The Peripheral

62

Ash was waiting, when Lowbeer’s car’s door slid open. She reached in, took his wrist, pressed her Medici’s softness against it with her other hand, and drew him out, his feet with difficulty finding Notting Hill pavement.

“Bed rest,” advised Lowbeer, briskly, as the door closed, “moderate sedation.”

“Goodbye,” Netherton said, “goodbye forever.”

The door, the only part of the car that had uncloaked, vanished itself in a bilious stir of pixels, moving away, a diminishing whisper of invisible tires.

“Here,” Ash said, clamping the Medici against his wrist, leading him. “If you’re sick in Lev’s house, Ossian will have to clean it up.”

“Hates me,” said Netherton, peering down the street, vaguely wondering how many of these houses were conjoined with Lev’s.

“Hardly,” said Ash, “though you’re tiresome enough, in your current state.”

“State,” said Netherton, contemptuously.

“Keep your voice down.” Leading him up the steps, into the house, past the entranceway’s Wellies and outerwear. The memory of Dominika hushed him.

He felt more secure in the elevator, if less than entirely well. He did feel that the Medici might be helping.

In the silent garage, Ash strapped him firmly into the cart and drove it to the Gobiwagen. “I’m putting you upstairs,” she said, when they’d climbed the gangway and entered, releasing his wrist and tucking the Medici away. “Her peripheral is in the back cabin, Lev’s brother’s is in the master.” She touched something on the wall. A narrow stairway, previously hidden, folded almost silently out of laser-cut veneer, taut support wires gleaming. “After you,” she said. He climbed, unsteadily, into a glass-walled crow’s nest fitted with gray leather upholstery.

“This is a hydrotherapeutic tub, optionally,” she said. “Please don’t try it. Medici’s given you something for sleep, something else to reduce your hangover. That’s a toilet.” She indicated a narrow, leather-padded door. “Use it. Then sleep. We’ll call you for breakfast.” She turned, and descended the complicated stairs, whose design made him think of cheese slicers.

He sat on a leather-cushioned ledge, wondered whether it was part of a tub, removed his shoes, took off his jacket, got to his feet with some difficulty, and pushed the center-hinged door. Behind it was a combination hand basin and urinal, the latter probably a toilet as well. He used the urinal, then shuffled back to the integral couch. He lay down. The lighting dimmed. He closed his eyes and wondered what the Medici had given him. Something agreeable.

He woke, almost immediately it seemed, to sounds from below.

The lights came on, down there, but not here in the gray-padded crow’s nest. He sat up, improbably clearheaded and pain-free, to the sound of someone retching, something splashing. He wondered if he himself might be dreaming, while actually vomiting in his sleep, but there seemed no great urgency in the idea.

He stood. Stocking feet. Children’s games of stealth. Crept to the dangerous-looking, Germanic edge of the stairway. Heard water running. Tiptoed down, as quietly as he could, until, bending further, he spied Flynne’s peripheral, in black jeans and shirt, cupping water from a tap in the open bar. She spat, forcefully, into the round steel sink, then looked up at him, sharply.

“Hello,” he said.

She tilted her head, without breaking eye contact, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Puked,” she said.

“Ash thought you might, the first time-”

“Netherton, right?”

“How did you open the bar?”

“Not locked.”

It occurred to Netherton, for the first time, that he was the only one who couldn’t open it. That they’d specifically set it that way. “You mustn’t drink anything but water,” he said to the peripheral, coming the rest of the way down the stairs. It seemed peculiar advice to be offering.

“Don’t move,” she said.

“Is something wrong?”

“Where are we?”

“In Lev’s grandfather’s Mercedes.”

“Conner says it’s an RV.”

“That’s what you called it,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed. She took a step forward. He remembered her musculature, in the resistance trainer. “Flynne?” he asked.

Someone came pounding up the gangway.

She was across the cabin in two strides, ready by the door as Ossian rushed in. And seemed to fall, Ossian, as if propelled by his own weight, over and around the ready pivot of her hip, but then somehow she was instantly, fluidly in a position from which to kick him powerfully in the shoulder, from behind, leg exactly reaching full extension. Ossian’s forehead struck the floor audibly.

“Stay down,” she said, breath unaltered, hands curved slightly in front of her. “Who’s our friend?” she asked Netherton, over her shoulder.

“Ossian,” said Netherton.

“Dislocated. . my fucking. . shoulder,” gritted Ossian.

“Probably just the bursal sac,” she said.

Ossian glared up at Netherton. “Her fucking brother, isn’t he? The boy just phoned Ash.” Tears ran suddenly from his eyes.

“Burton?” Netherton asked.

The peripheral turned.

“Burton,” Netherton said, seeing it now.

“Mr. Fisher,” said Ash, from the doorway. “A pleasure to finally meet you in person, or more relatively so. I see you’ve met Ossian.”

Ossian snarled something, syllables of a translated obscenity never previously voiced.

“Glad to be here,” Flynne’s peripheral said.

Ash touched the wall, causing an armchair to rise from the floor. “Help me get Ossian up,” she said to Netherton. “I’ll see to his shoulder.” This proved more easily said than done, both because the Irishman was solidly built and because he was in considerable pain, not to mention a foul mood. When he was finally settled, his face slick with tears, Ash produced the Medici. She pressed it against the black fabric of his jacket, above the injured shoulder, and released it. It stayed there, quickly ballooning, then sagging, worryingly scrotal, unevenly translucent, and doing whatever it was doing through the black jacket, which somehow made Netherton particularly queasy. He could see blood and perhaps tissue whirling dimly within it. It was larger than Ossian’s head now. He looked away.

“Hey,” said the peripheral, from the top of the gangway, just outside, “what’s this?”

Netherton crossed to it, careful not to get too close. “What?”

“Down there. Big white.”

Netherton craned his neck. “That’s a resistance-training exoskeleton,” he said. “An exercise device.”

“Now I could do that,” it said. Glanced down, seemingly at its breasts. “Conner had me expecting weird, but. .” It shrugged slightly, but that made its breasts move. It looked up at Netherton with a certain desperation.

“That can be easily arranged,” said Ash, behind them. “The exo isn’t a peripheral, though it does have a full range of movement. But it can be controlled via a homunculus, a miniature peripheral. Until we find you something else, you might prefer it to your sister’s. Which happens to be of very immediate strategic importance. You didn’t damage it, I hope, when you struck Ossian?”

The peripheral lifted the foot with which it had kicked Ossian, rotated it at the ankle, as if checking for discomfort. “No,” it said, putting it down. “Kicks ass.”

Ash firmly pronounced some freshly minted monosyllabic negative, her hand on Ossian’s injured shoulder, keeping him in the chair.

Netherton watched as the peripheral loped loosely, and, he had to admit, fetchingly, down the gangway, then circled the exo, head to one side, taking its measure.