The Peripheral (23 page)

TIMESICK

I
’ve got to sleep,” she said to Burton, in the kitchen, after Corbell had gone with the big man who’d brought in a golf umbrella to walk him back to his car. She was having trouble keeping her eyes open.

“You think Netherton can handle Corbell?”

“Lowbeer and the others can tell him what to say.”

“Who’s that?”

“Conner’s met her. I think we’re actually working for her, but getting paid Lev’s money. Or Lev’s money here, as much as it’s his. Damn. I’m about to fall over.”

“Okay,” he said, squeezed her shoulder, put on his jacket, and went out. The rain had stopped. She put out the kitchen light, went through the living room to check there was no light showing under her mother’s door, then up the stairs. They’d seldom been as steep.

Janice was in her room, cross-legged on the bed with half a dozen
Geographic
s. “Kills me,” Janice said, looking up, “national parks before they privatized. Asshole gone?”

“Burton too,” Flynne said, touching her own wrist and then all four pockets of her jeans before she remembered her phone was in the trailer. She pulled her t-shirt off, tossed it on the chair, then had to root under it for the USMC sweatshirt. Put that on, sat on the edge of the bed, and got her wet shoes and socks off. Undid her jeans and managed to get them off without standing up again.

“You looked whacked,” Janice said.

“Time difference, they said.”

“Ella okay?”

“Didn’t look in,” Flynne said, “but her light’s out.”

“I’ll sleep on the couch.” Picking up the magazines.

“I have seen so much weird shit,” Flynne said. “Woman who told me about the time difference has two pupils in each eye, animated tattoos of animals running around on her ass.”

“Just on her ass?”

“Arms, neck. On her belly once, but then they all ran off to her back, like cartoons, because they didn’t know me. Maybe to her ass. Can’t tell.”

“Tell what?”

“Whether I’m getting used to it. It’s weird, then it’s the way it is, then it’s weird again.”

Janice sat up. She was wearing handknit pink acrylic slippers. “Lay back,” she said. “You need to sleep.”

“We just bought ourselves the damn governor. That’s weird.”

“He’s a bigger asshole than Pickett.”

“Didn’t really buy him. Got a deal with Pickett to pay him on a regular basis.”

“What’s it supposed to get you?”

“Protection. Two of Burton’s guys killed a pair of ex-military who were trying to sneak in. Not just thugs. Down past the trailer.”

“I wondered what they got all quietly excited about.”

“Pickett got Tommy out here to make sure the bodies get disposed of okay.” She made a face from childhood, without meaning to. “Where’s Madison?”

“Over at Conner’s, with Macon, working on an Army copter for Burton. Or he was, last time I checked Badger. Might be home now.” Janice stood up, the old
Geographic
s pressed to her stomach. “But I’m keeping Ella company.”

“Thank you,” Flynne said, and let her head down on the pillow, timesick, or maybe that and that texture thing, her old chambray pillowcase intricate as chess against her face, less familiar.

NOT EXPECTED

A
sh was waiting, when Lowbeer’s car’s door slid open. She reached in, took his wrist, pressed her Medici’s softness against it with her other hand, and drew him out, his feet with difficulty finding Notting Hill pavement.

“Bed rest,” advised Lowbeer, briskly, as the door closed, “moderate sedation.”

“Goodbye,” Netherton said, “goodbye forever.”

The door, the only part of the car that had uncloaked, vanished itself in a bilious stir of pixels, moving away, a diminishing whisper of invisible tires.

“Here,” Ash said, clamping the Medici against his wrist, leading him. “If you’re sick in Lev’s house, Ossian will have to clean it up.”

“Hates me,” said Netherton, peering down the street, vaguely wondering how many of these houses were conjoined with Lev’s.

“Hardly,” said Ash, “though you’re tiresome enough, in your current state.”

“State,” said Netherton, contemptuously.

“Keep your voice down.” Leading him up the steps, into the house, past the entranceway’s Wellies and outerwear. The memory of Dominika hushed him.

He felt more secure in the elevator, if less than entirely well. He did feel that the Medici might be helping.

In the silent garage, Ash strapped him firmly into the cart and drove it to the Gobiwagen. “I’m putting you upstairs,” she said, when they’d climbed the gangway and entered, releasing his wrist and tucking the
Medici away. “Her peripheral is in the back cabin, Lev’s brother’s is in the master.” She touched something on the wall. A narrow stairway, previously hidden, folded almost silently out of laser-cut veneer, taut support wires gleaming. “After you,” she said. He climbed, unsteadily, into a glass-walled crow’s nest fitted with gray leather upholstery.

“This is a hydrotherapeutic tub, optionally,” she said. “Please don’t try it. Medici’s given you something for sleep, something else to reduce your hangover. That’s a toilet.” She indicated a narrow, leather-padded door. “Use it. Then sleep. We’ll call you for breakfast.” She turned, and descended the complicated stairs, whose design made him think of cheese slicers.

He sat on a leather-cushioned ledge, wondered whether it was part of a tub, removed his shoes, took off his jacket, got to his feet with some difficulty, and pushed the center-hinged door. Behind it was a combination hand basin and urinal, the latter probably a toilet as well. He used the urinal, then shuffled back to the integral couch. He lay down. The lighting dimmed. He closed his eyes and wondered what the Medici had given him. Something agreeable.

He woke, almost immediately it seemed, to sounds from below.

The lights came on, down there, but not here in the gray-padded crow’s nest. He sat up, improbably clearheaded and pain-free, to the sound of someone retching, something splashing. He wondered if he himself might be dreaming, while actually vomiting in his sleep, but there seemed no great urgency in the idea.

He stood. Stocking feet. Children’s games of stealth. Crept to the dangerous-looking, Germanic edge of the stairway. Heard water running. Tiptoed down, as quietly as he could, until, bending further, he spied Flynne’s peripheral, in black jeans and shirt, cupping water from a tap in the open bar. She spat, forcefully, into the round steel sink, then looked up at him, sharply.

“Hello,” he said.

She tilted her head, without breaking eye contact, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Puked,” she said.

“Ash thought you might, the first time—”

“Netherton, right?”

“How did you open the bar?”

“Not locked.”

It occurred to Netherton, for the first time, that he was the only one who couldn’t open it. That they’d specifically set it that way. “You mustn’t drink anything but water,” he said to the peripheral, coming the rest of the way down the stairs. It seemed peculiar advice to be offering.

“Don’t move,” she said.

“Is something wrong?”

“Where are we?”

“In Lev’s grandfather’s Mercedes.”

“Conner says it’s an RV.”

“That’s what you called it,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed. She took a step forward. He remembered her musculature, in the resistance trainer. “Flynne?” he asked.

Someone came pounding up the gangway.

She was across the cabin in two strides, ready by the door as Ossian rushed in. And seemed to fall, Ossian, as if propelled by his own weight, over and around the ready pivot of her hip, but then somehow she was instantly, fluidly in a position from which to kick him powerfully in the shoulder, from behind, leg exactly reaching full extension. Ossian’s forehead struck the floor audibly.

“Stay down,” she said, breath unaltered, hands curved slightly in front of her. “Who’s our friend?” she asked Netherton, over her shoulder.

“Ossian,” said Netherton.

“Dislocated . . . my fucking . . . shoulder,” gritted Ossian.

“Probably just the bursal sac,” she said.

Ossian glared up at Netherton. “Her fucking brother, isn’t he? The boy just phoned Ash.” Tears ran suddenly from his eyes.

“Burton?” Netherton asked.

The peripheral turned.

“Burton,” Netherton said, seeing it now.

“Mr. Fisher,” said Ash, from the doorway. “A pleasure to finally meet you in person, or more relatively so. I see you’ve met Ossian.”

Ossian snarled something, syllables of a translated obscenity never previously voiced.

“Glad to be here,” Flynne’s peripheral said.

Ash touched the wall, causing an armchair to rise from the floor. “Help me get Ossian up,” she said to Netherton. “I’ll see to his shoulder.” This proved more easily said than done, both because the Irishman was solidly built and because he was in considerable pain, not to mention a foul mood. When he was finally settled, his face slick with tears, Ash produced the Medici. She pressed it against the black fabric of his jacket, above the injured shoulder, and released it. It stayed there, quickly ballooning, then sagging, worryingly scrotal, unevenly translucent, and doing whatever it was doing through the black jacket, which somehow made Netherton particularly queasy. He could see blood and perhaps tissue whirling dimly within it. It was larger than Ossian’s head now. He looked away.

“Hey,” said the peripheral, from the top of the gangway, just outside, “what’s this?”

Netherton crossed to it, careful not to get too close. “What?”

“Down there. Big white.”

Netherton craned his neck. “That’s a resistance-training exoskeleton,” he said. “An exercise device.”

“Now I could do that,” it said. Glanced down, seemingly at its breasts. “Conner had me expecting weird, but . . .” It shrugged slightly, but that made its breasts move. It looked up at Netherton with a certain desperation.

“That can be easily arranged,” said Ash, behind them. “The exo isn’t a peripheral, though it does have a full range of movement. But it can be controlled via a homunculus, a miniature peripheral. Until we
find you something else, you might prefer it to your sister’s. Which happens to be of very immediate strategic importance. You didn’t damage it, I hope, when you struck Ossian?”

The peripheral lifted the foot with which it had kicked Ossian, rotated it at the ankle, as if checking for discomfort. “No,” it said, putting it down. “Kicks ass.”

Ash firmly pronounced some freshly minted monosyllabic negative, her hand on Ossian’s injured shoulder, keeping him in the chair.

Netherton watched as the peripheral loped loosely, and, he had to admit, fetchingly, down the gangway, then circled the exo, head to one side, taking its measure.

THREW UP

L
ittle over five hours,” said Janice, putting a mug of coffee down on the bedside table. “I’d let you sleep, but Edward just called. Down at the trailer with your brother. Needs you there.”

Flynne slid her hand under her pillow for her phone, remembered it wasn’t there. Sunlight at the edges of the curtains. Pillowcase felt normal. “What’s happening?”

“Said Burton threw up, you should come down.”

“Threw up?”

“What he said.”

Flynne hitched herself up. Took a sip of coffee. Remembered looking down at the white crown, its cables running off the army blanket to Burton’s display and her phone. “Shit,” she said, putting the mug down. “He’s fucking around with it.” Then she was up and pulling on her jeans, the cuffs damp and mud-flecked.

“With what?” Janice asked.

“Everything,” said Flynne, getting up and digging for dry socks in the clothes on the chair. She found two that didn’t match, but were both black. Sat down on the bed and pulled them on. Her damp laces were a mess.

“You drink that coffee,” Janice said. “You aren’t rich enough yet to waste Ella’s coffee.”

Flynne looked up. “How’s she doing?”

“Pissed at you and Burton for being involved with Pickett, but it gives her something to do. Seriously, drink that coffee. Doesn’t matter if you get there two minutes later.”

Flynne picked up the mug, went to the window. Pushed the curtain aside. Bright and clear, everything soaked from the night before. That red Russian bike out by the gate, beside it the Tarantula, scorpion tail tipped with the brand-new fuel-nozzle grapple he was supposed to have had all the while. “Conner’s here?”

“’Bout ten minutes ago. Carlos and another guy took him down to the trailer, in kind of a swing, slung between a couple of pieces of plastic pipe.”

Flynne drank some coffee. “Tommy gone?”

“Haven’t seen him. There’s a fresh jug of coffee to take down to them.”

A few minutes later, face washed, headed down the hill, big orange Thermos banging against her knee with each step, the path looked like a platoon had been marching up and down, boots churning dark mud, but really it would only have been Burton’s posse going back and forth, however many times, plus Tommy and whoever else had been down here. A small drone whipped over from behind, headed downhill, stopped and hovered for a second, then flew on.

Burton was sitting in the Airstream’s open door, wearing an old gray sweater, light blue boxer shorts, unlaced boots. His legs seldom got any sun, but now his face was whiter than they were. She stopped in front of him, the jug bumping her knee one last time. “Well?”

“Didn’t tell me it makes you puke,” he said.

“Didn’t ask me. Anything.”

He looked up at her. “You were asleep. Saw that thing on the bed, still hooked up, and there was Edward. You know I saw Conner use his. You’d have done the same.”

“Hey, Flynne,” called Conner, from inside, “wassup?”

“Coffee.”

“Bring it. Wounded warrior here.”

“What did you do?” she asked Burton.

“Turned up in your girlfriend, there. Got up, threw up, dropped the first one came running in.”

“Shit. Who?”

“Pigtail. Funeral suit.”

“Ossian. Tell me you haven’t fucked everything up.”

“Ash doctored him. With something like a cross between a bull’s balls and a jellyfish. Are those contacts she’s got?”

“They’re like a piercing or something. How much speed, intensity, and violence of action exactly did you whip on things?”

“He’s pissed at me, not you.”

“How long were you there?”

“About three hours.”

“Doing what?”

“Getting set up. Getting my ass out of your girlfriend and into something that won’t make me blush. Talking corporatization with four-eyes. Who’s your girl supposed to be, anyway?”

“Nobody seems to know.”

“Every time I’d pass a mirror, I’d jump. Does sort of look like you.”

“Just the haircut.”

“Wounded fucking warrior here!” cried Conner.

“Get up,” said Flynne. “Let me by.”

Burton stood. She stepped up and past him. Conner was propped up on the bed with Burton’s pillow and one of Macon’s blue duffels behind him, wearing one of his Polartec body socks. So much of him missing. She remembered him running, in the other peripheral.

“What?” he asked, looking up at her.

“Just remembered,” she said, “didn’t bring cups.”

“Burton got cups,” Edward said, from his seat in the Chinese chair. He bent over and fished a yellow resin mug out of a transparent Hefty gear box.

She put the Thermos jug down on the table beside the white cables leading to her phone. “I thought that thing was custom-made for my head.”

“You have more hair,” Edward said. “I padded it out in back with
Kleenex, keeps it pressed against his forehead. That and the saline, seems to do it.”

“Print him his own. I don’t want anybody using mine. Or my peripheral.”

“Sorry,” Edward said, unhappy.

“I know he made you.”

“No way he’s getting in my sweet golden boy either,” said Conner, prissily, from the bed.

“They got him something,” Edward said. “Came back here for a few minutes, then he went again.”

“A peripheral?” she asked.

“Little Muppet-assed thing,” said Burton, behind her.

She turned. He had some color back in his face. “Muppet?”

“Six inches tall. Put a kind of cockpit on this exoskeleton, where the head would go, put the Muppet in that. Synched ’em. I was doing backflips.” He grinned.

She remembered the headless white machine. “You were in that exercise thing?”

“Ash didn’t want me in your girl.”

“Neither do I. Put your pants on.”

He and Edward did a dance in the narrow space, Burton getting to his clothes rod and Edward getting to Conner, on the bed, with the yellow mug in his hand. Edward sat on the bed, holding the mug so Conner could slurp coffee. Burton pulled a brand-new pair of cammies off a hanger. “Come here a minute,” he said to her, and went out, carrying his pants. She followed him. “Close the door behind you.” He took one foot out of the unlaced boot, balancing, as he put his leg through the leg of his cammies, then his foot back into the boot, then repeated this with the other leg. “You go outside the house, when you were there?” He was buttoning the fly.

“Just in the back garden. And up in a quad, virtual.”

“Hardly anybody,” he said. “You get that? Biggest city in Europe. See many people?”

“No. Just in one place, but it’s a kind of tourist attraction, and Netherton told me they mostly weren’t real, after we got back. And it’s too quiet, in the backyard. For a city.”

“I got the quad ride too, with Ash, when she’d fixed the pigtail up, while he was getting my Muppet ready for the exo.”

“Cheapside?”

“Nothing cheap about it, just lonely. We went out over the river, low. Floating islands, some kind of tidal generator. I might’ve seen fifty, a hundred people, the whole flight. If they were people. And hardly any vehicles, nothing really like traffic. It’s the way heritage games looked, before they got updated. Before they could really do much in the way of crowds. If it’s not a game, where is everybody?”

She remembered her own first view of the city, as she rose straight up, feeling that.

“Asked her,” he said.

“So did I. What did she say?”

“Said there aren’t as many people as we’re used to. What did she tell you?”

“Changed the subject. She tell you why?”

“Said she’d explain when she had more time.”

“What do you think?”

“You know she thinks it all sucks, up there?”

“She say that?”

“No, but you can feel it. That she does. Can’t you?”

She nodded.