The Peripheral (37 page)

ORDINARY SAD-ASS HUMANNESS

H
er time in the trailer with Wilf had kept her mind off what she couldn’t quite believe she’d decided about Lowbeer and Griff. The ordinary sad-ass humanness of his story with Daedra, in spite of big lumps of future-stuff, had been weirdly comforting.

She still wasn’t sure how Daedra made her living, or what her relationship with the United States government was. Seemed like a cross between a slightly porny media star and what sophomore year Art History called a performance artist, plus maybe a kind of diplomat. But she still didn’t get what the United States did either, in Wilf’s world. He made it sound like the nation-state equivalent of Conner, minus the sense of humor, but she supposed that might not be so far off, even today.

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.

TRANSPLANT

N
etherton 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.”

“How is that?” Netherton asked.

“I suppose you could call it fecal transplant therapy.”

“Really?” Netherton looked at her.

“A synthetic bullshit implant,” Ash said, and smiled. “A procedure I don’t imagine you’ll ever be in need of.”

SUSHI BARN

T
he tunnel to Sushi Barn was less a tunnel than a giant hamster run. Madison had built two seven-foot walls of shingle bags, with a walkway in between, from a hole in the wall in the back of Coldiron, across the vacant store next door, through another hole in its far wall, across the next empty store, and finally through another hole, into Hong’s kitchen.

Coming in from the alley, Flynne had seen Burton, looking pale, under one of the white crowns. Conner was under another. “Want to switch jobs?” Clovis asked Tacoma, seeing her. “Neither of these guys are home much.”

“They’re making Burton work?” Flynne asked.

“Nobody’s twisting his arm,” Clovis said. “Glad to get out of his body. Conner just comes back to be fed and sleep.”

Griff didn’t seem to have any idea what Flynne might have on her mind. She wasn’t sure what Lowbeer might have heard, or what Griff might know. She wanted to look at his hands now, but he had them in his jacket pockets.

Hong’s kitchen was humid with cooking rice. He led them out to the front room, where the seating was at secondhand picnic tables, painted red, and over to an alcove, a sheet of red-painted plywood forming one of its walls. The alcove had its own picnic table, and a framed poster of the Highbinders on the inside of the red wall, a San Francisco band she’d liked in high school. She put the Wheelie Boy down on the scuffed, red-painted concrete floor, under the seat, and
sat, facing the Highbinders poster. Griff took the seat opposite. A kid she recognized as a cousin of Madison’s brought them glasses of tea.

“You need food, just let somebody know,” Hong said.

“Thanks, Hong,” she said, as he turned back to the kitchen. She looked at Griff.

He smiled, raised a tablet, consulted it, looked up from it, met her eyes. “Now that we know that a safe house elsewhere isn’t an option for your mother, we’re looked into maximizing security for your family home. With a view to keeping it as low key, as transparent really, as we possibly can. We don’t want to disturb your mother. We think a compound might be in order.”

“Pickett had a compound,” she said. “Don’t want that.”

“Exactly the opposite. Stealth architecture. Everything remains apparently the same. Any new structures will appear to always have been there. We’re speaking with specialist architects. We need it done yesterday, largely at night, silently, invisibly.” He scrolled something with a fingertip.

“Can you do that?”

“With sufficient money, absolutely. Which your firm most certainly has.”

“Not my firm.”

“Partially yours.” He smiled.

“On paper.”

“This building,” he said, “isn’t paper.”

She looked out at the front room of Sushi Barn. Noticed four members of Burton’s posse, men whose names she didn’t know, seated two-by-two at different tables, black Cordura rifle bags tucked under their seats. The rest of the customers were in KCV county outfits. “Doesn’t feel real to me,” she said. She looked back at him. “Been a lot lately that doesn’t.” She looked down at his hands.

“What doesn’t?”

“You’re her,” she said, looking up, meeting his pale eyes. Not that
crazy cartoon blue. Not blue at all, but widening now. A woman laughed, tables away. His hand lowered the tablet, came to rest on the table, and for the first time since the end of the ride back from Pickett’s, she thought she might be about to cry.

He swallowed. Blinked. “Really, I’ll be someone else.”

“You don’t become her?”

“Our lives were identical, until Lev’s first communication was received here. But this is no longer their past, so she isn’t who I’ll become. We diverged, however imperceptibly at first, when that message was received. By the time she first contacted me, there were already bits of my life she was unfamiliar with.”

“She mailed you?”

“Phoned me,” he said. “I was at a reception in Washington.”

“Did she tell you she was you?”

“No. She told me that the woman I’d just been speaking with, a moment before, was a mole, a deep-cover agent, for the Russian Federation. She, the woman, was my American equivalent, in many ways. Then she, Ainsley, this stranger on the phone, told me something that proved it. Or would, when I’d used classified search engines. So it was rather a gradual revelation, over about forty-eight hours. I did guess,” he said. “During our third call. She told me, then, that she’d made a wager with herself, that I would. And won.” He smiled slightly. “But I’d seen that she had knowledge not only of the world, but of my exact and most secret situation in it. Knowledge no one else could possess, not even my superiors. And she’d continued to identify other foreign and domestic agents in my own agency, and in the American agency I liaise with. In her time, they’d gone undetected for years, one for over a decade, and at very serious strategic cost. I’m unable to act on most of them, else I attract too much attention, become suspect myself. But possession of that information has already had a very beneficial effect on my career.”

“When was this?”

“Thursday,” he said.

“It hasn’t been very long.”

“I’ve barely slept. But it was nothing professional that convinced me. It was that she knew me as no one else could. Thoughts and feelings I’ve had constantly, all my life, but had never expressed, not to anyone.” He looked away, then back, shyly.

“I can see her now,” Flynne said, “but it didn’t strike me until Wilf told me about the tray, this morning.”

“The tray?”

“Like the one at my house. Clovis has one, in London. She’s an old lady there. Has a store that sells American antiques. Lowbeer’s friend. Took Wilf there when she needed Clovis to refresh her memory about something. When he told me, I remembered your hands, hers. Saw it.”

“How utterly peculiar it all is,” he said, and looked down at his hands.

“You’re not named Lowbeer?”

“Ainsley James Gryffyd Lowbeer Holdsworth,” he said. “My mother’s maiden name. She was allergic to hyphenation.” He took a blue handkerchief from a jacket pocket. Not Homes blue but darker, almost black. Dabbed his eyes. “Pardon me,” he said. “A bit emotional.” He looked at her. “You’re the first person I’ve discussed this with, other than Ainsley.”

“It’s okay,” she said, not sure what that even meant now. “Can she hear us? Right now?”

“Not unless we’re in range of a device of some kind.”

“You’ll tell her? That I know?”

“What would you prefer?” He tilted his head then, reminding her more than ever of Lowbeer.

“I’d like to tell her myself.”

“Then you will. Ash just messaged me that they need you back, as soon as possible.”