Agency

45 Luggage

Verity watched Sevrin help himself to a slice from each of two pizza boxes on the long table. The fourth floor was a single room, identical to the one below but minus the machines. Candlelit now, if those LED tea lamps from the dollar store counted. Desks, chairs, a few long tables. In the shadows of the farthest corner she recognized the outline of an industrial sewing machine.

She had her bag slung over her shoulder. When she’d opened it to get the shoulder strap, she’d remembered Eunice telling her that whoever she’d sent to the apartment had taken her passport, in advance of the men who’d installed the Robertson-head cams. But there it was, behind her toothpaste, in the zippered inner pocket where she kept it.

“Have something,” Kathy Fang said, beside her. “Sometimes you don’t know when you’ll be able to eat. Triple mushroom’s good.”

Verity wasn’t hungry, but thought she should be. She made herself take a slice of the mushroom pizza, putting it on several paper napkins, along with an industrial-strength canapé-analog from a tray of them. Film and television fuel, for a crew working overtime. Sevrin was into his second slice now. He wore a Prada-flavored bus driver uniform, or maybe the other way around, charcoal gray, with pointy black patent oxfords.

“Sorry,” said Ash, very close but from below Verity’s waist, startling her.

Verity looked down at the drone.

“We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” Ash said. “My fault. Should have introduced myself immediately. Sorry it seemed I was eavesdropping.”

“Considering how my week’s going, don’t worry about it.”

“We go now, please,” said Severin, behind the drone.

“Where?” Verity asked.

“Her protocol, I drive, get destination, start for that place, get new destination. Repeat until somewhere I wasn’t told.” He waved the floppy black nylon wheeled thing in the direction of the drone. “You, inside. We need this, on it.”

“What is it?” asked Wilf.

“Make you easy to move,” Sevrin said. “Nobody sees you walk.”

“We can’t have the drone’s mobility compromised,” said Ash, “particularly not its ability to use its arms.”

“No problem,” Sevrin said, kneeling in front of it. “Holes for legs. Arms fold inside, so”—he wiggled a black flap at the drone—“can move when you need.”

“Nice,” Kathy Fang said, behind him. “Who built it?”

“Leather shop in Castro,” said Sevrin.

“Maybe a first for them,” Kathy Fang said, “unless Cordura’s somebody’s thing.”

“Fold arms,” Severin said, spreading the case open on the floor.

The drone stepped promptly into the openings and folded its arms, making Verity suspect that Ash was in control. Sevrin pulled the case up around its torso, fastening Velcro as he went, as if putting a strange romper on an even stranger toddler. Now it had a pair of black casters where its ass should have been.

“Pull up legs,” Sevrin said. The torso settled onto the casters. He stood, hooked his hand into a handle on the case’s back, and raised it, on a black, telescoping rod. He tilted the drone back and rolled it a few feet, toward the snack table, and stood it upright, Verity following. “Put this on,” he said to her, taking a folded black garment she hadn’t seen before from the table. She put her snacks down, took it from him, and shook it out. A multiply oversized black hoodie, which she then zipped on over her jacket. “And these,” passing her a pair of black sunglasses. “Bring the charger,” he said to Dixon.

Verity, remembering her food, wrapped the pizza in two paper napkins, the macro-canapé in two more, and put them in the hoodie’s pockets.

In the elevator, she put on the sunglasses and pulled up the hood. A media-avoidance costume cliché, all too familiar from when she’d been recently post-Stets.

When they reached the foyer, Dixon held one of the two glass doors, as Sevrin, followed by Kathy Fang, wheeled the drone out of the building, Verity behind them.

The Chinese fruit wholesaler’s floodlit signs, across the street, helped dispel the darkness of the sunglasses.

“Is ours,” Sevrin said, indicating a dark Mercedes van set up as a minibus, passenger windows darker still.

In its wheeled carrier, handless insectile arms folded mummy-style across its torso, the drone suggested the larval stage of something much more intimidating, headed off to a nursery for robot monsters.

Now Dixon bent to help Sevrin boost it down, over the two entrance steps, to asphalt.

Kathy Fang, beside her, raised the upper edge of the black hood slightly, with the tip of an index finger, to look Verity in the eye. “Be careful. Hope we see you again.”

“Thanks,” Verity said. “And for pizza.” Heard the passenger door of the van power itself open.

“Did you meet her in person?” Kathy Fang asked, her tone suggesting she hadn’t.

“I think you met her as in-person as it got,” Verity said.

“Ready,” said Dixon. “Here’s the charger,” indicating where he’d left it. He stepped down from the passenger door.

“She was appreciative of our work,” Kathy Fang said, “and made me less worried about who we might be selling to. Thing’s formidable, in the right hands.”

“I liked her too,” said Verity, feeling tears start.

“Time to go,” Sevrin said, from the van.

She couldn’t see him, but turned and headed in that direction, her bag over her shoulder. The van’s engine started, headlights coming on.

Into an unlit interior, the door closing behind her.

Between the sunglasses, her almost-tears, and the van’s limo-grade tint, she couldn’t see. Pulling glasses off and hood back, she saw the drone seatbelted into the far end of the upholstered bench, directly behind Sevrin.

“Sit next to it,” he said, from the driver’s seat.

“I wouldn’t want it behind me,” she said. Stepping over the charger, she seated herself beside the drone.

“Fasten belt,” said Sevrin, pulling out of the space in front of Fabricant Fang.

She did, as he turned left at the corner, toward Jack London Square, away from the beach. Then another left. She remembered what he’d said about protocol.

“Verity? I’m Rainey,” said an unfamiliar voice, tone softer than Ash’s. “Like ‘rainy’ but with an e before the y. Wilf’s wife.”

Verity side-eyed the drone, her vision of Mrs. Drone in a flowered hat returning.

“If I were you,” this new voice said, “I’d think this was pushy, but I wanted to introduce myself. Wilf’s working from home, so I’ve had a chance to get an idea of your situation.”

“You don’t sound English.”

“Canadian.”

Verity looked at the top of the drone’s headless torso, noticing the outline of the hatch from which the periscopic projector had emerged. “You’re in London?”

“We live here, but my work’s in Toronto.”

“Doing what?”

“Public relations.”

“You and Wilf?”

“No. We met when we were working together, but I moved on to crisis management. You must have had professional advice, leaving Stets?”

Virgil, among others, had suggested that, but it hadn’t been something she’d wanted. “No. That felt like more of what I wanted out of. How do you know about that?”

“I’ve been reading about you.”

Sevrin, adjusting his earpiece, said something monosyllabic, then something else, slightly longer.

“What language is that?” Verity asked.

“Moldovan,” he said, taking another left.

It was almost impossible to see anything through the tinted side windows, the view ahead nearly as unhelpful.

“How many of you in there?” she asked the drone.

“Three,” said the Canadian, Rainey. “Wilf has a controller. Ash and I are patched into it by phone. We can each look around on our own, with the drone’s camera array. Wilf’s told me about Eunice.”

“She’s gone. Dead, I guess, except that she wasn’t alive to begin with.”

“Why not?”

“AI.”

“I wouldn’t assume she wasn’t alive,” Rainey said.

“She said she was layers of software.” Verity looked from the drone to Sevrin, wondering what he was making of this, and then ahead, finding they now seemed to be back on Nimitz, heading for the bridge. “What’s a controller?”

“It keeps your body from moving as you move your device. This isn’t full neural cut-out, as the drone has no nervous system. But with Wilf just learning to walk, his legs still move a little. When he walks in the drone, he’s sitting here on the couch, twitching his legs.”

“He’s learning to walk?”

“I am,” said Wilf, “thank you.”

“Ash,” Verity asked, “you there?”

“Yes,” said Ash.

“Regular party in a backpack,” Verity said.