"Yes, but perhaps he has only a finite number of favors left, to call in."
"Favors?"
"I don't imagine that he himself has any particular resources. It isn't his talent that might find you what you want, or any knowledge on his part. I believe he calls in a favor, asks someone, and sometimes is told the answer."
"Do you know who he asks?" Not really expecting an answer herself.
"Have you heard of 'Echelon'?"
"No." Although she thinks she has, but can't quite place it.
"American intelligence have a system that allows for the scanning of all Net traffic. If such a thing exists, then Hobbs might be its grandfather. He may well have been instrumental in its creation." He raises an eyebrow, as if to signal that is all he knows, or is willing to say, about so outre a subject.
"I see," she says, wondering if she does.
"Well," Ngemi pauses near the descending escalator, "you must know what you're doing."
"No, I don't. I don't at all. But thank you, for all your help."
"Good evening, then. I will phone you, in the morning."
She watches the shaven dome of his large dark head descend, on an angle, into the London underground.
She goes to find a cab.
FUCK me. Do you know that expression? 70s. Not that I want you to fuck me, but that I'm expressing a profound and baffled amazement.
She's ready for an early night, on CPST, and is checking her mail prior to brushing her teeth. Parkaboy first up.
Judy hasn't left Darryl's since my last message. More hot and heavy with Taki, who wants to get on a plane for California but he's got a day job designing games for a Japanese phone system. What I want to know is, is any of this worth it? Are you getting anywhere? Any closer at all?
Maybe, she decides. That's all she can tell him.
Maybe. I've got something in play here, but it may take a while to see whether it works. When I know more, you will. ,
Send. Boone next.
Greetings from the Holiday Inn down the road from the technology park. An original, lots of beige. Have made contact on supposed business but have no idea when anything useful might turn up. Next stop, the lounge downstairs, where some of the weaker sheep of the firm in question may congregate. You okay?
That really is the slow route, she thinks, though she doesn't know what else he should be trying, other than buddying up with Sigil employees.
I'm fine. She pauses. Nothing to report.
Which may well be the case.
Send.
Next is… spam? An all-numerical hotmail address.
Yes It ends in .ru Observe the protocol H-B
Baranov, e-mailing from the hyphen.
.ru
Russia.
- /
Monday morning, in Neal's Yard, she keeps the Blue Ant phone on, and nearby, while she works through her program.
It rings while she's on the PediPole, a device that makes her think of Leonardo's drawing of the human body's proportions as they relate to the universe. Her palms, fingers spread, are pressing down into black foam stirrups.
The woman using the nearest reformer frowns.
"Sorry." Cayce lets up the springs, releases the stirrups, retrieves the phone from the pocket of the Rickson's. "Hello?"
"Good morning. It is Ngemi. Are you well?"
"Yes, thanks. And you?"
"Indeed well. Stephen King's Wang ships today. I am very excited."
"From Maine?"
"From Memphis." She hears him smack his lips. "Hobbs phoned. He says he has what you need, and now it is up to you. Shall we visit Mr. Greenaway and pay his ugly price?"
"Yes. Please. Can we do it now?"
"He will not open until eleven. Shall I meet you there?"
"Please."
He gives her the number in Bond Street. "See you there."
"Thank you."
She places the phone at the blond wooden base of the PediPole and gets back into position.
IF there's any one thing about England that Cayce finds fundamentally disturbing, it is how "class" works—a word with a very different mirror-world meaning, somehow. She's long since given up trying to explain this to English friends.
The closest she can come is that it's somewhat akin, for her, if only in its enormity, to how the British seem to feel about certain American attitudes to firearms ownership—which they generally find unthinkable, and bafflingly self-evidently wrong, and so often leading to a terrible and profligate waste of human life. And she knows what they mean, but also knows how deeply it runs, the gun thing, and how unlikely it is to change. Except, perhaps, gradually, and over a very long time. Class in England is like that, for her.
Mostly she manages to ignore it, though there's a certain way they can have, on first meeting, of sniffing one another's caste out, that gives her the willies.
Katherine, her therapist, had suggested that it might in fact be because it was such a highly codified behavior, as were all of the areas of human activity around which Cayce suffered such remarkable sensitivity. And it is, highly codified; they look at one another's shoes first, she's convinced, and Lucian Greenaway has just done that to Ngemi.
And doesn't like them.
