The Peripheral

114

When they came out of the elevator, she saw, between two knots of people in black, the view from her first time here, that curve in the river. All the windows were unfrosted and the interior walls had been removed. Not so much removed but like they’d never been there. One big space now, like Lev’s dad’s gallery. Conner stood near the elevator, scoping everything. He looked completely on his game, and she guessed he was finally back to some version of what she imagined he’d been, before whatever it was had blown him up. He wasn’t quite smiling, because he was in full bodyguard mode, but he almost was.

“No way up or down except this elevator,” he said, as they reached him. “Stairs to the floor above and below. Some seriously ugly mofos in here. They’d be like me, security. Mofo-ettes too. Like a bad-ass convention sprinkled on a small town’s worth of rich folks.”

“More people than I’ve ever seen here in one place before,” she said, and then something howled, deep in every bone in the peripheral’s body. “Testing the entanglement,” the nastiest voice she’d ever heard said, a kind of modulated ache, but she knew it was Lowbeer. “Please acknowledge.”

Twin taps of the tongue’s tiny magnet, left forward palate-quarter.

“Good,” said the bones, horribly. “Circulate. Tell Wilf.”

“Let’s circulate,” she said to Wilf, as a crowd of tattooed New Zealanders passed them. Tā moko, she remembered, from Ciencia Loca. Technically not tattoos. Carved in. Grooved. The skin lightly sculpted. The boss, she guessed, was the blonde with the profile like something on a war canoe. They definitely didn’t look like they were here to party, or for that matter to celebrate life. Something had happened, around the blonde’s face as she’d passed them, a stutter of image-capture, barely visible. She remembered what Lowbeer had said, about artifacts in her field of vision.

“Keep a minimum of two meters distance,” Wilf said, to Conner. “When we engage in conversation, double that.”

“I’m housebroken,” Conner said. “She had me taught that in a virtual coronation ball, king of fucking Spain. This is like poolside casual.”

A Michikoid with a tray of glasses, pale yellow wine, offered her one. “No thanks,” she said. She saw Wilf reach for one, smiling, then freeze. Like seeing the haptics glitch Burton. Then his hand changed course, for one with fizzy water, near the edge of the tray. He winced, picking it up. “Follow me,” he said.

“Where?”

“This way, Annie.” He took her hand, led her toward the center, away from the windows, the glass of water held near his chest.

She remembered how long it had taken her to fly a circuit around this space. Wondered if the bugs were out there now, and what they’d really been.

There was an entirely black screen, square, floor-to-ceiling, near the middle of the space, people around it, talking, holding drinks. It looked like a giant version of one of those old flat displays that Wilf had on his desk, the first time she’d seen him. Wilf kept moving, looking as though he knew where he was going, but she assumed he didn’t. From a slightly different angle, now, she saw the black screen wasn’t entirely blank, but showed, very dimly, a woman’s face. “What’s that?” she asked Wilf, nodding in its direction.

“Aelita,” he said.

“Is that something you do, here?”

“Nothing I’ve ever seen before. And I-” He broke off. “And here’s Daedra,” he said.

Daedra was smaller than she’d expected, Tacoma’s size. She looked like somebody in a video, or an ad. At home that was something, even just to see someone like that. Pickett had had a little of it, sort of by osmosis, but not like he’d ever really tried. He was local. Brent Vermette had a lot of the guy version, via Miami and wherever else, and if he had a wife she’d have a lot of it too. But Daedra had it all, and tattoos on top of that, squared-off black spirals, up over her collarbones, out of the top of her black dress. Flynne realized she was waiting for the tattoos to move, and no reason to assume they wouldn’t, except she thought Wilf would have mentioned it, if they did.

“Annie,” Wilf said, “you’ve met Daedra before, at the Connaught. I know you weren’t expecting this, but I’ve told her about your sense of her art, her career. She’s very interested.”

Daedra was staring at her flatly. “Neoprimitives,” she said, as if she didn’t entirely like the word. “What do you do with them?”

Did she have to be asked directly about Daedra’s art for the bullshit implant to kick in? She guessed she did. “I study them,” she said, some part of her reaching back to the ragged yellow-spined wall of National Geographic, to Ciencia Loca, anything. “Study the things they make.”

“What do they make?”

The only thing she could think of was Carlos and the others making things out of Kydex. “Sheaths, holsters. Jewelry.” Jewelry wasn’t true, but it didn’t matter.

“What does that have to do with my art?”

“Attempts to encompass the real, outside of hegemony,” said the implant. “The other. Heroically. A boundless curiosity, informed by your essential humanity. Your warmth.” Flynne felt like her eyes were bugging. She forced herself to smile.

Daedra looked at Wilf. “My warmth?”

“Exactly,” said Wilf. “Annie sees your essential humanity as the least appreciated aspect of your work. Her analysis seeks to remedy that. I’ve found her arguments to be extraordinarily revelatory.”

“Really,” said Daedra, staring at him.

“Annie’s quite shy, in your presence,” he said. “Your work means everything to her.”

“Really?”

“I’m so grateful to meet you,” Flynne said. “Again.”

“That peripheral looks nothing like you,” Daedra said. “You’re on a moby, headed for Brazil?”

“She’s supposed to be meditating,” Wilf said, “but she’s cheating now, in order to be here. The group she’ll be embedding with insists on visitors having all of their implants removed. Remarkable dedication, on her part.”

“Who’s it supposed to be?” Still staring at Flynne.

“I don’t know,” said Flynne.

“A rental,” said Wilf. “I found it through Impostor Syndrome.”

“I’m sorry about your sister,” Flynne said. “I didn’t know that this was about her, until we got here. Must be so sad.”

“My father was on the fence about it until yesterday afternoon,” Daedra said, not sounding sad at all.

“Is he here?” Flynne asked.

“Baltimore,” Daedra said. “He doesn’t travel.” And behind her, through the crowd, came the man from the balcony, not in a dark brown robe now but a black suit, his dark beard grown in a little, trimmed. Smiling.

“Fuck,” Flynne said, under her breath.

Daedra’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

Tongue to palate. That shiver of frames, around him.

“Sorry,” said Flynne. “I’m so awkward. You’re my favorite artist in the whole world. I keep feeling like hyperventilating or something. And asking you about your dad when you’ve just lost your sister. .”

Daedra stared at her. “I thought she was English,” she said to Wilf.

“The neoprims she’s embedding with in Brazil are American,” said Wilf. “Working on fitting in.”

The man from the balcony walked right past, didn’t glance at them, but Flynne wondered who wouldn’t take a second look at Daedra?

“But we’ve come at the wrong time,” said Wilf, who as far as Flynne knew would have no idea that she’d just tagged their man. They should have worked out a signal. He was bluffing now. She could tell. “At least the two of you have been reintroduced-”

“Downstairs,” Daedra said. “Easier to talk there.”

“Go with her,” said the bone-voice. It made dragging your fingernails across a chalkboard seem like stroking a kitten.

“This way,” said Daedra, and led them toward the windows facing the river, around a low wall and down a wide flight of white stone stairs. Flynne looked back, saw Conner following them, flanked by two of the china-white robot girls, with their identical featureless faces, in loose black tunics and pants that zipped tight at their ankles, their feet white and toeless. They’d been standing at the head of the stairs, she guessed guarding it. Wilf walked beside her, still carrying his glass of water, which he didn’t seem to be drinking.

The floor below was more like what she’d seen from the quadcopter. Like a more modern version of the ground floor at Lev’s, rooms in every direction. Daedra led them into one with windows on the river, but Flynne saw them frost over as they walked in. Another Daedra, in the same dress, was standing there. She seemed to see them but didn’t react. A brunette in exercise clothes was sitting in an armchair that looked uncomfortable but probably wasn’t, a few white papers in her hand. She looked up. “You’re on in ten,” Daedra said to her, Flynne getting it that this woman wasn’t a guest at the party.

“Is that a peripheral of you?” Flynne asked, looking at the other Daedra.

“What does it look like?” Daedra asked. “It’s giving my talk. Or Mary is, with it. She’s a voice actress.”

Mary had gotten to her feet, the white paper in her hand.

“Take it somewhere,” Daedra said. “We’re having a talk.”

Mary took the Daedra-peripheral’s hand and led it away, around a corner. Flynne watched her go, feeling embarrassed.

“You think you’re safe here,” Daedra said.

“Yes,” said Flynne, all she could think of to say.

“You aren’t, at all. Whoever you are, you’ve let this idiot bring you here.” She was looking at Wilf, who put his glass of water down on the piece of furniture nearest him, looking pained. “Take that apart,” Daedra said, apparently to the two robot girls, pointing at Conner. And one of them, instantly, too quick to follow, was squatting upside down on the ceiling, white mantis-arms lengthening.

Flynne saw Conner smile, but then he was gone, a blank curved wall surrounding Flynne, Wilf, Daedra. It was just there, or seemed to be. Flynne reached over and rapped it with the peripheral’s knuckles. Hurt.

“It’s real,” Daedra said. “And whoever was operating your guard is now wherever you started from, whenever, telling whoever is there that you’re in trouble.” She was right about Conner. If the robots wrecked Lev’s brother’s peri, Conner woke up in the back of Coldiron, beside Burton. “But not understanding how much.”

The man from the balcony stepped through the wall, then. Just stepped through it, like it wasn’t there, or like he and it could temporarily occupy the same space and time.

“How’d you do that?” she asked, because you couldn’t see that and not ask.

“Assemblers,” he said. “It’s what we do here. We’re protean.” He smiled.

“Protein?”

“Without fixed form.” He waved his hand through the wall, a demonstration. He crossed to the side she thought Conner would be behind, stuck his face into it, instantly withdrew it. “Get them some help,” he said to Daedra.

“I can’t move,” said Netherton.

“Of course you can’t,” said the man. He looked at Flynne. “Neither can she.”

And he was right.

Two more robot girls ran out of the wall, where he’d come through, and back into it, where he’d stuck his head in, and then they were gone.