The Peripheral (13 page)

TIPSTAFF

L
ev’s sigil appeared, strobing, as Netherton was getting out of the cab in Henrietta Street. “Yes?” Netherton asked.

“How long is this going to take, do you think?”

“I have no idea,” said Netherton. “I don’t know what we’ll be discussing. I told you that.”

“I’ll send Ossian, when you’re done.”

“I don’t need Ossian, thank you. No Ossian.”

“I haven’t done this since I was a teenager,” said a slender young man, stopping on the pavement beside Netherton. Pale, with paler hair. A fairy prince in a flat tweed cap. Netherton dismissed Lev’s sigil with a tongue-tap. The young man’s eyes were a startling green.

“I beg your pardon?” said Netherton.

“Opera again. The rental place is busy. They had the little girl, but I thought I’d give you a break. Be more fun if they’d had something really strapping.”

“Rainey?” Her sigil appeared, then faded.

“Hello,” the young man said. “Shall we?”

“You lead the way,” said Netherton.

“Cautious of you,” observed the rental, its tone unimpressed. It adjusted the angle of its cap. “Look,” it said, pointing across Henrietta Street, “that’s where George Orwell had his first publisher.” That annoying thing that tourists did, opening a feed into London’s sea of blue plaques.

Netherton ignored the otherwise unremarkable building, dismissing the text with another tongue-tap. “Let’s go,” he said. The rental
started for Covent Garden. Netherton wondered if it had been infused with nutrients from a matte aluminum case.

The streets here were busy, or relatively so. Couples going to the opera, he supposed. He wondered how many were peripherals, rented or otherwise. A light rain began to fall. He turned up the collar of his jacket. He’d asked the rental to lead because he had no way, really, of knowing that it was Rainey. Sigils, he knew, could be spoofed. For that matter, he supposed, he had no way of knowing that this was a peripheral. On the other hand, it sounded like her. Not the voice, of course, but it had her manner.

Streetlights were coming on. Goods were on offer, in the windows of shops staffed by automata, by homunculi, by the odd person either present or peripheral. He’d known a girl who’d worked in a shop near here, though he couldn’t recall the street, or her name. “I’ve been worried about you,” said the rental. “Things are getting strange, here.” They were passing a shop in which a Michikoid in riding habit was folding scarves. “How do you stand having a beard?” the rental asked, running fingertips up its pale cheek.

“I don’t,” said Netherton.

“After it’s been shaved, I mean. It makes me want to scream.”

“I take it that’s not what you’re worried about, on my behalf,” Netherton said. The rental said nothing, walked on. It wore brown demiboots with elastic side gores.

Then they were entering the market proper, the building itself. Netherton saw that it was leading them toward stairs to the lower level. He decided that it was her, not that he’d ever seriously doubted that.

“We’ll have a little privacy, even if it’s purely symbolic,” it said. They’d reached the bottom of the stairs. He saw the Maenads’ Crush in its narrow archway, devoid of clientele, its Michikoid behind the bar, polishing glasses.

“Very good,” said Netherton, taking the lead. “We’ll have the snug,” he told the Michikoid. “Double whiskey. House. My friend isn’t drinking.”

“Yes, sir.”

The burgundy drapes reminded him of Ash’s fortune-telling booth. As soon as the Michikoid brought his whiskey, he drew them closed.

“They’re saying you did it,” the rental said.

“Did what?” The whiskey was halfway to his mouth.

“Killed Aelita.”

“Who is?”

“Americans, I’m assuming.”

“Does anyone have any proof that she’s dead? Missing, evidently, but dead?” He drank some of his whiskey.

“It’s that fuzzy sort of malignant publicity. You’re starting to surface in gossip feeds. Highly orchestrated.”

“You really don’t know who?”

“Daedra? Maybe she’s mad at you.”

“Us. Mad at us.”

“This is serious, Wilf.”

“It’s also ridiculous. Daedra ruined everything. Deliberately. You were there. You saw what happened. She killed him.”

“And please, don’t get drunk.”

“Actually,” he said, “I’ve been drinking considerably less. Why would Daedra be angry with me?”

“I’ve no idea. But it’s the sort of ongoing complication I was hoping to avoid.”

“Pardon me, sir,” said the Michikoid, from beyond the curtain, “but there’s someone here for you.”

“You told someone we were meeting?” The green eyes widening.

“No,” said Netherton.

“Sir?” said the Michikoid.

“If someone puts a hole in this thing,” the rental tapped its chest through the waxed-cotton jacket, “I wake up on the sofa. You aren’t in that position.”

Netherton took a preparatory drink and pushed the curtain aside.

“Forgive my interruption,” said Lowbeer, “but I’m afraid I’ve no choice.” She wore a hairy tweed jacket and matching skirt. It occurred to Netherton that that went quite well with Rainey’s peripheral’s outfit. “Please allow me to join you.” The Michikoid, Netherton saw, was bringing a chair. “Miss Rainey,” said Lowbeer, “I am Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer, of the Metropolitan Police. You do understand that you are present here, legally, under the Android Avatar Act?”

“I do,” said the rental, unenthusiastically.

“Canadian law makes certain distinctions, around physically manifested telepresence, which we do not.” Lowbeer took her seat. “Still water,” she said, to the Michikoid. “Best we keep the curtain open,” she said to Netherton, glancing out into the lower level of the market.

“Why?” asked Netherton.

“Someone may wish you harm, Mr. Netherton.”

The rental raised its eyebrows.

“Who?” asked Netherton, wishing he’d ordered a treble.

“We’ve no idea,” said Lowbeer. “Our attention has been drawn to the recent rental of a peripheral, one with potential as a weapon. The public isn’t aware of how closely such transactions are monitored. We know it to be nearby, and we believe you to be its target.”

“Told you,” said the rental, to Netherton.

“And why would you assume Mr. Netherton to be in danger, may I ask?” asked Lowbeer, as the Michikoid placed her glass of water on the table.

“You may, obviously,” said the rental, quite effectively managing to convey Rainey’s unhappiness. “The police, Wilf. You didn’t tell me.”

“I was about to.”

“You were Mr. Netherton’s colleague, in the business with the Garbage Patch,” said Lowbeer. “Have you been let go as well?” She took a drink of water.

“I was permitted to resign,” the rental said. “But merely from the project. I’m a career bureaucrat.”

“As am I,” said Lowbeer. “At the moment, on official business. Would that be true of you?”

The green eyes considered Lowbeer. “No,” it said, “I’m here privately.”

“Are you now involved,” Lowbeer asked, “in what the former project may be becoming?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” the rental said.

“But here you are, meeting privately with Mr. Netherton. Expressing concerns over his safety.”

“She says,” said Netherton, surprising himself, “that the Americans are spreading a rumor that I had Aelita killed.”

“No,” said the rental. “I said that they seemed the most likely suspects, in spreading it.”

“You said you thought it might be Daedra,” said Netherton, and finished his whiskey. He looked around for the Michikoid.

“We are aware of a whispering campaign,” said Lowbeer, “while uncertain as to its origins.” She glanced out again. “Oh dear,” she said, and rose, reaching under the flap of her brown satchel. “I’m afraid we’ll have to be going now.” She drew out a business card, passing it to the Michikoid, which had just then arrived, as if summoned. It accepted the card with two hands, bowed, smartly retreated. Lowbeer reached back into her satchel, producing what at first appeared to be a fussily ornate, gold-and-ivory lipstick, or perhaps atomizer, but which promptly morphed into a short, ceremonial-looking baton, its staff of fluted ivory topped with a gilt coronet. A tipstaff, evidently. Netherton had never actually seen one before. “Come with me, please,” she said.

Rainey’s peripheral stood. Netherton looked down at his empty glass, started to stand, saw the tipstaff morph again, becoming a baroque, long-barreled gilt pistol, with fluted ivory grips, which Lowbeer lifted, aimed, and fired. There was an explosion, painfully loud, but from somewhere across the lower level, the pistol having made no
sound at all. Then a ringing silence, in which could be heard an apparent rain of small objects, striking walls and flagstones. Someone began to scream.

“Bloody hell,” said Lowbeer, her tone one of concerned surprise, the pistol having become the tipstaff again. “Come along, then.”

She shooed them out of the Maenads’ Crush, as the screaming continued.

STUPIDITY TAX

L
eon was finishing a second breakfast, at the counter in Jimmy’s. Flynne sat beside him. He’d had to come into town to do contractually obligated promo media with a crew from the lottery, with, he said, the douchebag he’d bought the ticket from. Burton had driven them.

“If he’s a douchebag,” Flynne asked, “why’d you buy the ticket from him?”

“’Cause I knew it would burn his ass so bad, when I won,” Leon said.

“How much did you get, after taxes and the Hefty Pal fees?”

“About six million five.”

“I guess it’s proof of concept.”

“What concept?”

“Wish I knew. Nobody’s supposed to be able to do that. Some security company in Colombia?”

“All this shit’s like a movie to me,” Leon said, and belched softly.

“You put anything down on Mom’s meds?”

“Eighty grand,” letting his belt out a notch. “That latest biological she’s on does burn through it.”

“Thanks, Leon.”

“When you’re rich as me, everybody’s always after your money.”

Flynne gave him the side eye, saw him keeping a straight face. Then noticed, in the mirror behind the bar, way back in it, in the glare of the gravel lot, the cartoon bull. It winked at her. She resisted the urge to give it the finger, because it would just add that to whatever little profile it kept on her.

Being here was making her think of Conner, of the square white tent out on Porter, the drone swarm sucking up molecules of tires. She still hadn’t had the face time she needed to talk to Burton about that. Conner, she figured, his first night on the job, had killed those four men.

He’d done it with speed, intensity, and violence of action. That was the Corps’ fighting ethos, and maybe more so for Haptic Recon. As she understood it, it meant that your intel might not be great, your plan iffy, your hardware not the best, but you made up for it by just going for it, every time, that hard and that fast. In Burton, that coexisted with his idea of there being a right way of seeing, but she guessed that might at least partly come from hunting to put food on the table, something he’d always been good at. Conner, on the other hand, would be purely the other.

“What were you doing over at Fab?” asked Leon.

“Meeting with Shaylene and Macon.”

“Don’t do anything funny,” he said.

“You’re telling me that, today?”

“All I’ve done, today,” he said, “is help get people around here to pay their damn stupidity tax, next lottery.” He slid off his stool, hitched up his jeans.

“Where’s Burton now?” she asked.

“Over at Conner’s, if his to-do list went okay.”

“Rent a car and drive me over there,” she said. “I’ll hang my bike on the back.”

“Leon can rent the car, he’s got money.”

“Burton’s hoping you’ll have to get used to that.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Leon, suddenly serious. “Those people you and him talk to sound made up. That story that went viral, about the pediatrician who gave all his money to his imaginary girlfriend in Florida? Like that.”

“Know what’s worse than imaginary, Leon?”

“What?”

“Half imaginary.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Wish I knew.”

After she’d called for the car, they waited outside while it drove itself over.

HEADLESS

W
ould you mind my lighting a scented candle?” Lowbeer asked. “I’ve an unfortunate reaction to bombings.” She looked from Netherton to the rental. “I’ve had memories muted, but certain things continue to be triggers. Pure beeswax, essential oils, low-soot wick. Nothing at all toxic.”

“This unit doesn’t seem to have a sense of smell,” said Rainey. “Not that high end.”

Ash, Netherton thought, might make a point here, about beeswax in a world devoid of bees. “Please do,” he said, unable to stop seeing the tall, exceptionally graceful man’s shaven black head explode, repeatedly, in slow motion, from all those different angles and distances. It had happened as he’d descended the stairs, in front of the Maenads’ Crush. Where he still lay, for all Netherton knew, sprawled back, entirely headless. Lowbeer had shown them feeds from a variety of cams, and he wished she hadn’t.

There were four small, bulbous, swivel-mounted leather armchairs in the seemingly windowless passenger compartment of Lowbeer’s car, arranged around a low round table. Netherton and the rental had the two rearmost, facing forward, with Lowbeer seated facing them. The upholstery was slightly worn, scuffed at the beading along its edges, oddly cozy.

“It was rented as a sparring partner, from a martial arts studio in Shoreditch,” Lowbeer said, taking a short, wax-filled glass tumbler from her purse. It lit as she placed it on the table. “Rented the moment
you told your cab to take you to Covent Garden, Mr. Netherton. When I targeted it, I assumed you were about to be physically assaulted. A matter of blows, likely, with hands or feet, but easily fatal, as it was optimized for unarmed combat.”

Netherton looked from Lowbeer to the candle flame and back. They had emerged from the Maenads’ Crush to find the air thick, relatively speaking, with a variety of aerial devices. Four yellow-and-black diagonally striped Met units, each with two brightly blinking blue lights, had been hovering, unmoving, above the decapitated figure, on its back, on the stairs he and Rainey had themselves so recently descended. Many smaller units had darted, buzzing, some no bigger than houseflies.

What blood there was had seemed localized on the stonework adjacent the stairway. The screaming had turned to racking sobs, emanating from a woman seated, knees up, on the flagstones at the foot of the stairs. “See to her,” he’d heard Lowbeer say, to someone unseen, “immediately.” Lowbeer had lifted the tipstaff briefly then, shoulder high, and turned, displaying it. Netherton had seen people glance away, fearing to be marked by the sight of it, though of course they already were.

Bystanders had continued to avert their gaze, as Lowbeer led Netherton and the rental to the opposite end of the building, and up another open flight of stairs. Her car uncloaked before them as they’d emerged, its passenger door open. He had no idea, now, of where they were parked. Not far from Covent Garden. In the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue, perhaps.

“That poor woman,” Lowbeer said.

“Didn’t appear to have been physically injured,” said the rental, slouched in its club chair, tweed cap low on its forehead.

“Traumatized,” Lowbeer said, and looked at her candle. “Neroli. Girly, but I’ve always loved it.”

“You blew its head off,” Netherton said.

“Not intentionally,” said Lowbeer. “It left Shoreditch in a car leased by the martial arts studio. Alone, supposedly. But it can’t have been alone, because someone opened its cranium.”

“Its cranium?”

“The skulls are modular. Printed bone, assembled with biological adhesives. The structural strength of an average skull, but capable of disassembly.”

“Why is that?” asked Netherton, who just then found peripherals steadily less pleasant the more he learned of them.

“The brainpan of a sparring model ordinarily contains a printed cellular replica of a brain. A trainer, nothing cognitively functional. Registers levels of concussion, indicates less subtle trauma. The user can determine the exact efficiency of blows delivered. But the trainer, and for that matter the modular cranium, aren’t user-serviceable. A person or persons unknown voided the studio’s warranty, on the drive from Shoreditch. They removed the trainer, replacing it with an explosive charge. It would have approached you, then detonated. Unaware of that, I called in flashbots. The four nearest responded when my request cleared. They positioned themselves around its head and simultaneously detonated. A mere fraction of a gram of explosive each, but correctly distanced, precisely spaced, sufficient to immobilize virtually anything. Instead, we’re very fortunate my actions didn’t result in at least one death.”

“But otherwise,” said the rental, “it would have killed Wilf.”

“Indeed,” said Lowbeer. “The use of explosives is unusual, and we prefer to keep it so. Too much like asymmetric warfare.”

“Terrorism,” said the rental.

“We prefer not to use that term,” said Lowbeer, studying her candle flame with something that looked to Netherton to be regret, “if only because terror should remain the sole prerogative of the state.” She looked up at him. “Someone has made an attempt on your life. It may also have been intended to intimidate any associates who might survive you.”

“Wilf and I are only former associates,” the rental said.

“I was thinking of Mr. Zubov, actually,” said Lowbeer. “Though anyone intending to intimidate him must either be singularly unfamiliar with his family, extremely powerful, or entirely reckless.”

“How did you know,” Netherton asked, “that it would be on its way here?”

“The aunties,” said Lowbeer.

“Aunties?”

“We call them that. Algorithms. We have a great many, built up over decades. I doubt anyone today knows quite how they work, in any given instance.” She looked at the rental now, her expression changing. “Someone modeled that peripheral, rather romantically, after Fitz-David Wu. I doubt you’d know him. Arguably the best Shakespearean actor of his day. His mother was quite a good friend of mine. Those eyes were an afterthought, of course, later regretted. Not so easily reversible, in those days.”

Netherton, wishing he had another whiskey, wondered if she felt that way about her own periwinkle blues.