William Gibson - Zero history

“We’re still looking into that.”

“It’s not the sort of thing I’d have ever imagined you doing. Military contracts, I mean. I don’t get it.”

“It’s the one garment industry with none of the fantastic dysfunction of fashion. And hugely better profit margins. But at the same time everything that works, in fashion, also works in military contracting.”

“Not everything, surely.”

“More than you imagine. The military, if you think about it, largely invented branding. The whole idea of being ‘in uniform.’ The global fashion industry is based on that. But the people whose prototype we had Milgrim photograph and make rubbings of, in South Carolina, have evidently turned Sleight. And here we are.”

“Where?”

“In a position,” he said, firmly, “of possible danger.”

“Because Sleight’s your personal IT man?”

“Because of who and what they seem to be. I’ve had a more genuinely personal IT man looking out for me, keeping track of Sleight and the various architectures he’s been erecting, both those he’s told me about and those he hasn’t. I did say I’ve been through this before. So in most cases, I wouldn’t be as concerned, and not in this way. But one of these people was here, in London. He followed you and Milgrim to Paris, with Sleight’s help.”

“Foley, Milgrim calls him.”

“We must assume that Foley, so-called, was following you as well. That overlap I mentioned, between the actual elite and the mall ninjas. That can be a problematic segment, in this particular Venn diagram.”

“I saw him,” Hollis said. “He followed me into the basement of the building where I’d gone to-” She hesitated.

“Meet Meredith Overton. I had Milgrim debriefed last night, in Paris. He was particularly unnerved to have run into Rausch.”

“So was I, though Rausch was more rattled to see me, it seemed to me. He thought you were checking up on him. Is he with Sleight?”

“I doubt it,” said Bigend. “He’s not that fast. Do you know who designs Gabriel Hounds yet?”

“No. But either Meredith already does, or she thinks she can find out.”

“And what do you judge it will take to induce her to tell us, or to find out and tell us?”

“She had a shoe line. It failed financially, and somehow the bulk of the final season was misplaced.”

“Yes. We’re looking at her now. That was a good line. She prefigured the best of the back-of-Harajuku tendencies.”

“She thinks they’re in a warehouse in Seattle. Tacoma. Somewhere. She imagines Blue Ant might be able to locate something like that. If they’re found, she believes, she’s in a position to legally claim them.”

“And then?”

“She’d sell them. On eBay, she said. They’re worth more now, evidently.”

“But mainly as a relaunch strategy,” said Bigend. “The eBay sales would attract coolhunters, generate attention in the industry.”

“She didn’t mention that.”

“She wouldn’t. She needs to leverage fresh financing. Either to relaunch the line herself or sell it to the ghostbranders.”

“The what?”

“Ghostbranders. They find brands, sometimes extinct ones, with iconic optics or a viable narrative, buy them, then put out denatured product under the old label. Meredith’s shoes probably have enough cult cachet to warrant that, on an interestingly small scale.”

“Is something like that why you’re after Gabriel Hounds?”

“I’m more interested in their reinvention of exclusivity. Far ahead, say, of the Burberry label you can only buy in one special outlet in Tokyo, but not here, and not on the web. That’s old-school geographical exclusivity. Gabriel Hounds is something else. There’s something spectral about it. What did Overton tell you?”

She saw Ajay slipping the little blade into the base of the Blue Ant figurine, back in Number Four. “She knew someone, in fashion school here, or around it, who knew someone in Chicago. She believes that that person, in Chicago, then, is the Hounds designer.”

“You don’t think she knows?”

“She may not. She says she wound up on an e-mail list announcing Hounds drops.”

“We assumed there must be one,” he said. “We’ve put a fair bit of effort into finding it. Nothing.”

She took one of the books of swatches from where it lay on the shelf nearest her. It was amazingly heavy, its cover plain heavy brown card, marked with a long number in chisel-tipped black felt pen. She opened it. Thick, wholly synthetic materials, strangely buttery to the touch, like samples of the hides of robotic whales. “What is this?”

“They make Zodiacs out of it,” he said. “The inflatable boats.”

She put it back on the shelf, deciding as she did that this was not the time to be bringing up the bug in the figurine, if in fact she was going to.

“Foley himself,” said Bigend, “may not be that dangerous, though we don’t know. A fantasist, designing for fantasist consumers. But the person who’s employing him is another matter. I haven’t been able to find out as much as I’d like. Currently, I’m having to go outside Blue Ant, bypass Sleight and his architecture, for even basic intelligence.”

“How do you mean, dangerous?”

“Not good to know,” said Bigend, “or to be known by. Not good to be seen as being in competition with. That little bit of industrial espionage in South Carolina, as it happened, put Sleight in their camp. Given what I’ve managed to learn so far, we are likely regarded, now, as the enemy.”

“Who are they?”

“They were, at some point, usually, the people our new demographic imagines being. What are you looking at?”

“Your suit.”

“It’s by Mr. Fish.”

“It is not. You told me nobody could find him.”

“He may be selling furniture in California. Antiques. That’s one story. But I found his cutter.”

“You’re really worried about these contracting people? Foley?”

“Contractors, that would be. In that other, more recently newsworthy sense. I have an unusual amount on my plate now, Hollis. One of my long-term projects, something that runs in the background, has recently been showing strong signs of possible fruition. It’s frustrating, to be distracted now, but I’m determined not to drop any balls. Your getting hurt would constitute a dropped ball.” He was looking at her, now, with something she took to be the artful emulation of actual human concern, but she understood that that indicated there really might be something to be afraid of. She shivered on the ridiculous velour toadstool.

“Florence,” he said. “I have a flat there. Lovely. I’ll send you there. Today.”

“I have Meredith in play. She’s coming back here with George. Probably here already. Reg needs him in the studio. You can’t assign me that specific a task, then send me away when I’m about to complete it. I’m not working for you that way.” All of which was true, but having gotten as far as Garreth’s voice mail, she felt she needed to be here, where she’d told him she was, at least until she discovered where he was.

Bigend nodded. “I understand. And I do want the identity of the Hounds designer. But you need to be careful. We all do.”

“Who’s Tanky, Hubertus? Assuming that’s Tojo out front.”

“I suppose I am,” he said.

Winnie Tung Whitaker was wearing a pale blue iteration of the sweatshirt with the South Carolina state flag monogram. Milgrim imagined her buying the full color-range at some outlet mall, off the highway to Edge City Family Restaurant. The blue made her look more like a young mother, which she evidently was, than a bad-ass, which she’d just told him she was. He really didn’t doubt that she was either. The bad-ass part was currently expressed by a pair of really impressively ugly wraparound sunglasses with matte alloy frames, worn pushed up over her smooth black hair, though more so by something about the look in her eyes. “How did you know about this place?” asked Milgrim. Their starters had just arrived, in a small Vietnamese cafe.