Уильям Гибсон - Agency

Just as Virgil jerked his head upright, blinking. Netherton muted his link to the drone’s speaker. Virgil peered at the drone. “That’s Virgil,” Netherton said to Conner. “He works for Stetson Howell, who formerly was in a relationship with Verity Jane. She’s the woman on the couch, the current locus of our efforts there, our agent having apparently been taken offline.”

“Hey, Virgil,” Conner said, raising his voice. “Name’s Conner. Sorry to startle you.”

“She just sits there.” Virgil squinted at Verity, then back at the drone. “She okay?”

“She’s fine,” Conner said. “If they meant to keep her here for much longer, they’d have had her on her back.”

The drone’s camera angles shifted, as if it were elevating. Virgil’s eyes, attracted by movement, widened further.

“What are you doing with the drone, Conner?” Netherton asked.

“Balancing on its wrist-tips,” Conner said, “feet off the floor.”

“Conner was in the military, Virgil,” Netherton said. “He trained for this.”

“Marines,” said Conner. “Haptic Recon.” The camera angle changed again, suddenly, Netherton guessing the drone had tilted forward on its extended arms, to land on its feet ahead of where it had been standing. Now one of the room’s windows, curtains drawn, was centered in its display. It rolled toward this and stopped. A thin black rod flexed into view, tentacle-like, then quickly out of sight, behind the nearest drape. A new feed opened, encompassing most of the display. Looking down, into as much of the street below as could be seen from the window. A yellow vehicle Netherton assumed to be a taxi was passing beneath them. A crisp white circle and crosshairs appeared, centered on its roof, tracking it out of the feed.

“What are you doing?” Netherton asked, reminded of how Conner made him uneasy.

“Running systems checks,” Conner said. “This is a fabbed-up repro of something at least six generations behind the oldest I ever piloted, but the software looks like it’s either ours or we’ve rewritten it. Seriously fucked up.”

“And that’s the best Ash could come up with?” Netherton asked.

“Guess so,” said Conner, the crosshairs picking up a truck as it drove into the feed from the right, “but I meant fucked up like I can’t fucking wait to use it.”

Not liking the sound of that either, Netherton said nothing.

“Hey,” said Conner, “you come and sit in a room in the basement of the West Wing, doing sweet fuck-all. Rest of the time, it’s the wit and wisdom of President Leon. Back when we still weren’t sure about the Secret Service, I had something to tend to. Now they’re all loving his hick philosopher ass. You people have run some weird ops here, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, considering, but this, with Leon? I mean, come on.”

“Not my idea,” Netherton said, “I can assure you.”

“It was them,” said Conner, “Ainsley and that goth with the figure-eight pupils. That’s what Flynne said.” The crosshairs were tracking the roof of a passing police car now. “Anyway, you can’t blame me wanting to get this thing kinetic.”

What about my mother?” Verity asked Lowbeer. “I’d need to tell her, if I was disappearing. Not that she’d be the only one I wouldn’t want worried over whether or not I was dead.”

“Either one of Eunice’s branch plants finds you soon,” Lowbeer said, “or you may be attempting to contact your mother in a post-nuclear scenario. In the meantime, it’s still a matter of keeping you out of Cursion’s hands.”

“You think her network can stop Qamishli going nuclear?” Verity looked back at the silhouettes of the towers.

“With the agency we assume they’ll be able to provide, we may be able to help facilitate something. Without them, there’s nothing we can do.”

“Conner’s here,” Wilf broke in, “piloting the drone, in the hotel in San Francisco.”

A feed opened, she assumed on the peripheral’s built-in phone: she herself in the black helmet, seated on the couch, eyes open but unmoving. If her body were neurologically cut out, she assumed, or whatever they called it, would its face not produce micro-expressions? Someone had pitched Stets a program that provided those, for micro-animating CG faces, supposedly to reduce the uncanny valley factor, though she hadn’t felt any difference when looking at them herself. “Does it let me blink?” she asked, suddenly worried about her own eyes, in San Francisco.

“Blink, breathe, all that autonomic shit’s taken care of,” said a startlingly American voice, male, deep.

“How about micro-expressions?” she asked.

“Fuck if I know,” said the voice, amicably enough.

“This is Conner, Verity,” said Wilf. “He’s my copilot.”

“In your living room, in London?” Verity asked.

“Washington,” Wilf said. “District of Columbia.”

“In a different stub, he means,” said the voice called Conner.

“Don’t confuse her,” said Wilf, “she’s new to this.”

“What year’d you say this drone’s in, Wilf?” Conner asked.

“Didn’t Lowbeer brief you?”

“Just said it was too early for real AI.”

“2017,” said Verity.

“Explains the vintage cars,” Conner said. “Had it figured for a cosplay zone—”

The feed vanished.

“Sorry to interrupt,” said Lowbeer, “but we need to finish our conversation.”

“Who’s the new guy in the drone?” Verity asked.

“Conner is a friend of Flynne’s,” Lowbeer said, “the woman whose peripheral we’ve loaned you. They’re from the same stub, the same small town. His military experience included using telepresence platforms in combat. He’s very adroit with them.”

“Wilf’s not.”

“Hence Conner. It’s a self-mobile communications hub for us as well, essential given the demands of your stub, but with Conner piloting, it affords you protection.”

“From Cursion?”

“From anyone, really. With Conner, we’ve been able to leave it largely unweaponized, aside from a few toys he wanted, but by jettisoning those you could get it aboard commercial flights, though not as carry-on. As soon as he gets its grippers on a firearm, though, he can make more of a mess than we can successfully tidy. He understands that, though there are limits to his restraint.”

“If that’s bullshit,” Verity said, “you’ve really gone to some trouble.”

“Eunice wouldn’t have expected you to react to any of this with unthinking acceptance.”

“She told me to trust whoever the barista took me to. He took me to meet Kathy Fang and the guy who delivered the drones Eunice ordered. I met Wilf. I met Rainey and Ash. Then Sevrin brought me to the Clift. I already knew Virgil. I know Stets. Now I’ve met Caitlin. Now you. So say I count you, all of you, as who the barista took me to.”

“Yes?”

“Then you can’t just keep introducing me to people I should trust. Where’s the cutoff?”

“That’s up to you.”

“Why was she called Eunice?” The peripheral’s eyes stung. “Can this thing cry?”

“Of course,” said Lowbeer, reaching into her suit jacket and producing a white handkerchief, which she handed to Verity. “The acronym for the project that produced her stood for Untethered Noetic Irregular Support System. U-N-I-S-S.”

Verity looked at Rainey. “So what do I get, for behaving as though I trust you?”

“Your world gets a better chance of avoiding nuclear war,” Rainey said, “not that I have any idea how.”

“Is that true?” Verity asked Lowbeer.

“Yes.”

“Then I guess I’m disappeared.” She looked out at the dark masses of the towers, receding in straight lines. “That’s still not saying I believe this is real.”