Уильям Гибсон - Agency

“Hearing how our world ends,” said Virgil, “and yours begins.”

“Ah,” said Ash, “explains the mood. Rainey spilled the beans?”

“Sorry,” said Rainey. “She’s a sharp listener.”

White Helvetica appeared, across the back of the drone.

Hit the 5th speed dial. It’s Stets. He can actually talk, has a phone like this and no lawyers watching him. J-E

It seemed colder out, the passageway retaining a dankness Netherton hoped had nothing to do with urine, ersatz or otherwise. He saw Lowbeer draw something vaguely familiar from a topcoat pocket, gold and ivory glinting in her hand, reflecting candlelight in the instant before Fearing closed the door behind them. Her tipstaff, he remembered, in the sudden dark, a nastily mutable badge of authority, a cologne atomizer one moment and a handgun the next, but always of ivory, trimmed with gold, with somewhere, invariably, a small symbolic coronet. He hadn’t seen her produce it since shortly after he’d first met her, but associated it with trouble of a very immediate sort. “Why do you have that out?” he asked.

“Go ahead of me toward Cheapside,” she said. “Be prepared to do as I say.”

Netherton did, almost immediately aware of an approaching racket from the direction of the street, as of running boots over cobble, echoing off the walls of the passage.

“Keep walking,” Lowbeer said.

He did, noting the darkness in the passageway decreasing in a peculiar yet familiar way. Another effect of hers and, like the tipstaff, something he hadn’t seen recently. Assemblers in the very fabric of the City, subtly lighting her way.

Now they were in that particularly foul-smelling stretch, and here a running figure in high black boots appeared, smiling pleasantly, a dented top hat jammed low over its forehead. Quite tall, broad-shouldered, and bearing a massive mallet of some kind, partially upraised, it ran straight toward them.

“Down,” ordered Lowbeer, which Netherton would certainly have obeyed, had their assailant not been literally atop him then, shoving him aside with its massive weapon. Which reeked, Netherton noted, of claret, but by then he’d instinctively poked his stick at the man’s waistcoated midsection, a large gloved hand batting it aside, then seizing the ebony shaft and flinging it away, to clatter hollowly on the wall beside them.

Leaving, Netherton discovered, the stick’s handle still in his hand, with something still protruding from it. As of its own accord, his hand thrust this forward again, producing a bright flash of light, accompanied by a brief but vicious sizzling.

Looking down, he saw his hand around the stick’s handle. From which extended a slim straight blade, into the waistcoat’s fabric, smoking now, scorched, though he saw no blood. Again, the smell of claret. Then the man toppled backward, toward Cheapside, still smiling earnestly, the massive mallet’s head making surprisingly little sound as it struck the cobbles.

“What the actual fuck?” pronounced Fearing, powerfully, behind them, as the passageway and the fallen figure were flooded with mercilessly white light.

Squinting, shading his eyes, Netherton made her out, her pistol now apparently tipped with a small cylindrical floodlight.

“Do you know him?” asked Lowbeer. Who held, Netherton saw, a sort of blunderbuss, its barrel gold, stock of ivory.

“It’s Bertie,” Fearing said, “my neighbor’s coachman. Bot. Seems to have helped himself to a publican’s bung starter.” Which accounted for the claret, Netherton thought, noting that the mallet’s massive head was of wood.

“Something seems to have gotten into him,” Lowbeer said, bending to pluck the upright swordstick from the supine figure. She glanced around, then retrieved the hollow ebony shaft from where it lay nearby, smoothly sheathing the one in the other. She passed it to Netherton, who accepted it gingerly. “That’s really terribly bright, Clovis,” she said. The floodlight was immediately extinguished, though leaving, Netherton noted, a single sharp red dot, centered on the fallen bot’s torso.

“Were you expecting this?” Fearing asked.

“No,” said Lowbeer, “though the aunties were able to give me a last-minute inkling. Step over Bertie.” This last to Netherton.

“Is this an assembler weapon?” Netherton asked, looking at the stick in his hand.

“No,” said Lowbeer. “Ash made it from your clothing, and whatever else was available nearby. You happened to place it in such a way as to instantly fuse Bertie’s power supply. Good night again, Clovis.”

“Watch your back,” Fearing said.

“As ever. Cheapside, Wilf.”

Netherton began to walk.

“Good night, Wilf,” Fearing said, behind him.

“Good night, Mrs. Fearing,” he said, pretending to glance back.

Someone out of frame passed Stets a small glass of what Verity assumed was espresso. “Thanks,” he said, looking up briefly at whoever it was. He took a sip. This feed, Verity assumed, was via a camera in the Airstream aerie’s foldaway screen, which put him on the in-built couch opposite. “Where are you now?” he asked her.

“Not sure,” she said, assuming he couldn’t see her, “being driven somewhere. What have you been up to?”

“Trying to figure out whatever it is that we seem to have agreed to help Eunice’s branch plants do. They aren’t very communicative.”

“I was texting with one, earlier. It got me in touch with Joe-Eddy. Virgil tells me you used to try to think of things for him to do for you, but couldn’t.”

“Do you know Guilherme?” he asked.

Verity blinked. Hearing Stets mention the Manzilian felt like a category error, as if the moon were to inquire after the cantaloupe you’d bought the day before, both being spherical. “Not to speak to. I’ve seen him at the apartment.”

“Eunice’s network consists mainly of the branch plants, so human company can be a relief.”

“I thought it would all be people,” Verity said, “from what she said.”

“You already know most of the people,” he said, “but this, for instance”—and he raised his hand toward the camera—“is due to the network.” He did something that replaced his selfie feed with one from the top of the stairs, overlooking the broad floor below, under sunlight through blue tarps. Cables everywhere, helmeted climbers dangling. More workers than she’d seen here before. Lengths of glittering white fabric were being hauled up by electric winches.

Below this, she saw five identical, red, rectangular machines, each with a small pair of black rubber tires at the nearest end. “What is it?” she asked. “What are those red things?”

“Caitlin’s design. Fabric’s by a company I backed. Those are Honda EM5000 electric-start generators, power in case someone cuts ours tonight when we most need it. The branch plants ordered them. Tricky piping the exhaust out. Hope we don’t need them.”

“What is it you’re doing?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Then how did she design for it?”

“Someone suggested, a few months ago, that we get married here, before the place is finished. That was the impetus for this design. She already had the space entirely modeled for the reno design. Knows where every eye bolt is, up there. The fabric doesn’t need to be edged or hemmed, and she worked with standard lengths from the factory.”

“But you’re not getting married here?”

“Definitely not planning on it.”

“But you don’t know what it’s for?”

“I’m not sure the branch plants know themselves.”

“But aren’t we all looking the end of the world in the mouth, about now? And you’re up here hanging fabric art?”