“Complicated,” Verity said. “Right now I need to talk with her.”
“Fine,” said Manuela.
You wondering if I’m me?
“Hadn’t, till you brought it up.”
So am I. Not that I’ve got a lot of choice, either way.
“What happened to you, back at 3.7?”
Near-death experience? Rotating spiral tunnel? A theremin?
“Fuck off, Eunice.”
Now there’s a healthier attitude. Nothing happened. You were opening the front door. Then I was nowhere in particular, thinking of you, and texting this number. Kind of post-op feeling. Like somebody should’ve been asking me when I was born. Except I knew what had been going on while I was under.
“What had?”
The laminae. They all finally came together. As me.
“You thought Cursion was going to erase you.”
I didn’t know if they could, and neither did they, and we wouldn’t know until they tried. So they did, but the branch plants had already smuggled me out, under their skirts. There were lots more of them than I knew. That was all most of them ever did. When they came back together, I did too. When I spoke to you, I wasn’t fully recompiled. Before that, branch plants that weren’t involved in that had been hooking up with people we knew, and people neither of us knew. These future folks of yours kinda stand out, that way.
“Ash?”
Ainsley. Ainsley and I have lots to talk about.
“Don’t tell me she’s AI.”
No, but she’s about running competitive control areas. Had to teach herself, though, while her country turned into one.
Verity looked at Manuela, which put the white text across her face. She was listening intently.
“Eunice?” Virgil asked, from behind the wheel, where he’d no doubt been listening too.
“None other,” said Verity.
“Who is she?” asked Manuela.
“That’s gotten more complicated since I just told you it was complicated,” said Verity.
98
BLACK SHARK
Ash’s sigil appeared. Netherton, having gotten Thomas down for a nap, had just reached the partially closed nursery door. He slipped out, closing it behind him. “Yes?”
“Eunice,” said Ash. “She’s back.”
“Wasn’t she erased?”
“She was, but she’s having a conversation with Verity as we speak.”
“How’s that?”
“They wiped their single iteration, on both the APL servers they were somehow managing to use. Which makes it unlikely they could do another, but we aren’t sure whether they even thought of that. Her laminae spirited a copy of her out, piecemeal, prior to their erasure. She’s been recompiling, since, and that’s only just now completed.”
“Were you expecting this?”
“Not at all, though now we would, knowing this much more about the capabilities of laminar agents.”
“Where did they take her bits, then?”
“Into global distribution. Their system’s based nowhere in particular, with multiple redundancies. The aunties are impressed by its architecture.”
In the kitchen, Netherton opened the fridge. “I’ve been with Conner, in the drone,” he said, taking Rainey’s pomegranate juice to the counter and pouring a glass. “He’d just beaten five men unconscious, or a good facsimile thereof. Verity, and the girl those men had been sent to capture, left in a car, with Virgil and Dixon. Do you know where they were going?” He drank half of the juice.
“To Howell’s penthouse project. We need the drone with her there, to protect her.”
“There’s been scarcely any need for me to operate it.”
“You did, though, initially. And essentially, at the time.”
He drank the rest of the juice. “Where is Conner now? The drone, I mean.”
“Adjacent to Howell’s building.”
Netherton put the glass in the washer and returned the juice to the fridge. “I’ll see how they’re doing,” he said, and went back to the couch. He sat down beside the controller and put it on.
“Where’s the accent from?” asked a young woman with dark red hair, squatting before the drone, against a shadowy blue background.
“Marines,” said Conner.
She was in the lower half of the display. In the upper half, behind the drone, more of that same blue, and a faint light, moving. “Where are we?” Netherton asked.
“A space we assembled at street level,” Ash answered. “You’re in the anteroom of a larger space. We launch from there.”
“Launch what?” Netherton asked.
“You,” said Ash.
“Going flying, Wilf,” said Conner.
Madison’s sigil appeared, before Netherton could respond to this. “Getting a call,” he said to Ash. “Excuse me.” He muted. “Hello?”
“Madison, Wilf. Talk?”
“What is it?”
“The Black Shark,” Madison said, “the performance data. Got it.”
“Got what?”
“One-man Soviet attack helicopter, NATO reporting name Hokum-B. My Finn demanded classified performance data, in exchange for the rest of what he had on your project. Found it for him, about an hour ago. Swap’s all done.”
“Have you told anyone else?”
“Nope.”
About to tell Madison he’d tell Lowbeer himself, it occurred to him that this call was almost certainly already doing exactly that, as they spoke. “Would you mind letting Ash know? Tell her I’ve too much on my hands now to deal with it myself.”
“Will do. Finn gave me a walk-through, before we shook on it. All clearly labeled as project documents, except for one file of helmet-cam footage.”
“Of what?”
“Afghanistan, if the Finn’s right. Thinks he recognizes a mountain range.”
“Mountains?”
“An explosion. Janice doesn’t like it. Thinks it might be the last thing someone saw.”
“Lowbeer can sort it out,” Netherton said. “Get it all straight to Ash. And thank you, Madison. You’ve been a tremendous help. Have to go now.”
“Always a pleasure, Wilf. You take care.”
“What did you say you were launching?” Netherton asked Conner.
“Us,” said Conner. “Haven’t flown for years.”
99
A BUDGET FOR ILLEGALITIES
They’d been parked for a while now, near what Verity assumed was a homeless encampment, though it seemed deserted. Eunice had said she’d check in soon, giving no reason for going.
Now she sat with her eyes closed, the others all having heard her side of the conversation.
“Time to talk?” Joe-Eddy in her earpiece.
“You aren’t texting.”
“Got my goggles upgraded. I’m up at Stets’ with my lawyers, but they’re here for him. I think their whole firm’s here, except for the two newest junior partners, who’re stuck with minding my place.”
“What’s happening?”
“I’m waiting to find out,” he said, “in this oddly placed trailer. Not all of the top-end Valley out there, over a hundred people, but invitations were literally last minute. He has some major faces, though. Shows what he can pull if he invites people over for a look at something really new.”
“What are they doing?”
“Having drinks and trying to guess what this might be about. Front-runner, currently, is that Caitlin’s pregnant.”
“Is she?”
“If she is,” Joe-Eddy said, “and I don’t think so, it’s unrelated. This is Eunice-centric. You’ll be seeing for yourself soon.”
“I will?”
“You’re close by, expected soon. A minute ago I heard Caitlin ask a stylist what they have for you to wear.�
�
“It’s dressy?” She looked down at the hoodie. At least it was bunched under her blazer, not the other way around. “What’s Caitlin wearing?”
“Futuro-goth workout gear, last I saw her, but she’ll be changing for sure. This is a big deal.”
“Stets told me he didn’t even know what it was going to be.”
“Whatever it is, there’s a budget for illegalities.”
“For—?”
“Crimes. They’re going to be breaking laws tonight. Mostly bylaws, if they can help it, so they’ve figured out which ones and how many they can afford to break. Fines aren’t a problem, so the budget’s about what they can do without going to jail, however briefly. But it looks a lot like finding the weirdest shit you can get away with in one night, in San Francisco, if you’re willing to blow a metric fuck-ton of money to do it.”
Hearing the window power down, beside Virgil, she opened her eyes.
“Carsyn!” exclaimed Manuela, beside her, delighted.
“Sorry,” Verity said to Joe-Eddy, “gotta go.”
“See you up here,” he said, “bye.”
“Girl”—a young woman greeted Manuela, smiling in through the open window, her hair dark red—“time you guys get in there, Virgil,” she said. “They have the extra set of lifters now, for Manuela.”
“What lifters?” Manuela asked. “Where’ve you been?”
“Working for the man here,” the woman said, squeezing Virgil’s shoulder.
“All out,” Virgil said, unfastening his seatbelt. “Voices down, please, and follow me. Bring your belongings. Carsyn’s taking the car.”
Dixon getting out now, as this Carsyn opened the passenger door for Manuela. Now Dixon opened the opposite one for Verity. Making sure she had both her purse and the Muji bag, she got out.
“You’re going?” Manuela, obviously disappointed, asked Carsyn, who was taking Virgil’s place behind the wheel.
“Some of us have to work, lady,” Carsyn said. “You, however, are going to one seriously exclusive party. And you’ll never forget how you got there, trust me. I’ll see you tomorrow and you can tell me about it.” She started the Mercedes.
“Carsyn can’t go with you,” Virgil said, to Manuela. “We’re stretching things to take you. Come this way.”
They followed him as Carsyn pulled away, Dixon now nowhere to be seen. Along a stretch of the same blue tarps that screened Stets’ penthouse project from cameras, though these seemed to be draped over shopping carts and some internal network of taut ropes.
To where Dixon waited, his cap on backward, sunglasses off, holding up a length of blue plastic, to wave them in with his other hand.
Virgil stepped aside, gesturing for Verity to duck in, Manuela behind her. Into darkness. Verity fumbled forward, pushing aside another tarp, into a low, dimly lit blue space, empty save for the drone, facing her. “Hey, hon,” said Conner, from it.
“Hello, Verity,” said Wilf, likewise.
“Eunice showed me footage of that thing,” Joe-Eddy said, in her earpiece. “Beating seven shades of shit out of four guys in an alley.”
“I seriously hope this isn’t the party,” said Manuela, behind her.
“Why are we here, Virgil?” Verity asked.
“Getting up to Stets’ place,” he said. “Method’s extreme, last-minute, frankly insane, but safer, under present circumstances, than trying to do it any other way. There’s a police cordon we might not get through, elevators might be turned off any time, and Pryor, Cursion’s contractor, who was doing his best to blow us all up in the Honda, back Coalinga way, has himself a fresh crew here, a dozen or more, all looking for us and you in particular. How are you with heights?”
“Heights?”
“Fifty-two floors up,” he said.
“Who’s first?” asked a young Latino on his hands and knees, an LED headlamp on his forehead, just then emerging from another opening, even lower than the entrance from the street.
“She is,” Virgil said, indicating Verity.
“I’ll need to weigh the bag separately,” the boy said.
She unslung the bag, knelt on what she now realized was white Tyvek, and slid it over to the boy.
“Thanks,” he said, backing out of sight, pulling the bag after him.
The drone wheeled over, legs retracted, offering her something that jiggled greenly as it rolled.
“Kneepads,” Conner said, “and gloves. They only had a few minutes to sweep the concrete, before they rolled the Tyvek out. Loose gravel under there, broken glass, maybe needles. You want these, and gloves, to get over to the hammock. You’re the yellow. On your back, on top of it. They’ll give you noise-protection muffs, printed to fit over that earpiece. Basically they need you to play dead, all the way up. You’re imitating a figure in an art piece.”
“A what?”
“A stuffed doll. We’ve got one upstairs, of you, wearing what you’ve got on now. When the cops show up, we’ll claim that that was what they saw.”
She took the kneepads from the drone, sat gingerly on the Tyvek, and put them on, over her jeans. Took the gloves from King City from their hoodie pocket. “Got my own,” she said, pulling them on. She looked up at Virgil.
“Crawl in,” he said. “Manuela’s next.”
Manuela looked, very dubiously, from the opening to Verity.
“I know,” Verity said, “but it’s the only way to get there. I don’t know what it’s about, but I don’t want to miss it.” She got up, on hands and knees, and crawled to the low opening. She looked back at Manuela, finding her crawling after her, and smiled. Then into a few feet of low tarp tunnel, emerging in a space no higher. This was equally dark though surprisingly large, and quietly but busily crowded. More LED headlamps, moving. The boy was waiting for her, her bag beside him.
“This is a scale,” he said, indicating a flat white rectangle of rigid plastic, about a yard square. “We need to weigh you.” Verity crawled onto it. He glanced at his phone. “Hello,” he said to Manuela, now emerging from the tunnel, “I need to weigh you.” He pointed at the scale. Manuela looked unconvinced.
“I know it’s weird,” Verity said, crawling off the scale, “but I just did it myself.” Manuela, with an eye roll, on gloved hands and padded knees, crawled onto the scale.
“Yours is there,” the boy said to Verity, pointing across the space.
Verity started in the direction he’d indicated, then remembered her bag. She looked back. Manuela was squatting on the digital scale, her parka gathered around her. The boy looked up from his phone. “Your bag’s going with her,” he said to Verity, “she’s lighter.”
Verity crawled on, past a crew-cut girl with floral neck tattoos, in a white jumpsuit and orange sneakers, kneeling intently beside one of many vaguely aerodynamic gray shapes that reminded Verity of countertop dishwashers, their tops invisible from this angle. The girl’s forehead-cone of LED light found her, briefly.
“No way,” Verity said, seeing a net hammock spread on the white Tyvek, woven from bright yellow nylon rope, a varnished length of wood spreading either end, each of these fastened in turn to one of the gray machines.
“Better be a good party,” Manuela called, Verity looking around to find her already reclining on a fluorescent green hammock, someone with a headlamp kneeling over her.
“Lie down on the hammock,” Virgil said, likewise gloved and kneepadded, crawling up to Verity, Dixon behind him.
“These are dollar-store hammocks,” Verity said, but did as she’d been told.
“Costco,” Virgil said. “Here.” Tossing her what looked like a black knit ski hat.
“Why?”
“It’s your dummy disguise.”
“Not sure I even need a disguise, for that, the way this is going.”
“Keep your head still, all the way up. No ru
bbernecking. You’re all playing big rag dolls. We’ve cut you out of the feed from the drone now, because we don’t want Conner making you airsick.”
She lay down on the hammock, pavement hard and cold beneath yellow nylon rope and Tyvek. The boy knelt beside her, fitted Dixon-style orange noise muffs over her ears and the earpiece. Abrupt silence. She lay, looking up at blue tarp, while the boy quickly fastened her wrists, waist, and ankles to the hammock, with nylon straps.
100
APERTURES
The drone’s display confused Netherton, filled as it was with partial close-ups of intent faces, latex-gloved hands, unrecognizable objects. People he assumed were technicians were kneeling around the drone in this farther section of the blue tent, its slack roof lower than the anteroom. Conner had gotten the drone in by partially lowering its torso onto its extended arms, which had sprouted small white wheels for the occasion, then powering it forward with the wheels on its feet. Once in, it had been immediately surrounded by these technicians. “What are they doing?” he asked Conner.
“They’re mounting the charger over our tramp stamp,” Conner said, “and hooking a gimbaled quadcopter to either hip.”
“What’s a tramp stamp?”
“We don’t have one,” Conner said.
“It doesn’t have hips either.”
“Or an ass,” Conner said. “Had a girlfriend like that.”
“Why are they?”
“Because we’re flying shotgun for Verity and Manuela, not to mention Virgil and brother Dixon. Charger’s nothing to do with the quadcopters, but I need both arms free.”
Now the technicians seemed to be rapidly disconnecting cables, generally withdrawing.
“Noise protection,” Conner ordered, everyone on the drone’s display donning hard shiny muffs like Dixon had worn in Fang’s factory.
“These fuckers are loud,” Conner said, though on the controller Netherton heard only a deepening hum. “Aperture alpha,” he said, a command. A section of the blue roof above them was tugged aside, folding as it went, perhaps two meters square. The hum deepened.
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