With his notebook he activated interface software from Viper Lab, a variation on VideoJak and UCsniff. It was an update on the program Oscar had given him the first time he had covered park surveillance. Oscar had gotten the information while covering the Defcon conference in Vegas. “The software’s there for us. For you. For free,” he told Klinsman, trying to get him to go deeper on the park story. “A kid can do it. Actually, kids are the ones doing it, most times.”
The main difference between him and Oscar had something to do with faith. Klinsman had faith in technology, a blind faith, like most people. Oscar didn’t; he needed to know how things work, so maybe he could rework them, or make them work better for his purposes. But Oscar had an odd faith in people, some people, those few who could follow their own unique imaginations. Those few open to the ideas and imaginings of others but able to stay true to their own visions and creations. The journalist in El Paso who kept vigil on Juárez. Gina, with her gift for leading and then letting go. Rita, whom Oscar almost feared because he had so much faith in her aim, her art. And Klinsman, for no reason other than his befuddled, bejumbled, insomniac view of this city, what it had been and what it had become.
Beneath the loom of the wing monument, Klinsman jacked his way into the security feeds and brought up an image from one of the far parking lots. Except for the playground, which was alive with toddlers and moms and nanas, the park was empty because school was in session and the neighborhood was at work. On his screen Klinsman could see his own tiny self on the hilltop opposite the parking-lot camera, a hunched silhouette against the blue sky, a man about to be crushed by the silver wing tilting over him.
He clicked around for another view, not knowing which camera corresponded to which number. His image leapt forth, caught, it appeared, by the camera fastened beneath the wing. He saw a man with disheveled hair, an unshaven jaw creased by lack of sleep, dressed in a Western shirt from Tijuana not tucked in. If it weren’t for the laptop glinting in the sun, he could have been taken for a noontime park regular, concerned as a toad.
He walked the mile north to the next park. This one was a sloped rectangle of grass surrounded by a sea of sand-colored rooftops, treeless housing tracts. This one had no name but was commonly known as Ranch Park, after the ranch that lay beneath it, the Klinsman ranch. On the courts men on lunch break were playing Mexican basketball, nine-on-nine, everybody in. Their calls were sparks of sound in the ocean air, seagulls hailing one another.
Klinsman noted two cameras above the courts, two more perched atop seedling light posts. This park was newer than Silver Wing, and its cameras were smaller, sleeker, little black domes looking like forgotten thermos caps.
He sat on a stone picnic bench and clicked into the cameras. He called up the basketball courts, watched the games, the ball swimming over a mosh pit of dark arms and heads. He clicked around, searching for the view holding himself. Except for the basketball game, the park was empty and still. Finally he reached the camera aimed at his bench.
He wasn’t there.
16.
It was like looking into a mirror and seeing everything but himself. Klinsman felt this sensation as an upward rush through his nerves, like that hot push of venom. At first he sensed himself erased, then somehow sucked underneath—to the place this park used to be, to the time when he ran the fields, racing his youth, his brothers and sisters. This spot, this stone bench, marked where they used to have tomato fights after the last harvest, ducking and firing among the endless rows, soaked and smelling sweet with rot. The gull-like cries from the men playing Mexican Nines only enhanced that feeling, echoes draping him.
Not far from his bench, work had been done on a sprinkler. A worker had peeled back the turf and neatly piled a small amount of excess dirt to be removed later. Klinsman fetched a clump from the pile and brought it back to the table. He sat and eyed the clod as you would a precious gem. The dirt just beneath the topsoil of the ranch was this hard red composite, a little brighter than brick, a little duller than blood. When Viking sent pictures of the Martian landscape back to Earth, Connie said the rocks looked just like the clods she liked to throw at him right after the deep fall plowing. Klinsman placed the red clump carefully beside his laptop. The online feed still showed him disappeared.
He straightened his shoulders, looked away from the screen and into the blue above the far ocean, blinked, sought reason. The screen remained the same when he looked back, this stone table and bench empty, its shadows cast the same way on the grass, the same sprinkler cap to the side, the same dandelions quivering in the sea breeze. He waved his arms, trying to make himself appear. He clicked around to the other cameras, found the game of Mexican Nines. He clicked his way back to the near camera and still found himself gone.
Now a coldness slithered in him. He wanted to call Rita. He wanted to call Oscar. He wanted to call his brother Azariah. Or even Connie, so far away. He lifted his cell and crooked his thumb.
A shadow fell over him, paused him.
A young man stood above him, close enough to shield the noon sun.
“Don’t do that,” he said with a slight Latino accent, not enough force on his T’s. “You lose connection.”
Klinsman placed the cell down gently beside the laptop, maintaining connection. On the screen the man, like Klinsman, did not appear. This made him feel a little better.
He looked the young man over, angling off the overhead sun to get a better close-up. He was far too skinny for the dark suit coat he wore. The coat had stylized shoulders, razor sharp at the corners, sliding. His black hair was mussed and barely shifted in the breeze, and his lips hung slightly parted, as though he had allergies. He wore thick-rimmed glasses, chef’s pants, and mismatched shoes, one brown loafer, one black wingtip. He had a newly sprung mushroom color and smell about him.
“Could I?” He nodded to Klinsman’s laptop, open to the sky on the stone table.
Klinsman offered with his hand, and the youth hunched eagerly toward the screen. His hands were long and thin and moved like dragonflies over the keyboard. His touch was very light, making almost no sound, the burble of a little stream.
The game of Mexican Nines came up onscreen. One more flit and burble over the keys and the players disappeared, the courts empty but for the shadows of backboards and hoops.
Klinsman scrunched his brow.
“It’s just yesterday’s feed,” said the young man, adjusting his glasses. “Mixto. Mixed in.” His throat was the color of the inside of a seashell.
Klinsman’s brow remained furrowed. “But the passive feeds …you can’t get the old feeds.”
The young man looked at him, then at the game of Mexican Nines, then at the empty courts on screen.
“But you can,” said Klinsman.
The youth shook his head. “No. Not me.”
Klinsman looked him over again, starting with the mismatched shoes, ending with the pointed shoulders of his jacket. Klinsman switched to Spanish, ending with the plural “you.” “Tú, no. Pero ustedes, sí”
The young man gazed steadily at Klinsman, breathed gently through his lips.
“You nombre?” asked Klinsman.
“Douglas,” the young man replied. “Douglas Cook. We want you to leave us out of your story.”