The Peripheral

80

Clovis Fearing, introduced by Lowbeer as a very old friend, most spectacularly and evidently was: as old or older than Lowbeer herself, and very deliberately looking it. With her head likely hairless under a black knit cloche, atop a display of Victorian mourning so fustily correct as to make Ash’s outfits seem racily burlesque, she resembled some crumbling relict saint, one with acute and highly mobile black eyes, their whites yellowed and bloodshot. The Clovis Limit, her shop in Portobello Road, dealt exclusively in Americana.

He was here, Lowbeer had explained on their short ride over, because Daedra had now invited him to her party on Tuesday evening, though Lowbeer hadn’t yet permitted him to open the message. That, along with his RSVP, must be done from a location that didn’t involve Lev. One, he understood, that wouldn’t introduce the architecture of the Zubov family’s security to whatever architectures Daedra herself might be involved with, something Lowbeer regarded as messiness, and very much to be avoided.

“This young man, Clovis, is Wilf Netherton,” she said now, looking mildly around at the barbaric clutter of the crowded shop. “He’s a publicist.”

Mrs. Fearing, for such was her title on the shop front, eyed him, lizard-like, out of perhaps the densest matrix of wrinkles and mottle he’d ever encountered. Her skull was worryingly visible, seemingly mere microns behind what time had left of her face. “I don’t suppose we should blame him,” she said, her voice surprisingly firm, accent American but more pronounced than Flynne’s. “Wouldn’t think you’d need one.” Her hands, atop the counter’s glass, were like the claws of a bird, the back of one marked with an utterly illegible blot of subcutaneous ink, ancient and totally unmoving.

“His friends are continua enthusiasts,” Lowbeer said. “Are you familiar with that?”

“I’ve had a run of them, these past few years. They’ll buy anything from the twenty thirties, twenty forties. Seem to try to get as far back from the jackpot proper as they can. About twenty twenty-eight, latest. What can I do you for, then, hon?”

“Wilf,” said Lowbeer, “if you wouldn’t mind, I need to catch up with Clovis. You could open your mail and make that call from the pavement, if you like. Do stay near the car. Should you stray, it will retrieve you.”

“Of course,” said Netherton. “A pleasure, Mrs. Fearing.”

Ignoring him, Clovis Fearing was peering sharply at Lowbeer.

“I need my memory refreshed, dear,” he heard Lowbeer say, as he went out.

Saturday’s crowd had considerably thinned, this late in the evening, the barrow sellers mostly packed up and gone, though shops like Fearing’s remained open. Lowbeer’s car was parked there, cloaked but steaming slightly, an odd effect, though passersby studiously ignored it. A pair of theatrically professorial Italians, deep in conversation, were passing as he emerged. They crossed to an horologer’s shop, diagonally opposite. The car was making random ticking sounds, as of metal cooling, contracting. He remembered Flynne’s face, luminous in the moonlight, stricken. He hadn’t liked having to tell her about the jackpot. He disliked the narrative aspects of history, particularly that part of it. People were so boringly deformed by it, like Ash, or else, like Lev, scarcely aware of it.

He turned to face Mrs. Fearing’s display window, pretending to study a shallow glass-topped tray of stone arrow points, enigmatic symbols of a prior order. In Flynne’s moonlit garden, he felt, he’d glimpsed some other order. He tried to recall what Lowbeer had said Ash thought about him, in that regard, but couldn’t. He tapped the roof of his mouth, selected Daedra’s invitation, studied its particulars. The event was to be held in Farringdon, Edenmere Mansions, fifty-sixth floor, and that would be Aelita’s residence, the place Burton had been assigned to watch, where Flynne had apparently seen her murdered. He was invited, as was Dr. Annie Courrèges, though she was expected peripherally. The evening was described only as “a gathering,” no hint as to purpose or tone.

Tongue back to palate. Gyre on her sigil. No towering granite hall, this time. An indeterminate space, crepuscular, intimate, slightly boudoirlike in affect. “Mr. Netherton!” Her posh-girl module, startled but delighted.

“Responding to Daedra’s very kind invitation, thank you,” he said. “Dr. Courrèges will accompany me peripherally.”

“Daedra will be so sorry to have missed you, Mr. Netherton. Shall I have her try to phone you?”

“That won’t be necessary, thank you. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Netherton! Have a lovely evening!”

“Thank you. Goodbye.”

Daedra’s sigil vanished, Lowbeer’s replacing it. “You appear to be in quite good odor,” she said.

“You were listening.”

“As the pope remains Catholic, I trust. Please come back in for a moment.”

He reentered the shop, avoiding a stuffed, top-hatted alligator, or perhaps crocodile, upright and waist-high, which wore a matched and holstered set of what he took to be a child’s toy pistols, their cast-metal handles decorated with steer heads. Lowbeer and Fearing were still at the counter. Between them now, a rectangular tray of off-white plastic.

“Recognize this?” asked Lowbeer, indicating the tray.

“No,” he said. He saw the words CLANTON BICENTENNIAL in a clumsy font, a pair of years two centuries apart, small drawings or vignettes, the printing faded, worn.

“Your peripheral happened to record one of these in her house,” Lowbeer said. “We compared the various objects there to the catalogs of Clovis’s cooperative of dealers. This one was under Ladbroke Grove. Assemblers brought it up.”

“Just now?”

“While you were out.”

“I don’t recognize it.” He vaguely knew that former tube tunnels in the vicinity were packed with artifacts, the combined stock of many dealers, minutely cataloged and instantly accessible to assemblers. It struck him as sad, somehow, that this thing had been down there, just moments before. He hoped it wasn’t literally the one from Flynne’s house.

“Hers was on a mantelpiece,” Lowbeer said, “pride of place.”

“Been to Clanton,” said Mrs. Fearing. “Shot a man there. Lounge of the Ramada Inn. In the ankle. I was always a decent shot, at the range, but it’s how you do when you aren’t that counts.”

“Why?” asked Netherton.

“He was trying to leave,” said Mrs. Fearing.

“You were a piece of work, Clovis,” said Lowbeer.

“You were a British spy,” said Mrs. Fearing.

“So were you,” said Lowbeer, “though on a freelance basis.”

Mrs. Fearing’s extraordinary topography of wrinkles readjusted slightly. A smile, possibly.

“Why did you say she’d been a British spy?” he asked Lowbeer, a few minutes later, in her car. Two small children, tended by a Michikoid nanny, had been passing as the door decloaked, and had applauded, delighted. Lowbeer had wiggled the fingers of one hand at them as she’d climbed in, after Netherton.

“She was,” said Lowbeer, “at the time.” She gazed at the flame of her candle, on the table between them. “I ran her, out of the embassy in Washington. It led to her marrying Clement Fearing, as it happened, one of the last Tory MPs.” She frowned. “I never shared her enthusiasm for Clement, at all, but there was no denying the convenience of an influential husband. Not that she wasn’t inexplicably fond of him. Terrible days.”

“I told Flynne, about the jackpot.”

“I listened, I’m afraid,” said Lowbeer, obviously neither afraid nor in the least regretful. “You made a good job of it, considering.”

“She demanded I tell her. Now I worry that I’ve made her sad, frightened her.” And he actually did, he realized.

“It is,” said Lowbeer, “as people used to say, to my unending annoyance, what it is. I’m going to have Ash sedate you, when we get back.”

“You are?”

“It’s like alcoholic oblivion, but without the bother of the run-up or the subsequent mess. I need you rested. I must have you and Flynne ready for Daedra’s party, Tuesday evening.”

“You had so little time with her, back there,” Netherton said. “I thought you needed information.”

“I do,” she said, “but she’ll need time to retrieve and decrypt it. It’s nothing she literally remembers.”

“I was going to phone Flynne,” Netherton said.

“She’s asleep,” said Lowbeer. “She had a brutally long day. Kidnapped, held prisoner, rescued, then you gave her the whole of the jackpot to absorb.”

“How do you know that she’s asleep?”

“We had Macon add a feature to her new phone. Not only do I know that she’s asleep, just now, but that she’s dreaming.”

Netherton looked at her. “Do you know what she’s dreaming?”

Lowbeer looked at her candle. Looked up at him. “No. Not that it can’t be done, of course, though our connection in the stub is slightly makeshift, perhaps not entirely up to it. I’ve seldom found the results particularly useful, myself, as thematically interesting as primary oneirics can be. Though mainly in how visually banal they generally are, as opposed to the considerable glamor we all seem to imagine they had, as we remember them.”