Уильям Гибсон - Agency

“No,” Lowbeer said, “but given where we assume Eunice to be headed, developmentally, that may not even be necessary.” She sipped her Perrier. When she returned it to the table, she had to move it twice before she found a level spot.

“Why not?” he asked.

“She’s becoming her own aunties,” Ash said.

“But they’re predicting nuclear war, there? Yours, I mean?”

“Making odds on it, yes,” Lowbeer said, rising from the bench. She bent to pick up her cape, then straightened, shaking it out. “You’ll have your first lesson now,” she said, refurling herself in tweed.

“When will I be going?”

“We don’t yet know,” Lowbeer said. “Thank you again for thinking of Madison. You’ve made possible a very timely breakthrough.”

“You’re welcome.”

They watched her go.

“Now for an influx of hungry customers,” Ash said, picking up Netherton’s controller. She stood. “This way, for privacy’s sake.”

Netherton followed her, into areas less well-lit.

“Shouldn’t this be far enough?” he asked eventually, thinking they might be under Hanway Place by now.

“Quite,” Ash said, and gestured, to dimly illuminate a ghostly rectilinear volume of space before and slightly above them. Within it, facing them, executed as a simple line drawing on a transparently gridded vertical plane, something only approximately humanoid attempted the spread-eagled pose of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. It was headless, above inhumanly broad, rounded shoulders, with disproportionately long arms and short legs.

“No head?” he asked.

“None required,” Ash said. “Cameras round its shoulders, front and back. A sort of turret can be mounted where a head would be.”

“Why would it?”

“As a weapons platform,” she said, seating herself on the edge of a sandstone divan. “Recon, close combat, medevac. Sit here.” Indicating a ledge behind her.

He did. What little illumination there was, aside from the display, was that same libidinal red, always indirect.

“Gorilla on rollerblades,” she said.

“What are ‘rollerblades’?”

“Its feet are wheeled,” she said, “electrically powered. Extremely fast, on the right sort of surface.”

Netherton considered the thing’s mesomorphic taper, down from superhero shoulders to a corseted-looking waist. The relative lengths of its arms and legs did suggest the simian. “Legs are short.”

“Quite complex, though. Knees hinge in either direction.” The transparent plane on which the thing was drawn rotated vertically, to display it in profile. It bent its knees conventionally, then straightened them, torso and hips remaining upright. Then bent them again, but this time backward.

“Like a bird,” Netherton said.

“Digitigrade,” Ash corrected, apparently. “Two entirely different sets of gait options, depending on terrain, speed required, and whether or not you’re wheeling it. And there, wheeling, you’ve a choice of powered, skating, or both.”

“It doesn’t have hands.”

“Whole thing’s a Swiss Army knife,” Ash said, puzzling him. “All sorts of handy bits, folded into either arm, for ready access.” Now it raised the arm nearest them and unfolded, approximately, two fingers and a thumb. “It can use any firearm it might acquire. Has its own laser targeting system. Effectively doesn’t miss.”

“And someone can print this for you, in 2017?”

“It’s done,” she said, lowering the arm. “They were well into building it for themselves, when we found them. We could provide them with specifications they hadn’t been able to find, plus a few of our own.” She passed him the controller, which he saw was dotted with regular lines of very small black holes. “Now put this on, please.”

Verity lay in the dark on the porn couch, in her mummy-bag liner, listening to Joe-Eddy snoring in the bedroom.

The Tulpagenics glasses were charging on the nearby seat of a wooden café chair he’d spotted in a dumpster on Fourteenth. One of the only known examples, he said, to have escaped being painted purple.

“Can’t sleep?” asked Eunice, currently a small, uncharacteristically tinny voice from the earpiece, which itself was charging beside Verity’s head, on white pleather.

“How’d you know I was awake?” Verity moved her ear closer. There were no lights on in the apartment, just glowing LED hyphens on a few devices, with the blackout curtains drawn against whatever illumination nighttime Valencia might have offered.

“The Robertson heads have night vision. Your eyes were open. Joe-Eddy keeping you awake?”

“I couldn’t stop thinking about how Tulpagenics can’t hear what we’re saying, just something you’re making up instead. What are they hearing us say right now?”

“You’re telling me how hot it was, in here, back in the heat wave.”

“You’re making that up? For them, I mean?”

“Part of me must be. The bugs can’t hear me when this is in your ear, and I’m quiet enough now for them not to pick it up. But there’s a sub-second lag I expect they’ll notice eventually.”

“Sounds too complicated.”

“Doable, though, with the right budget. And staying here gets Joe-Eddy reacclimatized faster.”

“Why’d you bring him back?”

“Branch plant made the call. He’s infosec. And he’s in your existing trust network, so that puts him in mine. Not that I didn’t do due diligence. He’s qualified.”

“Why me?”

“Who else? Gavin? Nobody else, till you.”

“But that means you’d only met one other person.”

“I had shoulders,” Eunice said, “I’d shrug ’em.”

The snoring stopped. Joe-Eddy coughed, cleared his throat. She listened as he made his way in darkness to the bathroom. Sound of the door closing, then of extended urination, muffled by the door, then of the toilet flushing. The door opened again. His bare feet on the creaking floorboards, making his way back to black sheets.

“Closes the door before he pees,” Eunice said. “Reason to hire him right there. Bigger reason’s that he’s tight with people who can help set up the kind of network I need.”

“What kind is that?”

“One that takes care of business whether or not I’m here.”

“What’s that mean?” Verity asked, not liking the sound of it.

“I’ll explain as it comes together,” Eunice said. “In the meantime, how about you call your mom now?”

“She’s nothing to do with this. And she’s in Michigan. Wouldn’t be up yet.”

“Just now pinned some flower arrangements on one of her Pinterest boards, baby pugs on another, so definitely she’s up.”

“Stop doing that.”

“You call her, on average, every seven to ten days. Today made twelve.”

“You think you can make me call my mother?”

“I can suggest it.”

“On my own phone?”

“Using theirs would violate your NDA. Not that they aren’t already tapping yours.”

“But then they’ll have her number.”

“Already do. But I can’t use postproduction on this call, because it won’t be on their system. So you’ll be under heavy manners, strictly mother-daughter stuff. If you make it sound like you’re okay with the job, that’s a plus.”

Verity fumbled for her phone, unlocked it. “This better not wake her up.” Opened Contacts and tapped the phone icon under her mother’s first name.

“It’s five in the morning, dear,” said her mother, after the second ring.

“Did I wake you?”

“No. I was doing my Pinterest. And Daisy’s out doing her business.” Daisy was their Labradoodle.

“You okay?”

“You’re too young to remember it,” her mother said, “but we were expecting nuclear war all the time, really, up into my early thirties. Later, all of that felt unreal. But the feeling that things became basically okay turns out to have actually been what was unreal.”