“So how do I?”
“Your peripheral’s newly installed cognitive bundle is, literally, a bundle. Within it is a communications platform the security bubble around Daedra’s event will be unable to detect. You will hear me, when you do, as, and I quote, ‘static in your bones.’ I understand it’s peculiarly unsettling, but it’s our safest option.”
“And if he’s there?”
“Far the more interesting fork to consider. And why I was pleased by your complete unwillingness to allow the use of that peculiarly vile chemical weapon.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I may need you, going forward, to be exactly the person who won’t do that.”
“You always want to know a lot,” she said, “but you won’t tell me much at all.”
“We need you focused on the moment.”
“‘We’ who?”
“You and I, my dear,” said Lowbeer, and reached across to pat her hand.
106.
BUTTHOLEVILLE
Hello?” he said, settled in the Gobiwagen’s cupola, as the Wheelie’s window opened. “Flynne?”
“She’s not back yet,” said a voice, a woman’s, the accent familiar. The window’s contents looked abstract, white verticals against that same blue.
“Tacoma?”
“Clovis,” she said. “You’re Netherton.” And she picked the Wheelie up, turned it.
Unflattering angle, from below, of what he nonetheless took to be a very attractive face. Short black hair. He tried to see the face of the proprietor of The Clovis Limit there, but only saw her ancient, waiting skull. Terrifying. God’s view of humanity, perhaps, were there one. “Wilf,” he said, “hello.”
“Here she is,” she said, turning, and he was looking down on Flynne, her head in a strange, awkward, glitteringly white construct of some kind, cushioned with white pillows. Her eyes were closed. It was like looking down at the peripheral in the back cabin, except that this was Flynne herself. Absent.
“Can she hear us?” he asked.
“No. The crown’s an autonomic cutout. So I’m told. I thought you had all this tech, up there.”
“We do,” he said. “I’m not technical, myself. But our version of this looks like a transparent plastic hairband.”
“They were made up to your specs, but we had to improvise.” She turned him again. Flynne’s brother was in the next bed, under an identical crown. In the third bed, a face he didn’t recognize. The two of them under blue blankets. What he’d first seen were white bars at the foot of Burton’s bed, against blanket. The second man’s body mass seemed child like.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
“Conner.”
“Penske. I’ve only seen him in the dancing master.”
“The who?”
“Lev’s brother’s martial arts instructor. Peripheral. Excellent dancer, apparently.”
“I’d give my left nut to get up there, see all that,” she said, turning him to face her again. “What can I do for you, Wilf?”
“Is there a window?”
“Not really. On the other side of this stupid wall,” and she turned him, to view an improvised surface that seemed to be made of stacked white envelopes, perhaps containing paper files. “But they’ve sprayed it with polymer, so you can’t see out. Even if you could, you’d just be seeing the alley behind a strip mall in Buttholeville.”
“Is that the town’s name?”
“Nickname. Mine. My sister’s too, I guess. We’re awful.”
“I’ve met her,” he said. “She’s not awful.”
“Told me she met you.”
“Do you know when Flynne will be back?”
“No. Want to wait? Watch the news? I’ve got a tablet here.”
“The news?”
“Local’s interesting, today. We’ve got Luke 4:5 pulling out, nobody’s sure why. Griff actually doesn’t like it. He’s had two PR firms keeping them from getting media coverage, and that’s been working. Now that they’re leaving, for no apparent reason, there’s some national interest. Basically because it’s not what they usually do. You won’t be able to change the channel.”
“I’ll try it, then,” he said. “It fascinates me, here.”
“Takes all kinds.”
107.
LITTLE BUDDY
Flynne opened her eyes.
“Your little buddy’s here,” said Clovis.
“Wilf?”
“Got any others?”
“Where is he?”
“Watching the news.” She lifted the crown off Flynne’s head, put it down on the bedside table.
Flynne rolled on her side, sat up slowly, lowered her legs over the side. She’d been standing with Lowbeer in Lev’s kitchen, looking out at the garden. She felt like she could still see it, if she closed her eyes. She did. Didn’t see it. Opened them.
“You okay?” asked Clovis, eyeing her narrowly.
“Jet lag, maybe,” Flynne said. Standing up. Clovis was obviously ready to catch her if she fell. “I’m okay. Burton okay?”
“Fine. Been back to pee, again to have dinner and hydrate. Walter Reed’s happy with him.”
Flynne went over to the chair where she’d left the Wheelie. Clovis had collapsed the telescoping rod the tablet rode on, and propped a tablet of her own against the back of the chair, on a wadded sweatshirt. The Wheelie was watching the Ciencia Loca episode about spontaneous human combustion. “Hey,” she said, “hi.”
“Wah!” said Netherton, startled. The Wheelie’s spherical body rotated backward on fixed wheels, tilting its tablet and camera up at her. “That was frightening me,” he said. “I kept imagining my body igniting, in the Gobiwagen’s observation cupola. It came on after the news and I couldn’t change it.”
“Want to watch the rest? Second half’s scuba stuff, the old tip of lower Manhattan.”
“No! I came to see you.”
“I’ve got to eat. I’ll take you to Sushi Barn.”
“What’s that?”
“Hong’s restaurant. It’s at the other end of the mall. Madison’s cut holes through and built a hamster run with shingle bags.” She checked her reflection in a plastic-framed mirror that someone, probably Clovis, had taped to a blue tarp with aquamarine duct tape. “That crown is hell on my hair.” She sat down on the chair, put the Wheelie on the floor, and put her sneakers on. The Wheelie extended its tablet, whirred, and wheeled across the floor, tablet swiveling. “Stay there,” she said, getting up. She crossed to it, picked it up, and ducked through the slit.
“This is bizarre,” he said, on the other side. “It looks like some primitive game.”
“Boring game.”
“They all are. What is it for?”
“If we’re under attack, we can walk through this to Sushi Barn and get the shrimp special.”
“Does that make sense?”
“It’s a guy thing. But I think it was Lowbeer’s idea, as interpreted through Burton and my friend Madison.”
“Who is Madison?”
She stepped through the hole in the central wall. “My friend’s husband, nice guy. Plays Sukhoi Flankers.”
“What’s that?”
“Flight sim game. Old Russian planes. Lowbeer is Griff.”
He didn’t say anything. She stopped, between the shingle-bag walls, raised the Wheelie Boy. “‘Is Griff’?” he asked.
“Griff. Becomes her. But not exactly. Like this isn’t her past anymore, so he won’t have her life, because none of this happened to her when she was him.” She started walking.
“You somehow seem,” he said, “to simply accept all these things.”
“You’re the one living in the future, with nanobots eating people, spare bodies, government run by kings and gangsters and shit. You accept all that, right?”
“No,” he said, just before she ducked through, into Hong’s kitchen, “I don’t. I hate it.”
108.
COLDIRON MORNING
Tomm
y came in and squatted down on his haunches at the foot of her foam, hat in his hand. She was groggy from the pill she’d let Tacoma give her, but she’d had her best sleep in about a week. “Sit on the foam, Tommy, you’ll wreck your knees.”
“Best they got for you in here?” he asked, swiveling on his heels and dropping his butt on the corner of the slab.
“Hospital beds feel like hospital. And Burton and Conner both fart a lot. What’s that with Luke 4:5 packing up? Are we sure we didn’t buy them?”
“You sure shit didn’t buy ’em,” he said. “Why I’m waking you up before anybody wants me to. To tell you about that.”
“What?” She got up on her elbows.
“I think the other guys pulled them out because they’re a media magnet. Not that much on their own, anymore, but you add something else to the mix, media’ll be all over it. Or even if they just do something off-script, like leaving here now, they’re more interesting, maybe just for a news cycle. Like your PR operation’s been dialing them down, keeping your face pretty much out of it, but there’s still been a blip from them leaving.”
“So why would someone want them to leave?”
“So they won’t be an add-on draw when something else hits town,” he said. “Something they really don’t want any spare attention on, if they can help it.”
“Like what?”
“Homes. A strategic shitload of Homes. Vehicles, personnel. Grif’s connections are showing two big convoys headed this way. Serious lot of white trucks. Meanwhile, over at what’s left of Pickett’s, Ben Carter’s cousin’s in that quite sizable detachment of Homes, right there. And he’s telling Ben that the rumor’s they’re headed here, today, to mop up the armed remnants of the evil Cordell Pickett’s multicounty drug empire. Which incidentally they’re now behaving as though they put a stop to, as opposed to your vigilante brother, his best friend, and a prosthesis from the Veterans Administration.”
“They’re coming here?”
“Don’t doubt it.”
“And we’re the evil remnants?”
“You got it.”
“They’re that corrupt?”
“In today’s modern world, yeah, at least as of maybe twenty-four hours ago. They sure are. But you’re probably holding too big a stake in one of the prime corrupters to want to have too much of an attitude about that.”
“And when they get here?”
“We’ll resist arrest. Regardless what we might actually do, we’ll have resisted arrest. Those stacks of shingles won’t stop smart munitions. This is exactly the kind of improv urban fortress they were designed to be used against. The roof on this building might as well not be there, and Homes has real attack drones anyway. Wouldn’t matter if we were in bunkers. Plus your brother’s boys are constitutionally disinclined to go peacefully, in spite of odds.”
“Why’s it happening now?”
“Griff’s best bet is that both the two hands are slap up to the top of the handle of the bat, and there’s no room for another. Just worked out that way. They bought whatever it took to get Homes in their pocket, and there’s nothing left for us to buy to get ’em into our ours.”
“What if Griff got tight with Gonzales?”
“I think he already is, though you can probably still see some daylight between them. But there’s politics, and Homes isn’t on her side of the table, president or no.”
“When do they get here?”
“This evening. But they tend to operate after midnight.”
“You could just meet ’em as they come in and help keep order, Tommy. I don’t see that this has to be your fight.”
“Fuck that,” he said, perfectly pleasantly. “You want a breakfast burrito? Brought you one.”
“How come I can’t smell it?”
“Had ’em double-bag it, so it wouldn’t ruin my uniform,” he said, reaching into one of his jacket’s big side pockets.
109.
BLACK SILK FROGS
He was trying to sleep on a granite bench in the tall cold hall of Daedra’s voice mail, while trains, or perhaps mobies departed, dimly announced by gravely incomprehensible voices. Light pulsed.
He opened his eyes. He lay on the leather cushions in the cupola. Out in the darkness of the garage, another pulse. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, peered out.
Squidlight again, on Ossian, upholding, in one hand, on a hanger, dark clothing. Beside him Ash, grim-faced, though no more than usual, dressed in what seemed a chauffeur’s uniform, black, the breast of its stiff tunic crossed with frogs of black silk cord. She wore a large hat, like some Soviet commodore, its gleaming patent bill obscuring her eyes.
Now he remembered what Flynne had said, about Lowbeer and Griff. The mind reels, he thought, struck by the phrase itself, and how seldom, if ever, his seemed to. And how it didn’t, now, at the thought of Lowbeer and Griff being in some sense the same person. He was glad, though, to be too young to have some earlier self abroad, in Flynne’s day.
Pulse.
110.
NOTHING FANCY
They’d given the peripheral a shower, before she’d arrived, done its hair, and put on makeup. The dress Ash had chosen fit it better than anything Flynne had worn in her life. Nothing fancy, Ash explained, because Annie Courrèges wasn’t wealthy. But Ash’s idea of not too fancy was a little black dress, made of something that felt like velour but looked like fresh black carbide sandpaper, supple as silk. Her jewelry was a heavy round bangle made from antique plastic dentures and something that looked like black licorice, and a necklace that was a rigid loop of black titanium wire, strung with lots of different zipper pulls, like they’d been buried somewhere, the paint or plating corroded away. Ash said both of these were real neoprimitive, the bracelet from Ireland and the necklace from Detroit. The black shoes were made of the same stuff as the dress, had wedge heels, and were more comfortable than her sneakers at home. She wished they’d waited until she got there, so she could’ve put it all on, herself. But that familiar pang, when she looked into the tall mirror: Who was that? She was starting to feel like the peripheral looked like somebody she’d known, but she knew it didn’t.
The badge with the gold crown appeared in the mirror, and she thought for a second of the bull in the mirror at Jimmy’s, but it was just Lowbeer calling.
“Tommy thinks Homes is coming after us,” she said.
“Assume as much.”
“Can’t Grif do anything?”
“Not yet. In spite of being able to prove, should the opportunity arise, that the head of their Private Sector Office is in Chinese pay. But we do seem to have reached an impasse. Basically, we need to be able to command them to stop. Rescind the order.”
“What if he tells the president she’s going to be assassinated, but you can stop it, if she orders them to turn around?”
“It isn’t that simple,” said Lowbeer. “We’ve not yet established sufficient trust. Her office is riddled with those aligned with the people who’ll soon be plotting to kill her. And the rest is simply politics.”
“Seriously? There’s nothing we can do?”
“Clovis,” Lowbeer said, “my Clovis, here, is allowing the aunties to root about in her documents. She managed to extract an archipelago of data, before her flight to the U.K. I’d no idea how much, at the time. More a hoarder than a spy, Clovis. If there’s anything of use there, in our present situation, they’ll find it. In the meantime, if you’re successful tonight, it should be a game changer. Though how, exactly, is impossible to predict.”
She bit her lip, then stopped, not wanting to mess up the peripheral’s makeup.
“You look marvelous,” Lowbeer said, reminding her that she could see what the peripheral was seeing. “Have you said hello to Burton yet?”
“No,” she said.
“You should. He’s in the lounge, with Conner. You’ll be unable to see him, once you’re on the way to Farringdon. He’ll be in the trunk. I’m delighted he’s able, after his injury.”
“The trunk?”
“Folds quite flat. Like a piece of old-fashioned Swedish drain-cleaning machinery, folded. Say hello to your brother for me.” The crown was gone.
She went to the door, opened it.
They were sparring, the two of them. She remembered this from before Conner’s injury, even from before they’d enlisted. They had rules of their own. They’d hardly move, shifting weight from foot to foot, watching each other, and when they did move, mainly their hands, it was too fast to follow, and then they were back, the way they were before, shifting their weight, but one of them had won. She saw that it was the same, now, except that Conner was in Lev’s brother’s peripheral and Burton was in the white exoskeleton workout thing, with a bell jar glued where its head would be if it had one, and a pair of creepily real-looking human hands where she remembered it having white cartoon robot hands before. There was a little robot in the bell jar that did everything the exoskeleton did, but actually the other way around, because Burton was in that. Homunculus, they called it. The new hands on Burton’s exoskeleton were tanned a color that reminded her of Pickett. Then their hands moved, blurring, but Conner was faster, she thought.
“I break a finger on your Tin Woodman ass, you’re in deep shit,” said Conner. His peripheral was in a skinny black suit that looked about as restrictive as karate pajamas.
Now the little figure in the dome turned, the exoskeleton turning with it. “Flynne,” said a stranger’s voice, like a voice from an infomercial, “hey.”
“Shit, Burton,” she said, “I thought we’d lost you, back in that alley.” She sort of felt like hugging it, but then that seemed crazy. Plus it had those creepy-ass hands.
“Guess you did, for a while,” the voice said. “I don’t recall chopping that client, or anything really, until I woke up and saw the real-world version of handsome, here.”