Уильям Гибсон - Agency

Lev’s thylacines pulsed, just as they touched down.

“Yes?”

“He’s gone,” Lev said. “The room where they were dining no longer exists.”

“I’m sorry—?”

“It disappeared. My father says its having so much the quality of an old wives’ tale is particularly effective. He thinks she’s telling them they mustn’t allow themselves to dismiss her as merely that.”

“Who’s disappeared?” Netherton asked.

“Yunevich,” said Lev.

“We aren’t supposed to say the name.”

“It no longer matters. My father opened by telling me I wouldn’t need the bots further, and should return them to Kensington Gore in a cab, where he ordinarily keeps them. I knew then.”

“What’s happened?”

“Yunevich was dining at Shchaviev’s, in the Strand. Second floor, stuffed bear in the foyer?”

“Don’t know it,” Netherton said.

“It’s very old klept. He was with three others, none of them names I recognized. Coconspirators, my father assumes. They were dining in the smallest of the private rooms. Single table for four, a fireplace, collection of nothing but Turgenev, various editions. Was, rather.”

“Was?”

“Room’s gone,” said Lev. “Assemblers. Their waiter, an old man, was wheeling a cart of coffee and desserts in, along the corridor from the main dining room. When he saw that it was as though there had never been a door, let alone a room, he became hysterical. Other guests went to his aid, Muscovites, unfamiliar with the place, hence unaware of a room having been there, so unable to understand what had happened. The restaurant’s security soon did, however.”

The drone was now the focus of a scrum of busy technicians, who were removing the quadcopter units. “The wall,” said Netherton, “where the door had been. What’s behind it now?”

“A closet for storing mops and buckets. Shchaviev’s prides itself on doing literally everything traditionally.”

“But it hadn’t been, before?”

“It had,” said Lev, “but behind the missing dining room. It’s that much larger now, though everything in it is a perfect match for the earlier, smaller iteration. Twenty years’ dust on the uppermost of the new shelves, they told my father.”

“Who did?”

“Individuals in a position to know.”

“Were the police informed?”

“No,” said Lev. “Isn’t done, in situations like this. The Muscovites, returning to their table in the main room, received brandies on the house. Eventually it all became rather jolly.”

“You don’t sound nearly as down, yourself,” Netherton said, “as you recently have.” It was true.

“Dominika’s been in touch,” Lev said.

“She has?”

“She wants to get back together.”

“That’s wonderful,” Netherton said, remembering what Lowbeer, and Rainey, had told him. Now, though, he wouldn’t have to be the one to relay Dominika’s desire for reconciliation. “I’m in a bit of a situation here, actually. Talk later?”

“Good luck with it, then,” said Lev, chipper as Netherton had heard him in quite a while. The thylacines vanished.

“Done talking?” Conner asked. “Didn’t want to interrupt you.”

“Yes, thanks.”

“We’re getting a tow,” said Conner, as someone dropped something black over the drone, blocking its front, rear, and peripheral feeds. A square feed appeared, snaking up out of this darkness, to find blue plastic and more technicians. “They’ve draped a hooded raincoat over our AR-15,” Conner said, peering about with what Netherton assumed was the black cable-cam. Now what Conner called the ass-feed appeared: blue tarp as carpeting, very close up, the drone’s legs entirely retracted. Then they were tipped backward, someone towing them through a slit in blue plastic, Conner’s cam-tentacle first finding Verity, in what appeared to be a long gray robe, then they were being wheeled away, the flexicam taking in quite a crowd. “Turgenev,” he said, thinking of Lev’s story.

“Klept?” asked Conner.

“No,” Netherton said, “evidently a writer.”

Someone was freeing Verity’s left wrist, someone else the other. They then moved in unison to the strap around her waist, then to her ankles. All in utter silence, but then she remembered the noise-protection muffs. Virgil, appearing above her, was still wearing his own, though not the balaclava. He bent to help her remove both, sound instantly returning. “You couldn’t pay me enough to do that again,” he said, “but I’ll bet there are plenty of people who’d pay to do it.”

Above her now, more blue tarp. They’d erected a tent up here, she realized, its fourth wall open, where they’d removed an entire panel of glass.

“Our guests just watched us get flown in,” Virgil said. “We’re putting a dummy in your place, to be carried out of here with the others, on the hammocks, part of the performance piece we’re pretending Caitlin’s doing. The lawyers think it’ll reduce the charges. We’ll slip you and Manuela out the side, and take you up to the Airstream.”

A young woman with a black crew cut knelt beside the hammock, unzipping a very large gray duffel. From it she pulled a life-sized rag doll, wearing a black balaclava over sound-muffs, jeans, and a tweed blazer with a black hoodie bunched beneath it. Virgil handed her her purse. “Put that over your shoulder,” he said. “We’re bringing your garment bag.” She did, then someone helped her into a hooded gray terry robe.

“Girl who untied me told me Caitlin’s pregnant,” said Manuela, from beneath the hood of her own gray robe. “I feel like I’m at a royal wedding.”

Virgil, having shed the top of his running outfit, was being helped into something equally black but more formal. “We’ll be with some security people, on the way upstairs. Drone has its own disguise, to cover up Conner’s rifle. This way,” and he waved them both out, through a vertical slit in the side wall of blue tarp.

They were immediately surrounded by three men and a woman, Verity recognizing them as freelancers Stets sometimes hired for large public events.

Looking up, she saw that all of the tarps covering the glass had been removed, making the space feel even larger. Glancing back, past Virgil’s shoulder, she saw the drone’s extended handle in a stranger’s hand, the drone itself draped in black, the camera unit extending from beneath a hood. It swung toward her, but the man pulling it was already headed in a different direction.

“Eunice?” Under her breath.

No reply.

She kept her head down, aware of moving through a crowd she couldn’t see, until they reached the foot of the zigzag stairs, up to the trailer, now concealed by graceful sweeping forms in gleaming white fabric, and then they were climbing.

At the top, she raised her head, to find Grim Tim blocking the trailer’s open door, in white evening shirt and a black tie, under a chrome-studded black leather jacket. Bowing slightly, with a click of his heels and a resulting facial jingle, he handed her a dirty chai, the paper cup stamped with 3.7-sigma’s logo. VERATITTY, she read on the side, in fluorescent pink paint pen.

“Good to see you,” she said, as he stepped back to admit her, Manuela and Virgil following. Over her shoulder, she saw the security team turn and start back down the stairs. “Stets or Caitlin up here?” she asked Virgil.

“They’re down on the floor, greeting people.”

“I feel like I’ve got pieces of bug in my hair,” Verity said. “Maybe between my teeth.”

“Shower,” said Virgil.

“They’ve got one?”

“Right here. Connected to the plumbing for the space, so you’ll never run out of hot. Carol!” A woman in black t-shirt and jeans emerged from the crowd, smiling. “Shower available?” he asked.