirens,
see the flashing lights coming around the dark lagoon.
Marcelina
Hoffman, the controversial Canal Quatro producer who recently gained
national notoriety when she proposed putting disgraced goalkeeper
Moafir Barbosa on trial, was found dead at the foot of Morro dos
Cabritos on Sunday night. Police are continuing their investigations,
but suicide has not been ruled out. Adriano Russo, director of
programming at Canal Quatro, said that Senhora Hoffman had been under
a lot of strain recently, at work and in her domestic life, and had
been acting erratically.
She imagined Heitor looking into the
autocue. He would be professional. He was always professsional. He
would mourn later. Her family would bury something. The police would
keep the quantum-blade and wonder among themselves for decades just
how a dead television producer came to be in possession of a knife
that could cut through anything.