Agency

87 Lane-Splitting

If San Francisco was in fact their final destination, they were over halfway there. At least it wasn’t raining, because then her legs would be just as cold, but in sodden jeans. Otherwise, this was just too long a ride, at night on the 101, nothing to see but asphalt and bumpers, illuminated by headlights and taillights. And cold. Conner had gone to check on his day job in the White House. Told her he’d come running if she needed him.

“Verity?” A feed opened. The apartment in London, from the couch, looking into their kitchen.

“Wilf?”

“Where are you?” he asked.

“The 101, between King City and San Francisco. Coming up on Silicon Valley.”

“King City?”

“All I know about it is it’s not Coalinga.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m on the back of Grim Tim’s bike. The one you saw in Dogpatch.”

“Why?”

“He’s part of Eunice’s network.”

“Ash makes them sound busy,” he said.

“Joe-Eddy, Dixon, Kathy, Caitlin, all in it now.”

“Say hi to Verity,” said Rainey, from the kitchen, stepping into the frame, Thomas held in front of her.

“Hi, Thomas,” Verity said, though he couldn’t see her. Probably couldn’t hear her, either.

“Bye now,” said Rainey, smiling, and stepped back out of the frame.

“What’s going on in San Francisco?”

“When you find out,” he said, “tell me. I’ve had my hands full here, with something unrelated.”

“Conner,” she asked, “you there?” No reply. “He blew up a truck, at an airport, killed at least one person.” Saying it out loud made it feel even more unreal.

“Why?” Not sounding as if he thought blowing up a truck wasn’t something Conner would do.

“Someone was going to shoot down Stets’ plane. They thought we were all in it.” More unreal still.

“Hadn’t thought the place was that rough.”

“It’s not, usually.”

“Who are they?”

“Cursion,” she said, “but that was put together by Pryor, the man Conner gassed on Geary.” The traffic was slowing now, Grim Tim decelerating with it.

Wilf stood, the feed’s POV on the kitchen rising, then walked around the couch, to the window, where he looked down into their tidy dead-end. Empty, unless Lowbeer’s car was there, invisibly. Then up, at two of those towers.

“Carbon capture?” she asked.

“Those two store energy from renewables,” Wilf said. “I think they have molten silicon cores.”

The bike, which had been gradually slowing, came to a halt. “Silicon Valley,” she said, “gridlock. Better for me without the feed.”

He cut it, as Grim Tim revved them gently to the left, simultaneously straightening it up, then straight forward, between the two lines of stationary vehicles, lane-splitting.

In every car they passed, on either side, people were watching the same thing on their phones, held at lap level: a talking head, the president’s, above a chyron.

“What are they watching?” Wilf asked. With the drone perched backward, she imagined him only seeing their faces, faintly illuminated by the phones.

“The president,” said Ash, unexpectedly. “Qamishli.”

“What’s happening?” Verity asked.

“She isn’t saying, really,” said Ash.

“So Conner’s blown up a truck, to prevent an attack on Howell’s plane?” Wilf asked.

“When we nudged Cursion into experimenting with Eunice,” Ash said, “who they hadn’t yet tried to monetize, we understood that we’d be destabilizing them. A side effect, as far as we were concerned, but since then they haven’t been operating in their comfort zone. By now, having had to cope, however briefly, with a fully laminar iteration of Eunice, not to mention the various anomalies our involvement presents them with, destabilization has tipped over into dysfunction.”

“They were functional enough to mount an attack on Howell’s plane,” Wilf said.

“They’re not strategists,” said Ash, “though they assume they are, and rather good ones at that. A fully functional, strategically sound opponent would be a greater threat, but without posing the sort of unpredictable danger they currently do.” The bike was still thrumming, slowly but smoothly forward, between vehicles. “And Pryor, a mercenary opportunist, someone they’ve used before as a fixer, is taking advantage of the situation, no doubt in hope of becoming more than just a hired hand.”

Then Grim Tim gunned it, at once the scariest and most amazing aspect of lane-splitting. Joe-Eddy hadn’t been nearly this good at it.

“Is this legal?” Wilf asked, and she remembered that he’d been watching the feed from the drone, behind her, looking back.

“Yeah,” she said, instinctively flattening her elbows into her rib cage, curling her body against Grim Tim’s spine, and hugging the bike more tightly with her inner thighs, “but I don’t like it.”

Liking it even less as it became a seemingly endless stop and go, Grim Tim revving, slowing, dodging, weaving. She was getting the hang of it, though, learning a body language, a very specific mammalian bond developing between them, a physical trust, through the maze of paintwork and chrome, sometimes mere inches away. Mountain View, she remembered now, then Palo Alto, San Mateo, Daly City.

“You need to concentrate,” Wilf said. “I’ll be back.”

Her teeth were beginning to chatter. She was grateful not to have to talk.

Finally, it felt like hours, they were through the tortuous vehicular Tetris, driving into the city, whose lower speed limits reduced her chill. Headed downtown.