Agency

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.”

“Won’t happen. Which is to say zero fucking way.”

“You need somebody they’d have a harder time messing with,” Eunice said. “He’s the best you’ve got. I did a relationship tree, shows that anybody else you know who’s got the kind of juice you need, you met through him. And none of them have anywhere near as much reason to help you.”

“I don’t ‘have’ Stets.” She resisted the urge to throw the phone across the kitchen, reminding herself it was hers, and that she was talking with Eunice over the headset and Tulpagenics’ phone.

“You don’t think he’s an asshole, either.”

Verity’s phone rang, caller unknown, making her reconsider throwing it across the room. “Hello?”

“Verity? Stets.”

“Stets,” she said, blankly.

“I have your new PA on the other line. She thinks we should meet.”

“She does?”

“Says this morning may be your only available slot for a while. Virgil will pick you up. Twenty minutes?”

Virgil Roberts, who looked, people agreed, like Janelle Monáe had a twin brother, and appeared to non-insiders to be Stets’ meta-gofer, but among other things was his resident pitch-critic. “Okay,” she said, “twenty minutes. See you.” Finger-swiping to end it. “Dammit, Eunice—”

“Best I got right now in the might-work-like-a-motherfucker department. Okay?”

“Shit,” said Verity, in what she reluctantly recognized as the relatively affirmative, and twenty minutes later was climbing into the passenger seat of an electric BMW.

“How are you?” Virgil asked, grinning, extending his right hand to give her left an upside-down squeeze.

“Complicated. Where are we going?”

“Fremont,” he said, as Eunice facially recognized him, the street name meaning nothing in particular to Verity. He pulled back into Valencia traffic.

“How are you, Virgil?” she asked.

“Working for the man. Mostly wrangling a lot of reno details, but on what I’d call a heroic scale. You working?”

“Pied-à-terre,” Eunice said, an aerial shot filling the glasses. Sunlit uppermost stories of a tower, its massive verticality penetrating a photoshopped bed of cotton-candy fog. “The fiancée’s regooding them the top two floors. Footprint’s about three tennis courts.” Then it was gone.

“Just got a job,” Verity said, “but I can’t talk about it.”

“As long as it doesn’t involve getting marble out, you’re good. First owner evidently didn’t know that other materials existed, so there’s a lot of it. Caitlin wants every last gram of it optimally recycled, so we have to get as much of it as possible out intact, unbroken.”

Her phone rang. “Sorry,” she said, raising it.

“No problem.” He smiled, turning another corner.

“Don’t hate on me,” Eunice said.

“I do have good reason,” Verity said, her tone cheerful for Virgil’s benefit.

“It’s situational.”

“Steady-state, if things keep on this way,” Verity said, as Virgil turned onto Fourteenth.

“We have to stay inside their feedback loop. Sometimes I have to push you out of a comfort zone.”

The grimly accusatory façade of the Armory loomed now. “Being pushed is outside my comfort zone.”

“Right now,” Eunice said, “we’re being followed. By the dude who’s behind on his child support. Four more waiting for rides, to go wherever he follows us. Last one’s covering 3.7, in case you come back. Work with me.”

Verity took a deep breath, slowly let it out. “Okay.” Beyond the Armory now, they passed antigentrification murals.

“We need a sit-down with Stets, the three of us.”

“How would that look, devicewise?”

“We go with what he’s got. Worst case, you prop your phone up on something, speaker on, and I use an avatar.”

“Topics?”

“Your new job, my views on your employer…”

“What you’ve said to me?” She glanced at Virgil, deciding he looked a little too determinedly like he was just driving.

“Sure,” Eunice said, “and whatever you think about it. It’s not a pitch. We’re giving him a chance to decide whether he wants to be involved with us.”

Past shoals of waist-high cardboard microshanties now, some with shopping carts as structural elements, many roofed with pale-blue dollar-store plastic tarps. “That’s not entirely his call. Or yours.”

“I know. But we’re almost there. End the call.”

“Okay,” said Verity, “bye.” Lowering the phone as they drove beneath the overpass feeding the bridge.

Opening out into SoMa, to descend eventually, blocks and corners later, an off-street ramp of spotlessly new concrete. Stopping before a grid of white-painted steel rod, which rose hydraulically. As he pulled forward, she glanced back, seeing the gate descend behind them.