Free Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

the huge transmission hump, broad as a horse’s back, separating driver from passenger, but of course their affect had changed entirely, once the actual original Humvee had become a fixture on the streets of New York.
    Never her idea of a date vehicle, your old-school civvie Hummer, and this little one has her closer to Bigend, who’s placed his chocolate-brown Stetson on the down-scaled hump between them. Mirror-world traffic has her foot foolishly working a phantom brake, as though she, seated on the British driver’s side, should be doing the driving. She clutches her East German envelope, in her lap, and tries not to do that.
    Bigend’s made it plain that he won’t think of her taking a cab (though neither, apparently, would he think of resummoning the Blue Ant car and its natty driver) nor will he countenance her suggestion of the tender mercies of the Bow Road tube.
    The rain is done, the air clear as glass.
    She spots a cluster of signage denoting things Smithfield as they whip through a roundabout, and thinks that they are near the market.
    “We’ll have a drink,” Hubertus Bigend says, “in Clerkenwell.”

7.

THE PROPOSITION
    He parks the Hummer on a well-lit thoroughfare in what is apparently Clerkenwell, nothing much to distinguish any very individual ‘hoodness to Cayce. Street level is routine London retail and services, but the buildings themselves have the look of retrofitted residency, possibly of a more Tribeca-like sort than Stonestreet’s match factory.
    He opens the glove compartment and removes a rectangular sheet of thick glossy plastic that unfolds to approximately the size of a mirror-world license plate. She sees “EU” there, a British lion, and what seems to be a license number, as he places this, open and face-up, on the dash.
    “Permission to park,” he explains, and when she gets out she sees that they are parked against a double-lined, yellow-painted curb. Exactly how well connected is Bigend, here? she wonders.
    Putting on his dark brown Stetson, he clicks his key, and the Hummer’s lights flash, go dark, flash again, and a brief, truncated lowing issues forth as the vehicle comes to full alert. She wonders if it gets touched a lot, looking like a giant’s Matchbox toy. Whether it allows that.
    Then walking with him toward what is obviously their destination, a bar-restaurant retrofitted to look as little as possible like a pub, and whose lighting reminds her, as they approach its windows and the thump of bass, of the color of spent flashbulbs, fried steel wool through smoked glass.
    “Bernard has always said you were very good.” His voice reminds her of touring a museum with those earphones on. Strangely compelling.
    “Thank you.” As they enter the place, her eye-blink take on the crowd is about white powder, the old-fashioned kind.
    But yes, she remembers these too-bright smiles, eyes flashing flat as glass.
    Bigend obtains a table instantly, something she assumes not everyone could do under the circumstances, and she recalls that her friend in New York had initially cited this as one of the counterbalances to his Lombardhood: no waiting. Cayce assumes this is not because he’s known here, but because of some attitudinal tattoo, something people can read. He’s wearing a cowboy hat, a fawn waterproof of archaic hunting cut, gray flannels, and a pair of Tony Lama boots—so they probably aren’t reacting to a fashion message.
    A waitress takes their orders, Cayce’s a Holsten Pils, Bigend’s a kir. Cayce looks at him across two feet of circular table and a tiny oil lamp with a floating wick. He removes his hat, looking in that instant quite suddenly and remarkably Belgian, as though the Stetson should be a fedora of some kind.
    Their drinks arrive, and he pays with a crisp twenty-pound note extracted from a broad wallet stuffed mainly with unreal-looking high-denomination euros.
    The waitress pours Cayce’s beer and Bigend leaves the change on the table.
    “Are