Verity examined the unfamiliar mechanism of one of the latches. “How?”
White-outlined cartoon hands appeared, demonstrating the opening of a white-outlined lid. Doing as the hands had done, she undid the real latches, raised the real lid. Four square holes formed a larger square, in a deep bed of black foam. “Check it out,” Eunice said.
From the bottom of one hole, not quite silently, rose something dark gray and nonreflective. When it was level with her glasses, Eunice opened a feed, Verity abruptly looking into her own eyes, unflatteringly captured. Then it rose again, the feed showing her the kitchen behind her, the entrance to the living room.
Stets had had drones, a collection of them. People gave them to him, hoping he’d angel their start-up. This one was quieter than any of his, effectively silent. “How long can it stay up?”
“Eight hours. Less with a payload.”
“None of them last that long,” Verity said.
“This one’s military, or wants to be. Open the kitchen window.”
Verity went to the window, turned its paint-crusted latch, and heaved it up. In the feed, the drone’s POV reversed, showing her the doorway into the kitchen. Fast-forward blur, then her own back, in Joe-Eddy’s orange plaid shirt-jacket, which she instantly decided never to wear again, and then it was past her, with just the faintest gnat-zip, and rising, as quickly, straight up. Clearing the flat roof’s low parapet.
She’d never seen the roof here before, not that anything seemed to be up there. The drone confirmed this, quickly reconnoitering. It hovered over something. A rain-flattened clutter of gray bone, a small beaked skull, a hint of fossil wings.
“Gull,” said Eunice.
“How do you get up here? Without a drone, I mean.”
The drone turned, showing Verity a hatch, sheathed in dented metal sheeting, dull aluminum paint flaking.
“That’s the rental next door. Nonresidential. Lessee’s Vietnamese.”
“So Joe-Eddy’s probably never been up here?”
“He agile?”
“No.”
“Hang on,” Eunice said. “Over the edge.” The drone’s POV zipped toward Valencia, over the front parapet, and dove for the sidewalk below. Verity gasped. A frozen instant, inches above the concrete sidewalk, then it whipped back up, to look into Wolven + Loaves, where a young Asian man sipped something from a white mug, seated exactly where Verity had been, minutes before. Eunice face-captured him.
“Eunice, what is it you think you’re doing?”
“Always just finding out,” Eunice said, the drone shooting up, to overlook the rooftop again. “Aren’t you?”
10
Rio
The tardibot having seen Netherton to Ash’s door, claws clacking, he stood alone, on uneven pavement, awaiting the car Ash had summoned.
Where Ash’s road intersected the high street rose the side of a 1930s cinema. High up, on the windowless wall facing him, on a Moderne lozenge, steel-rimmed Prussian blue capitals spelt RIO. He’d taken Rainey there once, he remembered now, to a Kurosawa festival, having by then forgotten that it overlooked Ash’s weird hacienda.
The car, on arrival, proved to be a front-loading single-seater, the smallest of its three wheels in the rear. Like a solo sauna that had escaped from a day spa, Netherton thought. It opened its single door. “Good evening, Mr. Netherton,” it said, as he got in.
He gave it the address in Alfred Mews as the door closed, then phoned Rainey. “On my way,” he said, her sigil brightening as they pulled out onto the high street.
“How’s Ash?” she asked.
“She’s lost the bifocal eyes. And the tattoos. Told me she’s seeing someone.”
“Make you any less irritable around her?”
“No.”
“This was business, I take it?” Her joke.
“Lowbeer. Has a new project.”
“A stub,” she said.
“How did you know?”
“From all you say, she’s obsessed with them.”
“How’s Thomas?”
“Sleeping.” She opened a feed of his son, curled in his crib.
“I’ll be there soon.”
“Bye, then,” she said.
Thomas vanished. Rainey’s sigil dimmed.
He watched the passing shops, the few pedestrians. A couple stood talking, in the doorway of a pub.
He closed his eyes, which caused the single seat’s headrest to improve its support. When he opened them, the car was at a traffic signal, still in Hackney.
Through the windshield, at a pedestrian crossing, he saw something tripodal, perhaps three meters tall, which was also waiting, draped in a cloak of what appeared to be damp-blackened shingle.
Hackney, he thought irritably, glaring at it. Always gotten up as something it wasn’t.
11
Relationship Tree
Down under Joe-Eddy’s workbench, two inches above dust bunnies and a gum wrapper someone had folded as small as humanly possible, Verity was navigating the five-inch-wide canyon between the wall and an unused piece of drywall when Eunice opened the feed.
It was divided equally into six, each showing her a stranger, two of them female. “Who are they?” she asked, straightening up in the workstation chair and putting the drone into hover with the unbranded controller Eunice had downloaded to her phone.
“From something like Uber,” Eunice said, “but for following people.”
“You’re shitting me. What’s it called?”
“Followrs,” said Eunice, the spelling blipping past in Helvetica. “You really haven’t been online much this year, have you?”
“Who’re they following?” Already knowing the answer.
“You.”
Verity looked more closely. A young Latina in the lower right corner was shown at a different angle, the image in a different resolution. “Lower right, that’s in 3.7?”
“Getting that one off a cam I found there. Two more from street cams. Only have four drones, and you’re using one to dick around with under furniture.”
The girl in 3.7 seemed engrossed in her phone. “What’s she doing?”
“Candy Crush Saga. Nondigital surveillance is weaponized boredom.”
Another feed showed a white man seated behind the wheel of a car, looking straight ahead, apparently unaware of the drone in front of him. Having that forgettable a face would be a plus, she supposed, for doing this.
“Gavin put them onto you. He thinks it’s untraceable.”
Verity started backing out from behind the plasterboard. “If they’ve got somebody in 3.7,” she said, “that means they were watching us last night.”
“Somebody from Cursion was. Name’s Pryor. Found him on a couple of security cams, along the street. Facial recog’s a deep dive. Nasty. The six from Followrs are low-risk, though. The one in the car is behind on his child support, but that’s the worst of it, recordwise.” The feed blinked off.
“What do they want?” Verity asked, as the drone cleared the end of the plasterboard.
“Sight of you. Since I’m keeping Tulpagenics from being able to monitor us, Gavin’s got these guys on it.”
Verity flew the drone into the kitchen, where she was seated at the table, Pelican case open in front of her. Something took the drone over then, maybe Eunice, maybe the case. It hovered above the case, adjusted position, then descended, straight down into one of the square holes in the foam. “You found them by using the drones?” she asked Eunice.
“That and banking faces.”
“So what’s it mean?”
“You won’t like this at all,” said Eunice, “but it means you need to go and see Stetson Howell.”