“A trike?”
He shrugged in the hazmat suit, in the direction of the drones. “We’re getting some tire tracks out of particulate collection. Looks like three wheels, but it’s just borderline so far, too faint.”
“Can they do that?” Flynne asked.
“When it works,” Jeffers said, unenthusiastically.
Burton emerged from the tent, Tommy behind him. “Anonymous-ass strangers,” Burton said, to her. “Ugly ones. Wanna see?”
“Take your word for it.”
Tommy removed his hat, fanned his face with it, put it back on. “I’ll drive you back now.”
Lev’s father’s house of love, a corner property but otherwise undistinguished, was in Kensington Gore.
The car that had driven them was piloted by a small peripheral, a homunculus seated in a cockpit rather like an elaborate ashtray, embedded in the top of the dash. Netherton assumed it was controlled by some aspect of Lev’s family’s security. It irritated him, as pointless in its way as Ash’s theatricalities. Or, he supposed, it was intended to amuse Lev’s children, in which case he doubted it did.
Neither he nor Lev had spoken, on the way from Notting Hill. It felt good to be out of Lev’s house. He’d wished his shirt could have been pressed, though at least it had been laundered, the best such bot-free premises could offer. An antique unit called a Valetor needed repair, Ossian said.
“You don’t, I suppose,” Netherton asked, looking up at the polarized windows of the house of love, “use this yourself?”
“My brothers do,” said Lev. “I loathe the place. A source of pain for my mother.”
“I’m sorry,” said Netherton, “I’d no idea.” He now remembered that he had, actually, Lev once having told him all too much about it, drinking. He looked back at their car, in time to see their driver, the homunculus, hands on its hips, apparently watching them from atop the dash. Then windows and windshield polarized.
“I don’t think my father was ever that enthusiastic about this sort of thing,” said Lev. “There was something pro forma about it all, as if it were expected of him. I think my mother saw that too, and that made it worse.”
“But they’re together now,” Netherton observed.
Lev shrugged. He wore a battered black horsehide jacket with a Cossack collar. When he shrugged, it moved like a single piece of armor. “What did you think of her?”
“Your mother?” Netherton had only seen her once, in Richmond Hill, at some particularly Russian function.
“Lowbeer.”
Netherton glanced both ways, up and down Kensington Gore. Not a pedestrian or vehicle in sight. London’s vast quiet seemed suddenly to press in. “Should we be talking, here?” he asked.
“Better here than in the house,” said Lev. “More than one person’s been set up for extortion, there. What did you think of her?”
“Intimidating,” said Netherton.
“She offered me help with something,” Lev said. “That’s why we’re here.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“You were?”
“When you came back from escorting her to her car, you seemed taken with her.”
“I sometimes find my family oppressive,” Lev said. “It’s interesting, to meet someone with a countervailing degree of agency.”
“Isn’t she basically doing the City’s will, though? And aren’t your family and the Guilds quite deeply in one another’s pockets?”
“We all do the City’s will, Wilf. Don’t imagine otherwise.”
“What was her suggestion, then?” Netherton asked.
“You’re about to see,” said Lev. He mounted the steps to the entrance of the house of love. “I’m here,” he said to the door, “with my friend Netherton.”
The door made a low whistling sound, seemed to ripple slightly, then swung smoothly and silently inward. Netherton followed Lev up the steps and through it, into a foyer of variegated pinks and corals.
“Labial,” said Lev. “So crushingly obvious.”
“Majora,” agreed Netherton, craning his neck at a fretwork archway carved from some glossy and particularly juicy-looking rose stone. Or deposited, rather, piecemeal, by bots, the whole place having that look of never having been touched by human hands.
“Mr. Lev. So good to see you, Mr. Lev.” Not young, the woman was otherwise of no particular age, possibly Malaysian, her cheekbones etched in graceful arcs of tiny triangular laser scars. “It’s been too long.”
“Hello, Anna,” said Lev. Netherton wondered if she’d been calling him Mr. Lev since his childhood. It seemed possible. “This is Wilf Netherton.”
“Mr. Netherton,” said the woman, ducking her head.
“They’re here?” Lev asked.
“Upstairs, first floor. The escort satisfied herself that we were legitimate prospective buyers, then left. Should you choose to purchase, the nutrient equipment and other service modules will be delivered to Notting Hill. If not, they’ll send someone to collect her.”
“Who will?” Netherton asked.
“A firm in Mayfair,” said Lev, starting up a curving coral stairway. “Estate sales, mainly. Pre-owned.”
“Pre-owned what?” Netherton followed, the woman a few steps behind.
“Peripherals. Quite high end. Some early collectibles. We haven’t time to have something printed up.”
“Is this about Lowbeer helping you?”
“It’s about my helping her. Reciprocally,” said Lev.
“I was afraid of that.”
“The blue salon,” said the woman, behind them. “Would you care for drinks?”
“Gin tonic,” said Netherton, so quickly that he was afraid she mightn’t have been able to understand him.
“No, thanks,” said Lev.
Netherton turned on the stairs, catching the woman’s eye and nodding, as he held up two fingers.
“This way,” Lev said, taking his arm, as the stairs ended. He led Netherton into a depthless, deeply blue room, its walls seemingly at some great but indeterminate distance. A fantastically cheesy twilight, a gloaming of second-rate nightclubs, seaside casinos, illusorily extended in a room that could scarcely have been the size of Lev’s drawing room.
“This is truly foul,” said Netherton, impressed.
“Least repulsive room,” said Lev. “The bedrooms are hideous beyond belief. I gave Lowbeer your conversation with the polt’s sister.”
“You did?”
“It was quickest. She needed to make a match, source something locally. How did she do?”
“Do?”
“Stand,” ordered Lev, and a young woman Netherton hadn’t noticed rose from one of the bulbous blue armchairs. She wore a pale blouse and a dark skirt, both quite neutral as to period. Her hair and eyes were brown. She looked at Lev, then at Netherton, then back to Lev, her expression one of mild interest. “She said that she found two others who were nearer matches by facial recognition, but that this one felt better, to her.”
Netherton stared at the girl. “A peripheral?”
“Ten years old. One owner. Bespoke. Estate sale. From Paris.”
“Who’s operating it?”
“No one. Basic AI. Does she look like the polt’s sister?”
“Not remarkably. Why would it matter?”
“Lowbeer says it will, the first time she looks in a mirror.” Lev stepped closer to the peripheral, which looked up at him. “We want to minimize the shock, speed her acclimatization.”
The woman with the laser-etched cheeks appeared with a tray: two highball glasses, bubbles rising in iced tonic. Lev was still looking at the peripheral. Netherton picked up one of the glasses, drank off the contents, returned it quickly to the tray, picked up the other, and turned his back on her.
“We’ll need to buy specialized printers in the stub,” Lev said. “This will be beyond what they usually work with.”
“Printers?”
“We’re sending files for printing an autonomic cutout,” said Lev.
“Flynne? When?”
“As soon as possible. This one will do?”
“I suppose,” said Netherton.
“She’s coming with us, then. They’ll deliver the support equipment.”
“Equipment?”
“She doesn’t have a digestive tract. Neither eats nor excretes. Has to be infused with nutrient every twelve hours. And Dominika wouldn’t like her at all, so she’ll be staying with you, in grandfather’s yacht.”
“Infused?”
“Ash can deal with that. She likes outmoded technology.”
Netherton took a drink of gin, regretting the addition of tonic and ice.
The peripheral was looking at him.
Netherton, the man from Milagros Coldiron, looked like he was standing in the back of something’s throat, all pink and shiny.
She heard plates rattling in the kitchen, from where she’d stepped out on the porch to answer her phone. She’d regretted that Coffee Jones French espresso, trying to get back to sleep, but then she had, for a while.
Tommy had let them off at the gate, and they’d walked to the house, neither of them wanting to say anything about Conner until Tommy had driven away. “That was him,” she’d said, but Burton had just nodded, told her to get some sleep, and headed down to the trailer.
Leon woke everybody up at seven thirty, to tell them he’d just won ten million dollars in the state lottery, and now their mother was cooking breakfast. She could hear him now, from back in the kitchen.
“Drones,” said Wilf Netherton’s little pink-framed face, when she answered her phone.
“Hey,” she said, “Wilf.”
“You mentioned having them, when we spoke before.”
“You asked me if we had any, and I told you we did. What’s all that pink, behind you?”
“Our atrium,” he said. “Do you print your own? Drones?”
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
He looked blank, then up and to his right. Appeared to read something. “You do. The circuitry as well?”
“Most of it. Somebody does it for us. The engines are off the shelf.”
“You contract out the printing?”
“Yes.”
“The contractor is reliable?”
“Yes.”
“Skilled?”
“Yes.”
“We need you to arrange some printing. The work will have to be done quickly, competently, and confidentially. Your contractor may find it challenging, but we’ll provide technical support.”
“You’d have to talk with my brother.”
“Of course. This is quite urgent, though, so you and I need to have this conversation now.”
“You aren’t builders, are you?”
“Builders?”
“Making drugs.”
“No,” he said.
“Person does our printing won’t work for builders. Neither will I.”
“It’s nothing to do with drugs. We’re sending you files.”
“Of what?”
“A piece of hardware.”
“What does it do?”
“I wouldn’t know how to explain it. You’ll be paid handsomely for arranging it.”
“My cousin just won the lottery. You know that?”
“I didn’t,” he said, “but we’ll find a better way. It’s being worked on.”
“You want to talk to my brother now? We’re about to have breakfast.”
“No, thank you. Please go ahead. We’ll be in touch with him. But contact your contractor. We need to move on this.”
“I will. That’s one ugly-ass atrium.”
“It is,” he said, smiling for a second. “Goodbye, then.”
“Bye.” Her screen went black.
“Got biscuits,” Leon called from the kitchen, “gravy.”
She opened the screen door, into the shadowy morning cool of the front hall. A fly buzzed past her head, and she thought of the lights, the white tent, the four dead men she hadn’t seen.
She could stay with Ash,” Netherton said, glancing at the peripheral in the squidlight. He reminded himself again that she, it, wasn’t sentient.
She didn’t look like an it, though. And she did look sentient, if disinterested, walking between them now, controlled by some sort of AI. Not, he supposed, unlike the period figures that populated tourist attractions he scrupulously avoided.
“Ash doesn’t live here,” Lev said.
“Ossian then.”
“Neither does he.”
“She can stay in Ash’s fortune-telling tent.”
“Sitting upright at the table?”
“Why not?”
“She needs to sleep,” said Lev. “Well, not literally, but she needs to recline, be relaxed. She also needs to exercise.”
“Why can’t you put her upstairs?”
“Dominika wouldn’t have it. Put her in the yacht’s rear cabin,” Lev said. “Cover her with a sheet, if that helps.”
“A sheet?”
“My father had dust covers, for his. Two or three of them on chairs, in a back bedroom, covered with sheets. I pretended they were ghosts.”
“Not remotely human.”
“At the cellular level, as human as we are. Which is fairly approximate, depending on who you’re speaking to.”
The peripheral looked at whichever of them was currently speaking.
“She doesn’t look like Flynne,” said Netherton. “Particularly.”
“Similar enough.” Lev had both served as camera and monitored the call, in the foyer of the house of love. “Ash is having some clothing run up, based on what she wore in the first interview. Familiar.”
Netherton saw, then, as for the first time, imagining how she might see it, the ranks of Lev’s father’s excess vehicle collection, under the arches of their purpose-built cave. The majority were pre-jackpot, fully restored. Chrome, enamel, stainless steel, hex-celled laminates, enough Italian leather to cover a pair of tennis courts. He couldn’t imagine her being impressed.
They were nearing the Gobiwagen now. Beside its gangway, as the arch above brightened, was a treadmill, near which stood, to Netherton’s unease, a white, headless, simian figure, arms at its sides. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Resistance-training exoskeleton. Dominika has one. Take her hand.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going upstairs. She’s staying with you.”
Netherton extended his hand. The peripheral took it. Its hand was warm, entirely handlike.
“Ash will be along to discuss plans, and to see to her.”
“Fine,” said Netherton, indicating that it wasn’t, led the peripheral up the gangway and into the yacht, then into the smallest of the three sleeping cabins, the lighting sensing them as they entered. He studied the fitted hardware in the pale veneer, succeeded in allowing a narrow bunk to lower itself from the wall. “Here,” he said, “sit.” It sat. “Lie down.” It did. “Sleep,” not sure this last would work. It closed its eyes.
Rainey’s sigil appeared, pulsing.
“Hello?” he said, quickly stepping back, out of the cabin, closing its centrally hinged door.
“You haven’t been checking messages.”
“No,” he said, rattled. “Nor reading mail. I understand I’m sacked.” Back through the short narrow passageway, to the master cabin.
“People here didn’t believe me,” Rainey said, “when I told them you prided yourself on not knowing who you worked for. When you were fired, they all looked you up. Couldn’t tell who’d fired you. Where are you?”
“At a friend’s.”
“Can’t you show me?”
He did.
“What are those old screens for?”
“He’s a collector. How are you?”
“I’m a public servant, technically, so it’s different for me. And I blamed you.”
“You did?”
“Of course. You aren’t likely to be spreading résumés around our government, are you?”