Virgil had pulled his legs up now, to allow the drone past, on its way to the door’s window, to once again stand, braced with its spidery arms, as if peering out.
“That’s Dixon,” she said. “He and Kathy Fang built the drone.” Through the windshield’s spatter of bugs, she saw him lifting the gate, walking backward with it, to allow them through. Driving past him, they jolted down, toward the oak, following faint tracks of tires. Beside the black tree, elevated horizontally on a rusted iron framework, stood a large, less evenly rusted cylindrical tank, originally gray. Behind this, she saw, was Sevrin’s Fiat 500, or another like it, equally beige. It had been mounted with a black roof rack, supporting a streamlined black cargo box. Comically oversized for the tiny car, it reminded her of the Pelican case Dixon had passed her beneath the counter in Wolven Loaves.
“That yours?” she asked Sevrin.
“Unless plates copy mine,” he said, braking the van and turning off the ignition.
“I’m out first,” said Conner, retracting the drone’s arms to their previous length. “If there’s a problem, Verity and Virgil hit the floor and Sevrin hauls ass. Open it.”
Sevrin touched something, the door powering open, and the drone hopped down with an agility she didn’t question now, with Conner in control. Facing Dixon, who’d closed the gate behind them and followed the van at a trot, it put whatever currently passed for its hands on hips it didn’t have. “Dixon, right?” she heard Conner ask, the drone’s volume slightly up.
“Who’s asking?” Dixon asked, having come to a halt, black-gloved hands at his sides.
“Name’s Conner. You built this, right?”
“Partner and me.”
“Good job,” Conner said. “What’s the situation here?”
“I drove Sevrin’s car down,” Dixon said. “He’ll drive it back, with Virgil. Someone else is taking you and Verity, ETA in ten. I need help, unloading this box and getting things into the van.”
“What’s in it?” Verity asked, meaning the black case, as she stepped down and out into an untinted afternoon, the fresh air smelling faintly but pleasantly of manure.
Dixon nodded in greeting. “Drones,” he said, “not aerial. We didn’t make them. Kathy sends you her best.” He went to the Fiat, unlatched the front end of the box’s lid, and raised it on twin aluminum tubes, clicking them upright. She saw glossy black bundles, against the dull black plastic of the lid. He looked back at her. “Time’s tight,” he said. “Anything you have in the van, we need it out now.”
“I’ll help you,” said Virgil, behind her. She turned to see him crouched in the van, phone in hand. He got out and came forward.
“Pass them to me,” Dixon said. “They’re heavy. Don’t drop them.” Extending, in one gloved hand, a limp pair of black gloves.
“Latex-free?” Virgil looked serious about this.
“Nitrile,” Dixon said.
Virgil accepted them, pulling them on. “You’re policing our perimeter, right?” he asked the drone.
“Shit no,” said Conner. “Just admiring cows.” The drone’s nonhands were no longer on its hips, but on the ground, its arms having extended again, lending it a quality of simian alertness, like a headless Cubist orangutan surveying its savannah.
Sevrin, having gotten out on the driver’s side in the meantime, leaving his door open, came around to the open passenger door. “Your bag,” he said to Verity, “and charger. I get them.”
“And the hoodie,” she said. “You good with all this?” Meaning Dixon, the Fiat, the roof box.
Sevrin nodded, turned to the van.
Now Virgil, taller than Dixon, was lifting a black bundle from the box. It was rectangular, larger than the Pelican case but not by much, wrapped in shiny, thick-looking, flexible black plastic. It was sealed with transparent tape, and obviously heavy. He passed it to Dixon.
“Easy does it,” said Dixon, taking it and putting it carefully on the ground.
She remembered her dream. Eunice’s last will and testament. Looked up at the sound of a jet, but couldn’t find it. When she lowered her eyes, Sevrin was already in the van, on his knees, doing something between the passenger seats. Dixon walked toward it, looking as though he was being careful where he placed his feet, the first of the black bundles in his gloved hands, over which white Helvetica appeared: j-e, getting feed from ur glasses.
“Where are you?” Verity asked.
Home alone with lawyers. U?
“Route 25. Near Coalinga.”
U arent going there.
“Why not?”
Ur beard guy?
“Dixon.”
He’s driving something there. Ur going somewhere else.
“Who with?”
Cant say.
This last text over the backdrop of her view of Route 25, as a U-Haul headed toward Coalinga passed a silver Range Rover going in the other direction.
“Here’s your ride,” Conner said, the drone pointing, long arm extended. She hadn’t heard the engine of the black touring bike until then, and now it was pulling over, front shocks bumping over the rough shoulder as it rolled toward them.
She ran, up to the closed gate. Reaching it, she took hold of the length of tubing topping it and lifted. She began walking backward with it, so the bike had room to be ridden in and then down, toward the van. “I’ll get this,” Virgil said, beside her, taking the white pipe, lifting, beginning to close it.
She turned as the bike came to a halt, facing the immobile drone.
“Why’s he here?”
To take you back.
She started down the slope. Grim Tim and the drone, figures in a landscape. Then she saw Sevrin, crawling out backward, on hands and knees, from between the van’s two rows of passenger seats, pulling her Muji bag after him.
80
The Square Mile
Arriving at the bottom of the Denisovan Embassy’s annoyingly melted staircase, the place’s décor definitely having a cumulative effect on him, Netherton immediately spotted one of Lev’s redheads, though not yet draped in security sequins. This one was dressed, it struck him, as though it might be a publicist, but in fact was exactly the opposite: a counter-publicist. A cousin of Bertie’s, the fallen coachman, but where Bertie’s every movement had been remotely inspired, be that doing whatever coachmen did or homicidally attacking you with a bung starter, the redhead’s primary boast was zero connectivity. In a society in which most objects of any complexity whatever could recall anything they’d ever encountered, this one remained in a permanent state of tabula rasa.
“Good morning, Mr. Netherton,” it said, evidently remembering his name. How was that possible, if it had no memory? He made a note to ask Lev, once privacy had been established. “This way, please.”
The place was busier now than he’d seen it, perhaps the result of this being a traditional hour for breakfast. Following the bot-girl toward the catacombs beneath Hanway Place, he glimpsed Bevan Westmarch, a former associate from his own days as a publicist, seated at a crowded table. Wetmark, Rainey called him, having also worked with him. Now he clearly saw Netherton. Pretending not to have noticed him, Netherton continued after the bot-girl.
Lev had chosen a larger table than their last, Netherton saw, evidently to allow room for a full English breakfast he’d already finished, as evidenced by various side plates. For Lev, Netherton knew, a full English was stress-eating. He himself, he assumed, wasn’t expected to have breakfast, full or otherwise, though a place had been set for him opposite Lev. A girl, a real one, or in any case unfreckled, was just then putting a white bowl of café au lait at his place. “How are things in Cheyne Walk?” he asked, seating himself uncomfortably on yet another stalagmite.