Zero History

as possible. Looking up at this unfamiliar building. “Where are we?”
She removed the yellow helmet. “Cabinet. The rear.”
They were in a cobble-paved garden drive, behind a stone wall. She dismounted,
Milgrim intrigued as always by the smooth flexibility this demonstrated. He got off as
well, with no particular demonstration of grace, and watched as she hauled thick,
snakelike anchor chains from the Yahama’s panniers, to secure it.
He followed her up the tidy cobbles to a porte cochere. Pinstripes was waiting, behind a
very modern glass door. He admitted them without Fiona having to buzz.
“This way, please,” he said, and led them to a brushed stainless elevator door. Milgrim
found that the armored oversuit made him feel strangely solid, larger. In the elevator, he
felt he took up more space. Stood up straighter, holding Mrs. Benny’s helmet in front of
him with a certain formality.
“Follow me, please.” Pinstripes leading them through one self-closing, very heavy door
after another. Dark green walls, brief corridors, gloomy watercolor landscapes in ornate
gilt frames. Until they reached one particular door, painted a darker green even than the
walls, nearly black. A large, italic brass numeral 4, secured with two brass slot-head
screws. Pinstripes used a brass knocker on the door frame: a woman’s hand, holding an
oblate spheroid of brass. A single respectful tap.
“Yes?” Hollis’s voice.
“Robert, Miss Henry. They’re here.”
Milgrim heard a chain rattle. Hollis opened the door. “Hello, Milgrim, Fiona. Come in.
Thank you, Robert.”
“You’re welcome, Miss Henry. Good night.”
They stepped in, Fiona’s ungauntleted hand brushing his.
Milgrim blinked. Hollis was chaining the door behind them. He’d never seen a hotel
room like this, and Hollis wasn’t alone in it. There was a man on the bed (the very strange
bed) with short but unkempt dark hair, and he was looking at Milgrim with a seriousness,
a sort of quiet focus, that almost triggered the cop-sensing mechanisms Winnie had last
touched off in Seven Dials. Almost.
“You’re Milgrim, then. Been hearing a lot about you. I’m Garreth. Wilson. Forgive my
not getting up. Leg’s buggered. Keeping it elevated.” He was propped against pillows and
the wall, between what Milgrim at first took to be the tusks of a mammoth, twin
weathered gray church-window parentheses. An open laptop beside him. One of his
black-trousered legs up on three additional pillows. Above him, suspended, the largest
birdcage Milgrim had ever seen, filled, it seemed, with stacked books and fairy
floodlights.
“This is Fiona, Garreth,” Hollis said. “She rescued me from the City.”
“Good job,” said the man. “And our drone pilot as well.”
Fiona smiled. “Hullo.”
“I’ve just sent Voytek over to mod one of them.”