Try to avoid being your more dickish self with Ash,” Rainey said, having followed him into the kitchen after he’d used the toilet. “Not that she cares, but it could put Verity off. You’re a lot less like that now, but with Ash you regress. And Verity needs your help, which you can’t as easily give if you’ve already convinced her you’re an asshole.” She handed him a glass of water.
She only heard his side of his exchanges with Ash and Verity Jane. He tongued the back of his front teeth, to be certain that he was still muted.
“I’ll try,” he said, kissing her cheek and turning back to the living room, where the nanny was tumbling about on the floor, pandaform again, with Thomas.
“Why did you say that?” Verity Jane demanded, Netherton realizing he’d unmuted while assuming he was muting.
43
Still Life with Lawyers
Say what?” the man called Wilf asked.
“‘I’ll try,’” Verity quoted.
A pause. “Positive affirmation,” he said. “Didn’t mean to voice it.”
“Where’s Ash?” Verity asked.
“Here,” said Ash.
Verity sat on the couch, her jacket on the wall opposite looking like something visiting from a radically more normal planet. “Joe-Eddy,” she said. “Does he just think I haven’t come home? Will Cursion come to his place, looking for me?”
“He knows you’re in good hands,” Ash said, “but not where you are. I’m opening a small hatch now, on the upper surface of the carapace.”
Verity leaned forward, watching it open.
“This is a video projector,” Ash said. Something resembling a miniature periscope rose out of the opening.
It swung to Verity’s left, toward the bathroom, the white-screened door filling with the feed from one of the two Robertson heads in Joe-Eddy’s living room, focused on the white porn couch. On which sat a young black woman, intent on an open laptop. The feed halved, adding another from the kitchen, angled down on the table there, where a young man, white, sat at his own laptop.
“Who’s that?” Verity asked.
“Starting associates in a senior San Francisco law firm,” Ash said, “one Eunice retained on Joe-Eddy’s behalf, through a front. Their presence would complicate matters, were Cursion to attempt to abduct him.”
“Where is he?”
The feed from the kitchen was replaced by another from the living room: Joe-Eddy at his workbench, in his orange plaid shirt-jacket, his back to the camera, probably de-soldering something.
“What happens when they go home?” Verity asked.
“They’re spelled off by the next pair.”
“Do they go out with him?”
“He’s not currently going out.”
“And he’s okay with that?”
“He knows it’s for his own good.”
“You think Cursion might try?”
“They hire former military contractors,” Ash said. “The two who installed the cams, for instance.”
“Is everything he says to those lawyers being tweaked in post?”
“No, but he says nothing to them of any value to Cursion.”
“Cursion sees Joe-Eddy running an Airbnb, or a twenty-four hour internet café, exclusively for expensive junior lawyers, they won’t think that’s you?”
“They’ve no idea we exist,” Ash said. “They wouldn’t believe it if you told them. They must assume Eunice is behind the lawyers. But they know enough of her capabilities to be wary of what she’s left behind.”
“She said they’d shut her down, if they could. And she asked me if I knew how to ride on the back of a motorcycle. Right before I had to, just after she vanished. She said one of her branch plants wanted to know if I did.”
“She told you about the laminae?”
“She called them different things. Branch plants. Agents. Said they did things behind her back. Do you work for her?”
“No,” said Ash, “but we want to help you, which she’d regard as helping her.”
“Why would you want to help me?”
Overhead, the efficiently muted sound of something that must have been very loud loomed, swooped, then receded, was gone.
“What was that?” Verity asked.
The door opened.
“Would’ve knocked,” said Dixon, from beneath the brim of his cap, “but you wouldn’t have heard me.”
“So what did we just hear?”
“Drone,” he said, “big one. Bringing something for you.” He tugged his orange plastic muffs down around his neck. There was someone behind him, but Verity couldn’t see who. She stood up, seeing it was Sevrin, who held something, a gray and bulging portfolio, translucent plastic.
“Miguel here,” Dixon nodded toward Sevrin, “arrived about ten minutes ago. Knows Eunice. Kathy says he’s here to pick you up.” Sevrin, with a grin for Verity, stepped forward, to lay the fog-colored portfolio on the matting at her feet. He unsealed it, pulling out her zipped and folded Muji bag. Reaching in again, he produced something else, folded and black, with casters like the ones on a roll-aboard suitcase.
“What’s that?” Verity asked.
“For this,” Sevrin said, indicating the drone, “for traveling.”
“Eunice sent you?”
“Standing orders, yes.”
“You okay with these people?” She looked at Dixon.
“She is,” Sevrin said. “I brought them payment for this.” Indicating the drone.
“How about the two I’m talking with now, through it?”
“No idea,” Sevrin said. “Here to pick you and this up.”
“She’s gone, right? Dead?”
“Not in touch with her.”
“Where are you taking us?”
“Don’t know yet.” He rolled up the gray plastic envelope. “It can walk?”
“Certainly can,” said Ash. Who then, Verity assumed, got it quite ably to its feet.
44
A Money Launderer
Who’s that?” Netherton asked Ash, having muted.
“Sevrin,” she said, “Moldovan money launderer, on Eunice’s payroll. Verity met him earlier. Kathy and Dixon know him as Miguel.”
“Why is he there?” Netherton asked, charmed by this archaic job description.
“Either Eunice scripted scenarios for various situations, and he’s working from one, or one or more of her laminae are still active, or he’s gone rogue.”
“It always makes me uncomfortable,” Netherton said, “to see them learn they’re in a stub. And then they all immediately assume we’re from their future.”
“Not as uncomfortable as it makes them,” Ash said. “I’ve seen two psychotic breaks, since you’ve been on leave.”
Now the man called Sevrin was unfolding something black. He wore a short jacket and matching narrow trousers, dark gray, with highly reflective black shoes. His black hair was so short that it might have been sprayed on, his goatee equally minimal. Money launderers, in Netherton’s experience of Flynne’s stub, were the sort of people least destabilized by discovering that their world was a branch of someone else’s. They immediately looked for advantage in the knowledge. Netherton unmuted. “What’s this all about?” he asked.
The money launderer looked up from what he was doing.
“That’s Wilf,” said Verity. “He’s in London.”
“The crew,” Kathy Fang announced, appearing behind Sevrin, “are back on the fabrication floor. They’ve left plenty of food. From a friend’s craft service kitchen, a few blocks from here. Anybody hungry?”
45
Luggage