Brasyl Read Online Free PDF Page A

could even
scream.
    His back wheel shatters the mirror as he guns the engine. Bad luck
for someone. He pulls the bandana with which he had covered his face
down over his neck. Even a glimpse of one is a stop'n'search offense
these days. Antisocial clothing. Her I-shades, her watch, her shirt,
the taxi; some eye somewhere will have photographed him. He has the
moto's license plates in his backpack. When he gets to the chipperia,
they'll go back on. Twenty seconds with a screwdriver. The cards will
already be blank. The key codes change every eight hours. The
coin-tokens are worth less than the plastic they're pressed from.
Makeup, tampons, girlie mags are not for a man. But the street value
of a new season 2032 Giorelli Habbajabba (which is beyond must
have into by any means necessary ) is three thousand réis.
For a bag. Yes. Prize hooked over his arm, Gerson accelerrates down
the on-ramp into the great howl of Avenida Dr. Francisco Mesquita.
    Senhora Ana Luisa Montenegro de Coelho taps her big ochre I-shades
and sends an assalto report and photo through to Austral Insurance
and Security. Bandana over face. For sure. No plates. Of course. But
ten kilometers over São Paulo an Angel of Perpetual
Surveillance turns on the back-loop of its eternal holding pattern
and logs a stolen handbag. From the snow of ever-moving arfid
signatures it identifies and locates the radio frequency
identification chips that uniquely tagged the Anton Giorelli
Habbajabba handbag recently registered to Senhora Ana Luisa
Montenegro de Coelho. It calls up its neurallnet map of São
Paulo's two thousand square kilometers and twenty-two milllion souls;
searches through every burb, bairro, downtown, favela, mall, alley,
park, soccer stadium, racetrack, and highway; and finds it swinging
purple-and-pinkly from the elbow of Gerson João Oliveira de
Freitas, hunched over the handlebars of his hand-me-down moped,
buzzing like a neon through the home-run along Ibirapuera. A contract
goes out. Automated bid systems in the dozen private security
companies that can reach the target on budget submit tenders. Fifteen
seconds later a contract is issued from Austral Insurrance to
Brooklin Bandeira Securities. It's a well-established medium-size
company that's been losing recently to younger, meaner, more vicious
commpetitors. After comprehensive retraining and financial
restructuring, it's back, with a new attitude.
    This for a bag? With purple and pink flowers? Ana Luisa Montenegro de
Coelho can have another one before sunset. But there's a crackdown
on. There's always a crackdown on somewhere: tough on crime, tough on
the perpetrators of crime. Usually around the time for insurance
policy renewal. Brooklin Bandeira Securities has a corporate
reputation to restore, and its seguranças are dangerously
bored watching O Globo Futebol 1. In the garage two Suzukis rev up.
The riders fix location on their helmet HUDs. The pilllion riders
check weapons and buckle on. Game on.
    In the gutter outside Ana Luisa's nice little enclave, the discarded
one-shot gun turns to black, putrid liquid and drips from the rungs
of the grating into the sewer. Over the next few days delirious,
poisoned rats will stagger and die across the lawns of Vila Mariana,
causing short-lived consternation among the residents.
    Edson touches the first two fingers of his left hand gently to his
temple in a gesture he has evolved to show his older brother how
exasperated he is with him, even when Gerson cannot see him. He
sighs.
    "What is it you're trying to tell me? They can't blank the
arfid?"
    "It's some new thing they call an NP-chip."
    Gerson had been sipping coffee and enjoying the good sweet morning
rolls, still warm from the oven, at Hamilcar and Mr. Smiles'
Chipperia. It was parked round the back of a bakery, which meant good
sweet morning rolls and pão de queijo for the chipperia's
clients while they made stolen things disappear from the sight of the
Angels of Perpetual Surveillance.