Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(28)

“Better be good,” I said.

“Chris,” said Angel. “Give him a chance.”

Silverman was warming up. It took a while; it took a fair amount of coffee, too. The notion came to me that once he got in gear, once he reached velocity, he wasn’t going to stop.

“I’m an archivist. Digital, I mean, like, digital is just the best thing ever happened to me. If I had to store this all on VHS, I’d need a warehouse for it. And instead, it’s all on here.” He beamed, tapping at the keys with real affection. “Problem now is trying to keep it catalogued. I’ve got these different projects that I work on, you know, as the opportunity comes up, and sometimes they cross over and something that I took for one winds up in another, and, oh, it’s mostly interviews, some scenery, stuff like that. My girlfriend, well, my ex, I suppose she is now, she says I’m a hoarder, but I don’t hoard papers or toys or old food packaging, like the guys on TV, I hoard these little bits of movies. And, look, if I can find this thing, I’ll show you—”

He was working through his files, opening folders, checking lists. If there really was a method it was one he didn’t seem to know.

“I made Rikers this way,” he said, in defense. “It was on PBS and—”

“Herzog. You said.”

“Right! But—see—when I got the Registry exhibition I did some cross-referencing. I’m up with the exhibits, don’t think I’m not, but there’s been some negligence over my own work, and . . . well, after Rikers I was kind of stuck. I needed a follow-up. I needed something big, that people could relate to . . . And I thought, every day, I see these homeless people on the street, and I started talking to a few of ’em, and asked if I could film . . .”

“This is another unfinished project,” I said.

“No, no. It’s in progress. Definitely in progress. But, see—I met this guy. He wasn’t really homeless but he was kind of hanging out in that scene, same as I was. And we got talking. I just thought he was crazy at first. But he was interesting. This was a while ago, you understand? But after . . . what we saw that night—what you said about her swallowing a god—I thought you ought to see it. Here. Watch this.”

He turned the screen so we could see. The light was dim, the camera pointing up through several layers of tobacco smoke at what appeared to be a forty-year-old stoner, his hair matted, cigarette hanging from his lips.

Silverman’s voice, off-screen: “. . . and you were diagnosed . . . you had HIV, yes?”

“I had AIDS. I had full-blown AIDS.” He sucked the cigarette, pulled the smoke down deep and held it, a pot-smoker’s habit. “I had lesions. And pneumonia. Yeah.”

“But you’re telling me it’s gone now.”

“Uh-huh.” Smoke trailing from his lips.

“That’s good. Good news.” Pause. Then, “And you’re saying you were cured by—by God?”

“Is that thing on?” His eyes flicked down, and he was looking straight out of the screen at us.

“No, it’s not on.”

(Across the table, Silverman glanced at me, and grimaced.) On-screen, he said, “Just tell me, though. I want to get this clear. You were cured by God?”

“A god. By the god that lights our cities. Warms our houses. Your house,” he said, and shivered with laughter. “I had a piece of it. A piece—the size of my thumb. Div, they call it. Div, divine, divinity. I put it on the lesions. Here—and here—and here—” With his cigarette, he traced a path across his chest, up to his shoulder.

“This was . . . when?”

“Two years back. See?”

He rubbed his hand across his shirt.

“AIDS is shitty, man. It’s shitty . . .”

“I know.”

“Guy who turned me on to it—to div—he said to me: we got a mission. All of us. All of us who know, right? Big government. Big industry. Big pharma. They got this power, and they hold it for themselves, and what we need to do, what we need . . .” He cupped his cigarette in both hands. “What we need to do is let it go, yeah? Just . . . let it out.” He opened his hands, cigarette smoke fluttering up. A giggle shook him. “Let it go, uh huh? Fly free.”

“Yes,” said Silverman’s voice.

“In the beginning, see—in the beginning, everything belonged to everyone. You know that. People know that. The whole world was alive. And we were part of it. Everything alive.” He spread his fingers. “Connected up. But then . . .”

He pulled on his cigarette. “Then we got . . . isolated. Cut off from the scheme. Became . . . individuals. Single units. When that happened, we died.” Without moving his head, he looked down. “You’re recording, aren’t you? You fucking liar! You’re recording this—”

Back in the present, Silverman tapped a key, and the image froze, blurred, the man’s face caught mid-scowl.

“This sound familiar?” he said.

“A bit.”

“There was more, earlier. I couldn’t get the camera on him. I’m guessing this is your distributor, though. You think?”

He raised his brows; a puppy dog, all keen to please.

But I’d spent four days talking with Melody Duchess Vanderlisle de Vere, and if I knew one thing, it was this: that she would never, never buy from somebody like that. No matter how lonely, how desperate. Never.