“We’ve no idea,” said Lowbeer. “Our attention has been drawn to the recent rental of a peripheral, one with potential as a weapon. The public isn’t aware of how closely such transactions are monitored. We know it to be nearby, and we believe you to be its target.”
“Told you,” said the rental, to Netherton.
“And why would you assume Mr. Netherton to be in danger, may I ask?” asked Lowbeer, as the Michikoid placed her glass of water on the table.
“You may, obviously,” said the rental, quite effectively managing to convey Rainey’s unhappiness. “The police, Wilf. You didn’t tell me.”
“I was about to.”
“You were Mr. Netherton’s colleague, in the business with the Garbage Patch,” said Lowbeer. “Have you been let go as well?” She took a drink of water.
“I was permitted to resign,” the rental said. “But merely from the project. I’m a career bureaucrat.”
“As am I,” said Lowbeer. “At the moment, on official business. Would that be true of you?”
The green eyes considered Lowbeer. “No,” it said, “I’m here privately.”
“Are you now involved,” Lowbeer asked, “in what the former project may be becoming?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” the rental said.
“But here you are, meeting privately with Mr. Netherton. Expressing concerns over his safety.”
“She says,” said Netherton, surprising himself, “that the Americans are spreading a rumor that I had Aelita killed.”
“No,” said the rental. “I said that they seemed the most likely suspects, in spreading it.”
“You said you thought it might be Daedra,” said Netherton, and finished his whiskey. He looked around for the Michikoid.
“We are aware of a whispering campaign,” said Lowbeer, “while uncertain as to its origins.” She glanced out again. “Oh dear,” she said, and rose, reaching under the flap of her brown satchel. “I’m afraid we’ll have to be going now.” She drew out a business card, passing it to the Michikoid, which had just then arrived, as if summoned. It accepted the card with two hands, bowed, smartly retreated. Lowbeer reached back into her satchel, producing what at first appeared to be a fussily ornate, gold-and-ivory lipstick, or perhaps atomizer, but which promptly morphed into a short, ceremonial-looking baton, its staff of fluted ivory topped with a gilt coronet. A tipstaff, evidently. Netherton had never actually seen one before. “Come with me, please,” she said.
Rainey’s peripheral stood. Netherton looked down at his empty glass, started to stand, saw the tipstaff morph again, becoming a baroque, long-barreled gilt pistol, with fluted ivory grips, which Lowbeer lifted, aimed, and fired. There was an explosion, painfully loud, but from somewhere across the lower level, the pistol having made no sound at all. Then a ringing silence, in which could be heard an apparent rain of small objects, striking walls and flagstones. Someone began to scream.
“Bloody hell,” said Lowbeer, her tone one of concerned surprise, the pistol having become the tipstaff again. “Come along, then.”
She shooed them out of the Maenads’ Crush, as the screaming continued.
Leon was finishing a second breakfast, at the counter in Jimmy’s. Flynne sat beside him. He’d had to come into town to do contractually obligated promo media with a crew from the lottery, with, he said, the douchebag he’d bought the ticket from. Burton had driven them.
“If he’s a douchebag,” Flynne asked, “why’d you buy the ticket from him?”
“’Cause I knew it would burn his ass so bad, when I won,” Leon said.
“How much did you get, after taxes and the Hefty Pal fees?”
“About six million five.”
“I guess it’s proof of concept.”
“What concept?”
“Wish I knew. Nobody’s supposed to be able to do that. Some security company in Colombia?”
“All this shit’s like a movie to me,” Leon said, and belched softly.
“You put anything down on Mom’s meds?”
“Eighty grand,” letting his belt out a notch. “That latest biological she’s on does burn through it.”
“Thanks, Leon.”
“When you’re rich as me, everybody’s always after your money.”
Flynne gave him the side eye, saw him keeping a straight face. Then noticed, in the mirror behind the bar, way back in it, in the glare of the gravel lot, the cartoon bull. It winked at her. She resisted the urge to give it the finger, because it would just add that to whatever little profile it kept on her.
Being here was making her think of Conner, of the square white tent out on Porter, the drone swarm sucking up molecules of tires. She still hadn’t had the face time she needed to talk to Burton about that. Conner, she figured, his first night on the job, had killed those four men.
He’d done it with speed, intensity, and violence of action. That was the Corps’ fighting ethos, and maybe more so for Haptic Recon. As she understood it, it meant that your intel might not be great, your plan iffy, your hardware not the best, but you made up for it by just going for it, every time, that hard and that fast. In Burton, that coexisted with his idea of there being a right way of seeing, but she guessed that might at least partly come from hunting to put food on the table, something he’d always been good at. Conner, on the other hand, would be purely the other.
“What were you doing over at Fab?” asked Leon.
“Meeting with Shaylene and Macon.”
“Don’t do anything funny,” he said.
“You’re telling me that, today?”
“All I’ve done, today,” he said, “is help get people around here to pay their damn stupidity tax, next lottery.” He slid off his stool, hitched up his jeans.
“Where’s Burton now?” she asked.
“Over at Conner’s, if his to-do list went okay.”
“Rent a car and drive me over there,” she said. “I’ll hang my bike on the back.”
“Leon can rent the car, he’s got money.”
“Burton’s hoping you’ll have to get used to that.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Leon, suddenly serious. “Those people you and him talk to sound made up. That story that went viral, about the pediatrician who gave all his money to his imaginary girlfriend in Florida? Like that.”
“Know what’s worse than imaginary, Leon?”
“What?”
“Half imaginary.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Wish I knew.”
After she’d called for the car, they waited outside while it drove itself over.
Would you mind my lighting a scented candle?” Lowbeer asked. “I’ve an unfortunate reaction to bombings.” She looked from Netherton to the rental. “I’ve had memories muted, but certain things continue to be triggers. Pure beeswax, essential oils, low-soot wick. Nothing at all toxic.”
“This unit doesn’t seem to have a sense of smell,” said Rainey. “Not that high end.”
Ash, Netherton thought, might make a point here, about beeswax in a world devoid of bees. “Please do,” he said, unable to stop seeing the tall, exceptionally graceful man’s shaven black head explode, repeatedly, in slow motion, from all those different angles and distances. It had happened as he’d descended the stairs, in front of the Maenads’ Crush. Where he still lay, for all Netherton knew, sprawled back, entirely headless. Lowbeer had shown them feeds from a variety of cams, and he wished she hadn’t.
There were four small, bulbous, swivel-mounted leather armchairs in the seemingly windowless passenger compartment of Lowbeer’s car, arranged around a low round table. Netherton and the rental had the two rearmost, facing forward, with Lowbeer seated facing them. The upholstery was slightly worn, scuffed at the beading along its edges, oddly cozy.
“It was rented as a sparring partner, from a martial arts studio in Shoreditch,” Lowbeer said, taking a short, wax-filled glass tumbler from her purse. It lit as she placed it on the table. “Rented the moment you told your cab to take you to Covent Garden, Mr. Netherton. When I targeted it, I assumed you were about to be physically assaulted. A matter of blows, likely, with hands or feet, but easily fatal, as it was optimized for unarmed combat.”
Netherton looked from Lowbeer to the candle flame and back. They had emerged from the Maenads’ Crush to find the air thick, relatively speaking, with a variety of aerial devices. Four yellow-and-black diagonally striped Met units, each with two brightly blinking blue lights, had been hovering, unmoving, above the decapitated figure, on its back, on the stairs he and Rainey had themselves so recently descended. Many smaller units had darted, buzzing, some no bigger than houseflies.
What blood there was had seemed localized on the stonework adjacent the stairway. The screaming had turned to racking sobs, emanating from a woman seated, knees up, on the flagstones at the foot of the stairs. “See to her,” he’d heard Lowbeer say, to someone unseen, “immediately.” Lowbeer had lifted the tipstaff briefly then, shoulder high, and turned, displaying it. Netherton had seen people glance away, fearing to be marked by the sight of it, though of course they already were.
Bystanders had continued to avert their gaze, as Lowbeer led Netherton and the rental to the opposite end of the building, and up another open flight of stairs. Her car uncloaked before them as they’d emerged, its passenger door open. He had no idea, now, of where they were parked. Not far from Covent Garden. In the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue, perhaps.
“That poor woman,” Lowbeer said.
“Didn’t appear to have been physically injured,” said the rental, slouched in its club chair, tweed cap low on its forehead.
“Traumatized,” Lowbeer said, and looked at her candle. “Neroli. Girly, but I’ve always loved it.”
“You blew its head off,” Netherton said.
“Not intentionally,” said Lowbeer. “It left Shoreditch in a car leased by the martial arts studio. Alone, supposedly. But it can’t have been alone, because someone opened its cranium.”
“Its cranium?”
“The skulls are modular. Printed bone, assembled with biological adhesives. The structural strength of an average skull, but capable of disassembly.”
“Why is that?” asked Netherton, who just then found peripherals steadily less pleasant the more he learned of them.
“The brainpan of a sparring model ordinarily contains a printed cellular replica of a brain. A trainer, nothing cognitively functional. Registers levels of concussion, indicates less subtle trauma. The user can determine the exact efficiency of blows delivered. But the trainer, and for that matter the modular cranium, aren’t user-serviceable. A person or persons unknown voided the studio’s warranty, on the drive from Shoreditch. They removed the trainer, replacing it with an explosive charge. It would have approached you, then detonated. Unaware of that, I called in flashbots. The four nearest responded when my request cleared. They positioned themselves around its head and simultaneously detonated. A mere fraction of a gram of explosive each, but correctly distanced, precisely spaced, sufficient to immobilize virtually anything. Instead, we’re very fortunate my actions didn’t result in at least one death.”
“But otherwise,” said the rental, “it would have killed Wilf.”
“Indeed,” said Lowbeer. “The use of explosives is unusual, and we prefer to keep it so. Too much like asymmetric warfare.”
“Terrorism,” said the rental.
“We prefer not to use that term,” said Lowbeer, studying her candle flame with something that looked to Netherton to be regret, “if only because terror should remain the sole prerogative of the state.” She looked up at him. “Someone has made an attempt on your life. It may also have been intended to intimidate any associates who might survive you.”
“Wilf and I are only former associates,” the rental said.
“I was thinking of Mr. Zubov, actually,” said Lowbeer. “Though anyone intending to intimidate him must either be singularly unfamiliar with his family, extremely powerful, or entirely reckless.”
“How did you know,” Netherton asked, “that it would be on its way here?”
“The aunties,” said Lowbeer.
“Aunties?”
“We call them that. Algorithms. We have a great many, built up over decades. I doubt anyone today knows quite how they work, in any given instance.” She looked at the rental now, her expression changing. “Someone modeled that peripheral, rather romantically, after Fitz-David Wu. I doubt you’d know him. Arguably the best Shakespearean actor of his day. His mother was quite a good friend of mine. Those eyes were an afterthought, of course, later regretted. Not so easily reversible, in those days.”
Netherton, wishing he had another whiskey, wondered if she felt that way about her own periwinkle blues.
Conner lived on Gravely Road, off Porter past Jimmy’s. A gravel road, so growing up there’d been jokes about that, even though you pronounced it like grave, not gravel. Gravely had been a make-out spot in high school, somewhere to park on a date. As Leon pulled into what she supposed was Conner’s driveway, she wondered if she’d ever had any cause to come this far out Gravely before. The last stretch hadn’t felt familiar, though there was nothing about it that she would have particularly remembered. But she didn’t think she’d known that there were any houses out this far. Mostly it was posted woods here, or subdivided lots, overgrown now, that nobody had built on.
Conner’s house wasn’t as old as theirs, but it was in worse shape. It hadn’t been painted for a long time, so the wood had turned gray where the paint had come off. Its single story sat back from the road on what had once been a lawn, but now was a collection of junk overgrown with morning glory. A tall old tractor, all rust, not a fleck of paint left on it, a trailer smaller than Burton’s, down on its axle on flat tires, the standard history lesson of stoves and refrigerators, and a big old Army quadcopter, the size of Conner’s Tarantula, up on four concrete blocks. You’d need a license to fly that, if they’d let you fly it at all.
The Tarantula was at the far end of the driveway, beside the house, with Macon and Edward busy at the back of it, by the big lone slick. They had a pale blue tarp spread beside it, with their toolkits lined up on that.
She got out, as soon as Leon had stopped, and walked over to them. She wanted to see what was on the spiny tentacle arm she’d seen at Jimmy’s.
“Afternoon,” said Macon, straightening up. Like Edward, he wore blue latex gloves. Neither he nor Edward had a Viz in.
“What’s up?” Looking at the arm. It ended in some random-looking mechanism, moving parts but she had no idea what for.
“Troubleshooting for Conner,” said Macon. “This,” and he pointed at the thing, “is a grapple, for a fueling nozzle. Big help for him, at a gas station.”