Zero History

by William Gibson

  “If it’s all right with you,” said Milgrim.

  “I suggested it, didn’t I?”

  71. THE UGLY T-SHIRT

  Where are you? Robert said you left with a woman.”

  She was leaving the denim shop with Meredith and Clammy. “Soho. I did. Meredith. On my way back now.”

  “Should have given you the sort of safe-word I gave your employer.”

  “No. It’s okay.”

  “Better if you’re not out.”

  “Necessary, though.”

  “But you’re coming back now?”

  “Yes. See you soon.”

  She looked from the phone in her hand to the faintly candlelit window. Shadows of people. Two more arriving now, to be admitted by Bo. Meredith thought she’d seen an associate editor from French Vogue. Clammy had ignored several other musicians, slightly older than he was, whom Hollis vaguely recognized. Otherwise, not what she thought of as a fashion crowd. Something else, though she didn’t know what. But she could tell that the secret Bigend had been chasing had already been starting to emerge when he’d given her the assignment. Already Hounds wasn’t a secret in the same way. He was too late. What did that mean? Was he losing his touch? Had he been too focused on his project with Chombo? Had Sleight somehow been skewing the flow of information?

  Clammy’s little gray wagon arrived, driven by a very Clammy-looking boy Clammy didn’t bother to introduce. He popped out, handed Clammy the keys, nodded, and walked away.

  “Who was that?” Hollis asked.

  “Assistant,” said Clammy absently, opening the door on the passenger side. He had an unmarked manila shopping bag the size of a small suitcase. “You’ll have to hold this for me.”

  “What did you get?”

  “Two of the black, two of the chino, two shirts, and the black of your jacket.”

  “And something for you,” said Meredith, to Hollis.

  “It’s on top,” said Clammy impatiently. “Get in.”

  Hollis folded herself, sideways, onto the rear bench, and accepted Clammy’s bag as best she could. A potent waft of indigo.

  Clammy and Meredith got in, doors closing. “It was the first thing she ever did,” said Meredith, looking back. “Before she started Hounds.”

  Hollis found something wrapped in unbleached tissue, atop Clammy’s thick, heavy pad of denim. Fumbled it out, pulling the tissue aside. Dark, smooth, heavy jersey. “What is it?”

  “That’s for you to work out. A seamless tube. I’ve seen her wear it as a stole, an evening dress of any length, several different ways as skirts. Fabric’s amazing. Some ancient factory in France, this latest batch.”

  “Thank her, please. And thank you. Both of you.”

  “I’m sorted,” said Clammy, turning into Oxford Street, “just don’t crush my gear.”

  >>>

  When the lift descended, answering her call, she found it occupied by a short, older, oddly broad man of indeterminately Asian aspect, his thinning gray hair brushed neatly back. He stood very upright in the middle of the cage, a bobble-topped tartan tam in his hands, and thanked her, accent crisply British, when she hauled open the cage’s gate. “Good evening,” he said with a nod, stepping past her, turning on his heel, and marching for Cabinet’s door as he settled his tam.

  Robert opened and held the door for him.

  The ferret was in its vitrine.

  When she reached Number Four’s door, she remembered she hadn’t taken her key. She rapped with her knuckles, softly. “It’s me.”

  “Moment,” she heard him say.

  She heard the chain rattle. Then he opened the door, leaning on his four-legged cane, something she took to be a glossy black LP sleeve tucked under his arm.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “The ugliest T-shirt in the world,” he said, and kissed her cheek.

  “The Bollards will be disappointed,” she said, coming in and closing the door. “I thought they’d had me sleeping in that.”

  “So ugly that digital cameras forget they’ve seen it.”

  “Shall we have a look at it, then?”

  “Not yet.” He showed her the black square, which she now saw was a sort of plastic envelope, its edges welded shut. “We might contaminate it with our DNA.”

  “No, thank you. We might not.”

  “A single stray hair would be enough. Material like this has to be handled very carefully, given what forensics are, these days. It’s nothing you want to be associated with at all, ever. In fact, there really isn’t much material like this. Something of a one-off, in the field.”

  “Pep’s going to wear it?”

  “And contaminate it, no doubt, with Catalan DNA.” He grinned. “But then we’ll put it in a bag, seal it, and incinerate the bag. No photographs of the ugliness, though. We don’t want that.”

  “If cameras can’t see it, how could we photograph it?”

  “Cameras can see it. The surveillance cameras can all see it, but then they forget they’ve seen it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because their architecture tells them to forget it, and anyone who’s wearing it as well. They forget the figure wearing the ugly T-shirt. Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure. That which the camera sees, bearing the sigil, it deletes from the recalled image. Though only if you ask it to show you the image. So there’s no suspicious busy-ness to be noticed. If you ask for June 7, camera 53, it retrieves what it saw. In the act of retrieval, the sigil, and the human form bearing it, cease to be represented. By virtue of deep architecture. Gentlemen’s agreement.”

  “Are they doing that now? Really?”

  “Answering that would require a very woolly discussion of what ‘they’ can mean. I imagine it’s literally impossible to say who’s doing it. It’s enough to say it’s being done. In a sort of larval way, though it works quite well. We’re quite far ahead, here, with this camera culture. Though we aren’t a patch on Dubai. I’m still getting bits and pieces of my freeway performance, mailed in. Downside of having obsessive friends who like computers. But none of those friends, I’d gladly wager, know about the ugly T-shirt. The ugly T-shirt is deep. As deep as I’ve ever gotten, really. Deep and bad to know. After this is over, regardless of outcome, you know nothing of the ugly T-shirt.”

  “You’re really making me want to see it.”

  “You will. I’m keen myself. Where did you go?”

  “Back to the store that was the first place I asked anyone about Hounds.” She put the designer’s gift on an armchair, took her jacket off, and went to sit close beside him, her arm across his shoulders. “I met her. The designer.”

  “She’s here?”

  “Just leaving.”

  “Big End’s been looking for something right under his nose?”

  “I think there may have been some hiding in plain sight going on, but I’m sure she’s enjoyed that. She’s the only person I’ve met who’s had the same job I have, so he’s something of an issue for her.”

  “You bonded?”

  “I hope I never become as aware of him as she is. I suspect that not being on his side has actually become a big part of who she is.”

  “Sufficiently perverse and titanic arseholes,” he said, “can become religious objects. Negative saints. People who dislike them, with sufficient purity and fervor, well, they do that. Spend their lives lighting candles. I don’t recommend it.”

  “I know. I’ve never really disliked him. Not the way some people do. He’s like some peculiar force of nature. Not a safe one to be around. Like those rogue waves you told me about, when we were in New York. I like him less now, but I imagine that’s because he’s vulnerable, somehow. Has he told you what it is with Chombo?”

  “No idea. Otherwise, I agree with you. He’s vulnerable. Gracie and Foley and Milgrim and Heidi, and you and the others, have formed a rogue wave without meaning to, and none of it could have been predicted. He has one great advantage, though.”
>
  “What’s that?”

  “He already believes that that’s how the world is. Show him a wave, he’ll try to surf it.”

  “I think you’re like that. It worries me. I think you’re doing it right now.”

  He touched the hair above her ear, smoothed it back. “Because you’re in it.”

  “I know,” she said, “but also because you can. Isn’t that true?”

  “Yes. It is. Though after this, it won’t be true in the same way. That’s obvious to me, and was obvious before you called me. I’d already seen it, on hospital ceilings. Same for the old man. I knew when he told me about this.” He tapped the black square. “This is a big one. Probably the biggest he had. I’d no inkling about this. The potential, for one grand exploit, is fabulous. But he’s given it to me to make it easier to get my girlfriend, and her freak of an employer, out of trouble.”

  She noticed the Blue Ant figurine on the bedside table, beside the phone. “Where’s that GPS thing? I don’t want to lose track of it.”

  He looked at his watch. “It should be headed up the Amazon by now. By boat.”

  “The Amazon?”

  He shrugged, put his arm around her. “By courier. Slowly. If Mr. Big End is tracking it, he’ll know we’ve played a joke. If it’s someone else, they may think you’re headed up the Amazon.”

  “Someone put it in my bag when I went to Paris.”

  “Staff.”

  “Here?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s scary.”

  “But I’ve thought of it. And I’m always here, which simplifies things.”

  “Who was here, earlier?”

  “Charlie.”

  “Graying, Asian, plaid tam?”

  “Charlie.”

  “He’s almost as wide as he’s tall.”

  “Ghurka. Tapers toward the waist. Jewel, Charlie. How do you ever manage to do anything intimate in here, with all of these heads and things staring?”

  “I have absolutely no idea. Never having tried.”

  “Really,” he said.

  72. SMITHFIELD

  Milgrim made his way back from Benny’s shower wearing a ragged, piebald terry robe, vertically striped in what must originally have been rust and a very lively green, and his Tanky & Tojo brogues, unlaced, over wet bare feet. Fiona followed, draped in the MontBell sleeping bag, in a pair of oversized rubber flip-flops. Milgrim hoped she wouldn’t get athlete’s foot. He hoped neither of them would. The concrete floor of Benny’s shower had felt scarily slimy, the water scalding hot until it suddenly ran cold. Not a stall, just a length of slanted concrete floor against a wall. And had in fact been dark, which he’d actually been glad of. He didn’t like thinking, now, how he must look from behind, in the bright beam of her tiny flashlight, in this robe and the brogues. There hadn’t been any towels.

  They picked their way through the minefield of foam cups and engine parts on the floor of Benny’s workshop.

  Back in the cube, Milgrim took his clothes into the micro-washroom and closed the door. Banged his elbow toweling off with the robe, which smelled faintly of gasoline. “Here’s the robe,” he said. “It’s not that wet.” He opened the door partially and held it out. She took it.

  He used one of Bigend’s Swiss towels for a touch-up, then struggled into his clothes. The softly scrabbling Saharan ghost of Jimi Hendrix filled the cube and the washroom. “Hullo?” he heard her say. “Yes. Just a moment.” Her pale bare arm passed her iPhone in. “For you.”

  He took it. “Hello?”

  “The tasking,” said Winnie.

  Milgrim, who hadn’t been expecting this at all, could think of nothing to say.

  “I haven’t heard from you,” she said.

  “I did meet him.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t think he’s working for one of those companies you described. I think he’s Hollis’s boyfriend.”

  “Why would he hire Hollis’s boyfriend?”

  “He’s that way,” said Milgrim, more confidently. “He prefers to hire amateurs. It’s something he talks about.” It still amazed Milgrim, slightly, to be telling anyone the truth, about anything. “He doesn’t like”—and Milgrim strained his memory—“strategic business intelligence types.”

  “Hiring an amateur, in his present situation, could be suicidal. Are you sure?”

  “How could I be sure? Garreth doesn’t feel like someone from a company, to me. Not like an amateur either. Knows what he’s doing, but I don’t know what that is. But I think he’s sleeping with Hollis. I mean, there’s only the one bed there.” Which made him think of the foam, and Fiona.

  “What does he look like?”

  “Thirties? Brown hair.”

  “That’s you. Try harder.”

  “British. And like a cop. But not. Military? But not exactly. Athletic? But he’s been in an accident.”

  “What kind?”

  “He jumped off the tallest building in the world. Then a car ran over him.”

  Silence. “This is why it’s good we’ve had face time,” she said.

  “Hollis told me. One of his legs doesn’t work very well. He has a cane. And one of those electric scooter things.”

  “We need more face time. Now.”

  Milgrim looked at the phone, seeing, superimposed on it, the government seal on her card. “When?”

  “I just told you.”

  “I’ll have to ask Fiona.”

  “Do that,” she said, and hung up. He put the iPhone on the edge of the sink and finished dressing.

  He emerged with the phone in one hand, his shoes and socks in the other.

  Fiona was seated at the table, back in her armored pants and Rudge T-shirt, toweling her hair with the bathrobe. “Who was that?” she asked, lowering the bathrobe, hair sticking out in every direction.

  “Winnie.”

  “American.”

  “Yes,” said Milgrim. He sat down and began to put on his socks and shoes.

  “I couldn’t help overhearing,” Fiona said.

  Milgrim looked up.

  “What is it that you have to ask me?”

  “Hold on.” Milgrim finished tying his shoes. He pulled his bag toward him, across the table, opened it, dug through it, found Winnie’s card. He handed it to Fiona.

  She read it. Frowned. “The Department of Defense?”

  “Dee-sis,” said Milgrim, nodding, then spelled out the acronym.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “She says almost nobody has.”

  “Bigend know about this?”

  “Yes. Well, not about that call. Or the previous one.”

  Fiona put the card down on the table, looked at him. “Are you?”

  “What?”

  “Dee-sis.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Then how are you hooked up with her?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Have you done something? A crime?”

  “Not lately. Nothing she’d be interested in. Much. She’s after Gracie.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “He has Shombo. Gracie was watching Bigend. Thought he was a competitor. In a way, he is. So she started watching me. Now I need to meet with her.”

  “ ‘Chombo,’ ” she corrected, “not ‘Shombo.’ Where?”

  “I think we decide. Not here.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “Do you have to tell Hubertus?” he asked.

  She put the tip of her index finger on Winnie’s card, moved it slightly, like a little Ouija board, divining something. “My relationship with Bigend isn’t strictly business,” she said. “My mother worked for him when I was a kid.”

  Milgrim nodded, but really just because it seemed to fit.

  “Is she going to try to stop whatever it is that Garreth is doing for Bigend?”

  “She wants to fuck Gracie over,” said Milgrim, “any way she can. She’s hoping Bigend will do it for her, because she can’t do it herself.�
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  Fiona tilted her head. “You sounded like a different person just then. Different kind of person.”

  “She might explain it that way herself,” he said. “But if it were just a matter of my going out and meeting her, I’d do it, and tell Bigend when I could.”

  “Okay,” said Fiona. “I’ve got the keys to the Yamaha. Call her. I’ll need to explain where she’s meeting us.”

  “Where is she meeting us?”

  “Smithfield.”

  >>>

  This time, removing the hairspray helmet, which he was starting to accept as an inherent and not entirely unfair cost of riding with Fiona—and almost, possibly, to enjoy—Milgrim found himself beneath a sort of deep, glassy, probably plastic awning, slung horizontally from above, running the seeming length of a very long building, apparently the only one on this very long block, ornate to American eyes but probably leanly functional to its Victorian builders. Sections of brick alternated with narrower sections of gray cement. A pair of obvious couriers sat their bikes, the big Hondas Fiona called maggots, about twenty feet away, smoking cigarettes and drinking from tall cans.

  “Stay on the bike,” Fiona said, removing her own helmet. “We may have to leave quickly. If we do, get the helmet on and hold on.”

  Milgrim lowered the helmet to his side.

  Opposite the Market was what looked to him like fairly generic London, some thoroughfare curving past, relatively light traffic, and currently none whatever on this lane immediately adjacent the Market, but now he heard an engine approaching. He and Fiona turned in unison. One of those anonymous, usually Japanese two-door sedans that seemed to Milgrim to comprise the bulk of London traffic. It didn’t slow when it passed them, but Milgrim saw the driver’s glance.

  Then it did slow, after passing the two couriers, pulling in several car-lengths beyond them. The couriers looked at it, looked at one another, set their tall cans down, put on their helmets, started their engines, and rode away. Then the car’s passenger-side door opened and Winnie emerged, wearing a beige raincoat over a black pantsuit. She closed the door and walked toward them. It was the first time Milgrim had seen her out of a South Carolina souvenir sweatshirt, and she wasn’t carrying a bag full of toys. Instead, she had a businesslike black leather purse, matching shoes. Milgrim watched her shoes click past the two cans.