The Peripheral

20

It was Ash who’d suggested using Lev’s grandfather’s land-yacht as the set for the office. She knew that the table Netherton had slept on also converted to a very pretentious desk. Then Lev had pointed out that the vehicle’s camera system would lend a vintage, or from the polt’s sister’s point of view, a somewhat contemporary look. How Netherton himself had been selected to play the human resources officer was somewhat mysterious to him.

The grandfather’s displays, which Ossian had located in storage on some lower level, then brought up on an electric cart, were rectangular black mirrors, framed in matte titanium. Netherton knew the look from media of the period, but imagined they’d be unconvincing. Of course they hadn’t looked like that when they were in use. Ash, whose enthusiasm for theater came as no surprise, had taped a single blue LED to the one he’d be facing, just for that bit of infill on his face, to disguise the fact of the dead screen.

He checked his reflection in that one now. He was wearing his suit, the one he’d slept in, though Ossian had hung it in the bathroom while Netherton showered, which had taken out most of the wrinkles, and a black turtleneck, Ossian’s, too large in the shoulders and upper arms. Netherton’s shirt had acquired what he supposed were Scotch stains, and was being laundered. He regretted Ash’s having refused to reacquaint him with her Medici. He would have looked better, with a bit of that. Waiting, he tapped his fingertips on Lev’s grandfather’s multipurpose slab of gold-flecked black marble.

He was about to present himself as an executive of Milagros Coldiron, SA, of Medellín, Colombia, a largely imaginary company in a country he knew little about. Lev had registered Milagros Coldiron in both the Colombia and Panama of his stub; shell corporations, consisting of a few documents and several bank accounts each, both of them managed through a Panama City law firm.

Actually seeing the polt had been surprisingly interesting. That was a lot of why he was here now. It had been a bit too interesting. The tedium of Ash’s workspace had probably contributed to that: a matter of heightened contrast. But there the polt had been, driving, eyes on whatever motorway, seventy-some years earlier, on the far side of the jackpot, his phone something clamped to the dashboard of his car. The polt had had a very broad chest, in a thin white singlet, and was, or so it had struck Netherton in the moment, entirely human. Gloriously pre-posthuman. In a state of nature. And hustling, Netherton had soon seen, eye on the money. Improvising, and with utterly unfamiliar material.

Ash had placed the call, speaking with the polt first. No attempt to present herself as anything other than an elective freak with four pupils. Demanding to know what he’d seen on his most recent shift. The polt had been evasive, and Ash, after a nod from Lev, had put Lev on. Lev, without introducing himself, had gotten right to it. The polt was about to be terminated, no pay for his two previous shifts, unless he could explain himself. The polt, then, had promptly admitted to having hired his sister, who he described as “qualified and reliable,” to substitute for him, his cousin Luke having been critically injured in a fight. “I had to get up there. They didn’t think he was going to make it.”

“What does he do, your cousin?” Lev had asked.

“He’s religious,” the polt had said. Netherton had thought he’d heard a laugh, just then, and the polt had quickly taken one of his hands off the wheel.

The polt had said that he was on his way home now, from visiting his injured cousin, and hadn’t spoken with his sister. Lev had advised him not to, until he could speak with her in person. And then he’d told the polt about the ad.

At which point Netherton had decided that Lev, whatever small degree of klepty cultural essence he might possess, was out of his depth here. The polt hadn’t needed to know that. It would have been less wise to tell the polt that they were phoning from a future that wasn’t his, one in which he was part of a wealthy obsessive’s hobby set, but hardly more unnecessary. Netherton had been about to type Lev a note, his phone’s keyboard appearing unevenly on the table’s carved top, but then he’d considered the dynamics of his own relationship with Lev. Better to sit and listen, watching as the polt carved himself a new and potentially more lucrative position. The polt had tactical skills, Netherton saw, ones that Lev, bright as he was and in spite of familial predisposition, had never had cause to fully develop.

The polt had told Lev that he was not, as it happened, a particularly easy target for a hired assassin. That he had resources to draw on, in a situation of that sort, but that his sister being potentially a target was “unacceptable.” The word had fallen on the air in Ash’s narrow tent with a surprising weight. And what, the polt had asked, did Lev intend to do about that?

“We’ll give you money,” Lev had said. “You’ll be able to hire protection.”

Netherton had been aware of Ash trying to catch his eye. He’d known that she got it, that the polt was on top now, Lev outmaneuvered. He’d met her eye, but neutrally, without giving her what she wanted.

Lev had told the polt that he needed to speak with the polt’s sister, but the polt had wanted to hear a figure, a specific sum of money. Lev had offered ten million, a bit more than the fee for the supposed murder contract. The polt had said that that was too much for his cousin to receive by something called Hefty Pal.

Lev had explained that they could arrange for the cousin to win that amount in their state’s next lottery. The payment would be entirely legitimate. At that, Netherton had been unable to resist looking at Ash again.

“You don’t think that that lottery business casts the whole thing as a Faustian bargain?” Netherton had asked, when the call was done.

“Faustian?” Lev looked blank.

“As if you have powers one would associate with Lucifer,” said Ash.

“Oh. Well, yes, I see what you mean. But it’s something a friend stumbled across, in his stub. I have detailed instructions for it. I’d been meaning to bring it up with you.”

“It’s close in here,” Netherton had said, standing, distressed velour heavy against his shoulder. “If we’re going to chat, let’s do it in the Mercedes. It’s more comfortable.”

And that had been that, really, except that now he was sitting here, waiting for the polt’s sister to call.