The Peripheral

81

Cow?” Flynne asked, surprised, around a mouthful of banana, as the rental crested the high point of Porter, not very high but she knew it from cycling. A perfect day, to look at. Sunny, eleven thirty, headed into town with Janice driving a rented cardboard. Except for Netherton, the night before, telling her the world was ending. Or that it always had been, or something.

“Nope,” Janice said. “Burton put it up there, yesterday.”

Flynne squinted back at it, up in what had been a hay lot, before developers bought it and then didn’t build anything. She thought she saw the head move. “No shit? A drone?”

“More like a satellite,” Janice said. “Serious-ass sensing capabilities. But drones can come and charge off it, too.”

Flynne finished the last of the banana. “Guess he didn’t get it at Hefty,” she said, when she’d swallowed.

“Got it off Griff, maybe. Or one of your many lawyers.”

“How many’s that?”

“Enough to buy out all the chili dogs from Jimmy’s, noon and night. They preorder, send drones to pick ’em up. Danny went to Commercial Kitchen Warehouse for new chili pots.” Danny was the man who ran Jimmy’s, a grandnephew of the actual Jimmy, who her mother remembered from when she was little. “He wanted to put his price up, but Burton had Tommy tell him not to. So I think you’re subsidizing the chili dogs, kinda.”

“Why?”

“So’s not to put the town off Coldiron. They already think it’s about Leon. Conspiracy theory’s that he won a lot more in that lottery than the state let on.”

“No sense in that.”

“Conspiracy theory’s got to be simple. Sense doesn’t come into it. People are more scared of how complicated shit actually is than they ever are about whatever’s supposed to be behind the conspiracy.”

“What’s the theory?”

“Not that firmed up, yet. Inquiring minds, now, on the steps outside Jimmy’s, say Pickett was on Homes’ payroll all along.”

“They think Homes was building drugs?”

“How else do you finance the United Nations taking over?”

“There’s hardly any UN left, Janice. Rotary or Kiwanis would be more like it.”

“UN’s got deep roots in the demonology.” Janice slowed to let a feral orange tabby slink, belly down, across the road, giving them the stinkeye. “Madison says not letting Danny raise prices came down from your friends in the future.”

“Micromanaging.” Flynne was watching the beginning of town come into sight.

“If they’d just slow the changes down, I wouldn’t mind a little micromanagement. Town’s not the way you left it.”

“I subbed for Burton last Tuesday night, first time. Sunday morning, now.”

“And us not in church. Little while, big difference. I’ve been watching it, watching the news too. Looks the same, but it’s not.”

They were pulling into the mall. Flynne saw cell towers and antennas, on top of Sushi Barn, that hadn’t been there before, and shiny German cars in most of the spaces, with go-faster folds and Florida plates. “Whoa,” she said.

“Or doesn’t look the same, depending.” Janice parked in a space in front of Sushi Barn. “Hong’s doing fine. Sushi Barn’s the lawyers’ other favorite, plus it’s open all night. They’re even buying his t-shirts. And he got some compensation for you sticking all those antennas up there.”

“Not from me.”

“Far as Hong’s concerned, you. You’re CCO, your sig’s on all that correspondence.”

“Is that legal?”

“Talk to the future. Burton’s got his hands full with the paramilitary side.” Janice got out, so Flynne did too, the Wheelie Boy tucked under her arm like a bottle of wine.

Macon and Carlos were coming along the mall-front sidewalk toward them, Macon in his old jeans and a Sushi Barn t-shirt, red on white, with a fake Japanese font and a bad drawing of a barn with a single huge slice of maki roll in front of it. Carlos, in cammies and that soft body armor, had his bullpup under his arm. She knew that was legal, constitutionally and everything, but it still looked wrong here. The week before, none of them would’ve worn camo to town, let alone carried a rifle. So now Carlos was in body armor, even if it was the kind that looked like skater clothes. They each had a Viz on. Macon gave her a big smile, Carlos a smaller one, but Carlos was looking around. It dawned on her that he was entirely ready, right then, to shoot somebody. “You put all that shit up on top of Hong’s?” she asked Macon.

“Klein Cruz Vermette,” he said.

“Janice says there’s more of them here now.”

“Lawyers and paper is what Coldiron mostly consists of, still. That and equity.”

“They’re not all in that stinky storefront, are they?”

“Hardly any. Rented smaller spaces all over town. Better for us if they’re distributed, and mostly away from what we do here.”

“Which would be, exactly?”

“Got Conner up the line, currently, training on something.”

“In his peripheral?”

“Something less intuitive to operate, seems like, but you ask him. Been there about six hours straight. They just told us he’ll be back soon. Then he gets to meet his hot nurse.”

“What hot nurse?”

“Griff sent her,” said Janice.

“Nurse,” said Carlos, “my ass.”

“Carlos thinks she’s an operator,” Macon said. “She says she’s a paramedic. No reason she can’t be both.”

“Stone killer,” said Carlos, like that might be his favorite flavor of pie.

“Griff,” Flynne said. “Name keeps coming up.”

“Let’s talk inside,” said Macon, and led the way back toward the space next to Fab. It didn’t look very different, just that the outside of the windows and door had been washed.

Inside, it was different. Those interior barricades of Tyvek-bagged roofing shingles, to start with, that she remembered Janice telling her about. And she saw that Madison had sprayed about three inches of Burton’s Hefty polymer on the inside of the windows, which wouldn’t keep a bullet out, but would stop glass flying, and then this internal Alamo, the bags stacked like giant bricks, in walls about three feet thick, maybe seven feet tall. She guessed it went straight around the inside, with an opening for the front door, probably one for the hole cut through into Fab, and maybe one in back. The front door had been pasted over, inside, with layers of what Carlos’s vest was lined with, like thin sheets of greenish-purple cotton candy. She’d never understood the physics, just that it somehow translated the kinetic energy of a bullet into momentary steely rigidity, and could sometimes break your arm, doing that, depending on various things. There was a lot of the bland Homes blue of the zip ties they’d used to fasten her to the table at Pickett’s, mostly all these tarps, hung from rafters the acoustic tile ceiling had covered before. She saw a gray wasp nest up there, from however many summers ago. But that dead plumbing smell she’d noticed before was gone too, and she was glad of that.

“Departments,” Macon said. “That’s our legal, there.” He pointed into a space where she could see Brent Vermette, who’d come to the meeting at Hefty, in pressed khakis and a Sushi Barn t-shirt like Macon’s, talking to a girl with short red hair. “You like your Wheelie?” Macon asked. “See you brought it with you.”

“Talked to Netherton on it, last night.”

“How was that?”

“Either depressing and scared the fuck out of me, or sort of how I’d always figured things are?”

He looked at her.

“Complicated,” she said. “Conner in the back?” She started that way, Janice behind her.

He caught up with them. “Lowbeer wants you up there in about an hour. You can do it from here.”

“Burton here?”

“Over at Pickett’s.”

She stopped. “Why?”

“Tommy deputized him. Homes found Jackman.”

“You didn’t tell me,” she said to Janice.

“Getting harder to prioritize,” Janice said. “Homes found enough of him at Pickett’s to make the identification. Would’ve been dental records and a belt buckle, before they invented DNA.”

“How’s he taking that, Tommy?”

“He’s acting sheriff, with Jackman gone,” Macon said. “Sheriff Tommy. Busy man.”

“How about you?”

“Wakey,” he said. “Haven’t been sleeping.”

“That shit makes me too crazy, Macon. Don’t do it.”

“Not builder’s wakey,” he said. “Government wakey. From Griff.” He hitched up his Sushi Barn shirt, showing her a little one-inch yellow triangular patch on his stomach, a vertical green line running from base to apex.

“Who’s this Griff?”

“From England. Diplomatic or something. D.C. Has access to things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Funniest things I’ve run across, myself.”

“What do they tell you about him?”

“Nothing. They sent him, from D.C. Reece grabbed you, Lowbeer took over from Ash. Felt like she already had him in place, in case of whatever. If you hadn’t had that pill in you, I’d guess Griff would have called down all manner of government funniness to find you. He got Clovis in to mind Conner, when he’s under the crown.” He looked back, where Carlos had stayed put by the door. “Carlos thinks she’s a ninja.”

“Clovis is a boy’s name,” Flynne said. “Some king, back in France.”

“From Austin. Says she’s named after the town in New Mexico.”

“What’s she like?”

“Easier to introduce you.” He pulled a tarp aside. There were the three hospital beds, in a row, with Conner in one of them, in his Polartec but under a white sheet, eyes closed, wearing a Snow White crown.

“Clovis,” Macon said, “Flynne Fisher. Flynne, Clovis Raeburn.”

The woman beside the bed was a little older than Flynne, taller, and looked like she’d be good on a skateboard. Lanky, black-eyed, black hair cut short on the sides and up in a little fin on top. “Wheelie Boy,” Clovis said. “Had one in high school. You into collectibles?”

“Macon gave it to me. You born in Clovis?”

“Conceived. Mom figured it was really Portales, but she didn’t want Dad naming me that.”

“Getting along with Conner?”

“Hasn’t opened his eyes since I got here.” Clovis wore narrow stretch cammies and one of those shirts they’d worn under the old rigid plate armor, sleeves like a combat jacket but the torso like a clingy jersey top. She had a big first-aid pouch slung in front of her crotch, the red cross suppressed, two shades of coyote brown. She came over and shook hands.

“My friend Janice,” Flynne said, and watched them shake.

“Vermette’s got about three hundred documents he needs signed and notarized,” Macon said. “We’ll set a table up in here and you can talk while you do that.”

“Ladies,” Conner said, from the bed, “which one of you wants to help me with this catheter?”

Clovis looked at Flynne. “Who’s the douche-canoe?”

“No idea,” said Flynne.

“Me neither,” said Janice.

Flynne went over to the bed. “What were you in, up there? Macon says you’re training.”

“Kind of like a washing machine, inertial propulsion. Big-ass flywheels inside.”

“Washing machine?”

“About three hundred pounds. Big red cube. I’d just learned to balance it on one corner, then rotate, when they made me come back.”

“What’s it for?”

“Fuck if I know. Wouldn’t want to meet one in a dark alley.” He lowered his voice. “Macon’s high on a government stimulant. Like builders’ best, but minus the jitters. None of that dys-fucking-functional kind of paranoia.”

“Not like your own super-functional kind?”

He looked from her to Macon. “Won’t give me any,” he said.

“Doctor’s orders,” Macon said. “And anyway they engineered every last thing out of it that people do drugs for. Except staying awake.”

“You quit being so whiny-assed special,” Clovis advised Conner, having stepped closer to his bed, “like every other butt-hurt Haptic Recon pussy it’s been my misfortune to meet, and maybe I’ll get you a nice cup of coffee.”

Conner looked up at her like he’d discovered a kindred spirit.