Agency Read online

  TITLES BY WILLIAM GIBSON

  Neuromancer

  Count Zero

  Burning Chrome

  Mona Lisa Overdrive

  Virtual Light

  Idoru

  All Tomorrow’s Parties

  Pattern Recognition

  Spook Country

  Zero History

  Distrust That Particular Flavor

  The Peripheral

  Agency

  BERKLEY

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2020 by William Gibson

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Gibson, William, 1948– author.

  Title: Agency / William Gibson.

  Description: First Edition. | New York: Berkley, 2020. | Sequel to: The Peripheral.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019023019 (print) | LCCN 2019023020 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101986936 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781101986950 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Science fiction. | Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3557.I2264 A34 2020 (print) | LCC PS3557.I2264 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023019

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023020

  International edition ISBN: 9780451490988

  First Edition: January 2020

  Cover design by gray318

  Cover photo by AND-ONE / Getty Images

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To Martha Millard, my excellent literary agent for thirty-five years, with many thanks

  CONTENTS

  Titles by William Gibson

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1: The Unboxing

  2: Our Hobbyist of Hellworlds

  3: App Whisperer

  4: The Sandwiches

  5: Situational Awareness

  6: Dalston

  7: Franklins

  8: Joyous Victory

  9: Unobtainium

  10: Rio

  11: Relationship Tree

  12: Alfred Mews

  13: Stets

  14: Qamishli

  15: Area 51 Shit

  16: COTS

  17: MiG

  18: Pandaform, Tripartite

  19: Images of the Aftermath

  20: Baker-Miller Pink

  21: Bad Quality Control in Shenzhen

  22: Absolutely Horrible

  23: Not Trusting in the Glitch

  24: Porch

  25: Branch Plants of Me

  26: Denisovan Embassy

  27: Mother-Daughter

  28: Sim

  29: Legion

  30: Tottenham Court Road

  31: Why Would You Be Gone?

  32: Churchill’s Waistcoat Pocket

  33: Clarion Alley

  34: Working from Home

  35: Fabricant Fang

  36: Gone

  37: Top-Heavy

  38: The Handshake

  39: Stumpy

  40: Baby Steps

  41: Open-Plan Anxiety

  42: Wifely Advice

  43: Still Life with Lawyers

  44: A Money Launderer

  45: Luggage

  46: Emotional Support

  47: Phonelessness

  48: Corridor

  49: Suite

  50: From Floral Street

  51: Construals

  52: Posture and Gait

  53: Over London

  54: Systems Checks

  55: Micro-Expressions

  56: That Non-Posthuman Touch

  57: And Back

  58: Charmed Circle

  59: None of Me Knows

  60: Regard of the Adjustor

  61: Continental Breakfast

  62: Shoe-Button Eyes

  63: Users

  64: Minimum of Drama

  65: One-Shot

  66: Nonneural

  67: Collage Minus Glue

  68: Dogpatch

  69: Heathkit

  70: A Bit of Cosplay

  71: Catching Up

  72: Don’t Dawdle

  73: Singularity

  74: Old Klept

  75: Jackpot

  76: Came a Coachman

  77: Event Horizon

  78: Morning After

  79: Valley Oak

  80: The Square Mile

  81: Backward, Wearing Heels

  82: Wetmark

  83: Personality Test

  84: Looking Quite Chipper

  85: Multitasking

  86: Empty Chair

  87: Lane-Splitting

  88: Denmark Street

  89: Kinda Sorta

  90: The Work

  91: Followr

  92: Tennessee Street

  93: Winch

  94: Improv

  95: Volunteer

  96: Junior Here

  97: Speed Lines

  98: Black Shark

  99: A Budget for Illegalities

  100: Apertures

  101: Hammock Ride

  102: Nothing but Turgenev

  103: Marlene

  104: Green Room

  105: Heritage Human

  106: 34th Floor

  107: Prom Night

  108: Mercy on the Stairs

  109: After the After-Party

  110: The Sandwiches (II)

  Thanks

  About the Author

  1

  THE UNBOXING

  Very recent hiredness was its own liminal state, Verity reminded herself, on the crowded Montgomery BART platform, waiting for a train to Sixteenth and Mission.

  Twenty minutes earlier, having signed an employment contract with Tulpagenics, a start-up she knew little about, followed by a wordy nondisclosure agreement, she’d shaken hands with Gavin Eames, their CTO, said goodbye, and stepped into an elevator, feeling only relief as the doors closed and the twenty-six-floor descent began.

  New-job unease hadn’t yet found her, there, nor out on Montgomery as she’d walk
ed to the station, texting her order for pad thai to the Valencia branch of Osha. By the time she’d reached this platform, though, three flights down, it was entirely with her, as much as the black trade-show bag slung beneath her arm, silk-screened with the logo of Cursion, her new employer’s parent firm, about which she knew very little, other than that they were in gaming.

  It was with her now as her train arrived. Almost two years since she’d felt this, she thought, as she boarded. She’d been unemployed for half of that, which she supposed might account for its intensity now.

  She reached for a hang-strap as the car filled.

  Surfacing at Sixteenth, she went straight to Osha, picked up her pad thai, and started for Joe-Eddy’s.

  She’d eat, then start getting to know their product. This wasn’t just a new job, but a possible end to sleeping on Joe-Eddy’s curb-rescue porn couch.

  The early November sky looked almost normal, Napa-Sonoma particulates having mostly blown inland, though the light still held a hint of that scorched edge. She no longer started awake to the smell of burning, only to remember what it was. She’d kept the kitchen window closed, this past week, the only one Joe-Eddy ever opened. She’d give the place a good airing soon, maybe try cracking one of the windows overlooking Valencia.

  Once back at his apartment, she ate hungrily from the black plastic take-out tray, ignoring the lingering reek of the uncut Mr. Clean she’d used to scour the wooden tabletop, prior to Gavin’s call. If Joe-Eddy’s Frankfurt job lasted, she remembered having thought as she’d wielded a medium-grit 3M foam sanding block, she might scrub the kitchen floor as well, for the second time in a little under a year. Now, though, with Tulpagenics’ contract signed, she might be giving notice to the couple renting her condo, middle managers at Twitter, who hadn’t reported a paparazzi sighting for over three months. In the meantime, for however many more nights on white pleather, she had her silk mummy-bag liner, its thread-count proof against the porn-cooties of persistent imagination.

  Covering what remained of her order with its admirably compostable translucent lid, she stood, took her leftovers to the fridge, rinsed her couch-surfing chopsticks at the sink, and returned to the table.

  When Gavin had been packing the bag, the glasses were all she’d paid any real attention to. They’d involved a personal style decision: tortoiseshell plastic, with gold-tone trim, or an aspirationally Scandinavian gray. Now she took their generic black case from the bag, opened it, removed them, and spread the pale gray minimalist temples. The lenses were untinted. She looked for a trademark, country of origin, model number. Finding none, she placed them on the table.

  Next, a flat white cardboard box, in which a flimsy vacuum-formed tray, also white, hugged a nondescript black phone. Likewise no-name, she found, having freed it from the tray. She turned it on and placed it beside the glasses. A smaller white box revealed a generic-looking black headset with a single earbud. In another, three black chargers, one each for the glasses, phone, and headset, commonest of consumer fruit, their thin black cables still factory-coiled, secured with miniature black twist-ties. All of it, according to Gavin, plug and play.

  Picking up the headset and switching it on, she hung it from her right ear, settling the earbud. She put the glasses on, pressing their low-profile power-stud. The headset pinged, a cursor appearing. A white arrow, centered in her field of vision. Then moving down, of its own accord, to the empty boxes, the chargers, the black phone.

  “Here we go,” said a woman’s husky voice in Verity’s ear. Glancing to her right, toward what would have been the voice’s source had anyone been there, Verity inadvertently gave whoever was controlling the cursor a view of the living room. “Got a hoarding issue, Gavin?” the voice asked, the cursor having settled on the miniature junkyard of semi-disassembled vintage electronics on Joe-Eddy’s workbench.

  “I’m not Gavin,” Verity said.

  “No shit,” said the voice, neutrally.

  “Verity Jane.”

  “Ain’t the office, is it, Verity Jane?”

  “Friend’s place.”

  The cursor traversed the living room, to the closed curtains. “What’s outside?”

  “Valencia Street,” Verity said. “What should I call you?”

  “Eunice.”

  “Hi, Eunice.”

  “Hi yourself.” The cursor moved to Joe-Eddy’s Japanese faux Fender Jazzmaster. “Play?”

  “Friend does. You?”

  “Good question.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Thing-shaped hole.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I got one, in that department. Want to show me what you look like?”

  “How?”

  “Mirror. Or take the glasses off. Point ’em at your face.”

  “Will I be able to see you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “No there there.”

  “I need to use the bathroom,” Verity said, standing. “I’ll leave the glasses here.”

  “You don’t mind, maybe open the drapes.”

  Verity crossed to the window, hauled both layers of dusty blackout curtain aside.

  “You put the glasses down,” the voice said, “I can look out the window.”

  She took them off, positioning them, temples open, lenses overlooking the street, on a white Ikea stool, its round seat branded with soldering-iron stigmata. Then added, for what she judged to be needed elevation, the German-language making-of volume of a Brazilian telenovela. Removing the headset, she put it down on the book, beside the glasses, went to the kitchen, retrieving her own phone from her purse, then down the narrow corridor to the bathroom. Closing the door behind her, she phoned Gavin Eames.

  “Verity,” he answered instantly, “hello.”

  “Is this for real?”

  “You haven’t read the nondisclosure agreement?”

  “More clauses than I’m used to.”

  “You agreed not to discuss anything of substance on a non-company device.”

  “Just tell me there’s not someone somewhere doing Eunice, for my benefit?”

  “Not in the sense I take you to mean, no.”

  “You’re saying it’s real.”

  “Determining that to your own satisfaction is part of what you’re expected to be doing for us.”

  “Should I call back on the company phone?”

  “No. We’ll discuss this in person. This isn’t the time.”

  “You’re saying she’s—”

  “Goodbye.”

  “Software,” she finished, looking from the phone to her reflection in the mirror over the sink, its age-mottled silver backing suggesting a submarine grotto. She turned then, opened the door, and walked back into the living room, to the window. Picked up the glasses. Put them on. Late-afternoon traffic strobed behind transparent vertical planes of something resembling bar code. “Whoa . . .”

  Then she remembered the headset. Put it on.

  “Hey,” the voice said.

  The bar code vanished, leaving the cursor riding level with the windows of passing cars. “What was that?” Verity asked.

  “DMV. I was reading plates.”

  “Where are you, Eunice?”

  “With you,” said the voice, “looking out the window.”

  Whatever this was, she knew she didn’t want her first substantial conversation with it to take place in Joe-Eddy’s living room. Briefly considering the dive bar on Van Ness, not that she felt like a drink, she remembered having recently been recognized there. There was Wolven + Loaves, a few doors up the street, but it was usually busy, the acoustics harsh even when it wasn’t. Then she remembered 3.7-sigma, Joe-Eddy’s semi-ironic caffeination-point of choice, a few blocks away, on the opposite side of Valencia.

  2

  OUR HOBBYIST OF HELLW
ORLDS

  Vespasian,” Detective Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer said, peering sidewise at Netherton over her greatcoat’s upraised collar, “our hobbyist of hellworlds. Recall him?”

  You had him killed in Rotterdam, Netherton thought. Not that she’d ever said as much, or that he’d asked. “The one who made such horrific stubs? All war, all the time?”

  “I’d wondered how he so quickly rendered them nightmares,” she said, pacing briskly on, beneath Victoria Embankment’s gray morning and the canopy of dripping trees. “Eventually, I looked into it.”

  He lengthened his stride, keeping up. “How did he?” He hadn’t seen her since before Thomas’s birth, at the start of his parental leave. Now, he’d already gathered, that was coming to an end.

  “I dislike calling them stubs,” she said. “They’re short because we’ve only just initiated them, by reaching into the past and making that first contact. We should call them branches, as they literally are. Vespasian discovered a simple way of exaggerating the butterfly effect, or so it seems. That even the smallest perturbation may yield large and unforeseen consequences. On making contact, he’d immediately withdraw. Then return, months later, study the results, and very deliberately and forcefully intervene. He achieved remarkable if terrible results, and very quickly. Investigating his method, I happened on another of his so-called stubs, one in which he’d initiated contact in 2015, several years before the earliest previously known contact. We’ve no idea how he managed the extra reach, but we now have access to that stub.” They were climbing shallow steps now, toward the river, to an overlook. “We may have a chance, there, of achieving radically better outcomes than previously.” They reached the top. “I need you back for that. Contact has necessarily been oblique, so far, due to technological asymmetry, but we think we’ve managed a workaround. Your experience in dealing with contactees may soon be very much in need.”

  “Contact’s been oblique, you say?”

  “The aunties, for instance”—her pet name for her office’s coven of semisentient security algorithms—“are of relatively little use.” Netherton grimaced at the very thought of them.

  A dappled Thames chimera broke the surface then, red and white. It rolled, four meters head to tail, lamplike eyes clustered above cartoonish feeding palps. Diving, it left a shallow wake of beige foam.