“Haven’t had the pleasure.”
“Would you like me to arrange that? She’s very busy, but I could ask her. To fit you in.”
And there, to Netherton’s considerable satisfaction, behind the semiperformative tipsiness, was the fear Lowbeer induced, a visible rictus. “Wouldn’t think of it,” Westmarch said. His hand looked poised to tug a forelock he entirely lacked, his hair having been cut extremely short up the sides, to the very top of his head, where it was arranged in low blond waves, like some Viennese dessert.
“Good to see you, then,” Netherton said, seizing Westmarch’s frustrated forelock-hand and pumping it vigorously. “Lovely day.”
Then swiftly up the unpleasant stairway, scents of the full English receding behind him. Reminding him, now that he was leaving, that he hadn’t yet had breakfast.
83
PERSONALITY TEST
Someone had written LOCK HER UP on the wall of this toilet stall, in thick black marker. Before the election, Verity assumed, with someone else then having tried to scrub it off with solvent, the result reminding her of a tattoo halfway through laser removal.
Grim Tim had sent her in for the promised pee break, while he gassed his bike. Welcome as she found this, she’d also discovered that simply being seated on something neither moving nor vibrating, with her legs in front of her, rather than with a large motorcycle between them, was even more of a relief.
After they’d taken a right at what had turned out to be a literal crossroads, the simplest possible junction of two highways, she’d watched Dixon take a left, in Conner’s aerial feed, to recede toward Coalinga. When the van was out of sight, Conner had swooped the feed back to them, the final image blank and white, as the top of her helmet seemed to leap up, the feed itself vanishing, replaced by her own view of Grim Tim’s black leather back.
“Time, ladies,” Conner said now, causing her to flinch, before remembering that she’d removed the gray-framed glasses as she’d entered the restroom, tucking them into one of the hoodie’s pockets.
“Okay,” she said. By the time she’d gotten herself together, Grim Tim was at the register, paying for his gas with cash, his helmet still on. When he’d finished, she followed him out to the pumps, restraining the urge to say something to Conner now that she could see the drone.
Evening had arrived, Napa-Sonoma still providing extra pulpy orangeness. She settled her mask and put the helmet on. “Where’s Dixon now?” she asked, assuming Conner could hear her, but not certain he’d have an answer.
“Near Coalinga’s airport,” he said.
“What for?”
“Helping Lowbeer conduct a personality test.”
“How?”
“By letting us see just how nasty somebody’s willing to be.”
“Nasty?”
“Makes a difference how you want to deal with them.”
“Whose personality?”
“Pryor.”
Grim Tim handed her a pair of rubber-coated black knit gloves, still on shiny cardboard from the station’s rack. Something she’d meant to ask for as they’d pulled in, but had then forgotten. Her hands had been getting colder, since the crossroads, plus bug-impact on bare skin. “Thanks,” she said, partially pulling her mask down.
Something piercing his upper cheek moved a fraction, a minimalist alternative smile. He put his own gloves on, and straddled the bike. Pulling her own off their cardboard and putting them on, she got on behind him.
And then they were on the highway again, accelerating.
84
LOOKING QUITE CHIPPER
As Netherton surfaced in Hanway Street, a plain white Michikoid trotted past, pulling an equally white carbon-fiber rickshaw. In it sat two heavily modded neoprimitives, their faces as masklike as those of the Michikoids. Patchers, he knew, inhabitants of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which he’d visited himself, telepresently, on the job that had resulted in Lev introducing him to Lowbeer. These two would be envoys, neither tourism nor private business being a possibility. What skin of theirs was visible was a rough gray, bioengineered to protect them from excessive sunlight. Under the winter morning, it reminded him of frost.
Then they were gone, having reached and turned the corner. Lowbeer’s sigil, the coronet, began to pulse. “Yes?” he responded.
“The car’s in Tottenham Court Road,” said Lowbeer. “You’ll see it.”
He walked on, thinking that Lowbeer’s real work consisted of learning things, often things this fundamentally dull, through processes largely automated for her by the aunties and other systems. Eventually, having made her decisions, some action might be implemented, usually covertly, resulting in something dramatic happening. This, he supposed, was the nature of security work, where by definition one attempts to preserve aspects of the status quo. What she did with the stubs might be seen as that as well, he decided, if you thought of it in terms of a much longer status quo.
On Tottenham Court Road now, he spotted movement in a wide shop window. Drawing closer, he saw a miniaturized scale model of this part of London, tiny vehicles and pedestrians driving and strolling. A crisp yellow circular cursor surrounded a single magnified figure, its back to him, in front of a shop window. He raised his arm, the figure’s arm following suit. Thomas would love this.
He walked on, eventually coming to Lowbeer’s car, or what could be seen of it, as its step descended from nowhere. It was parked, for once appropriately, in curbside space reserved for Metropolitan Police and emergency vehicles.
Up and into it, then, to find Lowbeer seated in the chair pit, fingers steepled, elbows on the tray-sized mahogany table, on which were two white china mugs, cream, sugar, and a cylindrical black carafe. The car’s windows, or rather the cam systems that emulated them, showed vehicular traffic to one side, pedestrian to the other. “Good morning,” she said, as he heard the door close behind him. “Coffee?”
“Yes, thanks,” he said, the Denisovan Embassy’s café au lait having produced no noticeable effect.
“Have a seat,” she said. She wore a gray tweed suit, gray broadcloth shirt, and a pointillist camouflage necktie, olive and buff shot through with martial red. Looking quite chipper. “Lev’s dancing girls are extremely effective. We made a serious effort to listen in on your conversation, no success whatever. Aunties assume the encryption’s Chinese, nothing old-boy klept at all. We’ll look into that later, as it’s unexpected, though not unprecedented. Well?”
Netherton was settling himself in the built-in green armchair opposite hers. “He says it’s Yunevich. He also says, and I quote, that Yunevich isn’t his sort of klept. Seems to be a deep-burrowing, low-profile Square Miler with pretensions to Soviet bureaucratic DNA.”
Lowbeer was pouring from the carafe. “An old boy,” she said. “Endlessly predictable. Tedious, really.”
Her expression, as she said this, though superficially mild, made Netherton grateful not to be this Yunevich, whoever he was.
85
MULTITASKING
The feed from the very different bipedal drone Conner was piloting, through this rocky scrubland adjacent to CLG, New Coalinga Municipal Airport, meshed strangely with the motion of the bike.
There was no audio, so the roar of Grim Tim’s engine and the occasional whomps of displaced air, when vehicles passed them in either direction, became a soundtrack for the thing’s roadrunner trot through brush and rocks. It looked, she assumed, like the other three running with it, controlled, Conner said, by a swarming program. Like elongated tortoiseshells, mounted atop the hindquarters of miniature robot greyhounds, about a yard tall, assuming they could stand upright, something she hadn’t yet seen one do. They ran canted forward, which they’d done constantly since Conner had opened the feed, and were armless, their legs blurring when not confronted with an obstacle. “Where are they going?” she asked Conner.
“To the pe
rsonality test,” he said. “Dixon dropped them off nearer the airport.”
“Where is he?”
“In the parking lot there.”
“And where are we going, on the bike?”
“The hell away from Coalinga.”
The feed’s perspective rushed up a low ridge and froze. Which was confusing, given the momentum of the bike beneath her. To this drone’s right, she could see another like it, equally immobile. “Why’d they stop?”
“Look where it’s looking.”
Between the drone and the lights of the airport, she made out a vehicle, neutrally colored. The feed zoomed in on it. Some species of bad-boy pickup, its cabin extended, the bed enclosed. “Who’s that?”
“Pryor. I gassed him this morning, leaving the hotel.”
“Why’s he out here?”
“Man pads,” said Conner. “May have one in the truck.”
“Huh?”
“Acronym. Man-Portable Air-Defense System. Shoulder-launched surface-to-air missile. MANPADS. Singular, never plural.”
Something particularly large passed them, on the highway, headed in the opposite direction, she assumed a big truck. “To shoot down a plane?”
“Howell’s Honda just took off from SFO, flight plan filed for CLG. They’ll barely reach cruising altitude before they start descending.”
“The guy from in front of the Clift is going to shoot down Stets’ plane?”
“Not if I see him looking like he means to. If he did, though, your ex has it equipped with Israeli infrared countermeasures.”
“Honda’s armed?”
“Nah. Launches decoys, flares. And the pilot’s combat-experienced.”
“Stets’ pilot?” Remembering the ones she knew, this seemed unlikely.
“Got somebody else, for this.”
“Crazy.”
“Prom night, like I said.”
The drone suddenly sprinted forward. “What’s happening?”
“Left-flanking unit saw someone get out with a folded tripod. Pryor or the other one. That’s our red line, the tripod.”
“What are these things?”
“Land mines with legs.”
Grim Tim shifted and sped the Harley up, which had to be coincidental but was still weird, the feed simultaneously giving her a full-on charge through brush and over rocks. “This is a video game,” she said, surprising herself, sincerely wanting to believe it was. “Resolution’s not even that high.”
“Video’s encrypted,” Conner said, “but whatever. Want out of the loop? Save you being any more of a witness. Your call, either way.”
“Witness to what?”
Their drone froze again, this time behind a rock slightly taller than it was. The cam rose, either its legs straightening or a neck, which she hadn’t known it had, extending. They were closer to the truck now. Something darted out of the brush then, from the left, greyhound-legs blurring, toward the truck.
Then exploded, the feed whiting out.
“Going for the tripod with that one,” said Conner, the feed returning, revealing the truck on its side, burning. “Overkill.”
Movement from the right, equally fast, charging the burning truck, the feed whiting out again. All of this in complete silence. “That was two at once,” Conner said, “but the warhead on the MANPADS still hasn’t blown. Now I go in, find it if I can, detonate this one. So I’m partially fuzzing the feed”—its lower half pixelating as he said this. The drone lowered its head or carapace and darted around the rock, toward the burning wreck, most of which was pixelated.
“Why?”
“Save you the trauma,” he said, matter-of-factly, very close to the blaze now, rounding it.
Whiteout.
“Shit,” he said. “Got me.”
“What happened?”
“Heat must’ve reached the warhead. Took me out with it, when it blew. Be precious little of the truck left.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“Yeah, but it was whoever the other one was, not your guy. Fire and emergency are hauling ass over here from the airport now, trying to guess what they’ve just seen.”
“How do you know?”
“Got a spotter, at the airport.”
“What about Stets’ plane?”
“Pilot reported seeing explosions on the ground, canceled his approach, heading back to SFO now.”
“Who’s on it?”
“Just the pilot. But we made it look like Howell and the Frenchwoman were with him, when it took off. That was the test. To see if he’d go for it.”
“Who?”
“Pryor, but Cursion signed off on it.”
“They’d try to kill Stets and Caitlin?”
“Ainsley wanted to know if they would. They thought there were three people on board, including the pilot. Pryor and his partner doing anything like setting up the tripod for the MANPADS, that was when we’d move.”
“You know this feed’s still whited out?”
“Sorry,” he said, the feed disappearing, leaving the lower rear rim of the white helmet, black leather below it.
“Where’s Dixon?”
“Headed for a pit stop ten minutes from the airport, get the green off the roof and sides of the van, plus a change of plates. Cursion may assume you’re still in it. Ainsley wanted to see how bad Pryor is, Cursion, or both of them together. No idea what’s going on with that. Cursion was fed the idea that Stets was picking you up there, heading out of the country.”
“And they’d have blown it up on takeoff, not landing?”
“Yep. With you in it.”
“Why would they have assumed the plane would be shot down? Isn’t that kind of drastic?”
“Pryor’s idea. He had a MANPADS. Been trying to sell it on a darknet.”
“How many people did we just kill?”
“One for sure. I saw him. But not Pryor.”
A rig whomped past, in the other direction. She felt the cold now, but part of it was what Conner had told her.
86
EMPTY CHAIR
On his way home now, Netherton remembered the breakfast he hadn’t had. An egg sandwich seemed a good idea. He turned off into Chenies Street, where he knew a smaller, less compulsively authentic shop than the one Lowbeer favored. The morning having grown colder, he dialed his jacket up and walked there.
Taking a seat at the otherwise unoccupied counter, he ordered a fried egg sandwich on white toast and a glass of 2 percent milk. As the counter bot left with his order, Ash’s sigil pulsed. “Yes?” he answered.
“What are you doing?” she asked, having, he assumed, no way of seeing him.
“Sitting down for a belated but well-deserved breakfast. I’ve had nothing but coffee since getting up.”
“Consider yourself fortunate,” said Ash. “I’ve not slept at all.”
As the bot brought his sandwich and glass of milk, prepared with an inhuman speed that would have spoiled the experience for Lowbeer, he imagined Ash drawing herself a cup of scalding tea from her crusty samovar. “What’s kept you up, then?”
“Eunice’s network. Lowbeer now sees herself in it. Its skills are those she had to acquire during the worst decades of the jackpot.”
“Go on,” he said, biting into his sandwich.
“We don’t yet understand the so-called branch plants. The ones that hadn’t managed to return, to merge with her, before she was taken down. Of her, but not her. They communicate with each other, and with individuals they’ve elected to work with, ourselves included. It feels as if that constitutes an entity. As if there were a long table, Lowbeer says, its either side packed with strangers, and at the head, an empty chair. But it’s a very actively empty chair, one whose intent we can only infer by the actions of those around the table.”
Nether
ton rolled his eyes, swallowed some sandwich, drank milk. “Like Mechanical Turk?” he asked, recalling Virgil having mentioned a service of his day, monetizing live human intelligence. He took another bite, discovering that Ash’s long-windedness was causing his sandwich to cool. He chewed more rapidly.
“When you’ve finished your breakfast,” she said, “check in with Verity.”
“Where’s the drone?” he asked, around his mouthful of sandwich.
“Clipped to the back of a motorbike, on a Californian highway.”
“And Verity?”
“She’s with it.”
“It’s driving?”
“No,” said Ash. “Don’t talk with your mouth full. It’s disgusting.”
87
LANE-SPLITTING
If San Francisco was in fact their final destination, they were over halfway there. At least it wasn’t raining, because then her legs would be just as cold, but in sodden jeans. Otherwise, this was just too long a ride, at night on the 101, nothing to see but asphalt and bumpers, illuminated by headlights and taillights. And cold. Conner had gone to check on his day job in the White House. Told her he’d come running if she needed him.
“Verity?” A feed opened. The apartment in London, from the couch, looking into their kitchen.
“Wilf?”
“Where are you?” he asked.
“The 101, between King City and San Francisco. Coming up on Silicon Valley.”
“King City?”
“All I know about it is it’s not Coalinga.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m on the back of Grim Tim’s bike. The one you saw in Dogpatch.”
“Why?”
“He’s part of Eunice’s network.”
“Ash makes them sound busy,” he said.
“Joe-Eddy, Dixon, Kathy, Caitlin, all in it now.”
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