Zero History

“Would he have to know?”
“Did you learn to think this way from Bigend?”
“I learned it being an addict. Constantly requiring something I wasn’t legally allowed to
possess, and which I couldn’t afford. I learned leverage. What you did last night, with
Meredith. You could do that with Hubertus, and find your friend.”
She frowned.
“There was someone here, last night,” he said. “From Hubertus. After you went up.”
“Who?”
“Fiona. A girl on a motorcycle. Not someone I’d seen at Blue Ant. Well, I’d seen her.
On her motorcycle. Delivering something for Pamela. But I didn’t know she was a girl.”
“Why was she here?”
“So that I could speak with Hubertus, on her phone. He told me that Sleight is either
working for or with someone else. He told me that I should regard everyone other than
Pamela, and Fiona, as suspect. And you. He said you didn’t know about it. But you do
now.”
“How did he seem to be taking that?”
“He seemed … interested? He wants you to take a cab to your hotel when we arrive.
Fiona will take me to meet him then.”
“Isn’t she in Paris?”
“She’ll be on the train we take.”
“He cultivates this stuff,” she said. “Makes sure it’s in the mix. Hires people who’ll go
off the reservation, lead him somewhere new. Harnessing chaos, Garreth said.”
“Who’s Garreth?”
“My friend. He enjoyed hearing about Hubertus. I think Hubertus made a lot of sense to
him. I thought it might be the jumping-off thing. That Hubertus erects his life, and his
business, in a way guaranteed to continually take him over the edge. Guaranteed to
produce a new edge he’ll have to go over.”
“He believes that stasis is the real enemy,” Milgrim said, glad to put any space at all
between himself and Hollis’s moment of crossness. “Stability’s the beginning of the end.
We only walk by continually beginning to fall forward. He told me,” remembering, “that
that would be the problem with being able to perceive the order flow. The potential for
stasis.”
“The what?’
“The order flow. He was talking about secrets, once. In Vancouver, when I first met
him. He loves secrets.”
“I know,” said Hollis.
“But not all secrets are information people are trying to conceal. Some secrets are
information that’s there, but people can’t have it.”
“There where?”
“It just is, in the world. I’d asked him what piece of information he’d most want to