Agency

by William Gibson

  “Say hi to Verity,” said Rainey, from the kitchen, stepping into the frame, Thomas held in front of her.

  “Hi, Thomas,” Verity said, though he couldn’t see her. Probably couldn’t hear her, either.

  “Bye now,” said Rainey, smiling, and stepped back out of the frame.

  “What’s going on in San Francisco?”

  “When you find out,” he said, “tell me. I’ve had my hands full here, with something unrelated.”

  “Conner,” she asked, “you there?” No reply. “He blew up a truck, at an airport, killed at least one person.” Saying it out loud made it feel even more unreal.

  “Why?” Not sounding as if he thought blowing up a truck wasn’t something Conner would do.

  “Someone was going to shoot down Stets’ plane. They thought we were all in it.” More unreal still.

  “Hadn’t thought the place was that rough.”

  “It’s not, usually.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Cursion,” she said, “but that was put together by Pryor, the man Conner gassed on Geary.” The traffic was slowing now, Grim Tim decelerating with it.

  Wilf stood, the feed’s POV on the kitchen rising, then walked around the couch, to the window, where he looked down into their tidy dead-end. Empty, unless Lowbeer’s car was there, invisibly. Then up, at two of those towers.

  “Carbon capture?” she asked.

  “Those two store energy from renewables,” Wilf said. “I think they have molten silicon cores.”

  The bike, which had been gradually slowing, came to a halt. “Silicon Valley,” she said, “gridlock. Better for me without the feed.”

  He cut it, as Grim Tim revved them gently to the left, simultaneously straightening it up, then straight forward, between the two lines of stationary vehicles, lane-splitting.

  In every car they passed, on either side, people were watching the same thing on their phones, held at lap level: a talking head, the president’s, above a chyron.

  “What are they watching?” Wilf asked. With the drone perched backward, she imagined him only seeing their faces, faintly illuminated by the phones.

  “The president,” said Ash, unexpectedly. “Qamishli.”

  “What’s happening?” Verity asked.

  “She isn’t saying, really,” said Ash.

  “So Conner’s blown up a truck, to prevent an attack on Howell’s plane?” Wilf asked.

  “When we nudged Cursion into experimenting with Eunice,” Ash said, “who they hadn’t yet tried to monetize, we understood that we’d be destabilizing them. A side effect, as far as we were concerned, but since then they haven’t been operating in their comfort zone. By now, having had to cope, however briefly, with a fully laminar iteration of Eunice, not to mention the various anomalies our involvement presents them with, destabilization has tipped over into dysfunction.”

  “They were functional enough to mount an attack on Howell’s plane,” Wilf said.

  “They’re not strategists,” said Ash, “though they assume they are, and rather good ones at that. A fully functional, strategically sound opponent would be a greater threat, but without posing the sort of unpredictable danger they currently do.” The bike was still thrumming, slowly but smoothly forward, between vehicles. “And Pryor, a mercenary opportunist, someone they’ve used before as a fixer, is taking advantage of the situation, no doubt in hope of becoming more than just a hired hand.”

  Then Grim Tim gunned it, at once the scariest and most amazing aspect of lane-splitting. Joe-Eddy hadn’t been nearly this good at it.

  “Is this legal?” Wilf asked, and she remembered that he’d been watching the feed from the drone, behind her, looking back.

  “Yeah,” she said, instinctively flattening her elbows into her rib cage, curling her body against Grim Tim’s spine, and hugging the bike more tightly with her inner thighs, “but I don’t like it.”

  Liking it even less as it became a seemingly endless stop and go, Grim Tim revving, slowing, dodging, weaving. She was getting the hang of it, though, learning a body language, a very specific mammalian bond developing between them, a physical trust, through the maze of paintwork and chrome, sometimes mere inches away. Mountain View, she remembered now, then Palo Alto, San Mateo, Daly City.

  “You need to concentrate,” Wilf said. “I’ll be back.”

  Her teeth were beginning to chatter. She was grateful not to have to talk.

  Finally, it felt like hours, they were through the tortuous vehicular Tetris, driving into the city, whose lower speed limits reduced her chill. Headed downtown.

  88

  DENMARK STREET

  Denmark Street wasn’t a cosplay zone. Less so even than Carnaby, but Netherton always got a sense of it being doubly a reproduction. Lowbeer had volunteered nothing, as to why she wanted him here now, but had been preoccupied with getting the motorcycle through seemingly endless frozen traffic, and he’d tired of the view from the rear of it.

  “Am I meeting someone?” he asked now, her sigil between him and the antique guitars in this shop window he’d paused to look into.

  “Bevan Westmarch,” she said.

  “Wetmark?” he asked, surprised.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Rainey calls him that.”

  “That was an interesting conversation you had with him, after meeting with Lev.”

  “It was?”

  “You frightened him,” she said. “Threatened him. With me.”

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Not at all,” she said. “It’s produced an interesting result. He’s attempted to contact me. He believes, apparently, that he has information that will put him in our better books. Or is pretending to believe he does.”

  “You’re meeting with him?”

  “Best you do,” she said. “I’ll observe, though you needn’t tell him that.”

  He’d be a fool to assume you weren’t, Netherton thought.

  “He’s in the café with the Essex green façade,” she said, “just before the corner, to your left.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  This place proving not dissimilar to the one in Chenies Street, though the décor was considerably more stylized. Black, red, chrome, archaic advertising.

  Westmarch was seated in the rear, half a glass of orange juice before him on the small round table. “I thought it might be you,” he said, as Netherton pulled out the chair opposite and sat. “Sorry for my tone earlier, at the Embassy. That was still very much the night before, for me.”

  Netherton said nothing, something he’d only recently been learning to deliberately do.

  “I realized,” Westmarch continued, “that I only brought Lowbeer up at all because of something I recently heard. One does, as a publicist, as I’m sure you know.” He seemed entirely sober now, though not hungover. Both of which, Netherton well knew, could be afforded chemically, though only at some later and often greater cost.

  “Bring you something?” inquired a cadaverous young man in grubby violet shirtsleeves and a black string tie, a wooden pencil tucked behind his ear.

  “Espresso,” said Netherton, “thank you.” Then, to Westmarch, “She doesn’t employ me in her official capacity.”

  “Not as the Metropolitan Police,” Westmarch said, “but we both know what it is she actually does.”

  “Nor in that capacity either.”

  “Yet here you are,” Westmarch said, “responding to a call I made to her, one in which I never mentioned you.”

  “Nor should that surprise you, given you know so much about her.”

  “Hardly,” said Westmarch. “As it happens, though, I’ve something I think she should be apprised of. Had I heard it on the frothy seas of gossip we’ve both sailed, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  �
��No?”

  “Someone substantial alluded to it privately. Obliquely, but unmistakably.”

  “But you shan’t say who,” Netherton said, “or at least not initially?”

  The waiter returned just then with Netherton’s espresso, looking at once shambolic and preternaturally alert. When he had gone, Westmarch continued. “Lev’s brother, Anton, who seems so much more traditionally klepty. Know him?”

  “To say hello,” said Netherton.

  “They aren’t close, he and Lev,” Westmarch said. “Lev prefers to be seen to regard the klept as something of an embarrassment. There’s previously been no question as to which brother would inherit their father’s business mantle. Not Lev. Am I correct?”

  Netherton knew this to not always have been the case, though he assumed it to be now. “Lev doesn’t discuss family with me,” Netherton lied, “but yes. As the oldest, Anton’s in line to inherit the klepty bits, with Radomir next in line.” Radomir, between Lev and Anton in age, quite thuggish in his own right, fancied himself an art historian.

  “Allowing Lev,” Westmarch said, “to continue to play the dilettante, while his more traditional, less ironically inclined older brothers oversee the various activities that the family business comprises.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Lev’s father,” Westmarch said, lowering his voice, “no longer feels that Anton would be the best choice to run the family businesses.”

  “Why?” asked Netherton, surprised. There had, he knew, been question, prior to Anton’s own clinic stay in Putney, as to whether their father might disown him. On having taken what the clinic’s technicians strongly advised against calling the cure, Anton had been welcomed back into his previous position. This had led to Lev’s having been familiar with the clinic, which he’d eventually recommended, in no uncertain terms, to Netherton himself. Without which, Netherton now supposed, he wouldn’t be sitting here, and wouldn’t have a wife or son.

  “That’s my informant’s story to tell,” Westmarch said. “Not mine.”

  “They’re an informant now, are they?” Netherton tried a sip of espresso, finding it excellent. “And who might they be?” Not really expecting an answer.

  “Lev’s estranged wife,” Westmarch said, watching him.

  Netherton, midway through a second sip, was surprised. “More than estranged, I’ve assumed.”

  “Papers haven’t gone through,” said Westmarch.

  “And why would you suppose that Lowbeer would find this of interest?”

  “Because Anton, since the split, has become involved with Lev’s wife.”

  “Does Lev know this?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Do their children?” Not a question he would have asked, prior to Thomas.

  “No.”

  “Was it a factor in her wanting Lev to leave?”

  “No,” said Westmarch. “That was triggered by her discovery of Lev’s affair. Recently, however, she’s learned that the girl Lev was involved with was put up to it by Anton.”

  Netherton considered this. “It’s certainly nasty, whether true or not, but I don’t see why this should be of any particular interest to Inspector Lowbeer.”

  “Dominika, I can tell you, knows all this because Anton’s been using drugs. Chinese ones, apparently, designed to be quite impossible to detect. They do, however, disinhibit him, which he enjoys, and which leads him to tell her things he otherwise wouldn’t. His father, meanwhile, has come to suspect him of drug use, and needless to say is reconsidering his fitness as business heir.”

  Lowbeer’s sigil, the coronet, appeared in Netherton’s field of vision. He tapped his left front tooth with his tongue.

  “Ask him,” Lowbeer said, “how Dominika knows this about the father.”

  “But how does Dominika know this?” he asked. “Is she in the father’s confidence?”

  “No,” said Westmarch. “It’s all from Anton, in his cups so to speak.”

  “But how does he know?” Netherton asked.

  “Because,” Westmarch said, “he’s being advised by someone who’s penetrated the father’s most secure communications. And that person, according to Dominika, is someone with an agenda involving the dissolution of Lowbeer’s position.”

  At this last, the golden coronet pulsed again. “Tell him I’ll speak with him now,” Lowbeer said. “Best if you aren’t present.”

  “She going to speak with you now,” Netherton said. “I’ll be going, in order that your conversation be private.” He stood.

  Westmarch looked up at him. “What?” His eyes widened. “The coronet? That’s her?”

  “Yes. Best take it.” Netherton turned and made for the door.

  “Hello?” he heard Westmarch say, behind him. “Yes, yes it is. Bevan. A pleasure. Thank you—”

  89

  KINDA SORTA

  The last familiar landmark Verity had seen, blocks and turns behind her now, had been a sliver of SoMa’s iconic Coca-Cola sign, its top partially cut off by the helmet. Back in Dogpatch now, on what she assumed was Third Street, Grim Tim, not bothering with a turn signal, swung them abruptly left, into a wide alley between low, industrial-looking buildings.

  Then they were stationary, vibration ended, her ears ringing in the engine’s absence. Immediately behind her, past her doubly folded Muji bag and Dixon’s 3D-printed plastic addition to the Harley’s luggage rack, she sensed movement.

  “Can you get off okay?” Conner asked, in the Tulpagenics phone’s earpiece. She looked down, startled to discover the drone beside her, its legs now as short as she remembered them from Fabricant Fang, its torso tilted back as if looking up at her.

  She removed the gloves Grim Tim had given her, raised the visor, unfastened and removed the helmet, and pulled her mask down. “I’ll know when I try.”

  He lowered the centerstand, which reminded her that she needed to dismount first, so he could get the bike up on it. She discovered just how stiff she was, then, and in how many places.

  As he rolled the bike up, onto the stand, she took a step back. Her knees nearly buckled.

  “Careful,” said Conner, behind her, as she realized she was being supported, very solidly, by a manipulator at either elbow. Coated with something soft and looking nothing at all like hands.

  Cautiously, she tried a step forward, her knees functioning normally.

  Grim Tim had dismounted in the meantime, still helmeted and visored.

  “You good?” Conner asked her.

  “Stiff,” she said.

  The manipulators released her. “I’ll get your bag.” The drone turned to the rear of the bike, its two protruding suitcase casters surprising her, where its butt would have been if it had one. Now it used a different set of manipulators to adroitly unstrap the bag from Dixon’s backrest.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “We’re here,” he said, unfolding the bag atop the bike’s gas tank. She gave it a glance for squashed bugs, not seeing any. Then noticed much bug-wreckage on the forearms of the borrowed down jacket. She unzipped and removed it, gingerly.

  Grim Tim turned, passing the drone’s charger to Conner, then taking the helmet and jacket from Verity. After stowing them in the saddlebag, he removed the glove from his right hand, and reached to take hers and grip it firmly.

  “Thanks for getting us here,” she said, “and for the gloves.”

  Releasing her hand and passing her the bag, he quickly mounted, rolled the bike off its stand, then walked it back to where he could turn it toward the street. Ignition.

  She stuffed the gloves into one of the hoodie’s side pockets and put the strap over her shoulder. “I’m getting tired,” she said, “of nobody telling me where I’m going.”

  “Soon as I know,” Conner said, the charger held in front of the drone, “you will. Meantime
, this way.”

  She followed the drone.

  “Fang’s friends who make these brought this one over,” he said. She didn’t know what he was talking about. “Delivered half an hour ago, not that you could tell. Had set decorators make it look like it’s not brand-new. Fake pee stains on the side, always look wet.”

  She made out the ten-foot cubical container, farther along the alley, in shadow, flush with the wall to her left, looking like it had been there awhile.

  “Rented parking space,” Conner said, the drone bending to lower the charger to the pavement. “Won’t get hauled. Ash showed it to me on our way here.” Quiet sounds of manipulators, manipulating in relative shadow. “Lights go off when I open this door, stay off till I close it. Like a fridge, but backward.” He opened its door, on darkness. “I’ll be out here, on the roof. There’s a socket up there, so I can use the charger to top up.”

  “Why is this here?”

  “To keep you off the street. A place to put your feet up.”

  She stepped up into it, though not as much as she’d had to step up into Fang’s. This one seemed to be sitting directly on the pavement, no pallets. He closed the door behind her. The translucent ceiling came on.

  Same interior, but with the tatami equivalent of new car smell. Same low-backed, nearly legless couch, equally low wooden table in front of it, a white plastic 7-Eleven bag on that, the red plastic caps of two one-liter bottles of drinking water peeking out. She craned her neck, to see what else might be in it: a fistful of protein bars, a couple of packs of gas station jerky, a bag of kale chips.

  Hanging her bag from the familiar aluminum hook, she removed her shoes and put them on the plastic tray.

  Going into the restroom, she closed the sliding paper doors and used the toilet. No political graffiti. The wall looked as if it might never have been touched by human hands, which she supposed was literally possible. She closed her eyes, seeing gridlock again. When she stood, the toilet flushed as expected.

  “I’m up here,” Conner said, as she was washing her hands. “On top.” A feed appeared, looking, she assumed, toward what might be Third, from the cube’s flat roof. A police car passed, followed by a UPS truck.