Zero History

70. DAZZLE
The penguin smelled of Krylon, an aerosol enamel Fiona had used to camouflage it, so
to speak. Milgrim knew more about camouflage, now, than he would ever have expected
to, via Bigend’s interest in military clothing. Prior to that, he had only been familiar with
two kinds, the one with the Lava Lamp blobs in nature shades, that the U.S. Army had
featured when he was a boy, and the creepy photorealist turkey-hunter stuff that a certain
kind of extra-scary New Jersey drug dealer sometimes affected. What Fiona called
“dazzle,” though, was new to him. Fiona said it had been invented by a painter, a
Vorticist. He’d Google it, when he had time. It had been Garreth’s suggestion, and Fiona
had told Milgrim that it didn’t actually make a lot of sense, in their situation, though
anything was better than silver Mylar. She liked Garreth having suggested it, though,
because it seemed to her to be part of some performance-art aspect of what he was doing.
She said she’d never seen anything quite like it, what Garreth was doing, and particularly
the speed with which it was being put together.
Out in the bike yard, she’d sprayed the penguin’s silver Mylar with black, random,
wonky geometrics, their edges fuzzy, like graffiti. Real dazzle had sharp edges, she said,
but there was no way to mask the inflated balloon. She used a piece of brown cardboard,
cut in a concave curve, to mask approximately, then went back with a dull gray, to fill in
the remaining silver. When that had dried a little, she’d further confused it with an equally
dull beige, ghosting lines in with the cardboard mask. The result wouldn’t conceal the
penguin against any background at all, particularly the sky, but broke it up visually, made
it difficult to read as an object. Still a penguin, though, a swimming one, and now with
the Taser and the extra electronics that Voytek had taped to its tummy.
There was an arming sequence, on the iPhone now, that required a thumb and
forefinger, with the other forefinger needed to fire the thing. Milgrim hadn’t been entirely
sure what a Taser was before, but he was getting an idea. If he accidentally fired it, here
in the Vegas cube, a pair of barbed electrodes would shoot out, on two thin fifteen-foot
cables, propelled by compressed gas. That was strictly once-only, the barb-shooting. If
the barbs went into Bigend’s spotless plasterboard wall, the penguin was anchored there,
he supposed, and there was a lot of fine cable around. But if you tapped the iPhone again,
in the firing circle on the screen, the wall got shocked. Which wouldn’t bother the wall,
but if those barbs happened to get into anybody, which was what they were actually for,
that person got a shock, a big one. Not the kind that would kill you, but one that could
knock you down, stun you. And there was more than one shock stored in the toy airship
cabin Voytek had taped under there.
Fiona said that he wouldn’t have to worry about any of that when he flew the penguin.
She said it was just extra bells and whistles, something Garreth had tossed in because he’d