Zero History

by William Gibson

  “What was your track?”

  “Things that weren’t tied to the present moment. Not to any moment, really, so not retro either.”

  “What happened to your line?” Hollis asked.

  “Business happened. Business as usual. We weren’t able to invent a new business model. Our backing wasn’t sufficient to carry us through that routine dysfunction. We crashed and burned. There might be a warehouse full of our last season in Seattle. If I could find it, get my hands on it, the eBay sales would be worth more money than we ever saw from the line.”

  George held open a battered Galeries Lafayette bag and Mere thrust the security cables into it.

  “Can I offer you dinner?” Hollis asked.

  “Where are you staying?” George asked her.

  “St. Germain. By the Odéon Métro.”

  “I know a place,” said George. “I’ll make reservations for eight.”

  “Meredith?”

  Meredith considered Hollis. Then nodded.

  “For four, please,” Hollis said.

  24. HUNCH

  Milgrim sat at a table in the courtyard’s busy café, camera in his lap, cycling through his four shots of Foley.

  The two from behind might be useful if you wanted to send someone to follow him. The quarter profile, against a glare of Eighties color, was actually less useful. Could be anyone. Had women’s clothing actually been that bright, in the Eighties?

  But this one, which he’d shot blind, by reaching around, behind a hennaed German girl, was excellent. The girl had given him a dirty look, for getting too close. He’d smelled her perfume; something pointedly inorganic. The scent of coolly focused concentration, perhaps. “Sorry,” he’d said, and stepped back, palming the little camera, wondering if he’d captured Foley, who now had vanished again.

  He’d looked down, summoned the image. And had found Foley, zoomed, in tight focus, crookedly off-center in the frame. He’d seen how Foley’s sunglasses had left slight tan lines, recalling the porn rectangle he’d worn on the link Winnie had sent. The cap’s short bill effectively concealed his forehead, cutting out a good deal of emotional information. His features were smooth, as if untouched by experience, and confident, a confidence that Milgrim suspected he might not entirely be feeling. Something he’d try to project, regardless of the situation.

  With the camera semiconcealed in his right hand, Milgrim had moved on, scanning the busy Salon for Foley. He’d soon found him, but simultaneously had found Hollis, who was listening intently to a younger woman in jeans and a white shirt. Hollis had seen him, he was certain. Milgrim, focused on Foley’s receding back, had ignored her, avoiding eye-connect. When Foley had descended the stairs, Milgrim had followed, then had watched as Foley left the building.

  He’d gone into the courtyard, ordered an espresso, and settled down to study his photographs.

  Now he turned the camera off, opened the little hatch on the bottom and removed the blue card, the size of a postage stamp. When had he last used an actual postage stamp? He couldn’t remember. It gave him a strange feeling to even think of one. He reached down, hiked the cuff of his new pants, and slipped the card quite far down into his sock, which he then pulled up, allowing his cuff to fall back into place.

  He was not a methodical man by nature, his therapist had said, but the constant ongoing state of emergency imposed by his active addiction had shown him the practical advantages of method, which had then become habit.

  He took an unused card from the inside pocket of his jacket and extracted it, with the usual difficulty, from its cardboard backing. He inserted it, closed the hatch, and slipped the camera into the side pocket of his jacket.

  The Neo rang, from a different pocket. He brought it out. It looked even uglier than usual.

  “Yes?”

  “Just checking your phone,” Sleight said, unconvincingly. “We’re having trouble with the whole system.” Sleight had always spoken of the Neos as a system, but Milgrim had met no one else, other than Sleight, who had one.

  “Seems to be working,” Milgrim said.

  “How are things?”

  Sleight had never made it a secret that he was able to track Milgrim with the Neo, but only referred to it obliquely, if at all. The subtext, now, being that he knew Milgrim was in Paris. Knew that Milgrim was in this courtyard of this building, perhaps, given that extra overlay of Russian GPS.

  When their relationship had begun, Milgrim had been unwilling to question anything. Sleight had set the terms, in every way, and so it had been.

  “It’s raining,” said Milgrim, looking up at blue sky, bright clouds.

  A silence lengthened.

  He was trying to force Sleight to admit to knowing his location, but he didn’t know why. It was something to do with the anger he’d felt, was probably still feeling. Was that a good thing?

  “How’s New York?” Milgrim asked, losing his nerve.

  “Toronto,” said Sleight, “getting hot. See you.” He was gone.

  Milgrim looked at the Neo. Something was unfolding within him. Like a brochure, he thought, rather than the butterfly he imagined to be the more common image. An unpleasant brochure, the sort that lays out symptoms all too clearly.

  Why had Sleight actually called? Had he really needed to check Milgrim’s phone? Did a brief moment of live voice provide Sleight with the opportunity to manipulate the Neo in some way that he couldn’t, otherwise?

  If Milgrim spoke now, he wondered for the very first time, would Sleight hear him?

  It suddenly seemed entirely likely to him that Sleight could.

  He sat back in his white-enameled aluminum chair, aware again of that emotion he supposed was anger. He could feel the Faraday pouch, containing his passport, slung on its cord, under his shirt. Blocking radio waves. Preventing the RFID in his U.S. passport from being read.

  He looked at the Neo.

  Without consciously making any decision, he undid the top button of his shirt, fished the pouch out, opened it, and slid the Neo in with his passport. He tucked it back into his shirt and buttoned up.

  The pouch was bulkier now, visible under his shirt.

  He finished his espresso, which had cooled, and was bitter, and left some coins on the small square receipt. He stood up, buttoned his jacket over the slight bulge of the pouch, and reentered the Salon du Vintage. Still scanning for Foley, who for all he knew had returned.

  He took his time, making his way up the stairs, and then stood for a while, looking up at the blowup of Hollis’s poster. Then he undid his top button again, drew out the pouch, opened it, and removed the Neo, which rang immediately.

  “Hello?” As he tucked the pouch back in with his free hand.

  “Were you on an elevator?”

  “It was filled with Japanese girls,” Milgrim said, watching one pass. “Only three floors, here, but I couldn’t get off.”

  “Just checking,” said Sleight, neutrally, and hung up.

  Milgrim looked at the Neo, Sleight’s extension, wondering for the first time if it was really off when he turned it off. Perhaps it needed its batteries removed for that. Though, come to think it, Sleight forbade that. Or its two cards, which Milgrim was also forbidden to remove.

  Sleight had noticed it going into the Faraday pouch. Milgrim had been briefly invisible, as he’d sometimes gathered he was in elevators, for similar reasons.

  Given everything else Sleight had said he could do with the Neo, having it function as a bug actually seemed like a very modest capacity. And it would help explain why they’d bothered with the thing at all, cranky as it was. He’d been carrying around a wire. Would Bigend have known about that? Milgrim wondered.

  Sleight had given him the Neo on their flight from Basel to London, at the end of Milgrim’s treatment. He’d had it with him constantly, since then. Except, he remembered, yesterday, when Sleight had ordered him to leave it in his room. When Winnie had taken his picture. When he’d gone to Blue Ant to tell Bigend about that, and Big
end had suggested he no longer trusted Sleight. When he’d gone to the department store to have lunch with Hollis, then back to his hotel, where Winnie had been waiting. So Sleight had missed all of that, missed it because, if he was telling the truth, the company that made the Neo had gone bankrupt. “Lucky,” said Milgrim, then winced, imagining Sleight, Bluetoothed, somewhere, hearing him. But if Foley was Sleight’s, which was only one possibility, how had Foley known to find them at the department store? Perhaps he was following Hollis instead? But then, he reminded himself, Foley was someone else who had his picture on Winnie’s wall.

  The Neo rang in his hand.

  “Yes?”

  “Where are you?” Hollis. “I saw you walk past.”

  “Can you meet me? By the entrance, downstairs.”

  “Are you up here?”

  “Downstairs.”

  “On my way,” she said.

  “Good,” he said, and clicked off. Resisting the impulse to whistle for Sleight’s benefit, he put his phone in his jacket pocket, then removed his jacket, wrapped it several times around the phone, tucked the resulting bundle under his arm, and headed for the stairs.

  25. TINFOIL

  Hollis found Milgrim giving his jacket to the Japanese girl at the bag check. “I’m finished,” she said. “We can go now, if you’re ready.”

  Milgrim turned, took her hand, and led her away from the bag check.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “My phone,” said Milgrim, releasing her hand on the far side of the entranceway. “They’re listening through it.”

  Tinfoil hats, people whose fillings broadcast thought-control messages. “ ‘They’ who?”

  “Sleight. Bigend doesn’t trust him.”

  “Neither do I.” She never had. And now that she thought of Sleight, Milgrim didn’t sound quite as automatically crazy. That was the trouble with Bigendland. People did things like that. The ones like Sleight did, anyway. Then again, Milgrim might just be crazy.

  Or on drugs. What if he’d slipped? Gone back on whatever it was they’d gotten him off of in Switzerland? Where was the semi-absent character she’d met over tapas? He looked worked up, a little sweaty, maybe angry about something. He looked more like someone in particular, anyway, she realized, and that was what had been missing before. The lack of that was what had made him simultaneously so peculiar and so forgettable. She was looking into the eyes of someone experiencing the anxiety of sudden arrival. But Milgrim’s arrival, she somehow knew, was from within. But all because he thought he’d seen someone? Though someone, she reminded herself, she’d thought she’d seen too, in the basement. “I saw him,” she said. “Maybe.”

  “Where?” Milgrim stepped back, allowing a pair of spryly geriatric American men to pass, headed for the stairs.

  They looked to Hollis like aged hair-metal rockers in expensive mufti, and seemed to be talking golf. Did they collect vintage Chanel? “Downstairs,” she said. “I pushed the wrong button in the elevator. Then he came down the stairs. I think.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Got back in the elevator. Up. Didn’t see him again, but I was busy.”

  “He’s here,” Milgrim said.

  “You saw him?”

  “I took his picture. Pamela wants it. I could show you, but the card’s not in my camera.”

  “He’s here now?” She looked around.

  “I saw him go out,” glancing toward the entrance. “Doesn’t mean he hasn’t come back.”

  “I asked Bigend. He said they didn’t have anyone watching us.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Depends how much it matters to him. But we’ve got bad history, that way, between us. If he bullshits me again, and I find out about it, I’m gone. He understands that.” She looked Milgrim in the eye. “You aren’t high on anything, are you?”

  “No.”

  “You seem different. I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m in recovery,” said Milgrim. “I’m supposed to be different. If I were high, I wouldn’t be different.”

  “You seem angry.”

  “Not with you.”

  “But you weren’t angry, before.”

  “It wasn’t allowed,” he said, and she heard his amazement, as if in saying this he’d discovered something about himself he’d never known before. He swallowed. “I want to find out if Sleight’s telling him where I am. I think I know how to do that.”

  “What did Bigend say about Sleight?”

  “He warned me to be careful of the Neo.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My phone. The brand. They’re bankrupt now.”

  “Who is?”

  “The company who made it. Sleight always knows where I am. The phone tells him. But I’ve known that.”

  “You have?”

  “I thought Bigend wanted him to. Did want him to, probably. It wasn’t a secret.”

  “You think he listens through it?”

  “He made me leave it in the hotel, yesterday. Charging. He does that when he wants to reprogram it, add or subtract applications.”

  “I thought he was in New York.”

  “He programs it from wherever he is.”

  “Is he listening now?”

  “It’s in my jacket. Over there.” He pointed at the bag check. “I shouldn’t leave it there for long.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Did Blue Ant make the hotel reservations?”

  “I did.”

  “By phone?”

  “Through the hotel’s website. I didn’t tell anyone where we’d be. What do you want to do?”

  “We’ll get a cab. You get in first, tell the driver Galeries Lafayette. Sleight won’t hear. Then I’ll get in. Don’t say anything about Galeries Lafayette, or about the hotel. Then I’ll block the GPS.”

  “How?”

  “I have a way. I’ve already tried it. He thought I was in an elevator.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’ll get out at Galeries Lafayette, you’ll go on, I’ll unblock my phone. And see if Foley comes to find me.”

  “Who’s Foley?”

  “Foliage green pants.”

  “But what if someone’s here, and they just follow the cab?”

  “That’s a lot of people. If they have a lot of people, there’s nothing we can do. They’ll follow you too.” He shrugged. “Where are we staying?”

  “It’s called the Odéon. So is the street. And it’s by Odéon Métro. Easy to remember. Your room is on my credit card, and I’ve paid for one night. We have an eight o’clock dinner reservation, near the hotel. In my name.”

  “We do?”

  “With Meredith and George. I learned something, upstairs, but I think we might learn more, tonight.”

  Milgrim blinked. “You want me there?”

  “We’re working together, aren’t we?”

  He nodded.

  “Place called Les Éditeurs. George says you can see it from the hotel.”

  “Eight,” said Milgrim. “When I get my jacket, don’t forget the phone’s in it. Sleight. Listening. When we get a cab, you get in first, tell the driver Galeries Lafayette.”

  “Why there?”

  “It’s big. Department stores are good.”

  “They are?”

  “For losing people.” He was at the counter now, giving the girl his ticket. She passed him his jacket and his black bag. Hollis presented hers and the girl wheeled her roll-aboard out.

  “Merci,” said Hollis.

  Milgrim had put his jacket on and was already headed out the door.

  26. MOTHER RUSSIA

  Kleenex?” Milgrim asked as the cab turned right, into what he recognized as the Rue du Temple. “My sinuses are bothering me,” he added, for Sleight’s benefit.

  Hollis, seated to his left, behind the driver, produced a pack from her purse.

  “Thanks.” He removed three tissues, handed the pack back, unfolded one, spread it across his knees,
and took the Neo from his pocket. He showed it to her, presenting it from different angles, which made him feel something like a conjurer, though he was none too certain about what his trick might be.

  The cab turned left, into another street, one that doubled back at a sharp angle. He imagined Sleight watching a cursor represent this on a screen. It seemed unlikely, though he couldn’t understand why that should be. He knew that Sleight did things like that, constantly. Sleight could be watching on the screen of his own Neo.

  Milgrim lay the Neo on the Kleenex, resting it in the valley between his knees, opened the other two sheets, and began to carefully polish it. When he was finished, he remembered having idly removed the back, on the flight to Atlanta. Now he opened it again, rubbing down the inside of the battery cover and the exposed face of the battery, then replacing it. When he’d finished rubbing down the outside, he carefully folded the first tissue around it and slipped it into his pocket. He crumpled the other two and wiped his palms with them.

  “Have you been in Paris before?” Hollis asked.

  She seemed relaxed, her purse on her lap, the dark collar of the denim jacket turned up. “Once,” he said, “when I was just out of Columbia. For a month, with another graduate. We sublet an apartment.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  “It was nice, to be here with someone.”

  She looked out the window, as if remembering something, then looked back at him. “Were you in love?”

  “No.”

  “A couple?”

  “Yes,” he said, though it seemed strange to say it.

  “It didn’t work, for you?”

  “I wasn’t available,” he said. “I didn’t know that, but I wasn’t, really. I learned that in Basel.” He remembered Sleight, their hypothetical listener. He pointed at the pocket that held his tissue-wrapped Neo.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “It’s okay.”

  They took a right, then left again, at an intersection where he glimpsed a sign for the Strasbourg-Saint-Denis Métro, and into heavier traffic.