Уильям Гибсон - Agency

“No,” said Madison, “not given the immediate future you’re trying to keep us from.”

Netherton turned the Wheelie, tilting the cam up at him. “I wish I knew that the future of this stub will be an improvement over history as we know it, but we’re no more able to see your future than our own.”

“Not that we expect you to be all-seeing,” Madison said, looking down at the Wheelie. “We know you’ve just got cooler phones and better computers.”

“I understand you’ve had some luck with the list I gave Janice,” Netherton said.

“Finnish gentleman, on one of my boards, Russian militaria. Has lots of American material from back when you’re looking. Got positives on his first search. Your U-N-I-S-S, for instance, commenced April 2015, out of the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, but then was run from the Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, plus Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. That they needed two APLs suggests a lot of processing, by the standard of the day.”

“Physics?”

“Not that it was about physics, this system. My Finn’s not seeing anything after 2023. Highly classified throughout, though. He was delighted at how highly. This was all information he already had, of course, but no idea he had it, and might never have found it, if I hadn’t asked him to look.”

“Excellent,” said Netherton, assuming that it probably was, insofar as Lowbeer seemed not to have known about it either.

“There’s more,” said Madison, “but we won’t be seeing that until I give him something in return.”

“Lowbeer will want anything he finds, money no object.”

“Money’s no object anyway,” said Madison, “because this is a peer-to-peer exchange. I could lose my membership if I offered him money. He’s given me a want list of his own, information he hasn’t been able to find. When I find it for him, he’ll give us the rest of what he’s got, plus anything related that he might turn up in the meantime.”

“What does he want?”

“Performance data on the Kamov Ka-50, a single-seat Russian attack helicopter, designed in the 1980s. The Black Shark, they called it. NATO reporting name Hokum-B.”

“Why does he want that?”

“Because he hasn’t been able to find it himself.”

Netherton tooth-tapped the Wheelie Boy around, to take in the view from their front porch. The gravel driveway ran down to a paved road, beyond which a rusted wire fence enclosed uneven land he supposed was pasture, dotted with a few trees. He was always struck by how unplanned this vista was, a genuinely nondesigner landscape.

Nothing like it in London, hence stranger to him than, for instance, Madison’s nonmonetary economy of fossilized military secrets.

Why do you text sometimes, not others?” Verity asked, back in the living room.

“Text when you’re on the phone, with somebody, or there’s ambient noise. And sometimes for an extra layer of security.”

Verity, remembering her pulling Department of Motor Vehicles bar codes down, into passing traffic, crossed to the window, to stand beside the Ikea stool, its soldering-iron scars still hidden beneath the telenovela book. Pedestrians were passing, on the sidewalk opposite. She wondered if any were from Tulpagenics, or Cursion, or Followrs. And now a cab was pulling over, directly below the window.

She took a step forward, looked down. To see Joe-Eddy unmistakably emerging, from the cab’s rear door, multiply slung with shoulder-strapped bags. He looked up, through ridiculous white-framed goggles. A thumbnail of what he saw appeared: her face, in the window, looking down at him. “Joe-Eddy—”

“By way of another branch plant,” Eunice said. “I only knew a little before you did.”

“Branch plant?”

“How I think of ’em. Gavin’s laminae.”

He was headed for the street door now. She could see it, in the feed from his white goggles.

She’d started down the stairs before she was even aware of it, knowing he couldn’t get past the bolt. His feed blinked out before she reached the door.

She undid the deadlock, then the bolt, opened it. Looked into his eyes, behind the goggles.

“Here,” he said, “get this—” A black backpack, over one shoulder, was slipping down his arm. She snagged it, almost dropping it. “Thanks,” he said, stepping in. She closed the door behind him, turned the deadlock, slid the bolt. “You got cooler glasses,” he said, looking at her. “These, it had this fifteen-year-old DJ in Frankfurt build out of a Korean AR headset.”

Get him upstairs.

“What the fuck was that?” Joe-Eddy asked.

“A text. Why didn’t you call me?”

“It texts me too, but only on my phone,” he said. “I didn’t know this was about you until we were on the runway in SFO. Retainer has a clause about not telling anyone where it sends me. I had my phone out to let you know, when I’d gotten to FRA and learned where I was going, but it reminded me.”

“She hired you?”

“‘She’?” Joe-Eddy looked at her. “Mine’s not gendered, that I know of.”

“She’s gendered, trust me. You were dealing with kind of a subprogram of hers.”

“Okay, she. Paid off my Frankfurt contract, did some kind of meta-deal on top of that, like now they’ll make me an IT manager if I ever do them the favor of coming back.”

“Get used to it,” Verity said, hoisting the backpack over one shoulder. She started up. “Told you what she is yet?” She heard him stop, on the stairs behind her. Turned to look back.

Standing there, draped in his luggage, wearing loose black jeans and a belly-hiding black hoodie, he peered at her narrowly. “Not even close.”

“I’m supposed to be alpha-testing her.”

“As what?”

“A cross-platform avatar. They’d customize them. But I still keep thinking it’s all some asshole’s YouTube comedy channel.”

“Instead of rogue AI,” he said, making an expression she’d seen as a client struggled to describe the bad thing that had happened to their company’s system. “So I leave you here with my fucking cat,” he said, “and you get involved in this?”

“You don’t have a fucking cat.”

“I know.”

She turned and started up the stairs.

In the living room, beside the Fuckoids photo, she unslung the backpack, lowered it to the floor. “I hope this isn’t money.”

“Books,” he said, “and cheese.” The goggles’ round white frames looked like half-inch lengths of PVC pipe. He put his other bags on the leather armchair, the one she avoided because its springs were shot.

Hi, Joe-Eddy. I’m Eunice. You’ve been dealing with a subsidiary of mine, now incorporated.

Her avatar appeared in a thumbnail. It seemed to have gotten sterner, and somehow more specific unto itself. The fade now rose to a cliff-sided plateau supporting the uneven canopy of a miniature jungle of curls.

Verity was in the shower here, when you were being recruited in Frankfurt, but I didn’t know. I don’t know what they’ve done until they turn up and I incorporate them.

“Who tells them where to start?” Verity asked, assuming that Eunice had addressed her that way because Joe-Eddy was reading this too.

They’re just sort of issued. Out of me but not by me, feels like. They look at available input, then go where they see they can be of most use. In Joe-Eddy’s case, that was securing his services and bringing him here.

“Shouldn’t you tell him what’s going on,” Verity asked, “like the screw cams?”

Branch plant showed him the feeds, in the cab from SFO. He already knew about Cursion.