The Peripheral (20 page)

SANTA CLAUS’S HEADQUARTERS

P
arts of Lev’s house, Flynne thought, climbing after Netherton, Lowbeer behind her, were really a lot like any house. The kitchen, for instance, smelled of bacon, even though it had a stove half the size of the Airstream. But then there was the art gallery, which looked to be most of the length of a football field. And the garage below that, and whatever might be further down. But these stairs were just stairs, wooden, polished, a long tongue of what she guessed was Turkish carpet up them, fastened with brass rods and fancy hooks. Looked walked on, like people lived here.

At a square landing, the stairs turned right, then ended on a hallway. Old-fashioned furniture, paintings and mirrors in big frames, incandescent bulbs, frosted glass. And Netherton, ahead of her, walking through open double doors, into the gold-trimmed forest green of the Hefty Mart Santa’s Headquarters display.

They always set it up in a window, just after Halloween. The holograms changed every year, but the room had been what she’d loved. This was better, realer, and she wondered why they’d do that, but now Lowbeer was guiding her in, hand on her shoulder, pulling out a chair for her at the long dark table. Dark green curtains hid tall windows. The others coming in behind them, Ash and Ossian and Lev, then Conner. Lev turned to close the doors, Conner watching him.

“Be seated, Mr. Murphy,” said Lowbeer, who was wearing a sort of mannish pantsuit. “You aren’t playing butler now.” Ossian took a seat across from Flynne, Ash beside him. Lowbeer sat in one of two tall
green armchairs at the head of the table, Lev in the other. Conner lounged back against a dark green wall, beside something she thought was probably a sideboard, with a silver tray on it, and on that, one of those cut-glass bottles, with matching glasses. Netherton, still standing, seemed to be looking at that, but then he looked around, blinked, sat down beside Flynne.

“Delighted to see you,” Lev said, to Lowbeer.

“No solicitors evident,” she said. “Most cordial.”

“They haven’t been convinced that they’re entirely unnecessary, but they’ve agreed to be less obviously present.”

“More pleasant in any case,” Lowbeer said. She looked around at the rest of them. “I wish to propose a course of action.”

“Please,” said Lev.

“Thank you. Tuesday evening, in four days’ time, Daedra West hosts a gathering, the venue yet to be announced. Possibly one of the guildhalls. Her guest list, so far, is interesting.” She looked at Lev. “The Remembrancer himself may be there. Lesser faces from the City. We’ve been unable to determine even an ostensible purpose. I would suggest, Mr. Netherton,” and Flynne saw Netherton’s eyes narrow slightly, “that you might, in your way, be able to conjure up some sufficiently vivid rationale for an invitation.”

“For whom?” asked Netherton, beside Flynne. He sat close to the table, hunched forward, like someone holding cards.

“You yourself,” said Lowbeer, “plus one.”

“I don’t know that she’d even return my call,” said Netherton. “She hasn’t tried to get in touch.”

“I’m perfectly aware of that,” Lowbeer said. “But you could, if I understand your method, find a narrative that leads quite naturally to her inviting you. I’ll tell you when I think it best for you to approach her. Recently former lover may be awkward, as entrances go, but not without traction. If you’re entirely unwilling, however, I see no way of going forward.” Her hair white as the crown Macon had printed in Fabbit. “You’d be taking Flynne, allowing her to survey Daedra’s
guests.” She looked at Flynne. “You’ll be looking for the man you saw on Aelita West’s balcony.”

“These are rich people, right?” Flynne asked.

“Indeed,” said Lowbeer.

“So why isn’t there footage out the ass, on whoever was at that party?” Flynne asked. “Why isn’t there any record of what I saw? What about those paparazzi? Why was I even there?” She noticed how little space Conner was managing to take up, big as his peripheral was, against the wall. He looked like he’d just found himself there, hadn’t thought about it yet. He winked at her.

“Yours is a relatively evolved culture of mass surveillance,” Lowbeer said. “Ours, much more so. Mr. Zubov’s house, here, internally at least, is a rare exception. Not so much a matter of great expense as one of great influence.”

“What’s that mean?”

“A matter of whom one knows,” said Lowbeer, “and of what they consider knowing you to be worth.”

“The deal that gets you privacy is funny?”

“Our world itself is funny,” said Lowbeer. “Aelita West’s soiree was held under a somewhat similar protocol, but temporary, quasi-diplomatic. Nothing, by agreement, was recorded. Not by Aelita’s systems, nor Edenmere Mansions’, nor by your drone. News agencies and freelancers were kept away. That was the nature of your job, in fact.”

“He might be at this party?”

“Possibly,” said Lowbeer. “We shan’t know, if you can’t attend.”

“Get us in,” Flynne said, to Netherton.

He looked at her, then at Lowbeer. Closed his eyes. Opened them. “Annie Courrèges,” he said, “neoprimitivist curator. English, in spite of the name. Daedra met her, with me, at a working lunch in the Connaught. Later, I convinced her that Annie had a flattering theory about the artistic progress of her career. Now Annie is unable to attend her party physically, to her very great regret. But would be delighted to accompany me via,” he nodded toward Flynne, “peripheral.”

“Thank you, Mr. Netherton,” Lowbeer said. “I hadn’t the least doubt in you.”

“On the other hand,” Netherton said, “according to Rainey, she may think I killed her sister. Or have friends spreading the rumor that I did.” He stood. “So I think that that calls for a drink.” He walked around the end of the table. Flynne saw Conner’s peripheral’s eyes follow him. “Who else will have one?” Netherton asked, over his shoulder.

“Wouldn’t mind,” said Lev.

“Nor I,” said Ossian.

“Too early for me, thank you,” said Lowbeer.

Ash said nothing.

Netherton brought the silver tray, with its bottle and glasses, to the table.

“Mr. Penske will be going along as well,” Lowbeer said to Netherton, “as your security. To attend sans security would single you out.”

“Up to Flynne,” said Conner.

“You’re coming,” Flynne told him.

He nodded.

Netherton was pouring the whiskey, if that was what it was, into three glasses.

“We need to buy the governor,” Flynne said. “Shit’s happening. Shooting on our property—”

“In progress,” said Ossian, as Netherton passed him a glass, then took the other two to Lev, who took one.

“Cheers,” said Netherton. The three of them raised glasses, drank. Netherton put his down, empty, on the table. Lev’s joined it there, almost untouched. Ossian swirled the whiskey, smelled it, sipped again.

“Is that it?” Flynne asked Lowbeer. “I need to go back, see Burton. Conner too.”

“I have to be going myself,” said Lowbeer, standing. “We’ll stay in touch.” Smiling, nodding to them, looking pleased, she left the room, Lev behind her. Flynne didn’t think of tall people as scuttling,
ordinarily, but she thought Lev scuttled after Lowbeer, like she was the key to something he wanted bad. They went down the stairs.

“Where do we park these?” Flynne asked, meaning the peripherals. “We’ll be a while.”

“The Mercedes,” said Ash. “Yours is due a nutrient infusion, so we’ll do that while you’re away.” She stood, the Irishman putting down his glass and rising with her.

Flynne started to push her chair back, but then Conner was pulling it back for her. She hadn’t seen him come around the table. His peripheral smelled of aftershave or something. Citrusy, metallic. She stood up.

Netherton picked up Lev’s glass. “The master cabin has a larger bed,” he said to Conner. “You can use that.” He took a sip of Lev’s whiskey.

Ash led the way out of what Flynne now understood wasn’t really meant to be Santa’s Headquarters, however much it looked like it. Netherton swallowed the last of Lev’s whiskey and they all went downstairs, then into the elevator to the garage.

“You may find your reentry disorienting,” said Ash, beside her, in the elevator.

“I didn’t, before.”

“There’s a cumulative effect, aside from jet lag.”

“Jet lag?”

“The endocrine equivalent. You’re five hours behind London time, where you are, plus there’s an inherent six-hour difference between the time here and the time in your continuum.”

“Why?”

“Purely accidental. Established when we happened to manage to send our first message to your Colombia. That remains fixed. Do you suffer much, from jet lag?”

“Never had it,” Flynne said. “Flying’s too expensive. Burton had it in the Marines.”

“Aside from that, the more time you spend here, the more likely
you are to notice dissonance on returning. Your peripheral’s sensorium is less multiplex than your own. You may find your own sensorium seems richer, but not pleasantly so. More meaty, some say. You’ll have gotten used to a slightly attenuated perceptual array, though you likely don’t notice it now.”

“That’s a problem?”

“Not really. But best be aware that it happens.”

The bronze doors opened.

Ossian drove them to Netherton’s RV in a golf cart that made no more noise than the elevator. Netherton had taken the seat beside hers. She could smell the whiskey. Conner sat behind him. Those rafters lit up, one after another, as the cart rolled under them. Past grilles and headlights of all those old cars. She turned, looking back at Conner. “Who’ve you got at your place, when you get back?”

“Macon, maybe.”

“Ash says it might be weird for me. Might be weird for you too. Like jet lag and stuff.”

Conner grinned, through the peripheral’s bone structure but somehow it was totally him. “I can do that standing on my head. When we coming back?” He widened the peripheral’s eyes.

“I don’t know, but it won’t be that long. You need to eat, sleep if you can.”

“What are you doing there?”

“Trying to find out what’s going on,” she said, as she saw that headless robot exercise thing, standing where they’d left it.

IMPOSTOR SYNDROME

I
wouldn’t have imagined this as your sort of place,” Ash said, looking at what Netherton knew to be only the first of several themed environments, this one hyper-lurid dawn in a generic desert. Something vaguely to do with downed airships, it was on the floor above the Kensington High Street showrooms of a designer of bespoke kitchens. She’d driven him here in one of Lev’s father’s antiques, an open two-seater reeking of fossil fuel.

“I was here once with friends,” he said. “Their idea, not mine.”

She was enfolded, or encased, depending, in a Napoleonic greatcoat apparently rendered in soot-stained white marble. When she was still, it looked like sculpted stone. When she moved, it flowed like silk. “I thought you hated this sort of thing.”

“You’re the one telling me Lowbeer wants me to approach Daedra now. She insists I not phone from Lev’s.”

“She also insists on returning you there herself,” she said. “Please be careful. We can’t protect you, here. Particularly not from yourself.”

“You should stay, really,” he said, trusting that she wouldn’t, “have a drink.”

“You probably shouldn’t, but it isn’t my decision.” She walked away, into a cheesily augmented surround rivaling the one in Lev’s father’s blue salon.

“Your pleasure, sir?” inquired a Michikoid he hadn’t heard approaching. Its face and slender limbs were scoured aluminum, under something resembling the remnants of an ancient flight suit.

“Table for one, cloaked, nearest the entrance.” He extended his
hand, allowing it to access his credit. “Not to be approached by anything other than serving units.”

“Of course,” it said, and led him toward something aspiring, and failing, to look as though it were constructed from bits of derelict airships, roofed with netted bulges of gasbag, within which faint lights leapt and shuddered.

There was music here, of some genre he didn’t recognize, but a cloaked table would allow the option of silence. Splintered sections of fuselage, wooden propellers, none of it genuine, though he supposed that that might be the point. A thin crowd, this early in the evening, and relatively inactive. He spotted Rainey’s Fitz-David Wu, though almost certainly not the same one. This one wore a retro-proletarian one-piece, one pale cheek artfully daubed with a single smudge of dark grease. It was neutrally eyeing a tall blonde, one emulating, he supposed, some iconic pre-jackpot media asset.

The Michikoid decloaked his table. He took a seat, was cloaked, ordered whiskey. He dialed the silence up, sat watching the peripheral dumb show, waiting for his drink. When a different Michikoid had arrived with his whiskey, he decided that the place did at least offer decent drink. Otherwise, he wasn’t sure why he’d chosen it. Possibly because he’d doubted anyone else would be willing to put up with it. Though perhaps he’d also had in mind that it might provide some perspective on the fact of Flynne, in however lateral a way. Not nearly lateral enough, he decided, looking at the peripherals.

He wasn’t a peripheral person, something his one prior visit here should have definitively proven. He and the others had had a cloaked table then as well. He remembered wondering why anyone would choose to indulge in such behavior, when they could be almost certain of invisible observers. That was what the clientele paid for, someone had said, an audience, and weren’t they themselves, after all, paying to watch? Here, at least, in this first room, it was a purely social exhibitionism, and for that he was grateful.

This would be as stimulating, he decided, as sitting alone in Ash’s
tent. Though he was glad to not be in Lev’s basement. And of course there was the whiskey. He signaled a passing Michikoid, who could see him, to bring another.

Whoever the operators of these peripherals were, wherever they were, they were everything he found tedious about his era. And all of them, he supposed, sober, as they were all couched, somewhere, under autonomic cutoff, so unable to drink. People were so fantastically boring.

Flynne, he thought, was the opposite of all of this, whether in her peripheral or not.

Now Lowbeer’s sigil appeared, pulsing, as the Michikoid was delivering his drink, momentarily obscuring its artfully weathered nonface. “Yes?” he asked, not having expected the call.

“Courrèges,” Lowbeer said.

“What about her?”

“You’re definitely proceeding with that?”

“I think so.”

“Be certain,” she said. “It’s someone’s life. You’ll be sending her on her way.”

“Where?”

“To Brazil. The ship departed three days ago.”

“She’s gone to Brazil?”

“The ship has. We’ll send her to catch up with it, retroactively altering the passenger manifest. She’ll be entirely unavailable during the voyage. Practicing a form of directed meditation she requires in order to be accepted by the neoprimitives she hopes to study.”

“That seems rather elaborate,” said Netherton, preferring looser, more readily rejigged deceptions.

“We don’t know who Daedra may know,” said Lowbeer. “Assume your story will be examined in considerable depth. It’s a simple story. She left three days ago, for Brazil. Neoprimitives. Meditation. You don’t know the name of the airship, or her exact destination. Please restrain yourself in the invention of extraneous detail.”

“You’re the one fond of elaboration, I thought,” said Netherton, and allowed himself a very small sip of whiskey.

“We won’t be monitoring digitally. Too evident a footprint. Someone in the club will be reading your lips.”

“So much for cloaking?”

“You might as well be convinced you’re invisible when you close your eyes,” said Lowbeer. “Call her now, before you finish that drink.”

“I will,” said Netherton, looking down at his whiskey.

Her sigil was gone.

He looked up, expecting to find someone watching him, in spite of the cloaking, but the peripherals were busy with one another, or with pretending not to be, and the Michikoid waitstaff all smoothly eyeless. He remembered the one on Daedra’s moby sprouting at least eight eyes, in pairs of different sizes, black and spherical and blank. He drank some whiskey.

He imagined Annie Courrèges boarding some government craft, whisked out to a moby en route to Brazil. Her own plans, whatever they had been, as suddenly and irrevocably altered as anyone’s would be, should someone like Lowbeer decide to alter them. Lowbeer wasn’t simply the Met. No one Lowbeer’s age was simply anything. He looked up at those lights, dimly flitting within the sagging bladders of an imaginary airship, and noticed for the first time that they were vaguely figural. Captive electrical souls. Who designed these terrible things?

He drank off the very last of his whiskey. Time to phone Daedra. But first he’d have another.