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“You aren’t sorry you didn’t quit before the shit hit?” Heidi asked. They were back in her room, where Hollis saw that the Breast Chaser had been partially painted, though wasn’t yet under construction. There was a faint smell of aerosol enamel.

Hollis shook her head.

Ajay was pacing excitedly by the window.

“Calm the fuck down,” Heidi snapped at him. “Elvis isn’t leaving the building. Get used to it.” Garreth had asked to be taken to Number Four, in order to make some calls and use his laptop. To get him there, in the chair, they’d had to go along a hallway, to the rear of the building, and take a service elevator that Hollis had never seen before. Utterly devoid of Tesla charm, being German, nearly silent, and highly efficient, it got them to their floor quickly, but then Hollis became confused about the route to the room. The hallways were mazelike. Garreth, however, had remembered the way exactly.

“So who are these people, supposed to be fucking with us?” asked Heidi. “The dipshit with the bandage. How scary is that?”

“He’s a clothing designer,” said Hollis.

“If they aren’t all pussies,” said Heidi, “who is?”

“It’s the man he works for,” Hollis said. “A retired Special Forces major named Gracie.”

“Gracie? What about fucking Mabel? You’re totally making this shit up, aren’t you?”

“It’s his last name. And Garreth’s last name, while I remember, is now ‘Wilson.’ That was what he told Bigend it was at breakfast. Gracie’s an arms dealer. Bigend was spying on some business of his, in South Carolina. Well, Milgrim was, on his orders. In the process of that, Oliver Sleight, who you met in Vancouver but probably don’t remember, Bigend’s IT security specialist, defected to Gracie-”

“But you’re in love, right?” Heidi interrupted.

“Yes,” said Hollis, surprising herself.

“Well,” said Heidi, “I’m glad that’s sorted. The rest of this shit’s just shit, right? Ajay gonna get to violate his ASBO, or what?”

There was a rap at the door.

“Who the fuck?” inquired Heidi, loudly.

“Garreth, luv.”

“He likes you,” said Ajay, delighted.

“He likes you too,” said Heidi, “so try to keep your fucking pants on.”

She opened the door, held it as Garreth powered the scooter in, then closed, locked, and chained it.

“All good,” said Garreth, to Hollis. “Old chap’s signed off, he’s calling the solicitor about the bank, calling Charlie.” He turned the chair toward Ajay. “Know this Milgrim, then?”

“No,” said Ajay.

“Are Milgrim and Ajay of a similar height?”

Heidi raised her eyebrows, considered. “Close enough.”

“Build?”

“Milgrim’s a fucking weed.”

“Bigend guessed ten stone. But Ajay’s not that broad, really,” said Garreth, considering him. “Wiry. Core strength. No excess muscle-mass. Wiry can do weed. Done any acting, Ajay?”

“At school,” said Ajay, pleased. “Islington Youth Theater.”

“I haven’t met Milgrim either. We’ll both have to. Can you do a rupert for me, then? How does a rupert walk inspection?”

Ajay straightened, thumbs aligned with the seams of his sweatpants, assumed a supercilious expression, and strolled past Heidi, taking her in with a quick and disapproving glance.

“Good,” said Garreth, nodding.

“Milgrim,” said Heidi to Garreth, “is your basic pasty-faced Caucasian fuck. You couldn’t find a whiter guy.”

“Ah,” said Garreth, “but that’s the art of the thing, isn’t it?”

Milgrim, in his stocking feet and shirtsleeves, lay on the white foam, pleasantly lost in a new and deliciously seamless experience. Above him, near the room’s high ceiling, illuminated by the large Italian floor lamp with its silver umbrella, the matte-black manta ray was turning slow forward somersaults, almost silently, the only sound the soft crinkling of its helium-filled foil membrane. He wasn’t watching it. Instead, he was focused on the screen of the iPhone, watching the feed from the ray’s camera as it rolled. He saw himself, repeatedly, stretched on the white rectangle, and Fiona, seated at the table, working on whatever she was assembling from the contents of the cartons Benny had brought in. Then, as the ray rolled, white wall, the brilliantly illuminated ceiling, then over again. It was hypnotic, and all the more so because he was causing the roll, maintaining it, executing it each time, with the same sequence of thumb movements on the phone’s horizontal screen.

It swam in air, the ray. Modeled on a creature that swam in water, it propelled itself, with a slow, eerie grace, through the air.

“It must be wonderful outside,” he said.

“More fun,” she said, “but we aren’t allowed. Once anyone knows we have them, they’re useless. And they cost a fortune, even before the modifications. When we were first shopping for drones, I said go for something like this,” meaning the rectangular thing she was assembling on the table. “It’s faster, more maneuverable. But he said he thought we should recapitulate the history of flight, start with balloons.”

“There weren’t balloons with wings, were there?” Maintaining concentration on his thumb work.

“No, but people did imagine them. And this thing can only stay up for a while. Batteries.”

“It doesn’t look like a helicopter. It looks like a coffee table for dolls.”

“Eight props, that’s serious lift. And they’re protected. It can bump into something and not be instant rubbish. Give ray a rest and look at this.”

“How do I stop?” asked Milgrim, suddenly anxious.

“Just stop. The app will right it.”

Milgrim held his breath, took his thumbs from the screen. Looked up. The ray rolled up, executed an odd little wing-tip flutter, then hung suspended, rocking slightly, its dorsal surface to the ceiling.

Milgrim got up and went to the table. Nothing had ever been quite as pleasant as this afternoon with Fiona, in Bigend’s Vegas cube, though he kept surprising himself with the recognition of just how pleasant it was. There was nothing to do but play with Bigend’s expensive German toys, and talk, while the toys, and learning how they worked, provided a perfect topic for conversation. Fiona was working, technically, because she had to assemble the new drone from the parts in the two cartons, but she seemed to enjoy that. It involved a set of small screwdrivers mainly, color-coded hex wrenches, and videos on a website on his Air, via the red dongle. A company in Michigan, two brothers, twins, with matching eyeglasses and chambray shirts.

It didn’t look like a helicopter, though it did have those eight rotors. It was built of black foam, with a bumper of some other black material around its edge, and two rows of four holes, in which the rotors were installed. It stood on four slanted wire legs now, about six inches above the table. Its four batteries, currently charging at a wall socket, slotted into each of the corners, equalizing weight. It had a slender, streamlined black plastic fuselage underneath, housing the camera and electronics.

“No testing this indoors,” she said, putting down the screwdriver. “It’s together, though. I’m exhausted. Up all night. Feel like a nap?”

“A nap?”

“On your foam. It’s wide enough. You sleep last night?”

“Not really.”

“Let’s have a nap.”

Milgrim looked from one blank white wall to the next, then up at the black ray and the silver penguin. “Okay,” he said.

“Turn off your laptop.” She stood up while Milgrim shut the Air down. She walked over to the umbrella light and dialed it down low. “I can’t sleep with these pants on,” she said. “There’s Kevlar.”