The Peripheral

105

In the elevator, she tried thinking about what Wilf had told her about Daedra’s art, wondering if she might hear that bullshit voice in her head, but she didn’t. “What is that thing that talks?” she asked him.

“Cognitive bundle,” he said, as the doors opened. She smelled Lev’s cooking from the kitchen. “It constructs essentially meaningless statements out of a given jargon, around whatever chosen topic. I won’t walk you up. You’ve been there before.” He’d stopped at the foot of the stairs.

“I said it,” she said, “but I didn’t think it.”

“Exactly. But that isn’t evident to anyone else. And it wasn’t bad, for a collage from rote.”

“Creeps me out.”

“I think it’s actually a good idea, in our situation. Best you get upstairs.”

“Try the Wheelie, when I get back.”

“Where is it?”

“On a chair in the back of Coldiron. By the beds.”

“Good luck,” he said.

She turned and climbed the stairs, with their runner of patterned carpet, to turn at the landing, up again. At the top, furniture gleamed softly, glass sparkled. She wished she could’ve stopped to look at the things, but here was Lowbeer, at the double doors, only one of them partially open, her hand on the knob. “Hello,” she said. “Please come in.” Into that green again, gilt trim. A single lamp, incandescent element behind glass cut like diamonds. “Griff is sorting out protection for your mother, I understand.”

Flynne looked at the long table, its dark top perfectly smooth but not too glossy. It no longer felt to her like Santa’s Headquarters here. She wished it did. A very business-y room, almost an office. She looked at Lowbeer, who was wearing another one of her suits. Saw Griff there, more strongly than she’d expected. “He’s you,” she said. “He’s you when you were younger.”

Lowbeer’s head tilted. “Did you guess, or did he confide in you?”

“You have the same hands. Netherton saw the tray on our mantel. Said he’d seen one in Clovis’s store here. That she’s an old woman. I guess once I thought of her being there, and here, at the same time. .” She stopped. “But it isn’t the same time. I guessed you might be there too.”

“Exactly,” said Lowbeer, closing the door.

“Am I here, that way?” Flynne asked.

“Not that we’ve been able to determine. Your birth record survives. No death record. But things became messy, as I understand Netherton’s explained to you. Records, during the deeper jackpot, are incomplete to nonexistent, and more so in the United States. There was a military government there, briefly, that erased huge swathes of data, seemingly at random, no one seems to know why. If you were alive today, you’d be about my age, and that would mean either that you were wealthy or very well connected, which tend to be the same thing, here. Which should mean that I’d be able to have found you.”

“You don’t mind, that I know?”

“Not at all. Why would you think I might?”

“Because it’s a secret?”

“Not from you. Come, sit here.” She went to the tall, mossy-green armchairs, at the head of the table. She waited until Flynne was settled in one, then sat in the other. “I understand that Netherton is pleased with the cognitive bundle.”

“Glad somebody is.”

“And you’ve been shown the guns.”

“Why do I need them?”

“Only one,” she said. “The other’s either for Conner or your brother, depending. I hope none of you need them, but there’s a crudeness of mind behind this business. Best we have our own options for crudeness.”

The tall windows were hidden behind green curtains. Flynne imagined a maze behind them, more green curtains, like the blue tarps in Coldiron. “What about President Gonzales? Griff says they killed her.”

“They did. It set the tone.”

“You’re going to change that?”

“That depends. It’s less like a conspiracy than a climate, at this point.”

“What does it depend on?”

“Daedra’s party, it seems.”

“How?”

“Coldiron and Matryoshka, as your people are calling it, are racing for ownership of your world. Competing tides of subsecond financial events. We are not winning. We are not losing, by that much, but we are not winning. Lev is employing a brilliant but makeshift apparatus on Coldiron’s behalf. Matryoshka, which exists in order to kill you, and for no other reason, appears to be employing some more powerful state financial apparatus, here. I need to stop that, in order to enable Coldiron’s dominance, which may then enable the prevention of Gonzales’s assassination. But the politics here are such that I’m unable to do that without first having proof, or some reasonable facsimile thereof, of who murdered Aelita. I can’t begin to explain how power works, here, but someone powerful must have an interest in Matryoshka. Invariably, they will have stepped on someone else’s toes, or stand to. I can leverage that, offer that other party a fulcrum with which to crush them. But in order for any of that to happen, you and Netherton must succeed at Daedra’s event.”

Flynne looked at the cut glass and silver on the sideboard. She looked at Lowbeer. “It all hangs on me identifying the asshole on that balcony?”

“Yes.”

“That’s fucked.”

“It is that, yes. But here we are. Should you recognize him, you’ll alert me, and things will be set in motion.”

“What if I don’t? Can’t?”

“Best not dwell on that. But if you do succeed, we face another level of difficulty, in that Daedra’s gathering operates under a protocol that strictly bans the use of personal communication devices. As peripherals, telepresent devices, you and Mr. Penske become exceptions of a sort, but you’ll be very tightly monitored. So it then becomes a question of how, should you identify our murderer, you will then communicate that to me.”

“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.