William Gibson - The Peripheral

“She never finished her second term.”

“She gets elected again?”

“Exactly. And in Lowbeer’s view, Gonzales’s assassination was pivotal, a tipping point into the deeper jackpot.”

“Shit-”

“We may be able to change that.”

“Lowbeer knows how to fix history?”

“It isn’t history yet, here. She knows, in large part, what really happened here. But now the two have diverged, will continue to. The divergence can be steered, to some extent, but only very broadly. No guarantee of what we’ll ultimately produce.”

“She’s trying to stop the jackpot?”

“Ameliorate it, at best. We are, very much, already in it, here. She hopes, as do I, that the system in which she operates can be avoided in this continuum. She believes, and I agree, that a necessary step in that is the prevention of the assassination of Felicia Gonzales.”

She stared at him. Was this the loopiest bullshit ever, even after the past week? His pale gray eyes were wide, serious. “Who kills the president?”

“The vice president, not to put too fine a point on it.”

“Ambrose? Wally fucking Ambrose? He kills Gonzales?”

“What Coldiron and your competitor are doing could affect that outcome, but by crashing the global economy, which is a danger in itself. But I can’t know all of what she knows. It isn’t as though she could brief me, and in any case she’s far more experienced than I am. Were she to tell me the use of party time was necessary to prevent the assassination, I’d use it.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s explained her world to me. She’s shared the course of her career, her life. I don’t want it to go that way here.”

“Cute sister,” bellowed Conner, “where’s hot nurse?” His surviving arm, tattooed down its length with “FIRST IN, LAST OUT” in gang-style lettering, was pale around Macon’s neck. Macon himself was bare-chested, in wet shorts, hair matted from carrying Conner under the shower. He’d managed to get Conner mostly back into his Polartec. Now he carried him to his bed, put him down, helped him get his arm into the sole sleeve.

“Going back for my clothes,” Macon said, then looked at Flynne and Griff. “You two okay?”

“Fine,” said Flynne.

“Burton good?” Conner asked, squinting at her unconscious brother.

“Hospital says,” she said.

“Head office canceled the distribution,” Griff said to Macon.

“Okay,” said Macon. “You going to tell me what it would have been?”

“Another time,” Griff said.

Macon raised his eyebrows. “I’ll get my clothes.” He went out.

“Hot nurse said squidsuit fuckers popped a cap in his ass,” Conner said. “Girl’s a baller. Macon says she took down half of them. Fucking Carlos, he only got two.”

“Why aren’t you up in the future,” Flynne asked him, “flying your washing machine?”

“Man’s got to eat.”

Hong stepped sideways through the narrow vertical slit in the barricade, a foam box in one hand. “Shrimp bowl?”

“That’s me,” said Conner.

Hong saw Burton, raised his eyebrows. “He okay?”

“Wasn’t your cooking did it,” Conner said, “it was Jimmy’s. Nearly died of the runs.”

Flynne looked at Griff, who widened his eyes slightly, as if to say their real conversation was over, for a while at least.

Gonzales? Was he shitting her? Was Lowbeer shitting him?

The bar was still locked, just as it had been some minutes before. He looked at his thumb on the oval of brushed steel, inset into the glassine veneer. He was, minus a drink, as ready as he ever expected to be to confront Lowbeer with the news of Flynne’s unwillingness to attend Daedra’s event. It wasn’t, after all, his decision, or his idea. Though he had, somehow, it seemed, become party to it.

He’d indicated to Flynne that he’d contact Lowbeer immediately, and shortly he would, certainly, but he wasn’t happy about it. He supposed he understood Flynne’s reason for taking this course, but it wasn’t his. Though perhaps it sprang from that strata of archaic self-determination he found so exciting in her. Exciting and problematic. Why did the two seem so often to be inextricably linked, he wondered? And wondered, remembering Ash’s parliament of birds, whether Lowbeer might have in any case been privy to his conversation with Flynne? He paced nervously to the window, peered out into the dark garage.

Saw squidlight pulse, as Lowbeer stepped beneath an arch, headed his way. He backed away from the window. Definitely her broad shoulders, white hair, the ladylike take on a City suit. He sighed. Found the panel that brought the armchairs up, selected two and raised them. Looked at the closed bar. Sighed again. Went to the door, opened it, stepped out. She was at the bottom of the gangway, smiling pinkly. “I was nearby,” she said, “for a chat with Clovis. You don’t mind my dropping in?”

“Do you know?” he asked her.

“About what?”

“Flynne’s decision.”

“I do,” she said. “After all these years, I still find it vaguely embarrassing. Though it wasn’t that I specifically asked to hear it. The aunties fetched it.”

He wondered if that was true, that she could still be embarrassed by her own acts of surveillance? Perhaps it was akin to his own unease at knowing she’d listened, when of course one did assume that the klept was entirely able to do that. Just as one assumed, to whatever extent, that that was always being done. “Then you heard me agree to convey Flynne’s terms.”

“I did,” she said, starting up, “and your bafflement at doing so.”

“Then you know that she won’t go, unless this so-called party time is removed from the equation.”

She paused, midway. “And how do you feel about that yourself, Wilf?”

“It’s awkward. I’m prepared to attend, as you know. But you’ve proposed to do something, in the stub, that she finds very offensive.”

“She doesn’t find it offensive,” she said, starting up again. “She finds it evil. As it would have been, had I followed through.”

“Did you intend to?”

She’d reached the top. Netherton stepped back. “I field-test operatives,” she said. “A part of my basic skill set.”

“You wouldn’t have done it?”

“I would have infected them with a mild strain of Norwalk virus, had she not protested, having made her and the others immune. And been disappointed, I suppose. Though I never felt there was much chance of that, really.” She entered the cabin.

“It was a trick?”

“A test. You’ve passed it yourself. You made the right decision, though without quite knowing why. I assume you did it because you like her, though, and that counts for something. I think I might like a drink.”

“You do?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“I can’t open it. But you might be able to. There. Touch the oval with your thumb.”

She crossed to the bar, did as suggested. The door slid up, into the ceiling. “A gin and tonic, please,” she said. He watched as her drink rose, startling in its seemingly Socratic perfection, up out of the marble counter. “And you?” she asked.

He tried to speak. Couldn’t. Coughed. Lowbeer picked up her drink. He caught the scent of juniper. “Perrier,” he said, in what seemed a stranger’s voice, as alien an utterance as any in Ash’s parliament of birds.

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the bar, young, male, German, “but we have no Perrier. May I suggest Apollinaris water?”

“Fine,” said Netherton, his voice his own now.

“Ice?” the bar asked.

“Please.” His water emerged. “I don’t understand why you’d test her,” he said. “If it was her you were testing.”