The Peripheral

  Receding down the length of the dully grandiose hall, like an illustration of perspective, were chest-high plinths of granite, square in cross-section, supporting the familiar miniatures of her surgically flayed hides, sandwiched between sheets of glass. Typical self-exaggeration, as she’d so far only produced sixteen, meaning that the majority were duplicates. A wintery light found its way down, as from unseen windows. The ambient sound was glum as the light, as calculated to unsettle. An anteroom, reserved for cold calls. A point was being made. “Fine,” he said, and heard the echoes of the word deflect across granite.

  “Netherton?” asked the voice, as if suspecting the name of being an unfamiliar euphemism.

  “Wilf Netherton.”

  “What would this be concerning, exactly?”

  “I was her publicist, until recently. A private matter.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Netherton, but we have no record of you.”

  “Associate Curator Annie Courrèges, of the Tate Postmodern.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Be quiet, darling. Let pattern recognition have its way.”

  “Wilf?” asked Daedra.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’ve never liked Kafka.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Never mind.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Unfinished business,” he said, with a small and entirely unforced sigh that he took as an omen that he was on his game.

  “Is it about Aelita?”

  “Why would it be?” he asked, as if puzzled.

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “She’s vanished.”

  He silently counted to three. “Vanished?”

  “She’d hosted a function for me, after the business on the Patch, at Edenmere Mansions. When her security came back on, afterward, she was gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “She’s not tracking, Wilf. At all.”

  “Why was her security off?”

  “Protocol,” she said, “for the function. Did you sabotage my costume?”

  “I did not.”

  “You were upset about the tattoos,” she said.

  “Never to the extent that I’d interfere with your artistic process.”

  “Someone did,” she said. “You made me agree. In those boring meetings.”

  “It’s good that I’ve called, then.”

  “Why?” she asked, after slightly too long a pause.

  “I wouldn’t want to leave it this way.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to imagine you haven’t left it,” she said, “if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  He sighed again. His body did it for him. It was a quick sigh, propulsive. The regret of a man who knew both what he had lost and that he had well and truly lost it. “You misunderstand me,” he said. “But this isn’t the time. I’m sorry. Your sister . . .”

  “How can you expect me to believe you didn’t know?”

  “I’ve been on a media fast. Only recently learned that I’ve been fired, for that matter. Busy processing.”

  “Processing what?”

  “My feelings. With a therapist. In Putney.”

  “Feelings?”

  “Some horribly novel sort of regret,” he said. “May I see you?”

  “See me?”

  “Your face. Now.”

  Silence, but then she did open a feed, showing him her face.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You’re easily the most remarkable artist I’ve ever met, Daedra.”

  Her eyebrows moved fractionally. Not so much approval as a temporary recognition that he might have the capacity to be correct about something.

  “Annie Courrèges,” he said. “Her sense of your work. Do you remember me telling you about that, on the moby?”

  “Someone jammed the zip on that jumpsuit,” she said. “They had to cut me out of it.”

  “I know nothing about that. I want to arrange for you to have something.”

  “What?” she asked, with no effort to disguise a routine suspicion.

  “Annie’s vision of your work. Happenstance, really, that she confided in me, and of course she had no idea about us. Having had that glimpse of her vision, and knowing you as I do, I find I must at least attempt to bring it to you.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I couldn’t begin to paraphrase. When you’ve heard it, you’ll understand.”

  “You’re getting this from therapy?”

  “It’s been a huge help,” he said.

  “What are you asking me for, Wilf?”

  “That you allow me to introduce you to her. Again. That I might contribute, in however small a way, to something whose importance I may never fully comprehend.”

  She might, he thought, have been looking at a piece of equipment. A parafoil, say, wondering whether to keep or replace it. “They say you did something to her,” she said.

  “To who?”

  “Aelita.”

  “Who does?” If he gestured now, with the empty glass, there was a chance a Michikoid would bring him another, but Daedra would see him do it.

  “Rumors,” she said, “media.”

  “What are they saying about you and the boss patcher? That can’t be pretty.”

  “Sensationalism,” she said.

  “We’re both victims, then.”

  “You aren’t a celebrity,” she said. “There’s nothing sensational about you being suspected of something.”

  “I’m your former publicist. She’s your sister.” He shrugged.

  “What is that you’re sitting in?” she asked, appearing fully in front of him now, between two plinthed miniatures, no mere headshot. Her legs and feet were bare. She was wrapped in a familiar long cardigan, teal.

  “A cloaked table, in the bar of a place in Kensington, Impostor Syndrome.”

  “Why,” she asked, a single comma of suspicion appearing between her brows, “are you in a peri club?”

  “Because Annie’s away. On a moby bound for Brazil. If you’re willing to meet her again, she’d need a peripheral.”

  “I’m busy.” The comma deepened. “Perhaps next month.”

  “She’s going into fieldwork. Embedding with neoprims. Technophobics. She’s had to have her phone extracted. If it goes well, she might be with them for a year or more. We’d have to do it soon, before she arrives.”

  “I’ve told you I’m busy.”

  “I’m concerned about her, there. Were we to lose her, her vision goes with her. She’s years from publishing. You’re her life’s work, really.”

  She took a step toward the table. “It’s that special?”

  “It’s extraordinary. She’s in such awe of you, though, that I don’t know how we could arrange it even if you weren’t so busy. A one-on-one meeting would be too much for her. If we could meet you, seemingly at random, perhaps at a function. Surprise her. She’s ordinarily very confident socially, but she could scarcely speak to you, at the Connaught. She’s been desolate about that. I suspect this embedding is an attempt at distraction.”

  “I do have something coming up . . . I don’t know how much time I’d have for her.”

  “That would depend on how interesting you find her,” he said. “Perhaps I’m mistaken.”

  “You can be,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

  And she and her teal cardi and her bare legs were gone, and with them the chill stone light of her voice mail.

  He was looking out at the peripherals in Impostor Syndrome again. Their fretful animatronic diorama, viewed in utter silence. He signaled a passing Michikoid. Time for another drink.

  57.

  GOOD CHINA

  Her mother said rich people looked kind of like dolls. Seeing Corbell Pickett in her mother’s living room, she remembered that. Every square inch of him was probably the same perfectly even tan, his full head of preacher hair as evenly silver.

  She’d worn an old fishtail parka of Leon??
?s up from the trailer. He’d used that evil hydrophobic nanopaint on it, because it hadn’t been waterproof at all, in the Korean War Leon said it was from. Not the one he and Burton had been two years too young for, but the one before that, ancient history. She’d found it on Burton’s clothes rod, after she’d used his shaving mirror to put on some lip gloss, the rain still smacking on the Airstream’s cocoon. Tried not to touch the outside when she put it on. They’d shown PSAs about that paint, not touching it, in high school, when the government was first getting the stuff off store shelves. Fit her like a tent, stiff with paint.

  “Damn,” she’d said, looking down at the white controller on Burton’s army blanket, “it’s cabled to my phone. Don’t like leaving my phone, but I don’t know how you disconnect that.”

  “Leave ’em. Anybody you aren’t already on a first-name basis with tries to walk in here, tonight,” Tommy had said, zipping up his jacket, “they aren’t walking out.”

  “Okay,” she’d said, from beneath the cavelike hood, as he’d opened the door into the rain, wondering if she was getting that “meaty” thing Ash had told her about, from being back in her own body. Like the supersaturated color in an old movie, maybe, and everything with a little more texture?

  So she’d followed him out, feet slipping in the mud when she stepped down. Not hydrophobic, her shoes, and not even that comfortable. She’d wished she had her other ones, but then she’d remembered they were in a future that this world didn’t even lead to. And maybe weren’t even her size. She’d thought of the peripheral on its bunk, then, in the back room of that giant RV. Made her feel some emotion there might not be a name for, but was that just being back in her body too? Her shoes and socks already soaking through, she’d followed Tommy up the trail, thinking the rain made a little sizzling sound, as it tried its fastest to get off the coated cotton.

  When they’d gotten up to the backdoor, she’d wiped her shoes on the mat. Opened the door on Edward, Vizless, finishing a sandwich at the kitchen table. He’d nodded to her, mouth full, eyes wide, and she’d seen, through the door into the dining room, that her mother had the good china out. Nodding back at him, slipping out of the parka, which was perfectly, scarily dry, she’d hung it on the rack beside the fridge.

  “And here’s your pretty daughter, Ella.” He was beside the fireplace, with Burton, her mother sitting in the middle of the sofa. “And this must be Deputy Tommy.”

  “Evening, ma’am,” Tommy said. “Mr. Pickett. Burton.”

  “Hi,” said Flynne, almost silenced by how much anybody like Corbell Pickett was never supposed to be in their living room. “Remember you from the Christmas parade, Mr. Pickett,” she said.

  “Corbell,” he said. “Been hearing good things about you. From Ella here, and your brother. And Tommy, by way of Sheriff Jackman. Good to finally meet you, Tommy. Appreciate you coming out.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Pickett,” said Tommy, behind her, and she turned to see him. He’d hung his black jacket on the rack beside the parka, and now he put his hat on the hook. He turned, in his starched tan uniform shirt with the patches on the sleeves, badge flashing in the light, expression neutral.

  What she really wanted, she realized, was to ask Burton if they’d managed to buy the governor yet, but her mother was here, not to mention Pickett.

  “Hey,” said Burton, how he stood reminding her of Conner in the peripheral: off-centered but just so, ready to swing either way.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “You must be tired.”

  “Not sure.”

  “Bring in the coffee, Flynne,” her mother said. “Help me up, Burton. I’m past my bedtime.” Burton crossed to her, took her hand. Flynne could see her staying on top of her sickness, something she could still do when she needed to. Unwilling for Pickett to see it. The oxygen was nowhere in sight.

  She went back into the kitchen and got the pot off the stove. Edward was just sneaking out, under one of those giveaway rain capes with the Hefty logo across the back. He gave her a nervous half wave. The plastic blinds on the door’s window clattered as he closed it behind him.

  “Eat his sandwich?” her mother asked, from the living room.

  “He did,” Flynne said, coming back with the coffee.

  “Knew his aunt. Reetha. Worked with her. Sorry I have to turn in, Corbell. Pleasure to see you. It’s been a long time. Pour Corbell some coffee, Burton. Flynne, you help me to bed, please.”

  “I will,” she said, and put the pot down on the coffee table, on a thing made of big wooden beads that Leon had done in Scouts. She followed her mother through the door beside the fireplace, closed it behind them.

  Her mother bent down, plucked up her oxygen, turned the knob, stuck the little clear plastic horns into her nose. “What are you and Burton up to with that man?” she asked, voice down so he wouldn’t hear, and Flynne could see her being really careful not to swear, which meant she was seriously angry.

  58.

  WU

  The Fitz-David Wu rental, the one with the grease-smeared cheek and the creased boiler suit, was approaching his table, a drink in its hand. It seemed to see him.

  “You see me,” he said, resentfully.

  “I do,” it said, putting the drink down in front of him, “though others can’t. That’s your last. You’ve been cut off.”

  “By whom?” he asked, but knew.

  The peripheral reached into a pocket at its hip, withdrew something, which it then exposed on its open palm: a small cylinder, wrought in gilt and fluted ivory. It morphed, becoming a gilt-edged ivory locket that opened, revealing Lowbeer in what seemed a handtinted image, orange tweed and a green necktie, gazing sternly up. Vanishing as the locket seamlessly became a thumb-tall lion, crowned and rampant, then back into the ornate little cylinder.

  “Am I to assume it’s genuine? Easily done with assemblers.”

  It pocketed the thing. “The punishment for emulating a tipstaff is extremely severe, and not at all brief. Drink up. We need to be going.”

  “Why?” asked Netherton.

  “As you reached her voice mail, various individuals, across the entire Thames Valley, began to move in this direction. None connected to her, or to you, in any known way, but evident to the aunties as violating statistical norms. We need you out of here, then, with as little hint as possible of any contrivance of authority. Drink up.”

  Given such unqualified permission, Netherton tossed back the whiskey. He stood, a bit unsteadily, knocking over his chair.

  “This way, please, Mr. Netherton” said the peripheral, rather wearily he thought, and took his wrist, to lead him deeper into Impostor Syndrome.

  59.

  ADVENTURE CAPITALISTS

  People think the really bad ones are something special, but they’re not,” her mother said, sitting on the edge of her bed, next to the table crowded with meds. “Psycho killers and rapists, they never ruin as many lives as a man like Corbell does. His daddy was a town councilman. Stuck-up boy, Corbell, selfish, but no more than lots that age. Thirty-some years on, he’s ruined more people than he can be bothered to remember, or even know.” She was looking at Flynne.

  “We took something on,” Flynne said. “Took the money. Nothing to do with him, that we knew of. Now he’s turned up in it. Not like we asked him to, or asked for him.”

  “If Burton’s moonlighting, and the VA finds out,” her mother said, “they’ll cut him off.”

  “Might not matter, if things work out.”

  “VA’s not going out of business any time soon,” her mother said.

  Flynne heard the door open behind her. Turned.

  “Sorry,” said Janice, “but that asshole’s giving Burton the gears. Didn’t want to be standing where he might see me and think I heard.”

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “On your bed, doing hate Kegels. Went up there after I’d put the coffee on and helped Ella put her hair up, when Burton told us who was coming over. You okay, Ella?”
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  “Fine, honey,” said Flynne’s mother, but her sickness was showing.

  “You take your meds now,” Janice said. “You’d better get back there,” she said to Flynne. “Sounded like there was business being done.”

  Flynne noticed the picture of her very young dad, younger than Burton, in his dress uniform. The room had been his den, then her mother’s sewing room. After she started having trouble with the stairs, they’d moved her bed down here. “Have to go back now,” Flynne said to her mother. “I’ll look in after. If you’re still awake, we’ll talk.”

  Her mother nodded, not looking at her, busy with her pills.

  “Thanks, Janice,” Flynne said, and went out.

  “Not without a better idea who’s doing the buying,” Pickett was saying, as she entered the living room. He sat in the rocker armchair with the tan slipcover, which she now saw could do with a wash. Burton and Tommy were at either end of the sofa, facing him across the coffee table. Pickett saw her, kept talking. “My people in the statehouse won’t talk to you. This outfit you’ve hooked up with will be going through me. The other thing they need to understand is that what they’ve spent so far was just to get the door open. Maintenance is going to be due, on a regular basis.”

  She realized, sitting down between Burton and Tommy, that each sentence of what he’d just said had been in a cadence she remembered from his commercials for his dealership, a sort of spoken wedge, narrow on the front end but widening out to a final emphasis. Driven like a nail.

  “Now you,” Pickett said, looking her in the eye, “you’ve actually met our Colombian adventure capitalists.”

  Tommy, on her left, leaned forward, elbows on his knees, one hand around the other, which was curled into a loose fist. From where she sat she could see there was a pistol, smaller than the one in his belt holster, down the front waistband of his pants.

  She met Pickett’s hard stare. “I have,” she said.

  “Tell me about them,” Pickett said. “Your brother either doesn’t know or isn’t that eager.”