The Peripheral

66

She’ll ring you,” Ash said, passing Netherton a U-shaped piece of colorless transparent plastic, like something to hold back a young girl’s hair. “Put it on.”

Netherton looked at the thing, then at Ash. “On?”

“Your forehead. Haven’t eaten, I hope?”

“She suggested I wait.”

Ash had, ominously, come equipped with the polished-steel wastebasket he remembered from Flynne’s initial arrival. It stood, now, beside the crow’s nest’s longest section of gray upholstery.

Lowbeer’s sigil appeared. “Yes?” he asked, before it could pulse.

“The autonomic cutout, please,” said Lowbeer.

He saw that Ash was descending the stairway, taut wires vibrating with her every step. He gingerly settled the flimsy yoke across his forehead, nearer hairline than brows.

“Best you fully recline,” said Lowbeer, her tone reminding him of dental technicians.

Netherton did, reluctantly, the upholstered bench all too eagerly adjusting itself to more comfortably support his head.

“Eyes closed.”

“I hate this,” said Netherton, closing his eyes. Now there was nothing but the sigil.

“With your eyes closed,” said Lowbeer, “count down from fifteen. Then open them.”

Netherton closed his eyes, not bothering to count. Nothing happened. Then something did; he saw Lowbeer’s sigil, just for an instant, as though it were some ancient photographic negative. Opened his eyes.

The world inverted, slammed him down.

He lay curled on his side in an entirely gray place. The light, what little there was, was gray as every visible thing. Beneath something very low. It would have been impossible to stand, or indeed to sit up.

“Here,” said Lowbeer. Netherton craned his neck. Huddled, too near his face, was something unthinkable. A brief, whining sound, then he realized he’d made it himself. “The Australian military,” Lowbeer said, “call these drop bears.” The thing’s blunt, koala-like muzzle, unmoving when she spoke, was held slightly open, displaying a nonmammalian profusion of tiny crystalline teeth. “Reconnaissance units,” she said, “small, expendable. These two were haloed in, then guided here. How are you feeling?” Its blank gray eyes were round and featureless as buttons, the color of its hairless face. Mechanical-looking concave ears, if they were ears, swiveled fitfully, independent of one another.

“You didn’t,” said Netherton. “Not here. Please.”

“I did,” Lowbeer said. “You’re not nauseous?”

“I’m too annoyed to be sick,” Netherton said, realizing as he said it that it was true.

“Follow me.” And the thing crawled quickly away from him, toward some source of light, head low to avoid the ceiling, if it were a ceiling. Terrified of being left behind, Netherton crawled after it, gagging slightly at glimpses of his forepaws, which had opposed thumbs.

Clearing the overhang, whatever it was, Lowbeer’s peripheral rose on short hind legs. “On your feet.”

Netherton found himself standing, without being certain how that had been accomplished. He glanced back, seeing that they’d apparently crawled from beneath a bench in an alcove. Everything was that milky translucent gray. The glow ahead, he guessed, was moonlight, filtering down through however many membranes of revolting architecture.

“These units,” Lowbeer said, “are already being consumed by the island’s assemblers, which devour anything not of their own making, from flecks of drifting polymer to more complex foreign objects. As we’re currently being eaten, our time here is short.”

“I don’t want to be here at all.”

“No,” said Lowbeer, “but remember, please, that you were very recently employed in a scheme to monetize this place. You may dislike it intensely, but it’s as real as you are. More so, perhaps, as there are presently no schemes to monetize you. Now follow me.” And the koala-like form was suddenly bounding, partially on all fours, in the direction of further light. Netherton followed, immediately discovering an unexpected agility. Lowbeer led the way, across a blank, repulsive landscape, or perhaps floorscape, as they seemed to be within some enclosed structure larger than Daedra’s hall of voice mail. Vast irregular columns lined either side, much nearer on their right. The surface over which they ran was uneven, slightly rippled.

“I hope you’ve some compelling reason for this,” Netherton said, catching up with her, though he knew that people like Lowbeer didn’t need reasons, whether to put Annie Courrèges on a moby for Brazil or to bring him here.

“Whim, quite likely,” she said, confirming his thought. The bears’ exertions didn’t seem to affect her speech, or his. “Thought perhaps it will help you remember what I tell you here. For instance, that my investigation currently seems to hinge on a point of protocol.”

“Protocol?”

“The corpse of al-Habib,” she said, “if it wasn’t touched in the attack, but rather lay where it fell, makes no sense whatever in terms of protocol. The protocols of a low-orbit American attack system most particularly.”

“Why?” asked Netherton, clinging to the mere fact of conversation as to a life preserver.

“A system prioritizing her security would have immediately neutralized any possibility of his posing a posthumous threat.”

“Who?” asked Netherton.

“Al-Habib,” she said. “He might, for instance, have been implanted with a bomb. Considering his bulk, quite a powerful one. Or a swarm weapon, for that matter. The system saw to the others.” Netherton remembered the silhouette of the flying hand. “Protocol required him to be dealt with in the same fashion. He wasn’t. There must have been a strategic reason for that. Slow a bit, now.” Her hard gray forepaw tapped his chest. Distinctly, claws. “They’re nearby.”

Music. Aside from the scuffing of his and Lowbeer’s feet, the first local sound he’d heard since arriving here. Like the tones of the wind-walkers, but lower, more organized, ponderously rhythmic. “What’s that?” Netherton asked, halting entirely.

“A dirge for al-Habib, perhaps.” She’d stopped as well. Her ears rotated, searching. “This way.” She steered him to the right, toward the long base of the nearest column, then forward again, alongside it. As they neared its corner, she dropped on all fours and crept forward, to peer around it, like something from a children’s book, but gone appallingly wrong. “And here they are.”

Netherton braced his right paw on the column and leaned over Lowbeer’s bear, until he could see around the corner. A sizable throng of small, gray, predictably horrid figures squatted, around the upright corpse of the boss patcher. He was hollow now, Netherton saw, membrane thin, like the island’s architecture. Eyeless, the cavern of his mouth agape, he appeared to be propped up with slender lengths of silvered driftwood.

“Incorporating him into the fabric of the place,” Lowbeer said. “But not about myth so much as plastic. Each cell in his body replaced with a minim of recovered polymer. He’s made his escape, you see.”

“His escape?”

“To London,” Lowbeer said. “Americans enabled that, by not destroying his apparent remains. Though he’s always been a bit of an escape artist, our Hamed. Minor Gulf klept. Dubai. But a fifth son. Quickly the black sheep. Very black indeed. Had to flee in his late teens, under a death warrant. The Saudis particularly wanted him. The aunties knew where he was, of course, though I’d quite forgotten about him myself. And we wouldn’t tell the Saudis, of course, unless it became worth our while. His mother’s Swiss, by the way, a cultural anthropologist. Neoprimitives. That would be what he based his patchers on, I imagine.”

“He faked his death?” The music, if it could be called that, was a largely subsonic auger, boring into Netherton’s brain. He straightened, stepping back from Lowbeer and the column. “I can’t do this,” he said.

“Faked it most complexly. The peripheral’s DNA is that of an imaginary individual, albeit with a now highly documented past. I imagine Hamed’s own DNA is fairly imaginary by now, for that matter, by way of keeping a step ahead of the Saudis. But I’m taking mercy on you, Mr. Netherton. I can see how difficult this is for you. Close your eyes.”

And Netherton did.