Уильям Гибсон - Agency

“Yes.”

Virgil reached over again, to touch a switch on the side of the controller.

“Hello,” Verity said.

“Welcome,” said Ash.

For Verity’s sake, Netherton hoped they weren’t meeting in the flesh-yurt.

Is this the same year?” Verity asked Ash, who had a tangle of ultrablack hair, gray eyes below it, and wore a pale, acidy greenish-yellow shade of lipstick. She appeared to be about ten feet from Verity, while behind her stretched a single long room, its white walls windowless, the floor gray and smooth, the look of gallery space repurposed from something else.

“It is,” Ash said.

“I can’t move my head,” Verity said, having just tried.

“You haven’t a neck or shoulders,” Ash said. She came forward, wearing motorcycle boots, flowing dark pants tucked into them, and a smoothly iridescent brown carapace. She reached out, picked Verity up, and flipped her over.

“Whoa.”

“Sorry,” said Ash. “I promised you a nausea-free visit.”

They were in front of a long table, as cluttered as Joe-Eddy’s workbench but very differently textured. Ash panned Verity’s point of view the length of it, right to left. Past its end appeared what Verity took to be a hut, looking as though it had been composted from something else. In front of this was a large black-and-chrome motorcycle, old-fashioned but gleaming. “This is where you live?” Verity asked.

“Yes.”

“Where do you sleep?”

“In the yurt.” Ash swung whatever Verity inhabited back to the table, stopping at an antique vanity mirror on a tarnished silver base, then raised her, directly in front of the mirror. Verity saw the head of a doll, china, its wide eyes gray.

“You both have gray eyes,” Verity said.

“I had mine altered recently,” Ash said, “though this is the gray I was born with. I bought the doll before I had it done, to help me decide.”

“Can I see what’s on the table again?”

Ash swung the doll head to the right. “Collage minus glue, Wilf says.”

Verity glanced over decorated gourds, bundles of feathers, basketry, ethnic musical instruments both stringed and wind, ceramics, rolled tapestries, candlesticks, a tall samovar, and, most distinctively, what appeared to her to be a completely rusted submachine gun, covered with the dingy yellow plastic letters of fridge-magnet alphabets, spelling nothing Verity recognized. All of it absent anything Joe-Eddy could have de-soldered. “Is Joe-Eddy okay?” she asked, reminded of him.

“Appears to be,” Ash said. “He assumes they keylogged him, when they bugged the place. He’s right, of course.”

“Shit,” said Verity, “my laptop,” then remembered that Eunice had had someone take it from the apartment before the bugging, along with her passport.

“Guilherme,” said Ash, “has delivered, via the current pair of lawyers, a phone encrypted in a way even the aunties can’t break. Joe-Eddy can use it in bed, under the bedclothes.”

A higher purpose for black sheets, Verity thought. “The Manzilian,” she said.

“What?”

“That’s what Joe-Eddy calls Guilherme. What happened to the guy Conner gassed?”

“Kevin Pryor,” Ash said. “Ex-Army, Intelligence Corps.”

“What happened to him?”

“He wasn’t alone. Colleagues got him off the scene before police or the ambulance arrived. We assume he regained consciousness immediately, no injury when he collapsed. One of Eunice’s branch plants has quite a bit on him. He isn’t part of Cursion, but a freelancer they’ve used before. None of the principals at Cursion has an intelligence background, though neither do they assume they need one. They do, however, which is why they’ve repeatedly hired him. Lowbeer regards him as more dangerous than they are.”

“Why?”

“Intelligence background, of course, but also he’s differently ambitious. He isn’t wealthy, and she assumes he’s not satisfied with being a freelancer. She thinks he likely poses as much of a threat to them as he does to us.”

“Would he know what even hit him, back there?”

“Not necessarily, but we assume he knows quite a bit about you, given his current assignment. So we’re keeping an eye out for him.”

“Where are we going now?” Verity asked. Sevrin had showed her the van’s new decals on his phone. Logo of a vegan wholesaler in Chico, stylized vines and swirling leaves, the roof entirely green.

“Dogpatch, according to Sevrin,” said Ash. “Which may change, now that he thinks he’s spotted someone following the van on a motorcycle.”

“Shit,” said Verity.

“Best get used to it,” said Ash. “Would you like to go back to the van now?”

“Yes,” said Verity, and instantly was.

Netherton was watching Verity in the drone’s left peripheral display as she turned to look back.

“Where are we?” she asked. “Where’s the motorcycle?”

“Dogpatch,” said Sevrin, which meant nothing to Netherton. “They’re four cars back.”

Verity unfastened her safety belt and turned completely around, to kneel on the seat. Netherton watched her profile. Virgil, he saw in the opposite display, was similarly kneeling, peering back.

“We stop for red,” Sevrin said, “they get closer. Like now.”

Netherton reflexively squinted at the display’s narrow rearview band as the van came to a halt, producing, to his surprise, the sudden enlargement of a motorcycle, coming up behind them along the street’s centerline, its driver’s face hidden by a white helmet.

“Slows, when getting closer,” Sevrin said. “Never right behind us. Technique.”

“I may know who that is,” Verity said.

“Sit down,” Sevrin said, “buckle up.” The light changed and he drove on.

Verity and Virgil, on either side of the drone, turned back around and fastened their belts.

“How do you know the person you think this may be?” Ash asked.

“Maybe drove me to Oakland,” Verity said. “Eunice arranged it. I got an e-mail as soon as she was gone, written earlier, telling me to go with him. He works in 3.7, the coffee place on Valencia, not that we knew each other.”

“Did he tell you anything about his relationship with Eunice?” Ash asked.

“He never spoke. Assume he can’t.”

“Now,” Sevrin said, taking a sharp right, almost simultaneously braking, hard, into a paved space. A car passed, a second, and then the motorcycle, one of the largest Netherton had seen, swung smoothly into what free space remained, stopping about three meters from their sliding passenger door.

The rider put his booted feet down and sat on the motorcycle, wearing a black leather jacket and an immaculately white helmet.

“That your man?” Conner asked.

“I think so,” said Verity.

The rider raised a hand, flipped up the helmet’s visor. He wore a white filtration mask. Above its upper left edge, Netherton saw a glint of metal.

“That’s him,” Verity said.

Netherton flinched, as the drone suddenly shifted position to his left, putting more of its torso between Verity and the man on the motorcycle. Its arms, no longer handless, were extended now as well, though Netherton had scarcely seen that happen, the left grasping the back of the front passenger seat, the right the end of the bench. Virgil, finding himself between the drone and the stranger, unfastened his seatbelt again.

The rider gestured, twice, with his fingers. Come.

“Your call,” Conner said.

“I’ll speak with him,” Verity said.

“I let you past,” Conner said, “Sevrin opens the door, you get out. I’m behind you but at the open door. You good, Sevrin?”