William Gibson - Zero history

“What does that mean?” Milgrim asked.

“A Yiddish proverb,” Bigend said. “It rewards contemplation.”

Something moved, three feet above Bigend’s head. The manta, a sinuous matte-black blot, as wide, from wingtip to wingtip, as a small boy’s outstretched arms.

“Fuck, this is cool,” called Heidi, from across the floor of the atrium, “I heard everything you said!”

“Be a dear,” Bigend called to her, not bothering to look up. “Swim it away. Try the penguin now.”

The thing’s wingtips silently flexed, catching the air, for all the world like a real ray, as it swam slowly up, wheeling gracefully, barely missing the hanging stairway. “Utterly addictive,” Bigend said to Hollis. “Your locative art will morph again, with cheap aerial video drones.”

“That doesn’t look cheap to me.”

“No,” said Bigend, “not at all, but cheaper platforms will be in the High Street by Christmas. But the Festos are genius. We opted for their sheer strangeness, the organic movement, modeled from nature. They aren’t very fast, but if people see them, their first thought is that they’re hallucinating.”

Milgrim nodded. “He’s coming,” he said. “Gracie.”

“To London?”

“She said he’ll be here soon.”

“He has Sleight,” Bigend said, “so he knows that having a look at his pants was simply basic strategic business intelligence. It isn’t as though we’ve done anything to harm him. Or ‘Foley’ either, for that matter.”

Milgrim looked from Bigend to Hollis, eyes wide.

“A friend of mine has been in a traffic accident,” Hollis said. “I have to stay in town until I know how he is.”

Bigend frowned. “Anyone I know?”

“No,” said Hollis.

“That’s not a problem. I wasn’t planning on sending you immediately. Say four more days. Will you know by then whether or not your friend is out of the woods?”

“I hope so,” said Hollis.

You’re shotgun,” Heidi said to Milgrim as they neared the truck. Milgrim saw the pink Mossberg-Taser collaboration in Bigend’s gloved hands, in the office at Blue Ant, and almost said that he didn’t have one. “Hollis and I need a talk,” she said, clarifying things. He’d be in front with Aldous, his accustomed seat.

Aldous, alerted to their exit, had the motor running. Locks clunked open for them. Milgrim and Heidi hauled their respective doors open. He scrambled up while Heidi helped Hollis. He managed to close his door before Heidi had closed hers. The locks clunked solidly into place. Aldous had proudly pointed out the narrowness, the extreme evenness, of the gaps between the doors and the bodywork. These were too narrow for the insertion of any pry bar, he’d said, too narrow even for “the jaws of life,” an expression Milgrim was unfamiliar with, but which he took to be Jamaican, some potent icon of existential dread.

He fastened his seat belt, a bulky, complicated thing, and sat back, taking stock. Where, exactly, was he now, vis a vis the snapping jaws of life? Bigend had seemed to have virtually no reaction at all to the news of Milgrim having a federal agent in his life, or for that matter to Winnie’s alert regarding Gracie. Milgrim’s panic attack, only his second in recovery, not counting his initial reaction to having been photographed by Winnie in the Caffe Nero, had been for naught. As indeed had been every other panic attack he’d ever suffered, his therapist had repeatedly pointed out. His limbic mind was grooved by irrational fear, a sort of permanent roller coaster, always ready for a ride. “Don’t tell yourself that you’re afraid,” she’d advised him, “but that you have fear . Otherwise, you believe that you are fear.”

“You didn’t quit,” said Heidi, behind him.

“No,” said Hollis. “It wasn’t the right time.”

“You’ve got to try those balloons. They fucking rock.”

They were rolling now, the run-flats juddering over City tarmac, not so much old as recently resurfaced, piecemeal, in the course of much building.

Milgrim sighed reflexively and let himself settle forward, slightly, into the seat belt harness. Let go of the tension, he told himself. Be, as his therapist said, in the moment.

In the moment, a shiny black car, coming in the opposite direction, swerved diagonally into their path. Aldous instantly swinging right, into a much narrower street, the City equivalent of an alley, dark windowless walls of stone or concrete. Behind them, tires squealed. Milgrim glanced back, saw headlights plunging after them. “Look sharp,” advised Aldous, speeding up. Threads burst in the straps across Milgrim’s lap and chest, black shapes birthing instantly, a conjurer’s trick, hauling him upright.

“Mother fuck ,” observed Heidi, from the back seat, as Aldous continued to accelerate.

And Milgrim fell, amazed and unthinking, into his mysterious joy at the Hanger Lane Gyratory, lost in the basso howl of the Hilux’s supercharger.

Constrained by the inflated crash-harness, he struggled to look back. Saw headlights. The black car.

Aldous stamped on the brakes, momentum whipping Milgrim around. A second set of headlights, ahead of them, approaching.

“Well, then,” said Aldous, his teeth very white in the beams of the approaching vehicle.

Milgrim looked to the side, seeing a blank and ancient wall, perhaps two feet away.

“Aldous,” said Hollis.

“Moment, please, Miss Henry,” said Aldous.

The car in front of them was only a few feet away now. Squinting against the glare of the other’s lights, Milgrim saw, through the car’s windshield, two men. One, the driver, masked in a black balaclava. The other was masked in white, though weirdly and only partially. And was holding something up to the windshield in front of him. For Milgrim to see.

Milgrim’s Neo.

Foley, his short-billed cap low over his bandaged head, fixed Milgrim with the one eye Milgrim could see, raised his other hand, and slowly shook an admonitory finger, his expression changing abruptly as Aldous floored the truck, popped the clutch, and crashed into the car, still accelerating. Foley’s car began to move backward as its masked driver twisted the wheel, a few sparks popping as if off a grindstone, and still Aldous accelerated, the truck’s unnatural mass and abnormal power, Milgrim now realized, being central to that cartel-readiness of which Aldous was so proud. Milgrim saw the other driver abandon the wheel, actually cover his eyes. The car struck the opposite wall, producing more sparks, and suddenly they were in the street at the far end, back in the world. Foley’s car, patches of paintwork scoured to raw plastic, grille shattered, sat in the street, at a diagonal, its driver struggling, around an inflated airbag, with the wheel.

Aldous backed up slightly, then drove carefully, at an angle and at speed, into Foley’s car. Then calmly and neatly reversed, backing up until the bed of the truck blocked the passage. Milgrim heard brakes behind them, and turned to see the black car reversing, its headlights receding. He heard it scrape the wall.

“Fiona will take you home, Miss Henry,” said Aldous, as Milgrim turned to see him rapidly thumbing the screen of his iPhone.

“Fiona,” said Milgrim, hopefully.

“You must all leave now, quickly,” said Aldous. “The police are coming. Please go with Mr. Milgrim, Miss Hyde.” He touched something on the dash, causing their inflated harnesses to simultaneously unlatch. Milgrim looked down at the thing that lay across his chest, like a rubber bat, a goth party favor. He heard the doors unlatch.

“Let’s roll,” said Heidi.

“Ouch,” said Hollis. “Don’t hit me!”