William Gibson - Zero history

He logged out of Twitter, without checking to see if there was a message from Winnie. He didn’t want to have to see her, not upon arrival in London, anyway. He had his appointment with Bigend. He logged out of his webmail. Stared at Hollis’s interstellar vista. Changed that to a plain medium gray. That was better.

The train entered the tunnel.

He watched as the red dongle launched a window, informing him that the signal was lost.

He couldn’t be reached. Not electronically.

Hollis’s face was scrunched against the side of her headrest now, but her forehead was relaxed. He saw that the Hounds jacket had fallen to the floor. He bent, picking it up. It was heavier than he would have expected, more substantial, stiffer. He buttoned it. Folded it carefully, the way someone in a store would refold a shirt. It lay on his lap, the focus of one of Bigend’s mysteries. A secret.

The rectangular label was made of heavy, stiff, tan leather, branded with some four-legged animal, its head wrong.

He closed his eyes. Put his head back. He was hurtling through a tube, under the English Channel. Did the French call it that? He didn’t know. Why were these giant projects so relatively common in Europe? He’d grown up with the unquestioned assumption that America was the home of heroic infrastructure, but was it, now? He didn’t think so. How did they pay for these things here? Taxes?

›››

“You don’t know where you’re going?” Hollis asked, from the cab, as he lifted her bag in.

“No,” said Milgrim, “I’m supposed to wait here.”

“You’ve got my number,” she said. “And thank you. I wouldn’t have wanted to do that alone.”

“Thank you,” said Milgrim. “And for the laptop. I’m still not-”

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s yours. Be careful.” She smiled and pulled the door shut.

He watched the cab pull away, another taking its place. He stepped back, gesturing for the couple behind him to go ahead. “I’m meeting someone,” he said, to no one in particular, glancing around. As Fiona’s horn pipped, just beyond the cab’s black fender. She gestured, urgently, the yellow helmet jerking, astride a large, dirty, gray bike.

She took his bag as he reached her, and began securing it to the gas tank with elastic cords, shoving a black helmet into his hands. The visor of her helmet was up. “Put that on. I’m not supposed to be in here. Get on behind and hold on.” She flipped the visor down.

He fumbled the helmet over his head. It smelled of something. Hairspray? The transparent visor was scratched and thumb-printed, greasy. He didn’t know how to fasten the under-chin thing. Padding rested uncomfortably on the crown of his head.

“Put your arms around me, lean forward, hold on!”

Milgrim did.

She sounded her horn again as they rolled forward, Milgrim unsure where to put his feet. He shifted, trying to look down. Heard her yell something. Found muddy pegs for passenger feet. Saw a rapidly strolling pigeon framed for an instant in the narrow, smudged field the jiggling helmet allowed his vision.

Fiona felt like a very determined child, encased in layers of ballistic nylon and an indeterminate number of armored plates. Milgrim locked his fingers together, instinctively, and leaned into her back. Hard automotive protrusions, some chromed, were zipping past his knees, either side.

He had no idea where they’d emerged from the station, what street they were on, or which direction they might be going. The hairspray smell was giving him a headache. When she stopped for a light, he kept his feet on the pegs, dubious about finding them again.

Pentonville Road, on a sign, though he didn’t know whether they were on it or near it. Midmorning traffic, though he’d never seen it from a motorcycle. His jacket, unbuttoned, flapped energetically in the wind, making him glad of the Faraday pouch. His money, what was left of it, was in his right front pocket, the memory card with the photographs of Foley tucked down into his right sock.

More signs, blurry through the plastic: King’s Cross Road, Farringdon Road. He thought the hairspray fumes were making his eyes sting now, but no way to rub them. He blinked repeatedly.

Eventually, a bridge, low railings, red and white paint. Blackfriars, he guessed, remembering the colors. Yes, there were the tops of the very formal iron columns that had once supported another bridge, beside it, their red paint slightly faded. He’d come this way once with Sleight, to meet Bigend in an archaic diner, for one of those big greasy breakfasts. He’d asked Sleight about the columns. Sleight hadn’t been interested, but Bigend had told him about the railway bridge that had stood beside Blackfriars. When Bigend talked about London, it felt to Milgrim that he was describing some intricate antique toy he’d bought at auction.

Leaving the bridge, she turned, deftly negotiating smaller streets. Then she slowed, turned again, and they rode up on oil-stained concrete, into a workyard full of motorcycles, big ugly ones, their fairings patched with tape. Almost stopping, she dropped her booted feet to the ground and supported the motorcycle with her legs, walking with it as she crept it forward, between the others, past a man in a filthy one-piece orange suit and a backward baseball cap, a gleaming socket wrench in his hand. Through a wide opening and into an interior littered with tools, disassembled cycles and their engines, white foam cups, crumpled food wrappers.

She cut the engine, put down the kickstand, and swatted at Milgrim’s hands, which he quickly withdrew. The sudden silence was disorienting. He struggled off, knees stiff, and removed the helmet. “Where are we?” He looked up at the high, soot-blackened ceiling, hung with shattered fiberglass fairings.

Now she dismounted, swinging one multibuckled boot over the seat. “Suthuk,” she said, after removing the scarred yellow helmet.

“What?”

“South-wark. South of the river. Suth-uk.” She set the helmet on a cluttered tool cart, and began to undo the elastic net that held Milgrim’s bag atop her gas tank.

“What is this place?”

“A roll-in. Vinegar and brown paper. Quick and dirty repairs. No appointment necessary. For couriers.”

Milgrim raised the helmet, sniffed at its interior, put it on the motorcycle where he’d sat. She handed him his bag.

After various rippings of Velcro, the zipper down the front of her jacket made its own loud noise. “You hadn’t ridden a motorcycle before?”

“A scooter, once.”

“There’s a center-of-gravity concept you’re missing. You need passenger lessons.”

“Sorry,” said Milgrim, and he was.

“Not a problem.” Her hair was a pale brown. He hadn’t been able to tell in Paris, in the darkened hotel lobby. The helmet had made it stick up in back. He wanted to smooth it down.

The man in the once-orange boiler suit came to the entrance. “Himself is on the bridge,” he said to Fiona. He sounded Irish, but looked to Milgrim to be of some other, darker ethnicity, his face battered and immobile. He took a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it, using a small transparent lighter. Put the lighter in a side pocket and absently wiped his hands on the stained orange fabric. “You could wait in the room,” he said, and smiled at Fiona, “for all that’s good in it.” His two front teeth were framed in gold, and protruded at an unusual angle, like the roof of a tiny porch. He drew on his cigarette.

“Is there tea, Benny?”

“I’ll send the boy,” the man said.

“Carburetors aren’t right,” she said, looking at her bike.

“I told you not to go with the Kawasaki, didn’t I?” said Benny, pinching the cigarette for a final fierce drag, then letting it drop, to crush it with a battered, grease-soaked toe, through which dull steel showed. “Carbs wear out. Dear to replace. Carbs on the GT550’ve been very good to me.”