“Come on, son,” commands Tia Marizete, taking his hand now and drawing him after her with divine strength. “There’s a ladeiro up here.” Past the hysterical pigs, above the herb terraces, is a gate in a wall that leads to a steep, narrow staircase lutching between houses into a greater dank dark that smells of wet green growing. Edson stumbles after Tia Marizete, feet slipping on the slippery concrete steps. He glances back at Fia. Behind her upturned, dazed pale face, beyond the roof tiles of the Igreja, the street pulses blue and red from police beacons. Then they are out into cool and mold, above the build-line, on the hilltop in the forest. The old austral forests of north São Paulo have always been a refuge and highway for the hunted; indios to runaway slaves to drug runners. Now quantumeiros.

From her nightdress Tia Marizete finds a fist of reis — such is the axé of aunts and Sisterhood attorney generals — and presses them into Edson’s hand. There’s another object in there.

“Take care, be clever, be safe. This man will protect you.”

More by touch than sight Edson identifies the object in his hand, a little cheap bronze statue cast from recycled wire, a malandro in a suit and porkpie hat: Exu, Lord of the Crossings.

The last place the light fills is the hollow where the water drops over the ledge into the shallow pool. The cold cold water strikes away the daze and dreams of the night. Edson gasps, paralyzed by the chill. An edge of light shines between the skinny boles of the trees, growing brighter with every moment, its dazzle burning away the silhouettes of the trunks until they disssolve into sun. Edson climbs up into the light. Fia sits as he left her, knees pulled to chest for warmth. Bronze sky, brass city. The sun pours into the bowl of São Paulo, touching first the flat roofs and sat-dishes of the favelas just beneath their feet where the people have been up for hours, on their long journeys to work in the endless city. It flows from the hilltops down the roads like spilled honey, catching on the mirrors and the chrome, turning the rodovias that curl along the hillsides to arcs of gold. Now it lights the smoke spires: the plumes from the industry and powerplant stacks, the more diffuse auras from the scattered bairros; then caught the tops of the high towers rising above of the dawn smog, towers marching farther and farther than Edson can imagine, city without end and expanding every moment as the swift-climbing sun draws lesser towers up out of the shadow. He watches an aircraft catch the light and kindle like a star, like some fantastic starship, as it banks on approach. A big plane, from another country, perhaps even another continent. It has flown farther and yet never as far as this woman beside me, Edson thinks.

“We lost the sun,” Fia says, face filled with light. “We gave it away, we killed it. It’s gray all the time; we had to fix the sky to beat the warming. Constant clouds, constant overcast. It’s gray all the time. It’s a gray world. I think everyone should be made to come up here and watch it so no one can take it for granted.” She gives a small, choked laugh. “I’m sitting here looking at the light, but I’m thinking, Sunburn Fia, sunburn. I used to be in this university bike club, and there was this crazy thing we used to do every year: the nude bike run. Everyone would cycle this loop from liberdade through the Praça de Sé and back wearing nothing but body paint. We used to paint each other in the wildest designs. But I’d never have burned.” She bows her head to her bent knees. “I’ve just thought; they’ll be wondering what happened to me. I just disappeared. Gone. Walked away and never came back. Oh yeah, that Fia Kishida, I wonder what happened to her? I couldn’t even say good-bye to any of them. That’s a cruel thing for me to do. That’s one of the cruelest things anyone can do, walk away and never look back. But I could go to their houses, knock on their doors — I know where they live — and they wouldn’t know me.”

Edson says, “The way you’re talking, it’s like you’ll never see them again.”

Fia looks up into the holy sun.

“The crossing only works one way, there to here.”

Edson thinks, There is a smart brilliant creative Edson answer to this problem. But there is nothing but morning out there. Everyone hits that wall at the end of his competence. Impresarios cannot solve problems in quantum computing. But a good impresario, like any man of business, knows someone who can.

“Come on.” He offers a hand. “Let’s go. We’re going to see someone.” Five hillsides over the sound of voices drives Edson down into the undergrowth, creeping forward under cover. From behind a fallen log he and Fia watch a gang of eight favela boys camp around an old dam from the coffee age. Empty Antarctica cans and roach ends are scattered around a stone-ringed fire burned down to white ash. Three of the teenagers splash ass-naked in the pool; the others loll around on the bubble-mats, stripped down to their Jams, talking futebol and fucking. They’re good-looking, beautiful-bodied, laughing boys; sex gods caught at play. Like gods, they are creatures of pure caprice.

“They’re cute,” Fia whisper. “Why are we hiding?”

“Look.” One of the men rolls onto his side. No one could miss the skeleton gun butt in his waistband. “Malandros come up here all the time to lie low from the police. The cops have no chance of catching them; they all learn jungle skills on national service.”

“Even you?”

“A businessman can’t afford to give two years to the army. I worked myself a medical discharge after two months. But they would rob us, and they would have no reason not to kill us too. We’re going, but move very slowly and don’t make any noise.”

They make no noise; they move slowly; the boys’ voices recede into the forest buzz. The sun climbs high, pouring heat and dazzle through the leaf canopy. Minutes’ walk on either side of this ridge trail are rodovias, lanchonetes, coffee, and gossip; the morning news is a touch away on the I-shades, but Edson feels like an old, bold Paulista bandeirante, pushing into strange new worlds.

“If I am going to help you, there’s stuff I need to know,” Edson says. “Like priests, and the Order, and that guy with the Q-blade, and who was that capoeirista?”

“How do I say this without it sounding like the most insane thing you’ve ever heard? There’s an organization — more a society really — that controls quantum communication between universes.”

“Like a police, government?”

“No, it’s much bigger than that. It covers many universes. Governments can’t touch it. It works on two levels. There’s the local level — each universe has its agents — they’re known as Sesmarias. Sesmarias tend to run in famiilies: the same people occupy the same roles in other universes.”

“How can it run in families?”

“I told you it would sound crazy. Some of them are very old and respectable families. But the Sesmarias are just part of a bigger thing, and that’s the Order. ”

“I’ve head that word twice in one day. You, then that capoeirista woman. So the man who attacked us at the Igreja, he was from the Order, right?”

“No, he would have been just a Sesmaria. They aren’t terribly good, really. Sesmarias are allowed to contact each other but not cross. I’d hoped the Sesmaria back where I come from hadn’t been able to track where I was going. Wrong there. But the Order can go wherever it wants across the mulltiverse. They have agents: admonitories. When they send one through, they have to tell everyone from the president of the United States to the pope.”

Edson presses his hands to either side of his skull, as if he might squeeze madness our or reality in. “So capoeira woman, who is she?”

“I’ve never seen or heard of her before in my life. But I do know one thing.”

“What?”

“I think she’s on our side.”