Zero History

65. LEOPARD SKIN IN MINIATURE
She stood on Cabinet’s steps, looking at unexpected lights, beyond trees, in the privacy
of Portman Square, Robert hovering watchfully behind her, after the tall Slow Foods van
pulled away, driven by a young blonde with a cap worryingly like Foley’s.
Sounds of tennis. There was a court in there. Someone had decided to play a night
game. She thought the court would be too wet.
When she went back in, Inchmale and Heidi were in the lobby, Inchmale strapping
himself into his Japanese Gore-Tex. “We’re going to the studio to listen to some mixes.
Come with us.”
“Thanks, but I’m needed.”
“Either offer stands, Tucson or Hampstead. You could stay with Angelina.”
“I appreciate it, Reg. I do.”
“Quietly stubborn,” he said, then looked at Heidi. “Beats violently obstreperous.” Back
to her. “Consistent, anyway. Keep in touch.”
“I will.” She headed for the elevator. For the ferret, in its vitrine. Silently offering
prayer: that Garreth’s scheme, whatever it was, be as ferrety as it needed to be, or that
whatever had happened to this particular ferret, to earn it its timeless somnambulistic
residence here, not happen to Garreth, to Milgrim, or to anyone else she cared for.
Its teeth looked bigger, though she knew that couldn’t be possible. She pressed the
button, heard distant clanks from above, sounds from the Tesla machinery.
She hadn’t been aware of caring for Milgrim, really, until it became apparent that
Bigend would so easily feed him to Foley and company, if that meant getting Bobby
Chombo back. And it wouldn’t be Chombo Bigend needed, she knew, but something
Chombo knew, or knew how to do. That was what bothered her, that and the fact of
Milgrim having been reborn, or perhaps born, on a whim of Bigend’s, simply to see
whether or not it was possible. To do that, and then to trade the resulting person, possibly
to trade his life, for something you wanted, no matter how badly, was wrong.
When the lift arrived, she hauled the gate aside, opened the door, stepped in. Ascended.
On her way through the corridors to Number Four, she noticed that one of the
landscapes now contained two follies, identical, one further back, on a distant hillside.
Surely it had always been there, the second folly, unnoticed. She’d give it no further
thought, she decided firmly.
She knocked, in case Garreth and Pep were still deep into stays. “It’s me.”
“Come in,” he called.
He was propped up in the Piblokto Madness bed, the black bandage of the coldpumping
machine around his leg again, the black laptop open on his stomach, headset on.
“Busy?”