Zero History

alloon, he thought. It must have been a wonderful day when they first discovered
buoyant gases. He wondered what they’d put them in. Varnished silk, he guessed, for
some reason picturing the courtyard at the Salon du Vintage.
The boy held the balloon for him as he climbed out, his shirt eerily white in the light
from the nearest streetlight. Milgrim became aware of the presence of a large empty space,
an utter anomaly in London. Opposite side of the road. Empty and dark.
“A park?” he asked.
“Not exactly,” said the boy. “Go straight across.” He pointed. “Keep going. You’ll find
her.” He handed the balloon’s tether, the loop of nylon fishing line, to Milgrim.
“Thank you,” said Milgrim. “Thanks for the banana.”
“You’re welcome.”
Milgrim crossed the road, hearing the van start behind him, drive away. He kept
walking. Through grass, across a paved walk, into more grass. Such a peculiar, slightly
ragged emptiness, the grass uneven. None of the landscaping, the deep architecture, the
classical bones, of this city’s parks. Waste ground. The grass was wet, though if it had
been raining earlier, he hadn’t noticed. Dew, perhaps. He felt it through his socks, though
Tanky & Tojo’s brogues were better for this than pavement, the black lugs digging in.
Walking shoes. He imagined walking somewhere with Fiona, somewhere as wide as this
but less spooky. He wondered if she liked that. Did motorcycle people like walking? Had
he ever liked walking? He stopped and looked up at London’s luminous, faintly purple
sky, all the lights of Europe’s largest city caught, held there, obscuring all but a few stars.
He looked back, across the wide, well-lit road, to an ordinary, orderly jumble of housing
he didn’t culturally understand, houses or flats or condos, and then back to the oddness
of these Scrubs. It felt as though you could score here. He couldn’t imagine that a city this
size wouldn’t conduct drug traffic in a place like this.
Then he heard a low whistle. “Here,” Fiona called softly, “get under.”
He found her huddled under a thin tarp, in one of the more esoteric new camouflage
patterns Bigend was interested in. He couldn’t remember which one, but now he saw how
well it worked.
“Not with the penguin! Get your controller. Hurry.” She sat cross-legged, spoke quietly,
her own iPhone glowing green on her lap. She pulled the balloon down, unclipped its
tether at either end, and released it. It rose slowly, burdened with the Taser. Milgrim took
the penguin’s iPhone from his pocket, squatted beside her, and she drew the fabric
around them both, leaving heads and hands exposed. “Get on it,” she said. “Fly. Take it
up, away from the road. I can’t talk now, work of my own.” He saw she wore one of the
earplug headsets. “You’re looking for a tall man. He was wearing a raincoat, overcoat. No
hat. Short hair, probably gray. He has a parcel, something wrapped in paper, a few feet
long.”
“Where?”
“Lost him. Tap the green circle if you want night vision, but it’s no help on the penguin