“Know her before she got that done to her eyes?”
“I’ve known Lev since before he hired the two of them. She came that way. You take what you can get, in good technicals.”
“What’s he do, Lev?” She wasn’t sure that rich people necessarily did anything.
“Family’s powerful. Old klept. Russian. His two older brothers seem likely to sustain that. He’s a sort of scout for the family. Looks for things they might invest in. Not about profit so much as keeping fresh. Sources of novelty.”
She looked up into the branches, which seemed to be dripping less now. Something with red wings went flopping there, the size of a large bird but the wings were a butterfly’s. “This isn’t novelty to you, is it?”
“No,” he said, “it isn’t. That’s why there are neoprimitivist curators. To scoop up any random bits of novelty the neoprimitives might produce, vile as they are. That was why we were working with Daedra. Technological novelty in that case, more easily commodified than usual. Three million tons of recycled polymer, in the form of a single piece of floating real estate. That’s Hyde Park there, ahead.”
And she saw they were nearing the end of the greenway, the trees less tall, more thinly planted, opening out. She could hear a squawking, like a loudspeaker. “What’s that?”
“Speaker’s Corner,” he said. “They’re all mad. It’s allowed.”
“What’s that white thing, like part of a building?”
“Marble Arch.”
“Has a couple of arches. Like they took it off something else and sort of left it there.”
“They did,” he said. “But then it probably made more sense, visually, with traffic going through it.”
They were out of the greenway now, descending widening stairs to the level of the park.
“The one who’s talking,” she said, “he’s got to be on stilts, but it doesn’t look like it.” The spidery figure, she guessed, would be close to ten feet tall.
“A peripheral,” he said. The tall thing’s round pink head was fronted with a sort of squared-off trumpet, that same pink, through which it blared down, incomprehensibly, at the small crowd of figures surrounding it, at least one of which seemed to be a penguin, though as tall as she was. The tall speaker wore a tight black suit, its arms and legs very narrow. She couldn’t understand what it was saying, but thought she made out the word “nomenclature.” “They’re all mad,” he said. “They might all be peripherals. Harmless, though. This way.”
“Where are we going?”
“I thought we could walk to the Serpentine. See the ships. Small replicas. They sometime enact historic battles. The Graf Spee is particularly good.”
“Is that speaker making any sense at all?”
“It’s a tradition,” he said, and led her along a smooth gravel path, beige. And there were people here, walking in the park, sitting on benches, pushing buggies. They didn’t look particularly like future people to her. She guessed Ash did, more than anyone else she’d seen here, if you didn’t count the ten-foot trumpet-head Wilf said was a peripheral. She could still hear him ranting, behind them.
“What will it be like, when we go to your ex’s party?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call her that. Daedra West. I don’t know, exactly. Powerful people will be there, according to Lev and Lowbeer. The Remembrancer himself, possibly.”
“Who’s that?”
“An official of the City. I don’t think I could explain to you what his traditional function was. Originally, I think, to remind royalty of an ancient debt. Later, entirely symbolic. Since the jackpot, best not spoken of.”
“Does he know Daedra?”
“I’ve no idea. I’ve not been to that sort of occasion, and glad of it.”
“You scared?”
He stopped on the path, looked at her. “I suppose I’m anxious, yes. This whole business is entirely outside my experience.”
“Mine too,” she said. She took his hand. Squeezed it.
“I’m sorry we’ve invaded your life,” he said. “It was lovely, where you were.”
“It was? I mean, is?”
“Your mother’s garden, in the moonlight . . .”
“Compared to this?”
“Yes. I’ve always dreamed about it, in a way, the past. I didn’t fully realize that, somehow. Now I can’t believe I’ve actually seen it.”
“You can see it more,” she said. “I’ve got the Wheelie Boy, at Fab.”
“At what?”
“Forever Fab. I work there. Did. Before this all started.”
“That’s what I mean,” he said, his hand tensing. “We’re changing it all.”
“We’re all poor, except Pickett, who’s maybe dead now, and one or two others. Not like here. Not a lot to do. I would’ve joined the Army when Burton went in the Marines, but our mom needed taking care of. Still does.” She looked around at the wide flat park, the lawns, paths like something in a geometry class. “This is the biggest park I’ve ever seen. Bigger than the one by the river in Clanton, with the Civil War fort. And that greenway’s probably the craziest thing I’ve really ever seen, that people built. That the only one?”
“From here, we could walk greenways to Richmond Park, Hampstead Heath, and on, from either. Fourteen in all. And the hundred rivers, all recovered . . .”
“Glassed over, lit up?”
“Some of the largest, yes.” He smiled, but stopped when it seemed to surprise him. She hadn’t seen him smile much, not that way. He let go of her hand, but not all at once.
He started walking again. She walked beside him.
Macon’s red nubbin badge appeared. “I’m seeing Macon’s badge,” she said.
“Say hello,” he said.
“Hello? Macon?”
“Hey,” said Macon, “got this situation getting going. Clovis wants you back.”
“What?”
“Luke 4:5’s outside with the signs and shit, here. You and your brother and your mother, you’re on the signs. Cousin Leon too.”
“The fuck?”
“Looks like Coldiron is their new thing they’ve decided God hates.”
“Where’s Burton?”
“On his way back from Pickett’s. Just started.”
“Shit,” Flynne said.
86.
CHATELAINE
Looking up from the battle taking place on the Serpentine, he saw Ash approaching, in various tones of black and darkest sepia, along the pathway’s beige gravel, as if on hidden casters.
He’d been regretting Flynne missing the miniatures, though he himself preferred steam to sail, and the drama of long-range guns to these sparkings of tiny cannon. But the water in the region of the battle had scaled waves, and miniature cloud, and something about that always delighted him. The peripheral, seated on the bench beside him, seemed to be following it as well, though he knew attention to moving objects was just a way of emulating sentience.
“Lowbeer wants you back at Lev’s,” said Ash, coming to a halt in front of their bench. Her skirts and narrow jacket were a baroquely complicated patchwork of raw-edged fragments, some of which, though no doubt flexible, resembled darkened tin. She wore a more ornate reticule than usual, covered in mourning beads and hung with a sterling affair he knew to be a chatelaine, the organizer for a set of Victorian ladies’ household accessories. Or not so Victorian, he saw, as a sterling spider with a faceted jet abdomen, on one of the chatelaine’s fine chain retainers, picked its agile way up from the jacket’s waist, its multiple eyes tiny rhinestones.
“Flynne seemed worried, to be called back,” he said, looking up at her. “The timing was unfortunate. I was about to explain the framing narrative for Annie.”
“I’ve explained to her that you’re a publicist,” she said. “She seemed to understand it in terms of some already very degraded paradigm of celebrity, so it was relatively easy.”
“Public relations isn’t one of your areas of expertise,” he said. “I hope you haven’t
left her with misconceptions.”
Ash reached out, brushed the peripheral’s bangs aside. It looked up at her, eyes calm and bright. “She does bring something to it, doesn’t she?” she said to him. “I’ve seen you noticing.”
“Is she in more danger now, there?”
“I suppose so, though it’s difficult to quantify. Some apparently powerful entity, based here, wants her dead, there, and brings increasingly massive resources to the task, there. We’re there to counter that, but in our competition with them, we’ve stressed her world’s economy. That stress is problematic, as it can and probably soon will produce more chaotic change.”
A sudden sharp crack from the battle in the Serpentine. Children cheered, nearby. He saw that one of the ships had lost its central mast to a cannonball, as had happened long ago, he’d no idea where, according to whatever account was being reenacted. He stood, extended his hand to the peripheral, which took it. He helped it to rise, which it did gracefully.
“I don’t like it, that she’s sending you to Daedra’s,” said Ash, fixing him with her vertically bifurcated gaze. It occurred to him that he’d now been around her so much that he scarcely noticed her eyes. “It’s almost certain that Daedra, or one of her associates, is our competitor in the stub. They may be unable to do more to Flynne, here, than destroy her peripheral, in which case she finds herself back in the stub, however painful the experience may have been. The same for Conner, in brother Anton’s dancing master. But you’ll attend in person. Physically present, entirely vulnerable.”
“Tactically,” he said, “I don’t see what other choice she has.” He looked at her, struck with the idea that she might be genuinely concerned for him.
“You haven’t considered the danger you’ll be placing yourself in?”
“I suppose I’ve tried not to consider it too closely. But then what would happen to Flynne, if I were to refuse? To her brother, mother? Her whole world?”
Her four pupils bored into his, her white face perfectly immobile. “Altruism? What’s happening to you?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
87.
THE ANTIDOTE FOR PARTY TIME
Clovis Raeburn had beautiful skin. When Flynne opened her eyes, Clovis was right there, up close, like she was looking at Flynne’s autonomic cutout, or its cable. Easiest transition yet, from sitting on a bench beside a path in that Hyde Park to propped on pillows in a brand-new hospital bed. Like somersaulting backward, but not in a bad way. “Hey,” Clovis said, straightening up as she saw Flynne’s eyes were open.
“What’s going on?”
Clovis was pulling the two halves of something apart, packaging of some kind. “Griff says the competition’s hired Luke to make us look bad. I say anybody they protest just looks better.”
“Macon said Burton’s on his way back from Pickett’s.”
“In a deputized car,” said Clovis. “Been an orgy of car deputizing, over there. Pickett’s employees, the ones still being shoveled out of the pile, had their cars on the lot there.” She extracted something small from the packaging: circular, flat, bright pink. She peeled its backing off, reached under the hem of Flynne’s t-shirt, and pressed the adhesive down, just left of Flynne’s navel.
“What’s that?” Flynne asked, raising her head off the pillow, against the weight of the crown, trying to see it. Clovis hiked up the bottom of her own combat shirt. On abs you could do laundry on, the pink dot, with two sharp red lines crossing in the center.
“The antidote for party time,” Clovis said, “but I’ll let Griff explain that. Just you keep yours on.” She lifted the crown from Flynne’s head and put it carefully down on what looked like an open disposable diaper, on the table to the left of the bed.
Flynne looked from the crown to Conner, in the next bed, under his own crown.
“Better he’s still up there,” said Clovis, “considering the situation. He does have a proven potential to make things crazier.”
Flynne sat up. A hospital bed made you feel like you needed someone’s permission to do that. Then Hong walked into her line of sight, a plastic sack of takeout dangling from either hand. He wore a Viz and a dark green t-shirt with COLDIRON USA on it in white, the logo she’d seen on the envelope in Burton’s trailer, that first night. She realized he’d come in through a narrow vertical gap, in the wall of shingles, to the left of her bed. “Hey,” he said.
“There’s a secret passage from Sushi Barn, now?” she asked.
“Part of the deal for the antennas. Weren’t those e-mails from you?”
“Guess I’ve got secretaries and shit.”
“Have to be able to get food over here,” Clovis said. “Always have a few of Burton’s boys sitting in there, watching out.”
“Getting fat,” said Hong, grinning, and went out, past a blue tarp.
“Food’s for Burton and whoever,” Clovis said. “You hungry?”
“Might be,” Flynne said, picking up her Wheelie Boy from the chair where she’d left it.
“I’m here with sleeping beauty, you need me,” Clovis said. “True that you’ve got your own whole other body, up there?”
“More or less. Somebody built it, but you couldn’t tell.”
“Look like you?”
“No,” Flynne said, “prettier and tittier.”
“Go on,” Clovis said, “pull the other one.”
Flynne followed the smell of Sushi Barn. The bags were on the card table, the one she’d signed the contracts on, which was now back behind the blue tarp of what Macon had said was their legal department, but Hong wasn’t there.
“You’re Flynne,” the man said. Brown hair, gray eyes, pale, cheeks pink. Another Englishman, by his accent, but here in what she was starting to try not to think of as the past. “I’m Griff,” putting out his hand over the foam containers and three bottles of Hefty water, “Holdsworth.” She shook it. Broad shouldered but light framed, maybe not quite as old as she was, he had on a beat-up, waxy-looking jacket, the color of fresh horse poop.
“Sounds American,” she said, but really it sounded more like a character in a kids’ anime.
“It’s Gryffyd, actually,” he said, then spelled it for her, watching like he wanted to see exactly when she’d laugh.
“You Homes, Griff?”
“Not even slightly.”
“Madison thought you came in a Homes copter, that first time.”
“I did. I’d access to one.”
“Hear you’ve got a lot. Access.”
“He does,” Burton said, moving the tarp aside with an index finger. He looked tired, and like he needed a shower. His cammies and black t-shirt were dusty. “Handy for fixing things.” He stepped in.
“Sheriff Tommy been wearing you out?” she asked him.
He put his tomahawk down on the card table, its edges clipped into orthopedic Kydex.
“Punishment detail, but he won’t admit it. Doesn’t like what we did over there. Way of rubbing my nose in it. Not that it wasn’t more than we intended, Jackman aside. Wouldn’t have minded finding a little bit of Pickett while I was at it, though. Then I heard Luke’s bringing us the Lord’s own sweet judgement, here.” He looked at her. “Thought you were in London.”
“Lowbeer got me back,” she said. “Whoever wants us dead has Luke down here to psych you out. Get you to fuck up, like you tend to do when they protest shit.”
“You seen the animations on those signs?”
“Looks delicious,” said Griff, who’d opened the foam boxes. “Where is Hong from?”
“Philadelphia,” Flynne said.
“I’ll wash up,” said Burton, picking up his tomahawk.
“Now you’ve got me feeling like following him,” she said to Griff, when Burton was out of earshot.
“Carlos is on the front entrance, to discourage him leaving,” he said, unscrewing the caps on the three bottles of water. “Clovis on the rear and the inside route to Hong’s.” He began to transfer the food to the three com
postable plates Hong had brought with it, using two pairs of plastic chopsticks like a fork. Then he used a single pair to quickly reposition everything, so that it suddenly looked better than she would’ve guessed it was possible for Hong’s food to ever look. If she’d done it, she knew, she’d have wound up with three approximately same-sized messes of noodles and rolls. Watching him use the chopsticks to redistribute those little salty fake fish eggs, she remembered the robot girls prepping the snacks for the dead woman’s party. “Consider ignoring the placards our rent-a-zealots are displaying,” he said. “They were designed by an agency that specializes in political attack ads, and are specifically intended to upset you personally, while turning the community against you.”
“The other guys put them up to it?”
“Luke 4:5 are as much a business as a cult. As tends to be the case.”
“You’re from the Chef Channel or something?”
“Only with authentic Philadelphian cuisine,” he said. He tilted his head. “Give me the best northern Italian and I’ll have it looking like rubbish.”
“Let’s eat,” said Burton, coming back in and putting his tomahawk down on the table again, beside one of the plates. Seeing it, this time, Flynne remembered stumbling over the dog-leash man in Pickett’s basement.
She put the Wheelie Boy in the middle of the table, like it was flowers or something, then sat down on one of the folding chairs.
“What’s that?” Burton asked, looking at the Wheelie Boy.
“Wheelie Boy,” she said.
Griff put the empty boxes in one of the plastic bags, then put that in the other plastic bag, put it on the floor, seemed to consider the way the table was set, then sat. She almost wondered if he was about to say grace, but then he picked up his plastic chopsticks and gestured. “Please,” he said.
The going back and forth between her body and the peripheral was confusing. Was she hungry or not? She’d had a banana and coffee, but she felt like the walk through the greenway had been real. Which it had, but her body hadn’t done it. Smell of the food made her miss the week before, when none of this had happened, plus there was how Griff had made the plates look. “What’s party time?” she asked him.
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