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  “Don’t do that,” Ash said. “Some are dangerous, others merely intimidating. You’ll frighten her.”

  Verity looking down at him felt familiar from using Wheelies, in the county, though the drone was quite a bit taller.

  “Did Eunice choose you for this?” she asked.

  “Sorry,” said an unfamiliar voice. In a gap between the partially opened doors, a woman’s face. “Checking to make sure you got through.”

  “Who are you?” Netherton asked.

  “Kathy Fang.”

  “What’s out there?”

  “Our fabrication floor.”

  “Retract the wheels,” Ash said. “Walk. It’s not a Wheelie Boy.”

  Netherton drew them up, into their slots in the feet, as the woman opened the doors wide. A man stood directly behind her, bearded, wearing small orange plastic bowls over either ear.

  Netherton took a step forward. Another.

  41

  OPEN-PLAN ANXIETY

  Verity watched the gym-rat SpongeBob, unsteady on its feet, stepping out in front of her, into the white brilliance of Fabricant Fang, amid the jittery sound of machines.

  “What are you fabbing?” it asked, stopping.

  “Alien mandibular units,” Kathy Fang said. “My crew’s upstairs on their lunch break. We’ll go up to the roof. We have a place up there where you can talk. Through those doors.” Pointing.

  “Thank you.” The drone started toward the far end of the room, along the aisle that broke the rows of machines. It was managing not to waddle now, on its short legs, though it looked as if it should. She remembered the gyroscopes. It reached the far end of the aisle and turned right, to face the doors into the hallway. Lacking visible eye-equivalents, or head motion, she thought, it had no way of suggesting either curiosity or attention. But Wilf, whoever he was, might be looking at her right now. Feeling a need to move, she started after it, stepping past Kathy and Dixon.

  They followed it up the aisle, Verity noting that the mandibles, assuming these were those, were being printed from something with a certain amount of jiggle. “Why the roof?”

  “Quiet-time cube. Friend of ours builds them.”

  Dixon, who she saw had brought the charger with him, was holding a door open. She followed the drone out.

  In the corridor, the elevator door clanked open. She and Kathy stepped in, the drone following, then Dixon, who pressed an unmarked button above four. “Are you concerned about the possibility of nuclear war?” Wilf asked, sounding, as the elevator rose, like a canvassing missionary.

  The three of them looked down.

  “Are you?” Verity asked, as the door grated open.

  “On your behalf, certainly. My wife is as well. Has been since first learning of it.”

  Verity, imagining Mrs. Drone in a flowered straw hat, unexpectedly inhaled what might have been a vagrant waft of EBMUD. Looking up, she realized they were outside.

  “This way,” said Kathy Fang, leading them toward a gray cargo container, lightly rusted, the smallest standard size, a cube ten feet on a side. Various vents and ducts, unrusted, ran across the roof and down the side facing them. “Soundproofed, fully ventilated, temperature and humidity controlled, potable running water, chemical toilet stores waste on the outside.”

  Dixon was tapping a keypad on the container’s side. Verity looked to where she thought the Bay would be, but any view was behind taller buildings. As she turned back, Dixon was opening a door, into mellow light.

  The doorway, half the width of the cube, revealed Silicon Valley quasi-Japanoid décor. Light wood, tatami, a white paper screen, a low gray couch, a wooden table to match.

  “You won’t be locked in,” said Dixon, “but pretend you are. We know when the door’s open, or if anyone sets foot on the roof. Either happens, I’ll be right up. There’s an iPad on the couch, open to a page of commands. Alert’s in red. Tap that, if you want out.”

  “What is this?” Verity asked.

  “They help reduce OPA,” Kathy Fang said. “This was one of the prototypes. We make some of the interior trim for them.”

  “OPA?”

  “Open-plan anxiety. That’s for your shoes, there.” Indicating a translucent tray Verity assumed was from Muji.

  “What do you use it for?” Verity asked.

  “Naps. Get in.”

  The cube was resting on wooden pallets, a double layer of them. Verity stepped up and in.

  “I haven’t tried taking a step up,” said Wilf.

  They all looked at the drone.

  “Sorry. Concerned I might topple over.”

  “Turn around,” said Dixon, “and sit, in the doorway. Straighten out the legs, in front of you, right angle to the torso, and I’ll swing them in for you.”

  Verity knelt and began to remove her shoes. Away, she hoped, from where it might sit.

  It rotated in place with a series of baby steps, then sat. Having no ass, there was nothing much for it to seat, so she wondered if it was being held upright by the gyros. She got to her feet as Dixon swung its short but outstretched legs into the cube.

  “Thank you,” the voice called Wilf said, and she reminded herself that however helpless the thing itself might seem, she had no way of knowing whether he, or it, really was.

  “Ring when you’re done,” Kathy Fang said.

  Dixon placed the charger on the floor and closed the door, causing the indirect lighting to go up a notch.

  Not quite a cube, inside, she saw. A few feet of floor, out from the wall opposite the door, were behind sliding paper screens, now partially open, through which was visible a white curve of toilet. The rest was either tatami, wood, or paper, which she guessed would be over plastic and soundproofing, except for the ceiling, white but translucent, which emitted a gentle glow.

  “Could you take it over and get me up?” the drone asked, crossly.

  “Do what?” She stared at it.

  Silence.

  “Could I do what?” she repeated.

  It rose, with unexpected agility.

  “Whoa,” she said, stepping back.

  “Sorry,” said a woman with an English accent, “Wilf forgot to mute when he spoke to me, so you heard him. I’m Ash. We’re working together, Wilf and I. Hadn’t time to introduce myself earlier. Didn’t want to complicate things.”

  “You were listening,” Verity said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Who else is in there?”

  “No one, at the moment,” the woman said. “We’ll let you know, should anyone join us.”

  “You’re in public relations too?” Verity asked.

  “What you’d call IT, actually.”

  “Where are you?”

  “London.”

  “With Wilf?”

  “In my studio, four-point-eight miles from his flat. We’re both working from home.”

  “You know Eunice?”

  “Not to speak to, but I’ve been involved with her, these past three months. I’m better acquainted with her than Wilf is. He’s new.”

  “To what?” Verity asked.

  “To things Eunice.”

  “What was she?” Verity asked.

  “The result of hybridization of two lines of military research. One toward uploading aspects of human consciousness, the other toward an expert system focused on a particular sort of warfare. Would you like to use the toilet?”

  “I would,” Wilf said. “Excuse me.”

  “I meant Verity,” the woman said, “but have a glass of water, while you’re up. You look dehydrated.”

  “I thought you weren’t with him,” Verity said.

  “I have feed from the cameras in his controller,” the woman, Ash, said, “which happened to be showing me his reflection in a mirror, near where he was seated.”

 
Verity stood, removed her jacket, hung it on an aluminum hook, crossed to the screens, entered, and slid them shut. The toilet, once she’d used it, flushed itself. She washed her hands at the tiny stainless sink in the opposite corner.

  Stepping out, sliding the screens shut behind her, she saw the drone seated on the floor, at the low table, across from the couch.

  42

  WIFELY ADVICE

  Try to avoid being your more dickish self with Ash,” Rainey said, having followed him into the kitchen after he’d used the toilet. “Not that she cares, but it could put Verity off. You’re a lot less like that now, but with Ash you regress. And Verity needs your help, which you can’t as easily give if you’ve already convinced her you’re an asshole.” She handed him a glass of water.

  She only heard his side of his exchanges with Ash and Verity Jane. He tongued the back of his front teeth, to be certain that he was still muted.

  “I’ll try,” he said, kissing her cheek and turning back to the living room, where the nanny was tumbling about on the floor, pandaform again, with Thomas.

  “Why did you say that?” Verity Jane demanded, Netherton realizing he’d unmuted while assuming he was muting.

  43

  STILL LIFE WITH LAWYERS

  Say what?” the man called Wilf asked.

  “‘I’ll try,’” Verity quoted.

  A pause. “Positive affirmation,” he said. “Didn’t mean to voice it.”

  “Where’s Ash?” Verity asked.

  “Here,” said Ash.

  Verity sat on the couch, her jacket on the wall opposite looking like something visiting from a radically more normal planet. “Joe-Eddy,” she said. “Does he just think I haven’t come home? Will Cursion come to his place, looking for me?”

  “He knows you’re in good hands,” Ash said, “but not where you are. I’m opening a small hatch now, on the upper surface of the carapace.”

  Verity leaned forward, watching it open.

  “This is a video projector,” Ash said. Something resembling a miniature periscope rose out of the opening.

  It swung to Verity’s left, toward the bathroom, the white-screened door filling with the feed from one of the two Robertson heads in Joe-Eddy’s living room, focused on the white porn couch. On which sat a young black woman, intent on an open laptop. The feed halved, adding another from the kitchen, angled down on the table there, where a young man, white, sat at his own laptop.

  “Who’s that?” Verity asked.

  “Starting associates in a senior San Francisco law firm,” Ash said, “one Eunice retained on Joe-Eddy’s behalf, through a front. Their presence would complicate matters, were Cursion to attempt to abduct him.”

  “Where is he?”

  The feed from the kitchen was replaced by another from the living room: Joe-Eddy at his workbench, in his orange plaid shirt-jacket, his back to the camera, probably de-soldering something.

  “What happens when they go home?” Verity asked.

  “They’re spelled off by the next pair.”

  “Do they go out with him?”

  “He’s not currently going out.”

  “And he’s okay with that?”

  “He knows it’s for his own good.”

  “You think Cursion might try?”

  “They hire former military contractors,” Ash said. “The two who installed the cams, for instance.”

  “Is everything he says to those lawyers being tweaked in post?”

  “No, but he says nothing to them of any value to Cursion.”

  “Cursion sees Joe-Eddy running an Airbnb, or a twenty-four hour internet café, exclusively for expensive junior lawyers, they won’t think that’s you?”

  “They’ve no idea we exist,” Ash said. “They wouldn’t believe it if you told them. They must assume Eunice is behind the lawyers. But they know enough of her capabilities to be wary of what she’s left behind.”

  “She said they’d shut her down, if they could. And she asked me if I knew how to ride on the back of a motorcycle. Right before I had to, just after she vanished. She said one of her branch plants wanted to know if I did.”

  “She told you about the laminae?”

  “She called them different things. Branch plants. Agents. Said they did things behind her back. Do you work for her?”

  “No,” said Ash, “but we want to help you, which she’d regard as helping her.”

  “Why would you want to help me?”

  Overhead, the efficiently muted sound of something that must have been very loud loomed, swooped, then receded, was gone.

  “What was that?” Verity asked.

  The door opened.

  “Would’ve knocked,” said Dixon, from beneath the brim of his cap, “but you wouldn’t have heard me.”

  “So what did we just hear?”

  “Drone,” he said, “big one. Bringing something for you.” He tugged his orange plastic muffs down around his neck. There was someone behind him, but Verity couldn’t see who. She stood up, seeing it was Sevrin, who held something, a gray and bulging portfolio, translucent plastic.

  “Miguel here,” Dixon nodded toward Sevrin, “arrived about ten minutes ago. Knows Eunice. Kathy says he’s here to pick you up.” Sevrin, with a grin for Verity, stepped forward, to lay the fog-colored portfolio on the matting at her feet. He unsealed it, pulling out her zipped and folded Muji bag. Reaching in again, he produced something else, folded and black, with casters like the ones on a roll-aboard suitcase.

  “What’s that?” Verity asked.

  “For this,” Sevrin said, indicating the drone, “for traveling.”

  “Eunice sent you?”

  “Standing orders, yes.”

  “You okay with these people?” She looked at Dixon.

  “She is,” Sevrin said. “I brought them payment for this.” Indicating the drone.

  “How about the two I’m talking with now, through it?”

  “No idea,” Sevrin said. “Here to pick you and this up.”

  “She’s gone, right? Dead?”

  “Not in touch with her.”

  “Where are you taking us?”

  “Don’t know yet.” He rolled up the gray plastic envelope. “It can walk?”

  “Certainly can,” said Ash. Who then, Verity assumed, got it quite ably to its feet.

  44

  A MONEY LAUNDERER

  Who’s that?” Netherton asked Ash, having muted.

  “Sevrin,” she said, “Moldovan money launderer, on Eunice’s payroll. Verity met him earlier. Kathy and Dixon know him as Miguel.”

  “Why is he there?” Netherton asked, charmed by this archaic job description.

  “Either Eunice scripted scenarios for various situations, and he’s working from one, or one or more of her laminae are still active, or he’s gone rogue.”

  “It always makes me uncomfortable,” Netherton said, “to see them learn they’re in a stub. And then they all immediately assume we’re from their future.”

  “Not as uncomfortable as it makes them,” Ash said. “I’ve seen two psychotic breaks, since you’ve been on leave.”

  Now the man called Sevrin was unfolding something black. He wore a short jacket and matching narrow trousers, dark gray, with highly reflective black shoes. His black hair was so short that it might have been sprayed on, his goatee equally minimal. Money launderers, in Netherton’s experience of Flynne’s stub, were the sort of people least destabilized by discovering that their world was a branch of someone else’s. They immediately looked for advantage in the knowledge. Netherton unmuted. “What’s this all about?” he asked.

  The money launderer looked up from what he was doing.

  “That’s Wilf,” said Verity. “He’s in London.”

  “The crew,” Kathy Fang announced, appearing behind Sev
rin, “are back on the fabrication floor. They’ve left plenty of food. From a friend’s craft service kitchen, a few blocks from here. Anybody hungry?”

  45

  LUGGAGE

  Verity watched Sevrin help himself to a slice from each of two pizza boxes on the long table. The fourth floor was a single room, identical to the one below but minus the machines. Candlelit now, if those LED tea lamps from the dollar store counted. Desks, chairs, a few long tables. In the shadows of the farthest corner she recognized the outline of an industrial sewing machine.

  She had her bag slung over her shoulder. When she’d opened it to get the shoulder strap, she’d remembered Eunice telling her that whoever she’d sent to the apartment had taken her passport, in advance of the men who’d installed the Robertson-head cams. But there it was, behind her toothpaste, in the zippered inner pocket where she kept it.

  “Have something,” Kathy Fang said, beside her. “Sometimes you don’t know when you’ll be able to eat. Triple mushroom’s good.”

  Verity wasn’t hungry, but thought she should be. She made herself take a slice of the mushroom pizza, putting it on several paper napkins, along with an industrial-strength canapé-analog from a tray of them. Film and television fuel, for a crew working overtime. Sevrin was into his second slice now. He wore a Prada-flavored bus driver uniform, or maybe the other way around, charcoal gray, with pointy black patent oxfords.

  “Sorry,” said Ash, very close but from below Verity’s waist, startling her.

  Verity looked down at the drone.

  “We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” Ash said. “My fault. Should have introduced myself immediately. Sorry it seemed I was eavesdropping.”

  “Considering how my week’s going, don’t worry about it.”

  “We go now, please,” said Severin, behind the drone.

  “Where?” Verity asked.

  “Her protocol, I drive, get destination, start for that place, get new destination. Repeat until somewhere I wasn’t told.” He waved the floppy black nylon wheeled thing in the direction of the drone. “You, inside. We need this, on it.”