Zero History

now.”
“At Blue Ant?”
Aldous nodded. “New broom,” he said, gravely, then nodded to his own earpiece, and
slipped silently away.
“We found your mouthwash,” said Rausch. “In New York. Sending it to your cabin.”
He looked unhappy with Milgrim, but then he always did.
“Aldous says that things are changing at Blue Ant. ‘New broom,’ he said.”
Rausch’s shoulders rose. “Everyone who matters,” he said, “who’s made the cut, is on
this plane.”
“It’s not a plane,” said Milgrim.
“Whatever it is,” said Rausch, irritably.
“Do you know when we reach Iceland?”
“Tomorrow morning. A lot of this has just been cruising, breaking the thing in.”
“I’m almost out of medication.”
“That’s all been placebos for the past three months. I suppose the vitamins and
supplements were real.” Rausch watched him carefully, savoring his reaction.
“Why tell me now?”
“Bigend told everyone to afford you full human status. And I quote. Excuse me.” He
scooted away into the crowd.
Milgrim slid his hand inside his jacket, to touch the almost-empty bubble-pack. No
more tiny purple notations of date and time. “But I like a placebo,” he said to himself, and
then there was a burst of applause.
The Dottirs and their unpleasant-looking father were descending the spiral, down the
thick steps of frosted glass. Milgrim knew, via Fiona, that their album had just gone
something. Ermine-haired and glittering, they stepped down, on either side of their glum
Dottirs-father. Who Fiona said now owned, in partnership with Bigend, though in some
arcane and largely undetectable way, a great deal of Iceland. Most of it, really. It had been
Bigend, she said, who’d sold those young Icelandic fiscal cowboys on the idea of internet
banking in the first place. “He put them up to it,” she’d said, in the cabin, in Milgrim’s
arms. “He knew exactly what would happen. Out of their heads on E, most of them,
which helped.”
A toast was being poured. He hurried to find Fiona and his glass of Perrier.
As he took her hand, Pamela Mainwaring walked quickly past, headed in Bigend’s
direction.
“Hi, Mum,” said Fiona.
Pamela smiled, nodded, made the briefest possible eye contact with Milgrim, and
continued on.