“Her parents, eh?” The woman is big, easy, rolls of fat lapping generously as she sits, one leg outstretched, on the step of the gold refinery. Her wealth is in her teeth, around her neck, on her fingers, the stubby, sweet-smelling cigar she smokes with simple relish. “And they hired you? Son, you’re no priivate detective. But you’re not anything else either, so I’ll answer your guestion. Yes. I know this face.” Edson’s heart kicks inside so hard she must hear it: a meaty knock. “She was selling stuff, tech stuff; gear, good gear. Gear like I’ve never seen before, like no one had ever seen before. And some jewelry.”

“In the last month?”

“In the last twenty-four hours, son.”

Beyond the shotgun shacks, the dark trash mountains crawl with stars; LED head-torches and candle lanterns flickering like fireflies. The miasma the dump constantly exudes blue and yellow. It is radiantly beautiful. Weird stuff here by superstition, street legend. Whispers of night visions; strange juxtapositions of this city with other, illusory landscapes; angels, visitations, UFOs, orixás. Ghosts.

“Do you know who bought them?”

“Son, there’s always someone buying something around here. Some of the usual dealers — you won’t catch them here this time of night. They’ve more sense.”

“Do you know if she’s staying around here?”

“She’d be a bigger fool than you if she were. I got one set of eyes, son, and a failing memory. Count your blessings.”

Descending the spiral Little Snoop calls in at the futebol bar and has a bottle of good import whiskey sent up to bling woman. It’s expensive, but that’s the way his city works. A favor given, a favor returned. And his Yamaha is intact, untouched, absolutely flawless.

Eleven thirty-eight and Edson’s ass feels like a spill of hardened concrete. There’s one safe little niche on the hotel roof, but it’s small, uncomfortable, and ball-freezingly cold. This is an unglossy neighborhood, forgotten like discarded underwear behind the kanji frontages and Harajuku pinks of the sushi bars and theatrical teppanyaki eateries. Hardpoint sensors and an aerial drone on a three-minute orbit supplement the bored teen with the stupid near-moustache crewing the security barrier. Edson watches the HiLux pickup laden with vegetables drive through the gates into the cul-de-sac. Close behind the scooped red-tile roof the pencil-thin apartment towers rise, crowned in moving ads for beer and telenovelas. He’s never been so close to the mythical heart of the city. Praça de Sé is ten blocks away.

She grew up here , Edson thinks. Her life was shaped in this long, bulb-ended street like a vagina. She pedalled that pink kiddie-bike with the streamers from the handlebars around this turning circle. She put up a stall made from garden tools and sheets to sell doces and iced tea to the neighbors. She tongue-kissed her first boyfriend just around that step in the build-line where the segurança couldn’t watch her. Her parents are unloading the truck now, boxes bursting with green and dark red so soft you could imagine rolling over in them to sleep.

“Ghosts. Like, the way you mean ghost?” he had said to Mr. Peach, the gun hard against the crack of his ass.

“Go on.” There was a way Mr. Peach carried himself — eager, leaning, hands tense — when he expected more than affection and sex from Sextinho.

“There are millions of other Fias out there in other universes, other parts of the multiverse.”

“Yes.”

“And one of them…”

“Go on.”

“Has come through.”

“That’s a nice expression. Come through.”

“That’s impossible.”

“What you think is impossible and what quantum theory says is imposssible are very different things. What’s impossible is covered by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Pauli exclusion principle. The rest is just shades of probable. Quantum computing relies on what we call a ‘superposiition’: a linkage between the same atom in different states in different uniiverses. An answer comes through from somewhere out in those universes. And sometimes something more than an answer.”

To the right. On the roof of the garage. Movement, a figure. Edson’s heart thumps so hard it hurts. He needs to hurl. He moves to the low parapet, leans over. He can’t make out any detail in this damn yellow light. His hand goes to click up the zoom on his Chilli beans; then the figute sets a can of paint on the parapet. Some kid, a pichaçeiro, leaning over the edge to roller his tag. The heart eases, but the nausea peaks.

On the left. Walking slowly down the street, hood up, hands folded in the front pocket of a weird knitted short hoodie thing, like a street-nun. Skinny gray leggings tucked into fuck-me boots. Boots. Good boots, but who wears boots with leggings? He knows that too-tight walk, those too-short steps. Her face is shadowed by the hood, but the highlights, the glances are identification enough for Edson. Fia/Not Fia. Her hair is longer. But this is Fia. A Fia. Another Fia. She stops to glance down the guarded street. You were born there too, in that other Liberdade, weren’t you? The city, the streets, the houses are the same. What brought you? Curiosity? Proof? What are you feeling? Why are you in this world at all? The guard stirs in his booth. The Fia turns away, walks on. Edson drops from his surveillance, sits back to the coaming, panting, knees drawn up to thin chest. He has never been so scared, not even when he went up the hill to The Man to get his blessing to open De Freitas Global Talent, not even the night when Cidade Alta exploded around Emerson and Anderson.

You’ve identified her. Now get off this roost, get down there. Edson falls in thirty meters behind the Fia. The security kid checks him. Edson closes with the Fia. She glances over her shoulder. Twenty paces now. He knows how to do it. It’s all there in his head. Then the car stops across the end of the road.

“Fia!”

The car door opens; men step out. Fia turns at the sound of the name no one should speak. Edson pulls the big chrome gun out of the back of his pants. The security guard leaps to his feet. All in a bubble of space-time, beautiful, motionless.

“Fia! To me! Run to me. Fia, I knew you, do you understand? I knew you.”

She makes the decision in the instant it takes Edson to bring the gun up two-handed. She flees toward him, a tight-elbowed, flapping girl-run. The two men pelt after her. They are big; they know how to run; their jacket tails flap. Edson snatches Fia’s hand, drags her in his wake. He stops dead. Fia slams into him. From the other end of the street comes a third running man, a little flicker of blue light dancing around his right hand where the naked tip of his Q-blade wounds space-time. And the stupid stupid security kid has his gun gripped in both hands like something he’s seen in a game and he’s shouting, “Don’t move! Don’t fucking move! Put the gun down! Put the gun down!”

“Don’t be stupid, they’ll kill us all,” Edson shouts. “Run now!” The kid panics, throws away the piece, and flees up the street into the palm-creaking dekasegui gardens. Lights come on behind bamboo blinds as Edson snatches Fia down the side alley where he has parked the Yam. Jesus and all the Saints this is going to be tight. … Her arms close around his waist. Start. Start. Start. The engine yells into life. Edson steers one-handed down the alleyway, dodging trash cans and junk.

“Take the gun take the gun. Anything you see in front of you, shoot it.”

“But…”

But he’s already flying. The gun crash/flashes twice by the side of his head; he hears shells scream off walls and girderwork. He sees two dark shapes whirl away from him. Gone. But the third man, the man with the knife, blocks the exit from the alley. An arc of blue. He holds the Q-blade level; the bisecting stroke. This is how it was; let them come to you; let their own velocity cut them in half. Bang bang. The knifeman anticipates, dives, comes up with the blade ready. Crying with fear, Edson kicks out. The backhand slash shaves rubber swarf from the heel of his Nikes, but the man goes down. Edson guns the throttle and wheelies out into the street. Behind him, the two other killers are up. A whisper of jets: security drones are arriving onscene and deploying antipersonnel arrays. Sirens close from all sides, but Edson is through them, out into the light and the endless traffic of his Sampa.