William Gibson - The Peripheral

After the trailer, the three of them had gone up to the house and had the peas Janice had stir-fried with some bacon and onions, sitting around the kitchen table with Leon and her mother. Her mother had asked Tacoma about her name, and her job, and Tacoma had been good at not seeming like she wasn’t explaining what she did, and Flynne had seen her mother seeing that, but not minding. Her mother was in a better mood, and Flynne took that to mean she’d accepted that she wouldn’t be sent off to northern Virginia with Lithonia.

Driving back, it was the same convoy, and no other traffic on the road at all. “Should be more people driving out here, this time of day,” she said to Tacoma.

“That’s because it’s shorter to list what Coldiron doesn’t own in this county. You own both sides of this road. In the rest of the county, Hefty still owns the bulk of what you don’t. What’s left either belongs to individuals, or Matryoshka.”

“The dolls?”

“The competition. It’s what we call them in KCV. Out of Nassau, so that’s probably where they first came through from the future, the way Coldiron did in Colombia.”

They were at the edge of town now, and Tacoma started talking to her earbud, making the convoy take unexpected turns, or as unexpected as you could manage anywhere this size. Flynne figured they were angling to get into the back without attracting the attention of Luke 4:5, on the other side of Tommy’s yellow Sheriff’s Department tape. They knew how to obey police tape, because that could help them in court, when they eventually sued the municipality, like they always did, most of them having gone to law school for that express purpose. They always protested in silence, and that was deliberate too, some legal strategy she’d never understood. They’d hold their signs up and stinkeye everybody, never say a word. You could see the mean glee they took in it, and she just thought it was sorry, that people could be like that.

At least there was some traffic in town, mostly KCV employees trying to look local. Not a single German car. Anyone who made a living selling secondhand Jeeps should be hosting a big fiesta about now, for the workers at the factory in Mexico.

“Always been a redhead?” Flynne asked Tacoma, to get her mind off Luke 4:5.

“A day longer than I’ve been with KCV,” Tacoma said. “They have to bleach it almost white, before they dye it.”

“I like it.”

“I don’t think my hair does.”

“You get contacts at the same time?”

“I did.”

“Otherwise, you’d look enough like your sister that people would put it together.”

“We drew straws,” Tacoma said. “She would’ve gone blond, but I lost. She was blond when she was younger. Brings out her risk-taking tendencies, so this is probably better.”

Flynne looked over at the blank screen of the Wheelie’s tablet, wondered where he was now. “Are you really a notary?”

“Hell yes. And a CPA. And I’ve got paper for you to sign when we get back, taking your brother’s little militia from cult of personality to state-registered private security firm.”

“I have to talk with Griff, first thing. Has to be private. You help me with that?”

“Sure. Your best bet’s Hong’s. That one table, off in an alcove? I’ll have him hold that for you. Otherwise, you can’t know who’s on the other side of the nearest tarp.”

“Thanks.”

And then the truck was in the alley behind Fab, sandwiched between the two SUVs as they disgorged black-jacketed Burton boys, everybody with a bullpup except Leon.

“Ready?” Tacoma asked, killing the engine.

Flynne hadn’t been ready for any of it, she thought, not since that night she went to the trailer to sub for him. It wasn’t stuff you could be ready for. Like life, maybe, that way.

Netherton found Ossian waiting, a narrow rosewood case tucked beneath one arm, beside Ash’s tent, the unpleasant profile of the six-wheeled Bentley nowhere to be seen.

“Is Ash inside?” Netherton asked, Flynne’s peripheral beside him, watching him speak. He’d awakened it, if that was the term, after Ash had phoned, asking him to bring it along to the tent, for a meeting.

“She’s been delayed,” Ossian said. “She’ll be along shortly.”

“What’s that?” Netherton asked, eyeing the rectangular wooden box.

“Case for a pair of Regency dueling pistols, originally. Come in.” The tent smelled, familiarly now, of the dust that wasn’t there. Ash’s displays, the agate spheres, were the sole source of light. Netherton held a chair for the peripheral, which then sat, looking up at Ossian. Ossian put the rosewood box down on the table. Like a shopman, employing a certain constrained drama, he undid two small brass latches, paused briefly for effect, then opened the hinged lid.

“Temporarily deactivated,” he said, “and for the first time since they left the pram factory.” The case was lined with green felt. In identical fitted recesses nested a pair of what Netherton assumed to be guns. Like toys, really, given the glossy candy-cane cream-and-scarlet twisted around their short barrels.

“How is it that they fit the box so perfectly?”

“Rejigged the interior. Wanted something to carry them in. Wouldn’t want one tucked in my pocket, however positive I am that they’re disabled. Took some serious doing, to turn them off, but we managed to only release assemblers the one time, when you were there. Zubov has the Bentley with a specialist now, having five meters of leather cloned, to repair the upholstery.”

“Lowbeer values these things because they’re difficult to trace?”

“Because they’re terror weapons, more likely,” said Ossian. “They aren’t guns in any ballistic sense. Not about the force of a projectile. They’re directed swarm weapons. Flesh-eaters, in the trade.”

“What trade would that be?”

“They project self-limiting, single-purpose assemblers. Range a little under ten meters. Do nothing whatever but disintegrate soft animal tissue, including, apparently, your finer Italian leathers. But more or less instantly, and then they disassemble themselves. That way, they’re of no danger to the user, or rather to the infant, as their only user was intended to be the pram.”

“But they have handles,” Netherton observed. The handles were shaped something like the profile of a parrot’s head. They were the same cream shade as the barrels, minus the scarlet, but matte, bonelike.

“Grips and manual triggers are your Edward’s, to Lowbeer’s specifications. He isn’t bad at all.”

“I don’t understand why a pram would have been equipped with these in the first place.”

“Aren’t Russian then, are you? Effect of one of these on a human body will absolutely get your attention, foremost. Quite the spectacular exit. See a fellow kidnapper go that way, the thinking runs, you’ll flee. Or try to. Self-targeting. Once the system acquires a target, it sends the assemblers where they’re needed.”

“But you’ve entirely disabled them?”

“Not permanently. Lowbeer has the key to that.”

“Why does she want them?”

“Discuss it with her,” said Ash, ducking in, something fleeing cumbrously, on four legs from her cheek, across her neck, as she entered.

“When are we expecting Flynne?” Netherton asked, glancing at the peripheral.

“I’d assumed she’d be here by now,” Ash said, “but we’ve just been told she’s unavailable. And that we’ll wait.” Briefly, she cawed to Ossian, in some coarser birdsong. He lowered the lid over the peppermint pistols. “In the meantime,” Ash said, “we think we’ve solved the problem of Flynne’s lacking the gift of neoprimitivist curatorial gab.”