She put the drink on the nearest flat surface and pulled out her phone.
Her e-mail notification sounded. She looked down, to find, no pass code having been required, a single e-mail notification.
BRANCH PLANT <No Subject>
She opened it.
If you’re reading this they got me. Go with Bojangles [NOT his real name]. Trust people he takes you to. Sorry I fucked up your life. Hope things I set up help get it unfucked. Your provider’s server doesn’t have this message. Now it’s not on your phone either.
It vanished.
A sound like a doll’s tambourine.
She looked up. He held open a black bag she recognized as a Faraday pouch. Joe-Eddy owned several, all of them trademarked Black Hole. No radio signals, in or out. He gestured for her to drop her phone in.
She remembered the message. Dropped the phone in the bag. He pointed at her face. The glasses, she realized. She took them off, adding them to the bag, then the headset. Impatiently, he shook the bag. She remembered the Tulpagenics phone. Found it in the inside pocket of her jacket, dropped it in. He frowned, jingling. The case for the glasses. She found it in her purse, dropped it in.
He folded the bag with the same dramatic finality Joe-Eddy displayed when closing his, then jerked a hitchhiker’s thumb toward the rear of 3.7, toward grubby green-painted walls. She followed him back, into an ancient dishwashing area, the windowless survivor of however many previous businesses.
Eunice would have known, she thought, eyes stinging.
He took a worn black jacket from a row of coat hooks, handed it to her. Joe-Eddy’s size, down-lined, it hung on her when she’d zipped it up, its cuffs covering her hands. He passed her the kind of white mask she’d unsuccessfully tried to buy when the smoke had been at its worst. She put it on, remembering the mask Virgil had made her wear with the silicosis suit.
He put on a black leather jacket, then a white mask like hers, which she imagined pressing uncomfortably on his piercings, though maybe he’d enjoy that. Stowing the Faraday pouch inside the jacket, he zipped up. Then the thumb again, toward what was obviously 3.7’s rear door.
She followed him out, into an unroofed passageway no wider than the space behind the bar, cluttered with buckets and mops. She’d left her drink behind, she realized, but then remembered that she was wearing a mask.
Further narrowness, around two corners and into an alley, where a sledlike black Harley touring bike waited. He unshackled a pair of very white helmets from a chrome rack at the back, passing her one, then turned and mounted. She put on the helmet, fastened its strap, climbed on behind him, the engine coming to life, and then they were rolling forward.
By the time they were on Bryant, ascending into the bottom level of the bridge, she knew he was a much better rider than Joe-Eddy.
From the center lane, then, she looked up into girders blurring past. Would someone take over the bar, at 3.7? a part of her wondered. Some espontáneo, scrambling over the counter, seizing control of the levers?
Did Joe-Eddy know that Eunice was gone? Would her postproduction still be spoofing what the Robertson heads picked up in the apartment? And the drones, in their camouflaged cote atop the cartridge-refill place? What had happened to the one she’d seen in Clarion Alley, recording that mural? Would it have flown home?
The thought of it making its way alone along Valencia almost made her sob, so she concentrated on the girders, pretending they were a GIF of metal grilles, endlessly racing past, though in reality to Treasure Island, which they soon reached.
34
Working from Home
Where’ve you been?” Rainey asked, Thomas slung on her hip in the kitchen, as Netherton let himself in. “I tried to phone you.”
“In Lowbeer’s car,” he said. “It must have been blocking calls. There’s a situation.”
“The stub—?” Her eyes widened.
“It’s still there. Not war, no. Our software agent there is threatened, apparently. I’ll have to break our rule, I’m afraid.” Their first post-Thomas protococlass="underline" not working from home in the evening.
“Good.” He saw her relief.
He took the controller from his jacket pocket, fumbled with it.
“What’s that?”
“Neural cut-out for an anthropoid drone.” It unfolded, becoming a symmetrically blobby silver-toned tiara. Again he noticed its array of small black holes. They held cameras, he assumed. “I have to go there now. With Ash. She’ll work from home.”
Thomas, looking at him, winced fiercely and began to cry.
35
Fabricant Fang
Out onto the new span now, Treasure Island behind them, past those few remaining pylons of the old bridge, preserved out of concern for something’s habitat, she couldn’t remember what, and then the cold glare of what Joe-Eddy deemed the world’s shittiest LED billboards. To loop back, toward East Bay waterfront and the penetrative reek of the EBMUD plant, unseen at first but soon a dingy miniature Tomorrowland in the middle distance, fairy realm of off-white domes and sewage piping.
In Oakland, now, headed to where the drones had been printed, she assumed. Where Sevrin had manipulated lowball cryptocurrencies to pay for them. Where currently she knew no one at all.
Nimitz, she remembered, passing a sign, was the older, familial name for this highway along the waterfront. Recalling the names of neighborhoods here she’d heard of but never seen, walled magically away behind shared embankment: Ghost Town, Dogtown, Cypress Village, Lower Bottoms.
Turning left then, away from the Posey Tube, into vaguely familiar nonresidential streets. Slowing, after a few more turns, to park. Cutting the ignition.
She’d once had an interview near here, but couldn’t remember what for. Releasing the barista’s waist, she got stiffly off the bike, legs unsteady. She removed the helmet, emerging into silence, lack of vibration. She pulled down the filtration mask.
Lowering a centerstand, he pulled the bike back, front wheel slightly leaving the pavement. She looked up at the four-story gray building, industrial, not new, and then around, at the empty street behind her, a wholesale fruit business opposite, its name in Chinese and English. He dismounted, removed his helmet, then his mask, and walked toward the building.
She followed him, helmet under her arm.
The entrance was unmarked. Beyond unwashed glass doors, a drab foyer, a rectangle of gray cardboard taped to its rear wall. FABRICANT FANG 3RD FLOOR, in green marker.
The elevator, enameled a dull gray, reminded her of card catalogs in old public libraries. He pushed the button for the third floor. The door shuddered shut. She half expected thumbnails to appear, then remembered.
The elevator stopped, door clanking open.
“Welcome to Fabricant Fang,” said the man who’d brought the drones to Wolven + Loaves, and taken away the Franklins. “I’m Dixon.” Bearded, ball-capped, in a black t-shirt and brown workpants, orange plastic sonic-protection muffs hugging his neck.
“I’m Verity,” she said, stepping out. Behind her, the door made an impatient sound. She turned, saw the barista preventing it from closing, his helmet slung on its strap from his wrist. With his other hand he passed the Faraday pouch to the bearded man and took Verity’s helmet. He gestured impatiently with it, indicating the down jacket. She zipped out of it and draped it over her helmet, which he withdrew, into the elevator, then released the door, which jolted shut. Sound of his descent.
“Come meet Kathy,” the bearded man said.