Brasyl Read Online Free PDF

Hamilcar and Mr. Smiles worked out
of a thirdhand campervan so full of computers they lived outside in
tents and awnings. As all trails ended at the chipperia, mobility was
paramount. As Gerson understood it, it was all timing. It took ten
minutes average, twenty minutes tops to erase an arfid; the closest
the seguranças could get in that time was a five-kilometer
circle of confusion, and it would blow their budget to search that
large area. Most turned around and headed home as soon as they lost
the signal from the arfid.
    "How much are you looking for that bag?" Hamilcar was half
reading the paper, half peeling the flakes of eczema from his cracked
feet.
    "Three thousand reis."
    "No, I mean seriously."
    "That's what they're going for. You cannot get these bags for
love nor money nor bribery. I'm telling you."
    "Give you eight hundred, and that's including what you owe us
for the dechipping."
    "Two thousand five."
    Hamilcar grimaced as he tore a particularly salty piece of dead white
skin a little too far, baring raw flesh.
    "You are a man of no education. I was thinking maybe my
girlfriend might like it as a present—she likes that sort of
thing, all the names and that. Not at that price, though."
    Then the door had opened. Mr. Smiles stepped out of the stinky
camper.
    He was an IT graduate from the University of São Paulo, the
hacker of the outfit. He was a big skinny Cabo Verde with a great and
well-tended Afro and dentition that made him look as if he was always
smiling. The smile did nor sit naturally with the pump-action shotgun
in his hand.
    "Hey hey hey ... " cried Gerson, spluttering flakes of
sweet roll.
    "Gerson, nothing personal, but you have thirty seconds to get on
your bike and depart."
    "What what what?" Gerson said, catching the Habbajabba as
Mr. Smiles lobbed it to him.
    "It's NP-chipped. I can't touch that."
    "NP what? What shit? You're the scientist; you should know about
these things."
    "I'm an information technologist, majoring in database design.
This is quantum physics. Get a physicist. Or just go to the river and
throw the thing away. You choose, but I'm not facing off with the
Brooklin Bandeirantes. And I will shoot you."
    And that was when Gerson called his smart kid brother. And Edson
says, "Go and throw the thing in a river."
    "It's three thousand reis."
    "Brother, it's a handbag."
    "I need the money."
    "Do you owe someone again? Jesus and Mary . . . "
    Edson shoos kids away from his bike. It's a Yam X-Cross 250 dirt
bike, green and yellow, like a parrot, like a futebol shirt, and
Edson loves it beyond everything except his mother and his business
plan. It is all jeito, and you can ride it straight up a wall. "Let
me talk to Smiles."
    "Okay," says Mr. Smiles after Edson explains that he really
can't let his dumb brother get killed even over a woman's handbag. "I
think you're all dead, but you could try the quantumeiros."
    "Who are these? What-eiros?"
    "Quantumeiros. You know, those new quantum computers? No? Codes
you can't break? They can. They're the physicists. I can give you
their code; they move around even more than we do. Careful with them,
though. Weird shit happens round these people."
    A map of the São Caetano rodovia network appears on Edson's
Chilllibeans; a license plate is flagged, heading north on R118.
Edson wonders how many chippers and crackers and quantumeiros are
nomadic on the highways of great Sampa at any instant.
    "I shall try them."
    "What did Gerson ever do he should have a brother like you?"
says Mr. Smiles. "All the same, I wouldn't hang around too
long."
    The Yamaha starts to Edson's thumbprint. He slips a concentration
enhancer from his travel pack, pops it, and as the world sharpens and
clariifies around him, rides slow through the alleys back of the
crente church. He doesn't want mud splashes from the lingering
night's rain on his white flares.
    The brothers de Freitas meet twenty-three minutes later on the
on-ramp at Intersection 7. Twenty-three