Looking down, he saw his hand around the stick’s handle. From which extended a slim straight blade, into the waistcoat’s fabric, smoking now, scorched, though he saw no blood. Again, the smell of claret. Then the man toppled backward, toward Cheapside, still smiling earnestly, the massive mallet’s head making surprisingly little sound as it struck the cobbles.
“What the actual fuck?” pronounced Fearing, powerfully, behind them, as the passageway and the fallen figure were flooded with mercilessly white light.
Squinting, shading his eyes, Netherton made her out, her pistol now apparently tipped with a small cylindrical floodlight.
“Do you know him?” asked Lowbeer. Who held, Netherton saw, a sort of blunderbuss, its barrel gold, stock of ivory.
“It’s Bertie,” Fearing said, “my neighbor’s coachman. Bot. Seems to have helped himself to a publican’s bung starter.” Which accounted for the claret, Netherton thought, noting that the mallet’s massive head was of wood.
“Something seems to have gotten into him,” Lowbeer said, bending to pluck the upright swordstick from the supine figure. She glanced around, then retrieved the hollow ebony shaft from where it lay nearby, smoothly sheathing the one in the other. She passed it to Netherton, who accepted it gingerly. “That’s really terribly bright, Clovis,” she said. The floodlight was immediately extinguished, though leaving, Netherton noted, a single sharp red dot, centered on the fallen bot’s torso.
“Were you expecting this?” Fearing asked.
“No,” said Lowbeer, “though the aunties were able to give me a last-minute inkling. Step over Bertie.” This last to Netherton.
“Is this an assembler weapon?” Netherton asked, looking at the stick in his hand.
“No,” said Lowbeer. “Ash made it from your clothing, and whatever else was available nearby. You happened to place it in such a way as to instantly fuse Bertie’s power supply. Good night again, Clovis.”
“Watch your back,” Fearing said.
“As ever. Cheapside, Wilf.”
Netherton began to walk.
“Good night, Wilf,” Fearing said, behind him.
“Good night, Mrs. Fearing,” he said, pretending to glance back.
77
EVENT HORIZON
Someone out of frame passed Stets a small glass of what Verity assumed was espresso. “Thanks,” he said, looking up briefly at whoever it was. He took a sip. This feed, Verity assumed, was via a camera in the Airstream aerie’s foldaway screen, which put him on the in-built couch opposite. “Where are you now?” he asked her.
“Not sure,” she said, assuming he couldn’t see her, “being driven somewhere. What have you been up to?”
“Trying to figure out whatever it is that we seem to have agreed to help Eunice’s branch plants do. They aren’t very communicative.”
“I was texting with one, earlier. It got me in touch with Joe-Eddy. Virgil tells me you used to try to think of things for him to do for you, but couldn’t.”
“Do you know Guilherme?” he asked.
Verity blinked. Hearing Stets mention the Manzilian felt like a category error, as if the moon were to inquire after the cantaloupe you’d bought the day before, both being spherical. “Not to speak to. I’ve seen him at the apartment.”
“Eunice’s network consists mainly of the branch plants, so human company can be a relief.”
“I thought it would all be people,” Verity said, “from what she said.”
“You already know most of the people,” he said, “but this, for instance”—and he raised his hand toward the camera—“is due to the network.” He did something that replaced his selfie feed with one from the top of the stairs, overlooking the broad floor below, under sunlight through blue tarps. Cables everywhere, helmeted climbers dangling. More workers than she’d seen here before. Lengths of glittering white fabric were being hauled up by electric winches.
Below this, she saw five identical, red, rectangular machines, each with a small pair of black rubber tires at the nearest end. “What is it?” she asked. “What are those red things?”
“Caitlin’s design. Fabric’s by a company I backed. Those are Honda EM5000 electric-start generators, power in case someone cuts ours tonight when we most need it. The branch plants ordered them. Tricky piping the exhaust out. Hope we don’t need them.”
“What is it you’re doing?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Then how did she design for it?”
“Someone suggested, a few months ago, that we get married here, before the place is finished. That was the impetus for this design. She already had the space entirely modeled for the reno design. Knows where every eye bolt is, up there. The fabric doesn’t need to be edged or hemmed, and she worked with standard lengths from the factory.”
“But you’re not getting married here?”
“Definitely not planning on it.”
“But you don’t know what it’s for?”
“I’m not sure the branch plants know themselves.”
“But aren’t we all looking the end of the world in the mouth, about now? And you’re up here hanging fabric art?”
“Lowbeer’s take is doing this demonstrates trust, and that we can cooperate.”
“How about Caitlin?”
“I’d ask her, but she’s video-conferencing the technical details of an aerial drone display above the building, an extension of the fabric work.”
“What if you do it and nothing happens?”
“A little pre-apocalyptic gathering? Why not enjoy it? Have to go now. I’ll see you there.”
“Is this what happens when Virgil’s not here to tell you shit’s crazy?”
“I don’t need Virgil to tell me that about this.” He grinned as his feed closed.
78
MORNING AFTER
Netherton woke in their darkened bedroom, to sounds of Rainey feeding Thomas breakfast in the kitchen.
He remembered the bot, on the reeking cobbles, the laser on Fearing’s pistol pinpointing the singed whipcord waistcoat. He gestured for the bedside lamp, then again, to reduce its brightness, then frowned at the amount of clothing scattered on the floor. All from the night before, none of it Rainey’s, and none of it anything he’d worn to Cheapside.
These were the garments from which the assemblers had made his costume. Now retransformed, he supposed, as he and Rainey had slept. Evidently the swordstick as well, as there was no sign of it. She’d found the pin-striped flannel drawers as risqué as anticipated, but those seemed to be gone as well.
He sat up, unsure whether the myalgia he now noticed was due to his brief struggle with Bertie or the later interlude with Rainey. Getting up and putting on his robe, he set about picking up and tidying away his clothing, hanging some things in the closet and folding others into the bureau.
He hadn’t told Rainey anything about their visit with Fearing, other than that they’d had one, but really she’d only been interested in the flannel drawers. He’d said nothing whatever about Yunevich, of course, whoever that might be, though he kept repeating the name to himself, silently, else he forget it before he could speak with Lev in person. And nothing about inadvertently short-circuiting Bertie, though when he eventually did, he’d lack the stick, for an optimally dramatic demonstration of exactly what had happened.
He went blinking into the brightly lit kitchen, finding Thomas in his high chair, one pandaform third of the nanny seated beside him, on the edge of the table, its almost spherical legs somehow managing to be crossed.
“Lowbeer just rang,” Rainey said, feeding Thomas a spoonful of pablum, most of which he immediately ejected, letting it run down his chin while smacking his lips. “Didn’t want to wake you. Reminding you to make that call as soon as possible. Didn’t say which one. Breakfast?”
“I’d best make the call first
,” Netherton said, tooth-tapping for Lev’s sigil.
“Wilf,” Lev greeted him, voice only, the avatar’s two thylacines brightening.
“We need to meet again,” Netherton said. “Your troupe, as well.”
“Same place,” said Lev. “I’m on my way.”
“See you there,” said Netherton, the thylacines dimming as he ended the connection. “Denisovan Embassy again,” he said to Rainey, who was wiping Thomas’s mouth.
“You’re anxious to hear more about his relatives cramping his style in Cheyne Walk, I know,” she said.
“Sorry about breakfast. It’s business of hers,” meaning Lowbeer’s. “I’ll shower first.”
“I should hope so,” she said primly, picking up Thomas. “Verity’s learned about the jackpot, by the way.”
“When?”
“While you were in Cheapside,” she said, “but I was in no mood to tell you last night. My fault, I’m afraid, that she put it together this soon.”
“How is she?”
“Seems to be digesting it reasonably well, though you’ve much more experience of judging that.”
“Sometimes,” Netherton said, “I’ve thought they were fine, only to have them suddenly start screaming, a day or so later.”
“Ash thinks she’s doing well. But don’t be late for Lev.”
Netherton returned to the bedroom, hung up his robe, and entered the shower. “Not too warm,” he told it, “brief burst of cold at the end of the rinse.” As his shower began, Ash’s sigil pulsed. “Yes?” he answered.
“Rainey broke it to her accidentally,” Ash said. “Virgil was privy to the exchange, though Conner seemed to have already told him most of it. Sevrin, the driver and financial manager, also overheard, though he either had a sense of it already or is extremely nonreactive. They’re all taking it reasonably well, though they don’t yet know of the extinctions.”
Netherton winced, as the exfoliant sprays cut in. Extinctions, for Ash, were exclusively a nonhuman matter, and a far more emotional one than the 80-percent loss in human population. Hence her having lived, for over two decades, with the mourning tattoos that now roamed the walls of her hideous yurt. “What are they doing now?” As the exfoliation ended, the shower began soaping him.
“Sevrin is following the instructions of his dispatcher, so we’ve no idea where they’re ultimately headed.”
The cold rinse kicked in. Netherton waited for it to be followed by warm drying air, before responding. “I’m on my way to the Denisovan Embassy,” he said.
“You should be accessing the drone.”
“I’m on Lowbeer’s business,” he said, as drying ceased, enjoying, as ever, the opportunity to not do something Ash wanted him to.
Her sigil dimmed, no goodbye.
Back in the bedroom, having cleaned his teeth, he dressed, putting on his best casual jacket. The meeting was business, after all, and of a very serious if impenetrable sort.
Yunevich, he reminded himself again.
79
VALLEY OAK
After Rainey’s revelations, which had rung like predictions but were history to her, and the bizarre preview of whatever Stets was doing, Sevrin had announced they were heading for Monterey.
Not that this meant that they were going to Monterey, Verity understood, but that that was where the Moldovan speaker on Sevrin’s headset had directed him to go. Before they got there, she assumed, he’d be directed elsewhere, to eventually be suddenly informed that they were already where they’d actually been going all along, that being how Eunice had insisted it be done.
She’d been mainly dozing since her conversation with Stets, periodically registering their slog through the Silicon Valley side of the South Bay, ignoring both Sevrin’s cover-story destinations and any actual highways they traveled on. She had no idea where they currently were. With her head cushioned on the folded black sweatshirt, against darkly tinted glass, she’d lost the majority of their journey to a strange sleep, Rainey’s grim précis of future history compounding whatever existing exhaustion and confusion. Riddled not with dreams, exactly, but slow-moving trains of thought, at once rickety and ponderous, the most recent having been about how much the network Eunice had left behind could be considered to be a living part of Eunice. An unseen opponent (Verity herself, it had sometimes seemed, in the logic of dream) had argued that the network was literally Eunice, while Verity had contended that it wasn’t Eunice at all, less so than a last will and testament is literally the deceased.
“You okay?” asked Virgil, from across the headless span of the drone’s cam-riddled shoulders, it being seated once again between them, connected to the charger beneath the seat, Virgil having plugged that into the van’s electrical system. “You were talking in your sleep.”
“What did I say?”
“Nothing I could understand.”
“Where are we?” Peering through the tint at an expanse of sere autumn pastureland, the odd grazing cow, scattered stunted oaks standing leafless and bleakly hieroglyphic. Another planet. Earth.
“Route 25. Not far from Coalinga. Not that Sevrin says we’re going there, though I’m beginning to wonder.”
“Why?”
“The Honda could land there. Just enough runway. We have it on a list of alternatives, for various situations. Otherwise, I’ve no idea what we’re doing, unless we’re just keeping you mobile and out of the city, which also seems like a possibility.”
“Have you spoken with Stets?” she asked.
“Not since he left the hotel, last night,” Virgil said. “Backing out of the Singapore deal is having repercussions in Asian markets. Phil has his hands full, but Stets is too busy with this stuff to be bothered.”
“What do you think about that?”
“Knowing him, I think he’s probably prioritizing correctly. I think we’re seeing him deal with an exponentially weirder situation than any of us have previously encountered.”
“Here,” said Sevrin, the van slowing, to pull bumpily right, onto the barren shoulder.
“What’s here?” Verity saw the drone, beside her, unplugging itself.
“The tree,” Sevrin said, as Verity saw Dixon, dark ball cap pulled low over sunglasses. He was standing behind a white-coated aluminum gate, twenty feet back from the two-lane blacktop, the shoulder in front of it sufficiently undisturbed for it to seem no more than an entrance to pastured land. Beyond the wire fence, slightly down grade and to the left, stood a single, surprisingly large valley oak, black limbs entirely leafless, like the tattoo of a tree superimposed on a sun-faded photograph.
Definitely Dixon, she saw, as they drew nearer. Remembering her first sight of him, on a feed from a surveillance camera on Valencia, as he’d been approaching Wolven + Loaves.
Virgil had pulled his legs up now, to allow the drone past, on its way to the door’s window, to once again stand, braced with its spidery arms, as if peering out.
“That’s Dixon,” she said. “He and Kathy Fang built the drone.” Through the windshield’s spatter of bugs, she saw him lifting the gate, walking backward with it, to allow them through. Driving past him, they jolted down, toward the oak, following faint tracks of tires. Beside the black tree, elevated horizontally on a rusted iron framework, stood a large, less evenly rusted cylindrical tank, originally gray. Behind this, she saw, was Sevrin’s Fiat 500, or another like it, equally beige. It had been mounted with a black roof rack, supporting a streamlined black cargo box. Comically oversized for the tiny car, it reminded her of the Pelican case Dixon had passed her beneath the counter in Wolven + Loaves.
“That yours?” she asked Sevrin.
“Unless plates copy mine,” he said, braking the van and turning off the ignition.
“I’m out first,” said Conner, retracting the drone’s arms to their previous length. “If there’s a problem, Verity and Virgil hit th
e floor and Sevrin hauls ass. Open it.”
Sevrin touched something, the door powering open, and the drone hopped down with an agility she didn’t question now, with Conner in control. Facing Dixon, who’d closed the gate behind them and followed the van at a trot, it put whatever currently passed for its hands on hips it didn’t have. “Dixon, right?” she heard Conner ask, the drone’s volume slightly up.
“Who’s asking?” Dixon asked, having come to a halt, black-gloved hands at his sides.
“Name’s Conner. You built this, right?”
“Partner and me.”
“Good job,” Conner said. “What’s the situation here?”
“I drove Sevrin’s car down,” Dixon said. “He’ll drive it back, with Virgil. Someone else is taking you and Verity, ETA in ten. I need help, unloading this box and getting things into the van.”
“What’s in it?” Verity asked, meaning the black case, as she stepped down and out into an untinted afternoon, the fresh air smelling faintly but pleasantly of manure.
Dixon nodded in greeting. “Drones,” he said, “not aerial. We didn’t make them. Kathy sends you her best.” He went to the Fiat, unlatched the front end of the box’s lid, and raised it on twin aluminum tubes, clicking them upright. She saw glossy black bundles, against the dull black plastic of the lid. He looked back at her. “Time’s tight,” he said. “Anything you have in the van, we need it out now.”
“I’ll help you,” said Virgil, behind her. She turned to see him crouched in the van, phone in hand. He got out and came forward.
“Pass them to me,” Dixon said. “They’re heavy. Don’t drop them.” Extending, in one gloved hand, a limp pair of black gloves.
“Latex-free?” Virgil looked serious about this.
“Nitrile,” Dixon said.
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