William Gibson - The Peripheral

“It was,” she said, gesturing toward the armchairs. He picked up his scentless water and followed her. “I’ve a further role in mind, for her,” she continued, when they were both seated, “should we be successful at Daedra’s soiree. And perhaps one for you as well. I imagine you’re actually rather good at what you do, in spite of certain disadvantages. Disadvantage and peculiar competence can go hand in hand, I find.”

Netherton sipped the German mineral water, tasting faintly of what he supposed might be limestone. “What exactly are you proposing, if I may ask?”

“I can’t tell you, I’m afraid. In sending you to Daedra, I send you beyond the reach of my protection, and of Lev’s. It’s best that you know no more than you do now.”

“Do you,” Netherton asked, “know literally everything, about everyone?”

“I most certainly don’t. I feel hindered by a surfeit of information, oceanic to the point of meaninglessness. The shortcomings of the system are best understood as the result of taking this ocean of data, and the decision points produced by our algorithms, as a near enough substitute for perfect certainty. My own best results are often due to pretending I know relatively little, and acting accordingly, though it’s easier said than done. Far easier.”

“Do you know who that was, the man Flynne saw, when Aelita was killed?”

“I imagine I do,” she said, “but that isn’t good enough. The state requires proof, paradoxically, however much it may be built on secrets and lies. Were there no burden of proof, this all would be boneless, mere protoplasm.” She sipped her gin. “As it can all too often seem to be. Waking, I find I must remind myself how the world is now, how it became that way, the role I played in what it became and the role I play today. That I’ve lived on, absurdly long, in the ever-increasing recognition of my mistakes.”

“Mistakes?”

“I suppose I shouldn’t call them that, realistically. Tactically, strategically, in terms of available outcomes, I did the best I could. Rather better, sometimes, it can feel, even today. Civilization was dying, of its own discontents. We live today in the result of what I and so many others did to prevent that. You yourself have known nothing else.”

“Well hey,” said Lev’s brother’s peripheral, the dancing master, from the entrance to the master bedroom, “didn’t expect you.”

“Mr. Penske,” said Lowbeer, “delighted. How goes it with the cube?”

“Who thought that thing up?” asked the peripheral, now very clearly Flynne’s brother’s friend, Conner, lounging against the jamb in a way Pavel would never have done.

“A tortured nation,” said Lowbeer, “in the sole service of a pervert.”

“Sounds about right,” said Conner.

“And how is Mr. Fisher?” asked Lowbeer.

“You’d think he got his ass blown off,” said Conner, an oblique little smile misplaced amid the dancing master’s facial bone, “the way everybody goes on about it.”

You work for Klein Cruz Vermette?” she asked the red-haired girl, who was making up a bed for her in a smaller tarped-off section behind the one they’d eaten in. There was a bare slab of beige foam on the floor, nothing else. The girl had just popped a new sleeping bag out of a stuff sack, was unzipping it.

“I do.” She unrolled the bag and spread it on the foam. “Pillows haven’t come, sorry.”

“How long?”

The girl looked at her. “The pillows?”

“When’d you start, at KCV?”

“Four days ago.”

“Got a gun in that pouch?”

The girl looked at her.

“You work for Griff? Like Clovis?”

“I’m at KCV.”

“Keeping track of them?”

Same look, no answer.

“So what do you ordinarily do?”

“I’m not just trying to be some kind of hard-ass,” the girl said, “but I can’t tell you. I’m under constraint, and that’s aside from just basic opsec. Ask Griff.” She smiled, to take the edge off.

“Okay,” said Flynne.

“Want a fast-acting sedative with a really short half-life?”

“No, thanks.”

“Sleep tight, then.” When she was gone, it struck Flynne that she’d changed from her cammies into really bad mom jeans and a man’s blue tank top with the mascot of the Clanton Wildcats on the front. On the way in here, they’d passed Brent Vermette, wearing a boonie hat that Leon wouldn’t have minded, and some kind of cheap black plastic watch.

She stood the Wheelie Boy on the open sleeping bag, took off the soft armor jacket, rolled it, put it against the wall of Tyvek-bagged shingles at the head of the foam. Sat down on the foam and undid her laces. Needed new shoes. Took them off, leaving her socks on, stood up, took off her jeans, sat back down, picked up the Wheelie, pulled the top of the open sleeping bag across her legs. It wasn’t dark in here, or light either. Just sort of blue. Like being in the middle of a clear block of Homes blue plastic. There was light up by the rafters, leaking from tarped-off sections where people were working. They might all be keeping it down, so she and Burton could sleep. Lowered voices. She was in here because Clovis needed the other bed, now they’d lifted the pill bug off Burton. Clovis had put on a helmet and examined the sutured hole in his thigh, doing what a surgeon in D.C. told her to, while seeing what she saw. Like Edward working long distance with a Viz in each eye, but the helmet was older, the way government stuff could be, sometimes way ahead, sometimes way behind. Burton had been conscious, but woozy, and Flynne had kissed his scratchy cheek and told him she’d see him in the morning.

“Hello?”

She looked at the Wheelie Boy. Netherton, big-eyed and big-nosed. “You got the cam too close again,” she told him. He adjusted it. Not that much better.

“Why are you whispering?”

“Quiet time, in here.”

“I spoke with Lowbeer,” he said. “In person. She isn’t going to do it.”

“I know,” she said. “Griff told me.”

He looked disappointed.

“I should’ve called you when I found out,” she said, “but they were doing things to Burton’s leg. She with you now?”

“She’s upstairs, with Conner.”

“Listening now?”

“Her modules,” he said, “but they always are. She says she never intended to use that weapon.”

“Macon was set to. Didn’t know what it was, but he was ready.”

“She would have been disappointed, she said, if you hadn’t objected. Then given them all stomach flu, having made you immune.”

“Maybe she should do that anyway. Why would she have been disappointed?”

“In you,” he said.

“Me?”

“It was a test.”

“Of what?”

“Evidently she wanted to determine whether, as you might put it, you are an asshole.”

“I’m just the only one who happened to see what happened. I could be an asshole and still ID the guy I saw. What would it matter?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “How is your brother?”

“Not bad, considering. They’re mainly worried about infection.”

“Why?”

“Because antibiotics don’t work for shit.”

He gave her a look.

“What?” she asked.

“You’re still relying on antibiotics.”

“Not that much. They only work about a third of the time.”

“Do you get cold?” he asked.

“When?”

“‘Colds.’ ‘Common cold’?”

She looked at him. “Don’t you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Induced immunity. Only neoprimitives forgo it.”

“They don’t want to be immune from colds?”

“Ostentatiously perverse.”