The Peripheral

16

Fifteen minutes,” said Lev, scrambling eggs on the kitchen’s vast French stove, bigger than either of the ATVs slung from davits on the stern of his grandfather’s Mercedes. “Most of that is reading their terms-of-service agreement. They’re in Putney.”

Netherton at the table, exactly where he’d been earlier. The windows looking onto the garden were dark. “You can’t be serious,” he said.

“Anton had it done.”

The scarier of Lev’s two older brothers. “Good for him.”

“He had no choice,” Lev said. “Our father organized the intervention.”

“Never thought of Anton as having a drinking problem,” Netherton said, as if this were something he was quite accustomed to being objective about. He was watching two Lego pieces, one red, one yellow, as they morphed into two small spheres, between the Starck pepper grinder and a bowl of oranges.

“He no longer does.” Lev transferred scrambled eggs, flecked with chives, to two white plates, each with its half of a broiled tomato, which had been warming on the stovetop. “It wasn’t only for drinking. He had an anger management problem. Aggravated by the disinhibition.”

“But haven’t I seen him drinking,” Netherton asked, “here, and recently?” He was fairly certain that he had, in spite of having a firm policy of flight if either brother appeared. Fully spherical now, the two Legos began to roll slowly toward him, across worn pine.

“Of course,” said Lev, adjusting the presentation of the eggs with a clean steel spatula. “We’re not in the dark ages. But never to excess. Never to the point of intoxication. The laminates see to that. They metabolize it differently. Between that and the cognitive therapy module, he’s doing very well.” He came to the table, a white plate in either hand. “Ash’s Medici says you’re not doing well, Wilf. Not at all.” He put one plate in front of Netherton, the other opposite, and took a seat.

“Dominika,” Netherton said, reflexively trying to change the subject. “She’s not joining us?” The two Legos had stopped moving. Still spherical, side by side, they were directly in front of his plate.

“My father would have disowned Anton, if he’d refused treatment,” Lev said, ignoring the question. “He made that absolutely clear.”

“Gordon wants in,” Netherton said, having just noticed the thylacine at the glass door, darkness behind it.

“Tyenna,” corrected Lev, glancing at the animal. “She’s not allowed in the kitchen when we’re eating.”

Netherton quickly flicked the red Lego off the table. He heard it click against something, roll. “Hyena?”

“Medici doesn’t like the look of your liver.”

“Eggs look wonderful-”

“Laminates,” Lev said, evenly, looking Netherton in the eye, the heavy black frames of his glasses accentuating his seriousness, “and a cognitive therapy module. Otherwise, I’m afraid this will have to be your last visit.”

Fucking Dominika. This was about her. Had to be. Lev had never been like this. The yellow Lego was brick-shaped again. Pretending innocence.

Lev looked up, then, and to the side. “Excuse me,” he said, to Wilf. “I have to take this. Yes?” He gestured at Netherton’s eggs: eat. He asked something, briefly, in Russian.

Netherton unrolled his knife and fork from the cool heavy napkin. He would eat the eggs and tomato in exactly the way a healthy, relaxed, responsible individual would eat them. He had never felt less like eating eggs, or broiled tomato.

Lev was frowning now. He spoke again in Russian. At the end of it, “Aelita.” Had he really said her name, or only something in Russian that had sounded like it? Then a question, also in Russian, which, yes, definitely culminated in her name. “Yes,” he said, “it is. Very.” His hand came up, to scratch the skin just above his left nostril with the nail of his index finger, something Netherton knew he did when he was concentrating. Another question in Russian. Netherton dutifully tried the eggs. Tasteless. The thylacine was gone now. You almost never saw them leaving.

“That’s odd,” said Lev.

“Who was it?”

“My secretary, with one of our security modules.”

“What about?” Please, Netherton begged the uncaring universe, let Lev be more interested in this, now, than in any behavioral modification in Putney.

“Aelita West’s secretary just canceled lunch. Tomorrow, in the Strand. I’d reservations for Indian. She’d wanted to know more about her polt. Your gift.”

Netherton forced himself to take another half-fork of eggs.

“The Met was listening in, when her secretary spoke with mine. We were surveilled.”

“The police? Seriously? How did it know?”

“She didn’t,” said Lev, annoyingly personalizing a program. “The security module did, though.”

Klept as established as the Zubov family’s, Netherton assumed, was layered in byzantine tediousness. He refrained from saying so.

“The security module interpreted it as being related to a very recent event,” Lev said, adjusting his black frames to peer at Netherton.

“How could it know that?”

“Any listener necessarily assumes a particular stance, informed by intention. Our module’s more sophisticated than that which was listening. The shape of their listening suggested what they were listening for.”

So unexpectedly welcome was this distraction that Netherton had scarcely been paying attention, but now he realized that it fell to him to keep the conversation going, and as far away from Putney as possible. “What would that be, then?”

“Serious crime, it assumed. Abduction, possibly. Even homicide.”

“Aelita?” It struck Netherton as absurd.

“Nothing so clear as that. We’re having a look. She held a reception, just this evening. While you were sleeping it off.”

“You’ve been watching her?”

“The security module’s done a retrospective, since her secretary’s call.”

“What sort of reception?”

“Cultural. Semigovernmental. It would originally have been about your project, in fact. One would assume celebratory, if Daedra hadn’t killed your man and had the cavalry in. Rather than cancel, it seems, Aelita reframed it. No idea what as. Security was excellent.”

“Where was it held?”

“Her residence. Edenmere Mansions.” Lev’s pupils moved as he read something. “She has the fifty-fifth through fifty-seventh floors. Daedra attended.”

“She did? Did you have someone there?”

“No,” said Lev, “but our modules tend to be a bit sharper than theirs. Eat.” His fork, neatly loaded with both eggs and tomato now, was almost to his mouth when he stopped, frowned. “Yes?” He lowered the fork. “Well,” he said, “it isn’t as though there hasn’t been the odd rumor that it’s possible. I’ll be down shortly.”

“Secretary?” Netherton asked.

“Ash,” Lev said. “She says that someone else is accessing our stub. Seems as though it has to do with your polt.”

“Who?”

“No idea. We’ll go down and see.” He began to eat his eggs and tomato.

Netherton did the same, finding that with the distancing of Putney and liver lamination, and possibly the aftereffects of Ash’s Medici, they’d acquired flavor.

The red Lego, spherical, now rolled slowly from behind the bowl of oranges, to join, becoming rectilinear again, with the tiniest of clicks, its yellow companion. He wondered what shape it had taken to get back up the table leg.