William Gibson: Zero history

“Have a good one, then,” said Benny, seemingly paying no attention to the penguin. “I’ll lock up.”

Then the little Japanese minivan with the curtains and the moonroof pulled up, the driver’s-side window powering down. A Japanese mini-driver, looking about fifteen, in a crisp white shirt. “I’ll help you put that in the back,” he said, with a British accent. He cut the engine and got out.

“Where are we going?”

“Haven’t been told yet, but we’re in a bit of a hurry.”

The broken wheel on her roll-aboard woke, like some ominous precision measuring device, as she pulled it along the corridor to the rear lobby. She’d gone to say goodbye to the ferret, though she doubted she’d ever be able to explain that to anyone. Garreth might understand, who had his own odd ways with fear. She saw the empty scooter-chair, abandoned beside the glass slab door, where Robert now stood.

“Congratulations, Miss Henry,” he said, inexplicably and rather tenderly, as he opened and held the door for her. Unwilling, after more definitely having noted a multiplication of identical follies in the watercolors upstairs, plus her moment just now with the ferret, to risk further liminality, she thanked him, smiling, and clicked swiftly on, out beneath a porte cochere she supposed had been built for actual coaches, and on toward the back of the tall Slow Foods van, drawn up near it. Tall, the van, a big one, and newly painted a rich aubergine, lettered and trimmed in a dull bronze, as if the Queen herself were vegan, if vegan was what Slow Food was about, and fond of Aubrey Beardsley.

“Hello,” said the driver, brunette under her Foleyesque cap, and prettily Norwegian. Both a professional truck driver and an actress. Hollis knew all this because she’d overheard Garreth hiring her, via some third party, and hadn’t realized until now that this was what that had been about. “There are two zippered panels, inside these doors,” the driver said, indicating the back of the truck. “I’ll open the first for you, then close it, then you’ll open and close the second. It’s to make sure no light escapes. Clear?” The girl smiled, and Hollis found herself smiling back. Aside from driving, Hollis knew, she was there to engage the authorities, should there be any trouble with where they were parked later. Now the girl opened one of the van’s rear doors, revealing a taut wall of black canvas, like something in a conjuring trick, and climbed three very sturdy-looking folding aluminum steps, where she raised a tall vertical zip. “Give me your bag.” Hollis passed it up. The driver put it through the slit, climbed down. Hollis went up the steps, through the slit, the zip’s plastic teeth odd against her wrist, then turned and pulled the zipper most of the way down. The girl pulled it the rest of the way, leaving Hollis in absolute darkness.

Behind her, the other zip went up, admitting startlingly bright light. She turned and saw Garreth, and behind him Pep, wearing what she instantly knew must be the ugly T-shirt.

“I didn’t think it would literally be that ugly,” she said, stepping through the second zip.

It was. Pep, in black cyclist’s pants, wore the largest, ugliest T-shirt she’d ever seen, in a thin, cheap-looking cotton the color of ostomy devices, that same imaginary Caucasian flesh-tone. There were huge features screened across it in dull black halftone, asymmetrical eyes at breast height, a grim mouth at crotch-level. Later she’d be unable to say exactly what had been so ugly about it, except that it was somehow beyond punk, beyond art, and fundamentally, somehow, an affront. Diagonals at the edges continued around the sides, and across the short, loose sleeves. Pep leered at her, or perhaps only looked at her, and pulled the strap of a dark green messenger bag over his head, tucking what she recognized as Garreth’s other party favor into it.

“Don’t forget to take that bag off,” Garreth said. He was seated in a black workstation chair that appeared to have been taped to the shiny aubergine floor. “Queer the visuals, otherwise.”

Pep leered, or perhaps smiled, in reply, then stepped past her, through the open zip in the second scrim of black canvas. She saw the same hideous features repeated on the back of the shirt. He bent, picked up her bag, deposited it inside, then ran the zipper down, vanishing. She heard the other zipper being opened, then closed, then the sound of the door being closed.

She turned to Garreth, but saw that he was mounting his black laptop in a sort of clasp that extended from a framework of black plastic pipe. The pipe, like a geometric model of a rectangular solid, almost filled the interior of the van. Like Garreth’s chair, it was held in place with that nonreflective black tape that kept film sets together. There were things mounted on the framework: two plasma screens, one above the other, cables, boxes and bits the cables plugged into, and several very stylish-looking LED lamps.

“Where we going?” asked Heidi, sounding oddly subdued, seated on the floor at the front, her back against another centrally zippered sheet of black canvas.

“Should know shortly,” Garreth said as he finished locking his computer in place, so that it sat before him on an invisible desk.

“Where’s Ajay gone?”

“Wherever we’re going,” Garreth said, “but with Charlie.”

It all smelled of pipe cement, new electronics, lighting.

“Sit down beside Heidi,” Garreth said as Hollis heard the driver’s door slam shut. “There’s foam.”

Hollis did.

“Crazy,” said Heidi, eyes wide, looking from Hollis to the rig that surrounded them. “Claustrophobia.”

“What about it?” Hollis asked.

“I’ve got it,” said Heidi.

The driver started the engine. The van was moving away from Cabinet.

Deal, said Hollis, silently, to the ferret, though she hadn’t really been aware of making one.

“I’ve never heard you say anything about claustrophobia,” Hollis said.

“Fujiwara says it was being married to fuckstick. Why I went to him in the first place. I thought it was just wanting to beat the living fuck out of somebody, y’know?”

“You don’t think it was?”

“When he got me calmed down, building models, I could see that it was not wanting to feel trapped.”

“Did you finish your Breast Chaser?” Thinking it might help, to keep her talking.

“Not enough detail,” Heidi said, sadly.

“Have an ETA?” Garreth asked someone. He was conversing in clipped but genial near-code, with some unknown number of people, his headset plugged into a switchbox attached to an octopus galaxy of phones.

“How ’bout us?” said Heidi. “Do we?”

“Hush. He has to concentrate.”

“Understand what he’s doing?”

“No, but it’s complicated.”

“Ajay’s cousin got him up in whiteface. Filled the notch in his nose with putty. Dyed his hair shit-brown and sprayed stuff on the sides.”

“They want him to be mistaken for Milgrim.”

“I got that. Why?”

“Someone’s kidnapped Bigend’s star researcher. They’re demanding Milgrim in exchange for him.”

“Why would they?”

“Actually,” Hollis said, “it seems to be because you stuck the man who was following you with that dart, though Milgrim had already fucked him up himself.”

Heidi, her large white hands locked tightly across her knees, black nails chipped, regarded Hollis from just above them with utmost seriousness. “Are you shitting me?”

“No,” said Hollis.

“What are they, pussies?”

Hollis, framing her response, saw that Heidi was struggling not to laugh. She dug her swiftly in the ribs with a knuckle.