Zero history

78. EL LISSITZKY

Care for mineral water,” asked the driver, “or fruit? The basket’s right there.”

Milgrim, seated on the floor behind the passenger seat, noticed the small basket for the first time. He’d been watching the penguin joggle against the moonroof, and wondering what would happen if the Taser went off. “Is there a croissant?” he asked, leaning toward the basket.

“Sorry, no. Apple, banana. Prawn crackers.”

“Thank you,” said Milgrim, and pocketed a banana. He wanted to ask what the driver thought they were doing, actually, out in the night with a dazzle-painted robotic penguin, filled with helium, but he didn’t. He suspected that the driver had no idea; that he was someone who drove, who drove and rather specifically had no idea, and was pleasant, unobtrusive, an extremely good driver, someone who knew the city very well. So Milgrim opted to ask nothing at all. Wherever they were going was where Garreth wanted them, and perhaps Fiona would be there too.

The penguin rolled slightly as they executed a roundabout. Milgrim sensed the scrupulousness of the boy’s driving; he’d be doing nothing at all in violation, probably driving a steady two kilometers below the speed limit. Milgrim had seen people, sometimes quite unlikely people, drive this way on their way to drug deals. Transactional, he thought of it. Really the whole evening felt extremely transactional, though he’d never been offered mineral water or fruit, doing that.

The boy wore one of those headsets designed to look as much as possible, it seemed to Milgrim, like a pinball flipper had been pounded into his ear, the flipper part being the microphone. He periodically spoke softly to this, though mainly to answer yes or no, or to repeat the names of streets Milgrim promptly forgot. Milgrim gathered, though, that the boy now knew where they were going.

And suddenly, no prior announcement, it seemed that they were there.

“Where are we?” asked Milgrim.

“Wormwood Scrubs.”

“The prison?”

“Little Wormwood Scrubs,” said the driver. “You’ll cross the road, straight in from here, keep going straight, into the grass. He said to tell you she’s under a sheet of camouflage and may be difficult to see.”

“Fiona?”

“He didn’t say,” the boy said primly, as though unwilling to be further involved. He got out, closed the door, walked quickly around to the rear, and opened that door.

Milgrim kept the penguin low, away from the moonroof, as he edged crabwise back to the open rear door. There was something inherently cheerful about the buoyancy of a balloon, he thought. It must have been a wonderful day when they first discovered buoyant gases. He wondered what they’d put them in. Varnished silk, he guessed, for some reason picturing the courtyard at the Salon du Vintage.

The boy held the balloon for him as he climbed out, his shirt eerily white in the light from the nearest streetlight. Milgrim became aware of the presence of a large empty space, an utter anomaly in London. Opposite side of the road. Empty and dark.

“A park?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” said the boy. “Go straight across.” He pointed. “Keep going. You’ll find her.” He handed the balloon’s tether, the loop of nylon fishing line, to Milgrim.

“Thank you,” said Milgrim. “Thanks for the banana.”

“You’re welcome.”

Milgrim crossed the road, hearing the van start behind him, drive away. He kept walking. Through grass, across a paved walk, into more grass. Such a peculiar, slightly ragged emptiness, the grass uneven. None of the landscaping, the deep architecture, the classical bones, of this city’s parks. Waste ground. The grass was wet, though if it had been raining earlier, he hadn’t noticed. Dew, perhaps. He felt it through his socks, though Tanky amp; Tojo’s brogues were better for this than pavement, the black lugs digging in. Walking shoes. He imagined walking somewhere with Fiona, somewhere as wide as this but less spooky. He wondered if she liked that. Did motorcycle people like walking? Had he ever liked walking? He stopped and looked up at London’s luminous, faintly purple sky, all the lights of Europe’s largest city caught, held there, obscuring all but a few stars. He looked back, across the wide, well-lit road, to an ordinary, orderly jumble of housing he didn’t culturally understand, houses or flats or condos, and then back to the oddness of these Scrubs. It felt as though you could score here. He couldn’t imagine that a city this size wouldn’t conduct drug traffic in a place like this.

Then he heard a low whistle. “Here,” Fiona called softly, “get under.”

He found her huddled under a thin tarp, in one of the more esoteric new camouflage patterns Bigend was interested in. He couldn’t remember which one, but now he saw how well it worked.

“Not with the penguin! Get your controller. Hurry.” She sat cross-legged, spoke quietly, her own iPhone glowing green on her lap. She pulled the balloon down, unclipped its tether at either end, and released it. It rose slowly, burdened with the Taser. Milgrim took the penguin’s iPhone from his pocket, squatted beside her, and she drew the fabric around them both, leaving heads and hands exposed. “Get on it,” she said. “Fly. Take it up, away from the road. I can’t talk now, work of my own.” He saw she wore one of the earplug headsets. “You’re looking for a tall man. He was wearing a raincoat, overcoat. No hat. Short hair, probably gray. He has a parcel, something wrapped in paper, a few feet long.”

“Where?”

“Lost him. Tap the green circle if you want night vision, but it’s no help on the penguin unless you’re right up on something.”

Milgrim turned on his iPhone, saw a blank glowing screen, then realized that the penguin’s camera was seeing empty sky. It was so much nicer, he instantly realized, when you didn’t have to worry about bumping the wall or ceiling of the cube. He swam higher, strangely free.

“Is this guy wearing a hockey jersey with a face painted on it?” She showed him her screen. Looking down on a figure in a huge pullover of some kind, the back presenting a grotesque and enormous face.

“Looks Constructivist,” he said. “El Lissitzky? He’s breaking into that car?” The man stood close to a black sedan, his back to the camera on Fiona’s helicopter.

“Locking it. Already broke in, now he’s locking it.” Her fingers moved and the image blurred, her drone, compared to the air penguin, moving with startling speed.

“Where are you going?” Meaning the drone.

“Have to check the other three. Then I have to set it down, save batteries. Been in the air since I got here. Are you looking for the man with the parcel?”

“Yes,” said Milgrim, and sent the penguin swimming down, into the relative darkness of the Scrubs. “Who are the other three?”

“One’s Chombo. Then the one from that car, that tried to block you in, in the City.”

Foley.

“The other one’s a footballer, with metal hair.”

“Metal hair?”

“More like a mullet. Big lad.”