The Peripheral

68

Netherton, eyes screwed shut, viscerally dreading the gray light of the patchers’ island, became aware of a honeyed scent, warm yet faintly metallic.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Netherton,” Lowbeer said, from nearby. “I suppose that was very unpleasant for you. Not to mention unnecessary.”

“I’m not opening my eyes,” he said, “until I’m sure we’re no longer there.” He opened his right, fractionally. She was seated opposite where he lay.

“We’re in the cupola of the land-yacht,” she said. “Not peripherally.”

Opening both eyes, he saw that she’d lit her candle. “Were you here, before?”

“I was in Ash’s tent,” she said. “Had I come in earlier, you’d have asked where we were going. And refused, possibly.”

“Revolting place,” he said, meaning the island, though equally true of Ash’s tent. He sat up, the cushion that had supported his head lowering itself as he did.

“Ash,” said Lowbeer, fingers extended around the candle as if for warmth, “imagines you a conservative.”

“Does she?”

“Or a romantic, perhaps. She sees your distaste for the present rooted in the sense of a fall from grace. That some prior order, or perhaps the lack of one, afforded a more authentic existence.”

The autonomic cutout slid down Netherton’s forehead, over his eyes. He plucked it off, resisted the urge to snap it in half, put it aside. “She’s the one mourning mass extinctions. I simply imagine things were less tedious generally.”

“I personally recall that world, which you can only imagine was preferable to this one,” she said. “Eras are conveniences, particularly for those who never experienced them. We carve history from totalities beyond our grasp. Bolt labels on the result. Handles. Then speak of the handles as though they were things in themselves.”

“I’ve no idea how anything could be otherwise,” he said. “I simply don’t like the way things are. Neither does Ash, apparently.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s in your dossier.”

“What is?”

“That you’re a chronic malcontent, albeit quite a purposeless one. Otherwise we might have met earlier.” Periwinkles quite sharp, just then.

“And why, exactly, do you think al-Habib is here?” Netherton asked, a change of topic seeming suddenly welcome.

“That was a peripheral, that you saw her stick her thumb into,” she said. “He’d been peripherally there for years, though not with the peri you and Rainey saw. Very expensively bespoke, the one you saw die. It had only been there for a few days. Complete genome, full complement of organs, fingerprints. The formal forensic signatures of a legal death, waiting to be ticked off. The island’s history assigned to an imaginary figure. His previous peripheral, most likely, was weighted and dropped into the water column, to be consumed by their assemblers. None of his immediate cohort would have been privy to that, nor to his real identity, and now, conveniently, courtesy of the Americans, they’re all dead. But we saw the survivors, didn’t we? Mortaring him into the fabric of the place. Memorializing what he’d pretended to be.”

“He hadn’t actually been there, before?”

“Present at the start, certainly, for their initial flotilla and whatnot. Perhaps for the cannibalism as well. He isn’t at all nice, Hamed. Good at pretending, though.”

“What did he pretend to be?” he asked.

“A prophet. A shaman. Motivated extraordinarily, thus extraordinarily motivating. Taking the same drugs they took, which he himself provided. Though of course he didn’t actually take them. If you fancy resenting the tedious, I recommend intentional communities, particularly those led by charismatics.”

“You believe he was here, while he was doing that?”

“No, not here. Geneva.”

“Geneva?”

“As a place to await an opportunity to optimally monetize the island, as good as any. And, of course, his mother is Swiss.”

“With two penises and the head of a frog?”

“All easily reversible,” said Lowbeer, pinching out the candle’s flame. “He’s made a mistake, though, in not staying there. London’s his mistake. Premature.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s come to my attention again,” she said, her expression just then making Netherton wish for another change of topic.

“What is it,” Netherton asked, “since you’re encouraging my curiosity, that you’ve offered Lev?”

“Assistance with his hobby.”

“Would you lie to me?”

“If the need were sufficiently pressing,” she said, “yes.”

“You’re telling me you’re helping him manage his stub?”

“I’ve an overview of its history, after all. I’ve information which isn’t generally available, here. Nor there either, or I should say, then. Where certain bodies are buried, you see. The nature of actual as opposed to ostensible policy, for any number of state and nonstate players. Fed the right bits of that, on a need-to-know basis, Ash and Ossian become considerably empowered. I’m surprised at just how engrossing I’ve started to find it.”

“Who else is in there, trying to kill Flynne and her brother? Do you know that?”

“I don’t,” she said, “yet, though I’ve suspicions.” Taking a crisp white handkerchief from an inside breast pocket, she wiped her thumb and forefinger. “This business with al-Habib is fully as dull as its pretentious exoticism, Mr. Netherton. We’re on the same page, there. Real estate, recycled plastic, money. Whoever’s gained entrance to Lev’s stub is likely involved with that. A more interesting question, of course, being how they came to be admitted.”

“Is it?”

“It is, since the very mysterious server enabling all of this remains a mystery,” she said.

“May I ask you what it is that you actually do?”

“You pride yourself on not knowing who employs you. Rather behind the curve, in that. I might pride myself, were I so inclined, on not knowing what it is I do.”

“Literally?”

“If one has a sufficiently open mind about it, certainly. I was an intelligence officer, early in my career. In a sense I suppose I still am, but today I find myself enabled to undertake investigations, as I see fit. Into, should I so deem them, matters of state security. Simultaneously, I’m a law enforcement officer, or whatever that means in as frank a kleptocracy as ours. I sometimes feel like an antibody, Mr. Netherton. One protecting a disease.”

She offered him an uncharacteristically wan smile then, and he remembered her saying she’d had memories suppressed, as he and Rainey’s rented Wu had sat with her in her car. She must have more, unsuppressed, he thought, because just then he was certain that he felt their weight.