William Gibson - The Peripheral

“That’s odd,” said Lev.

“Who was it?”

“My secretary, with one of our security modules.”

“What about?” Please, Netherton begged the uncaring universe, let Lev be more interested in this, now, than in any behavioral modification in Putney.

“Aelita West’s secretary just canceled lunch. Tomorrow, in the Strand. I’d reservations for Indian. She’d wanted to know more about her polt. Your gift.”

Netherton forced himself to take another half-fork of eggs.

“The Met was listening in, when her secretary spoke with mine. We were surveilled.”

“The police? Seriously? How did it know?”

“She didn’t,” said Lev, annoyingly personalizing a program. “The security module did, though.”

Klept as established as the Zubov family’s, Netherton assumed, was layered in byzantine tediousness. He refrained from saying so.

“The security module interpreted it as being related to a very recent event,” Lev said, adjusting his black frames to peer at Netherton.

“How could it know that?”

“Any listener necessarily assumes a particular stance, informed by intention. Our module’s more sophisticated than that which was listening. The shape of their listening suggested what they were listening for.”

So unexpectedly welcome was this distraction that Netherton had scarcely been paying attention, but now he realized that it fell to him to keep the conversation going, and as far away from Putney as possible. “What would that be, then?”

“Serious crime, it assumed. Abduction, possibly. Even homicide.”

“Aelita?” It struck Netherton as absurd.

“Nothing so clear as that. We’re having a look. She held a reception, just this evening. While you were sleeping it off.”

“You’ve been watching her?”

“The security module’s done a retrospective, since her secretary’s call.”

“What sort of reception?”

“Cultural. Semigovernmental. It would originally have been about your project, in fact. One would assume celebratory, if Daedra hadn’t killed your man and had the cavalry in. Rather than cancel, it seems, Aelita reframed it. No idea what as. Security was excellent.”

“Where was it held?”

“Her residence. Edenmere Mansions.” Lev’s pupils moved as he read something. “She has the fifty-fifth through fifty-seventh floors. Daedra attended.”

“She did? Did you have someone there?”

“No,” said Lev, “but our modules tend to be a bit sharper than theirs. Eat.” His fork, neatly loaded with both eggs and tomato now, was almost to his mouth when he stopped, frowned. “Yes?” He lowered the fork. “Well,” he said, “it isn’t as though there hasn’t been the odd rumor that it’s possible. I’ll be down shortly.”

“Secretary?” Netherton asked.

“Ash,” Lev said. “She says that someone else is accessing our stub. Seems as though it has to do with your polt.”

“Who?”

“No idea. We’ll go down and see.” He began to eat his eggs and tomato.

Netherton did the same, finding that with the distancing of Putney and liver lamination, and possibly the aftereffects of Ash’s Medici, they’d acquired flavor.

The red Lego, spherical, now rolled slowly from behind the bowl of oranges, to join, becoming rectilinear again, with the tiniest of clicks, its yellow companion. He wondered what shape it had taken to get back up the table leg.

Going back to Jimmy’s was a bad idea. Knew it soon as she’d walked into the dark and the dancing, the smell of beer and state weed and homegrown tobacco. The bull was leaning out of the mirror, eyeing a girl who might have been fourteen. The LEDs were pulsing to a song Flynne had never heard before and wouldn’t have wanted to again, and she was the oldest living thing in the building. Still wearing her improv security guard outfit. And she hadn’t even found Macon, over on the side of the lot where mostly black kids hung, where he did his funny business. She’d come because she still needed to ask him what Homes might have thought of the phone he’d made for her, but maybe she’d really just been hoping for someone to talk to. She hadn’t felt like the sandwich she’d made to eat after the shift, and she didn’t feel like she’d ever be hungry.

That shit in the game. She hated that shit. Hated games. Why did they all have to be so fucking ugly?

She got a beer, her phone dinging as Jimmy’s ran a tab. Took the bottle to a little round corner table, unwiped but mercifully empty, sat down, tried to look like the meanest old lady she could. Girl who’d passed her the beer had a Viz, like Macon and Edward had, a tangle like silver cobweb filling one eye socket, but you could still see the eye behind it, watching whatever the little units strung in the tangle were projecting. Hefty Mart had to scan your socket before they fabbed you one, so it would fit, and there weren’t any funny ones yet. Looked better on a black face, she thought, but most every kid here had one and it made her feel old, and more so that she thought they looked kind of stupid. It was something every year.

“Look like you’ve come up short on the number of fucks you need to not give,” Janice said, appearing out of the crowd with a beer of her own.

“Short a few,” Flynne agreed, but no longer the oldest thing in Jimmy’s. She’d always liked Janice. She automatically looked around, because Janice and Madison weren’t usually very far apart. He was at a table with two boys, each one with a silver-tangled eye. He looked like Teddy Roosevelt, Madison, and most of what she knew about Teddy Roosevelt was that Madison looked like him. He had a mustache he trimmed but never shaved off, round titanium-wire glasses, and a moth-eaten wool cruiser vest, olive green, complicated breast pockets bristling with pens and little flashlights.

“Want some company with it?”

“Long as it’s you,” Flynne said.

Janice sat down. She and Madison had that thing going, that some married people did, where they’d started to look like each other. Janice had the same round glasses but no mustache. They could have swapped outfits without attracting any attention. She was wearing cammies that were probably his. “You really don’t look too happy.”

“I’m not. Worried about Burton. Homes had him for going up to Davisville and beating on Luke 4:5. No charges, just a public safety detention.”

“I know,” Janice said. “Leon told Madison.”

“He’s doing something on the side,” Flynne said, glad of the music, looking around, knowing Janice would understand about the disability money. “I filled in for him.”

Janice raised an eyebrow. “You don’t give the impression you liked it much.”

“Beta testing some kind of creepy-ass game. Serial killers or something.”

“You played anything, since that time at our place?” Janice was watching her.

“Just this. Twice.” Flynne felt differently uncomfortable. “You seen Macon?”

“He was here. Madison was talking to him.”

“In here much, you and Madison?”

“Do we look like it?”

“So fucking young.”

“It was young when we were here before, remember? You were, anyway. Burton’s kid sister.” She smiled, looked around.

As the song ended, there was a blast of deep-throated exhaust from out in the parking lot.

“Conner,” said Janice. “Not good. Fucking with those boys.”

Flynne, feeling like they were back in high school, followed Janice’s gaze. Five big boys with bleached hair, at a table covered with beer bottles. They’d be on the football team. Too thick for basketball. None wore a Viz. Two of them stood, each taking an empty green beer bottle in either hand, by the neck, and headed out to the porch.