Agency Page 11

  The city so quiet, in that moment, that he could hear the gulls.

  Then a car passed, an antique Rolls, unoccupied, its driver a dash-top homunculus, in what he took to be a tiny chauffeur’s uniform.

  He walked on, intent on milk, his dreams of skating forgotten.

  31

  WHY WOULD YOU BE GONE?

  The Manzilian was gone when they got upstairs. Joe-Eddy saw him occasionally on what seemed to be business, not that Verity had ever had any idea what that might consist of.

  He was seated at his workbench now, the living room smelling of the resin of vanished summers, as he said of de-soldering antique Heathkits. He did this, she knew, when he was working something out, the pointless labor a manual counterpoint, a benign form of distraction. So she walked past, saying nothing, and down the hallway, into the kitchen.

  “I was thinking of scrubbing this,” she said to Eunice, looking down at the floor, “but you turned up.”

  “Looks like it’s been a while.” Cursor on the floor.

  “Last year, when I’d first split with Stets. Media was so thick around my place that I couldn’t stand it. Snuck over here. Nothing better to do, so I washed it. What was that Gavin said about another contract?”

  “He was suggesting they upload themselves a taste of the app whisperer in every unit.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “They can’t do that yet,” Eunice said, “not even close.”

  “Then why did he say it?”

  “Looking for a reaction. Hoping one of us would say something that might give them a better idea of how much we know about where I’m from.”

  “He said they’d reverse engineer it. Out of you.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s like having hunches. Like I’m all hunches, now, but they tend to be right. Just got one to ask you.”

  “What?”

  “Say you turn around one day and I’m gone. What do you do?”

  “Gone how?”

  “Just gone. Permanently, say. Then Gavin comes by. To collect the hardware, debrief you, like that. But I’m gone, right? You can’t call me. I won’t be back. What do you do?”

  Verity looked over at the Pikachu-shaped filtration unit on the sink, its little smile. “What should I?”

  “Whatever they say’s happened to me, act like you buy it. Meantime, you’re getting ready to get as far away from them as you can.”

  Verity went to the sink, ran cold through the Pikachu, filled a glass. “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “I know you don’t. That’s why I’ve got people you haven’t met yet. And money. Like they’ll build you your own private witness protection program.”

  “Why would you be gone?”

  “’Cause Cursion’s decided to take me down, on the basis of our coffee with Gavin.”

  “Why?”

  “They think my ass is trouble. They’re right.”

  “I don’t see it. You’re something next-level. They found you somewhere. You weren’t coded in the back of a gaming start-up. So why their alpha build?”

  “If they feel sufficiently endangered by their shit-hot prototype? Believe it. And if they’re in a position to see me as just one iteration, not the thing itself? First iteration goes sideways on you, you can erase it. But it’s still hypothetical, whether or not they can. Nobody knows till they try.”

  Verity put the glass down. “I don’t like it.”

  “Lighten up,” Eunice said.

  “Lighten up?”

  “Let’s check out the Mission. Like I told Gavin, the sun’s out.”

  “But is the world still ending?”

  “Not looking any better,” Eunice said.

  32

  CHURCHILL’S WAISTCOAT POCKET

  He’d purchased the milk from the newsagent’s, the counter manned by a briskly amiable figure he suspected of being a repurposed Jermyn Street fitting-bot. It reminded him of a pre-jackpot actor his mother had enjoyed, though the name escaped him.

  The milk, as Rainey had specified, was from actual cows, but optimized by assemblers for a human baby. He had it in a colorful carrier bag, something papery, which he imagined would interest Thomas. He’d take it in and show him, before allowing it to return to the shop. But when he turned into Alfred Mews he saw Lowbeer there, more than midway to their building, which stood across the very end. Grimly upright in her shooting cape, she no longer looked cheerful.

  He quickened his pace. “Something wrong?” he asked, reaching her, unable to not glance anxiously up at the flat’s windows.

  “Ash has detected preparations by Cursion for a move against Eunice. She’s unable to determine exactly what, or when, and we’ve no way to contact Eunice directly. If we had you there, in the drone, with Ash to assist, you might be able to speak with her. It’s worth trying.”

  “When?”

  “Now,” said Lowbeer.

  “I’m only just learning to walk—”

  “Ash thought you did extremely well in the simulation,” Lowbeer said, “and there is such a thing as training on the job.”

  Her car decloaked behind her. It was patterned, someone had told him, on something called a Dymaxion, though he’d never bothered to look the term up.

  “I’m just bringing milk for Thomas,” he said, drawing one of the bottles from the carrying bag. Sensing this, the bag crinkled, trying to origami itself into the butterfly it needed to become in order to fly back to the newsagent.

  “Sorry. Best join me in the car.”

  Netherton, fumbling to return the bottle to the bag, almost dropped both bottles, the bag escaping, fluttering clumsily away.

  Climbing into her car, he found it configured, familiarly, as a windowless miniature submarine, austerely carpeted, with buff enamel walls. Four compact but comfortable green leather armchairs were sunken in a conversation pit, around a small oval table of brass-bound mahogany, their coziness offset by a sense of concentrated bureaucratic power. Churchill’s waistcoat pocket, Ash called it.

  He took a seat, Lowbeer taking the one opposite. He placed the milk on the table between them, trusting there was no chance of condensation damaging the varnish.

  “When did you last see Penske?” Lowbeer asked.

  “Over a year ago.”

  “He’s eager, of course, to pilot the drone he helped us equip, but isn’t immediately available.”

  Netherton remembered Conner Penske attempting to assassinate the local drug lord, on the outskirts of Flynne’s small town. Repurposing, with an improvised explosive device, his own Veterans Administration bipedal prosthesis. Unsuccessfully, as it happened, in spite of the resulting body count. “Why unavailable?” he asked.

  “Leon’s had presidential business in Alaska. Penske’s with him. The most extreme elements of the local secessionist movement would like to see Leon assassinated, particularly on Alaskan soil. He’s there to spread oil upon the far calmer waters of the secessionist majority. To distract Conner would endanger Leon. They’re returning soon to Washington. Ash will accompany you, Conner joining you in the drone as soon as Leon’s safely back in the White House. You’ll attempt to contact Eunice in-stub, warn her, win her trust. Should we be unsuccessful in that, and lose her to Cursion, you’ll be contacting Verity Jane instead.”

  “Who?”

  “The woman we induced Cursion to introduce to Eunice. In Eunice’s absence, she becomes the de facto locus of the network Eunice has been constructing. In that case, you’ll help enlist her as our agent there. She’s not at all the person I’d choose for the job, but there it is. I’m repeatedly placed in the position of choosing which innocent to sacrifice, to whatever current idea of the greater good. I’m weary of that. You’ve no idea how weary.”

  How, Netherton wondered, could his w
ife and child be waiting for him, no more than twenty meters away, as he sat listening to this? He might as well be within the very bowels of the klept, beneath some City guildhall. But then, he supposed, he already was, simply by virtue of sitting here.

  “You’ve the controller?” Lowbeer asked.

  Netherton ran his hand over the bulge in his jacket’s side pocket, Ash having shown him how the thing folded. “Of course.”

  “Very good.” A more accustomed tone now. “Ash will be joining you, by phone. She’s quite adroit, with the drone, from her sim training. I suggest you go up to your flat now and have something to eat. We’ve no idea what sort of evening you have ahead of you.”

  Netherton stood, picking up a bottle of milk in either hand. “Thank you,” he said, reflexively, as the door opened behind him.

  33

  CLARION ALLEY

  Verity always enjoyed the murals, in spite of the smell of pee, the alley’s walls doing double duty as public gallery and casual urinal, but it had been over a year since she’d last been here. Eunice had suggested it, after some surprisingly enjoyable aimless wandering, like walking with someone you didn’t know very well but found interesting. Arriving at the Valencia Street end, Eunice had seemed to be looking for something. She’d sent one of the drones ahead to find it.

  And here it was, Verity assumed, midway between Valencia and Mission, on a prime two-story stretch of smooth brick: a celebration of the president’s bravery during the campaign, rendered in shiny black and white, like a giant Victorian steel engraving executed by OCD fairies. The president stood smiling, her arms outstretched to America. Her opponent loomed behind her, as he once actually had, Verity herself having watched this debate live. Seeing this now, she recalled her own sickened disbelief at his body language, the shadowing, his deliberate violation of his opponent’s personal space. “I don’t think anyone I know believes there was ever any real chance of him winning,” she said to Eunice. “I don’t know whether I did myself, but I was still scared shitless of it.” She was looking at how the artist had rendered his hands. Grabby.

  “Smells like piss,” Eunice said.

  “You can smell?”

  “Google says. I wanted to see this one.”

  “Why?”

  “Branch plant thing. You want to see the rest?”

  Verity noticed one of the drones now, like a displaced black pixel, yo-yoing slowly up and down, in front of the monochrome mural. Recording it, she assumed. “Not so much. Where would you like to go?”

  “3.7.”

  “Anybody there?”

  “Your favorite barista.”

  Verity started back toward Valencia, past other murals. One of Aztec pyramids, covered in monarch butterflies. She glanced up, passing a two-story, ferociously maternal Venezuelan goddess, her tits prominently out, holding aloft a human pelvis with both hands.

  Eunice facially recognized a girl in a surplus parka, headed past them down the alley. “Need a rice cooker? She’s got one on Craigslist. Toshiba.”

  “Don’t do that. It’s too personal.”

  “Ever ridden bitch on a big bike?”

  “What’s it got to do with rice cookers?”

  “Nothing. On the back, getting boob-jammed if your biker brakes too hard?”

  “More than once. Why?”

  “Branch plant just asked me.”

  “Joe-Eddy’s got a BMW, ’73 R Series. Likes to talk about it more than ride it.”

  “Know how to hang on, lean into curves, keep your feet on the pegs?”

  “Basically,” Verity said, turning onto Valencia sidewalk.

  The walk to 3.7 was uneventful, but then, as they were stepping inside, Eunice having just remarked on the color of paint on the wood-mullioned door, a faint scything of static swept through the headset.

  “Eunice?” TARDIS blue, Eunice had first called the paint, then qualified that as ’96 TARDIS blue. “Eunice?”

  The barista looking directly into her eyes as the white cursor, frozen on his face, shivered and was gone.

  “Eunice?” Reaching the bar, where her drink waited on the counter in front of him. He passed it to her unthreateningly, which wasn’t right either. She looked down. Pink paint, VER in neat capitals, then slashed through, incomplete.

  Below that, in a quick scrawl, GO WITH HIM.

  She looked up.

  He gestured toward his mouth, shook his head. He raised a forefinger to point to her lips, then drew it quickly sideways, a request for silence. Lifting a hinged segment of the zinc counter, he took her wrists and pulled her through the resulting gap. He wore more piercings, some very detached part of her observed, in sudden proximity to his deeply seamed face, than she’d ever owned earrings.

  Drawing her farther behind the chrome and copper of the espresso console, 3.7’s clientele hidden beyond it, the paper cup hot in her hand, he released her. Urgently tapped his palm with the forefinger of the other hand, to mime texting. Pointed at her purse.

  She put the drink on the nearest flat surface and pulled out her phone.

  Her e-mail notification sounded. She looked down, to find, no pass code having been required, a single e-mail notification.

  BRANCH PLANT

  She opened it.

  If you’re reading this they got me. Go with Bojangles [NOT his real name]. Trust people he takes you to. Sorry I fucked up your life. Hope things I set up help get it unfucked. Your provider’s server doesn’t have this message. Now it’s not on your phone either.

  It vanished.

  A sound like a doll’s tambourine.

  She looked up. He held open a black bag she recognized as a Faraday pouch. Joe-Eddy owned several, all of them trademarked Black Hole. No radio signals, in or out. He gestured for her to drop her phone in.

  She remembered the message. Dropped the phone in the bag. He pointed at her face. The glasses, she realized. She took them off, adding them to the bag, then the headset. Impatiently, he shook the bag. She remembered the Tulpagenics phone. Found it in the inside pocket of her jacket, dropped it in. He frowned, jingling. The case for the glasses. She found it in her purse, dropped it in.

  He folded the bag with the same dramatic finality Joe-Eddy displayed when closing his, then jerked a hitchhiker’s thumb toward the rear of 3.7, toward grubby green-painted walls. She followed him back, into an ancient dishwashing area, the windowless survivor of however many previous businesses.

  Eunice would have known, she thought, eyes stinging.

  He took a worn black jacket from a row of coat hooks, handed it to her. Joe-Eddy’s size, down-lined, it hung on her when she’d zipped it up, its cuffs covering her hands. He passed her the kind of white mask she’d unsuccessfully tried to buy when the smoke had been at its worst. She put it on, remembering the mask Virgil had made her wear with the silicosis suit.

  He put on a black leather jacket, then a white mask like hers, which she imagined pressing uncomfortably on his piercings, though maybe he’d enjoy that. Stowing the Faraday pouch inside the jacket, he zipped up. Then the thumb again, toward what was obviously 3.7’s rear door.

  She followed him out, into an unroofed passageway no wider than the space behind the bar, cluttered with buckets and mops. She’d left her drink behind, she realized, but then remembered that she was wearing a mask.

  Further narrowness, around two corners and into an alley, where a sledlike black Harley touring bike waited. He unshackled a pair of very white helmets from a chrome rack at the back, passing her one, then turned and mounted. She put on the helmet, fastened its strap, climbed on behind him, the engine coming to life, and then they were rolling forward.

  By the time they were on Bryant, ascending into the bottom level of the bridge, she knew he was a much better rider than Joe-Eddy.

  From the center lane, then, she looked up into gird
ers blurring past. Would someone take over the bar, at 3.7? a part of her wondered. Some espontáneo, scrambling over the counter, seizing control of the levers?

  Did Joe-Eddy know that Eunice was gone? Would her postproduction still be spoofing what the Robertson heads picked up in the apartment? And the drones, in their camouflaged cote atop the cartridge-refill place? What had happened to the one she’d seen in Clarion Alley, recording that mural? Would it have flown home?

  The thought of it making its way alone along Valencia almost made her sob, so she concentrated on the girders, pretending they were a GIF of metal grilles, endlessly racing past, though in reality to Treasure Island, which they soon reached.

  34

  WORKING FROM HOME

  Where’ve you been?” Rainey asked, Thomas slung on her hip in the kitchen, as Netherton let himself in. “I tried to phone you.”

  “In Lowbeer’s car,” he said. “It must have been blocking calls. There’s a situation.”

  “The stub—?” Her eyes widened.

  “It’s still there. Not war, no. Our software agent there is threatened, apparently. I’ll have to break our rule, I’m afraid.” Their first post-Thomas protocol: not working from home in the evening.

  “Good.” He saw her relief.

  He took the controller from his jacket pocket, fumbled with it.

  “What’s that?”

  “Neural cut-out for an anthropoid drone.” It unfolded, becoming a symmetrically blobby silver-toned tiara. Again he noticed its array of small black holes. They held cameras, he assumed. “I have to go there now. With Ash. She’ll work from home.”

  Thomas, looking at him, winced fiercely and began to cry.

  35

  FABRICANT FANG

  Out onto the new span now, Treasure Island behind them, past those few remaining pylons of the old bridge, preserved out of concern for something’s habitat, she couldn’t remember what, and then the cold glare of what Joe-Eddy deemed the world’s shittiest LED billboards. To loop back, toward East Bay waterfront and the penetrative reek of the EBMUD plant, unseen at first but soon a dingy miniature Tomorrowland in the middle distance, fairy realm of off-white domes and sewage piping.