William Gibson - The Peripheral

Netherton sighed.

“I imagine,” said Ash, “that she’s decided to make a point. This will be recognized, absolutely, as belonging to Lev’s grandfather. Daedra’s security, whatever that may consist of, will certainly know that it emerged from this address. Any pretext that you aren’t associated with the Zubovs will end, upon our arrival. Possibly she sees advantage in that. There’s usually some degree of advantage in underlining one’s association with klept. Disadvantages too, of course.” She considered him. “Suit’s not bad.”

Netherton looked down at the black suit she’d had made for him. Looked back up. “Is it black because the occasion requires it, or because you ordered it?”

“Both,” said Ash, a distant herd of something or other choosing that instant to transit her forehead, what was visible of it below the bill, making it appear as though a cloud of restless foreboding were lodged beneath her hat.

“Will you wait for us, there?”

“We aren’t allowed to park within two kilometers,” she said. “When you’re ready to go, they’ll call us. Though Lowbeer will already have done, I’m sure.”

“When do we leave?” He glanced up at the Gobiwagen.

“Ten minutes. Need to put Burton in the trunk.”

“I’ll use the toilet,” he said, starting for the gangway. And check to see that the bar’s still locked, he thought, certain as he was that it would be.

It wasn’t far, Ash said.

The interior of this car felt larger than the lounge in the Mercedes RV. It wasn’t, but it felt it. The way grown-up furniture felt when you were little. And everything in here was this black that made her like her dress less. It must be a thing, that black.

And the light outside was rainy, silvery, pink, the way it was when she’d first come here, lifting out of that launch bay in the white van.

Netherton, seated beside her, was almost too far away to reach, and if they’d been closer, it would’ve felt too much like a date. Conner was up front with Ash, room enough between them for two other people.

She wished it had a coffee machine, but that made her think of Tommy and Carlos and everybody back there, with Homes convoying in from three different directions. “Can I still phone home?” she asked Ash, assuming she could hear her through the partition.

“Yes, but do it now. We’ll be there soon.”

Ash had helped her set up the peripheral’s phone for dialing, while they waited for Burton to get into the trunk and fold up, transferring the numbers from her own phone. Now she brought the badges up, scrolled to Macon’s yellow one with the single red nubbin, and tapped the roof of her mouth.

“Hey,” said Macon.

“What’s happening?”

“Guests still on the way,” he said.

“Shit. .”

“Putting it mildly.”

“Who’s with my mother?”

“Janice. And Carlos and his friends, some of them.”

Flynne saw herself in the white bed, under the white crown, Burton and Conner beside her in their own beds. What would happen here if she died there, she wondered for the first time? Nothing, except that her peripheral would go on automatic pilot, that cloud thing. Would it still bullshit, then, if you asked it about Daedra’s art? Would that be the only remaining evidence that she’d been here?

“Better wrap it up,” Ash said. “We’re driving into their protocol now.”

Faintly at first, she heard the whispers of those fairy police dispatchers, around the base of Aelita’s building.

A Michikoid with a luminous wand waved their ZIL to the curb, behind something more on the order of the six-wheeled silver Bentley steam iron, though the color of Lowbeer’s car when uncloaked. A couple with shaven heads and Maori facial tattoos were briefly visible, between the sleek graphite wedge of the vehicle and a solemn-looking bouncy castle affair that obviously wasn’t a routine architectural feature of Edenmere Mansions or any other shard. The various scanners would be in there, he assumed. The entrance seemed staffed entirely with Michikoids, in identical gray, vaguely quasi-military uniforms. He remembered the one on Daedra’s moby, just before it flung itself over the rail, bristling with weapons, and what Rainey had said about how she’d seen them move like spiders, down on the patchers’ island.

Ash and Conner each opened a door, as if on cue. The ZIL’s doors were so massive that they must be servo-powered, though silently. Simultaneously, Ash on Netherton’s side and Conner on Flynne’s, they opened the passenger doors.

Without thinking, Netherton leaned toward Flynne, squeezed her hand. “We’ll lie like champs,” he said, not knowing where that had come from. She gave him an odd, startled smile, and then they were out, on either side, the air damp, colder than he expected, but fresh. A Michikoid scanned Conner with a nonluminous wand, another doing the same to Ash, and then he and Flynne were waved into the bulging gray inflatable, as between the thighs of some oversized toy elephant.

A field of some kind induced a moderately dissociative state, as they were scanned and prodded, by a variety of unpleasantly robotic portals, for perhaps the next fifteen minutes, and then they were being greeted by an artfully distressed Michikoid in an ancient kimono.

“Thank you for honoring our celebration of the life of Aelita West. Your personal security attendant has been admitted separately. You will find him awaiting you. The elevator is third from the left.”

“Thank you,” said Netherton, taking the peripheral’s hand. The tattooed couple was nowhere in sight. Nor was anyone else, the lobby as welcoming as Daedra’s voice mail, though typical in that.

“Celebration of life?” Flynne asked, as he led her toward the elevator.

“So it said.”

“Byron Burchardt’s parents had one of those.”

“Who?”

“Byron Burchardt. Manager at the Coffee Jones. Got run over by a robot eighteen-wheeler, Valentine’s Day. I felt guilty because I’d been pissed at him, for firing me. But I went anyway.”

“They seem to have accepted that she’s gone.”

“I don’t see how they could be sure she is. But I wish we’d known. Could’ve brought some flowers.”

“Daedra never suggested this. It seems to be a surprise.”

“A surprise funeral? You do that, here?”

“A first, for me.”

“Fifty-sixth floor,” she said, indicating the bank of buttons.

The doors opened as he touched the button. They stepped in. The doors closed behind them. The ascent was perfectly silent, rapid, slightly dizzying. He was sure that drink would be served.

When they came out of the elevator, she saw, between two knots of people in black, the view from her first time here, that curve in the river. All the windows were unfrosted and the interior walls had been removed. Not so much removed but like they’d never been there. One big space now, like Lev’s dad’s gallery. Conner stood near the elevator, scoping everything. He looked completely on his game, and she guessed he was finally back to some version of what she imagined he’d been, before whatever it was had blown him up. He wasn’t quite smiling, because he was in full bodyguard mode, but he almost was.

“No way up or down except this elevator,” he said, as they reached him. “Stairs to the floor above and below. Some seriously ugly mofos in here. They’d be like me, security. Mofo-ettes too. Like a bad-ass convention sprinkled on a small town’s worth of rich folks.”

“More people than I’ve ever seen here in one place before,” she said, and then something howled, deep in every bone in the peripheral’s body. “Testing the entanglement,” the nastiest voice she’d ever heard said, a kind of modulated ache, but she knew it was Lowbeer. “Please acknowledge.”