Zero History

74. MAP, TERRITORY
The heels of Milgrim’s Tanky & Tojo brogues, as he sat astride the high, raked pillion of
Benny’s Yamaha, didn’t quite touch the cobbles of this tiny square. Something about the
angle of his feet recalled some childhood line-drawing from Don Quixote, though
whether those feet had been the knight’s or Sancho Panza’s, he didn’t know. Fiona sat,
saddled lower, in front of him, boots firm on the pavement, holding them upright. He
held her iPhone behind her back, seeing exactly where they were now, on the bright little
window, via the application she’d shown him earlier: amid these narrow lanes, his eye
backtracking to Farringdon, the straight run to the bridge, river, Southwark, Vegas cube.
Comprehending the route for the first time.
He’d phoned Winnie from this courtyard, reading off the number Garreth had given
him. He’d written it on the back of her card, which was becoming a softer object, its
sharp corners blunted. She’d repeated it back to him, made him check it. “Good work,”
she’d said. “Stand by in case I can’t reach him.”
But that had been eight minutes ago, so he assumed she was on the phone with Garreth.
Fiona’s yellow helmet turned. “Finished?” she asked, muffled by the visor.
He looked down at the screen, the glowing map. Saw it as a window into the city’s
underlying fabric, as though he held something from which a rectangular chip of
London’s surface had been pried, revealing a substrate of bright code. But really, wasn’t
the opposite true, the city the code that underlay the map? There was an expression about
that, but he’d never understood it, and now couldn’t remember how it went. The territory
wasn’t the map?
“Done,” he said passing her the bright chip. She turned it off, pocketed it, while he put
on Mrs. Benny’s helmet and fastened the chinstrap, scarcely noticing the hairspray.
He put his feet on the pegs as she rolled forward, and curled in closer to her armored
back, watching day-bright vignettes of headlit wall-texture as she wheeled them around,
the Yahama’s engine sounding as though it were anxious for the bridge.
What would Winnie and Garreth be talking about? he wondered as Fiona drove out of
the courtyard and down the lane to Farringdon Road.