“You killed Vespasian, didn’t you?”
Her eyes met his. Hers, if original, were over a hundred years old. “I used to regret not having come across him sooner,” she said, “thus having had the opportunity to kill him earlier, but now I have to consider the opportunity he’s provided us, however inadvertently, in Eunice’s stub.”
Netherton heard the door open behind him, signaling the end of the meeting.
“Verity’s asleep in the hotel in San Francisco,” Lowbeer said. “When she wakes, speak with her. I’m here, should you need me.”
“You knew Lev phoned me,” Netherton said. “Did you know it was about this?”
“That it might be along these lines. The conversation tripped something the aunties had in place, that I hadn’t been aware of.”
61
Continental Breakfast
Verity woke to men’s voices, in another room, conversational but indistinct. She opened her eyes, to less-than-emphatic sunlight at the edges of unfamiliar drapes.
“Russians,” someone said, “Facebook…” The one called Conner, who sounded southern. Then recognizing Virgil as he responded, though she couldn’t distinguish any of it.
She squinted at the bedside clock. 8:25 a.m.
Unzipping the liner, she pulled it down, emerged from the sheets, and noticed the white bathrobe crumpled on the foot of the bed. Putting it on, she went to the door.
“—get how super fucked it all sounds to you,” she heard Conner say, “but that’s how it went down.”
“How what went down?” she asked, opening the door.
Virgil looked up from where he sat, stocking feet up on the couch. “Conner’s scaring the shit out of me,” he said, mildly, and smiled.
“Wait’ll I tell you the arc over the rest of the season,” Conner said, from the drone’s speaker. It stood facing the window, drapes open on gray morning.
“Any coffee?” she asked.
“Here,” Virgil said, indicating a tray on the lilac hassock. “Fresh croissants.”
“Save me some.” Closing the door and going into the bathroom, she discovered further evidence that she’d managed to shower before getting into bed. She brushed her teeth, washed her face, put on jeans, a clean t-shirt, sneakers, and went to the other room.
“You sleep?” she asked Virgil, pouring herself a cup of coffee from the carafe on the tray.
“Couple hours,” he said. “Conner spelled me. You?”
“Woke that one time, slept after that.”
“2136?” he asked.
“What about it?” She tried a sip of black coffee.
“You think that’s really the year, there?”
She added milk and sugar. “Maybe.” She looked up at him. “Does that make me crazy?” She sat on the edge of the hassock, beside the tray.
“I’m crazy too,” Virgil said, “but I’ve been up half the night, with Conner. Where you went, according to him, used to be the future of where he is. They still have a common past, but it forked a few years ago. And they both share a past with us, up until something that happened here, prior to the 2016 election, but he doesn’t know what.”
She looked up from the freshly torn croissant she was spreading with jam. “I don’t think I can even grasp that, forget entertaining it.”
“Man got it right,” Conner said. “Hardly anybody does, the first time.”
“It feels like this is Lowbeer’s show,” Verity said, “so what does she actually do?” She saw Virgil’s attention sharpen, at this.
“On the books,” Conner said, “she’s just a cop. But the klept has her there to keep things stable. Their culture produces more than enough assholes, all scrambling for a bigger piece for themselves, to bring the whole thing down. But the other side of that coin’s stagnation, if the same big boys on top try to stay forever, so I think she may cover that too.”
“Klept?”
“The result,” said Virgil, “if Conner’s being straight with me, of paths we fortunately didn’t take.”
“No such luck,” Conner said. “You’re still plenty liable to get there, and so are we. And we’ve had four years now of future folks fiddling with us, trying to prevent that. Shit, we don’t even have those fancy phones of theirs yet.”
Virgil’s phone rang. He put it to his ear. “Sure is,” he said. “She’s having the continental breakfast.” He offered her the phone.
“How are you?” Stets asked. “Did you sleep?”
“I did, thanks. You?”
“Yes, but we’ve been having a very busy morning. Eunice’s branch plants have found us.”
“They’ve survived her?”
“Thrivingly.”
“What are they like?”
“Not like her at all.”
“She told me they did things behind her back. Like bring Joe-Eddy back from Germany. It was a surprise for her.”
“They’re keeping up the tradition with us. Our surprise this morning is that we’re hosting an event on very short notice. But I have to run now. We’ll speak later. Take care of yourself.”
“You too,” she said. He hung up. She passed the phone to Virgil.
“Rose Garden in ten,” Conner said, “got it.”
“Say what?” Virgil asked.
“My day job,” Conner said. “President’s taking questions from the press in half an hour, likes me to check if the translation from future-ese to folk wisdom’s solid. You need me, I’ll be right on it.”
“Break a leg,” said Virgil.
Verity, her mouth full of croissant and raspberry jam, said nothing.
“Anybody else in there?” Virgil asked the drone.
Silence.
“Money,” Virgil said, “for Stets, is a by-product of satisfying his own curiosity. He’s still amazed that most people who do what he does are in it mainly for the money. And Caitlin’s the same. So you get two curiosities like that, what could be more attractive than this crazy shit?”
“You’re supposed to be the house skeptic,” she said. “I keep hoping you’ll talk me out of it being real.”
“Conner’s been telling me his stub’s history. Same as ours, up to the election.”
“What election?”
“The president,” he said.
She saw the monochrome mural in Clarion Alley. The overt threat.
“They aren’t our future, that London,” he said. “Their past got him instead.”
She looked over at him, speechless.
“I know,” he said, nodding, “but here we sit, engaged in whatever this is, while lots of people expect the world to end, and real soon now.”
“I just agreed to disappear myself, supposedly to increase the chance of that not happening.”
“Who says?”
“Lowbeer. Met her in 2136.”
Virgil grinned. “Congratulations. You’ve crossed over.”
“To what?”
“To believing this shit. What’s disappeared look like, to her?”
“She says I’ve already done it, by being off Cursion’s radar, but I still don’t like the sound of it.”
“Me neither,” he said.