“They’re coming here?”
“Don’t doubt it.”
“And we’re the evil remnants?”
“You got it.”
“They’re that corrupt?”
“In today’s modern world, yeah, at least as of maybe twenty-four hours ago. They sure are. But you’re probably holding too big a stake in one of the prime corrupters to want to have too much of an attitude about that.”
“And when they get here?”
“We’ll resist arrest. Regardless what we might actually do, we’ll have resisted arrest. Those stacks of shingles won’t stop smart munitions. This is exactly the kind of improv urban fortress they were designed to be used against. The roof on this building might as well not be there, and Homes has real attack drones anyway. Wouldn’t matter if we were in bunkers. Plus your brother’s boys are constitutionally disinclined to go peacefully, in spite of odds.”
“Why’s it happening now?”
“Griff’s best bet is that both the two hands are slap up to the top of the handle of the bat, and there’s no room for another. Just worked out that way. They bought whatever it took to get Homes in their pocket, and there’s nothing left for us to buy to get ’em into our ours.”
“What if Griff got tight with Gonzales?”
“I think he already is, though you can probably still see some daylight between them. But there’s politics, and Homes isn’t on her side of the table, president or no.”
“When do they get here?”
“This evening. But they tend to operate after midnight.”
“You could just meet ’em as they come in and help keep order, Tommy. I don’t see that this has to be your fight.”
“Fuck that,” he said, perfectly pleasantly. “You want a breakfast burrito? Brought you one.”
“How come I can’t smell it?”
“Had ’em double-bag it, so it wouldn’t ruin my uniform,” he said, reaching into one of his jacket’s big side pockets.
109
He was trying to sleep on a granite bench in the tall cold hall of Daedra’s voice mail, while trains, or perhaps mobies departed, dimly announced by gravely incomprehensible voices. Light pulsed.
He opened his eyes. He lay on the leather cushions in the cupola. Out in the darkness of the garage, another pulse. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, peered out.
Squidlight again, on Ossian, upholding, in one hand, on a hanger, dark clothing. Beside him Ash, grim-faced, though no more than usual, dressed in what seemed a chauffeur’s uniform, black, the breast of its stiff tunic crossed with frogs of black silk cord. She wore a large hat, like some Soviet commodore, its gleaming patent bill obscuring her eyes.
Now he remembered what Flynne had said, about Lowbeer and Griff. The mind reels, he thought, struck by the phrase itself, and how seldom, if ever, his seemed to. And how it didn’t, now, at the thought of Lowbeer and Griff being in some sense the same person. He was glad, though, to be too young to have some earlier self abroad, in Flynne’s day.
Pulse.
110
They’d given the peripheral a shower, before she’d arrived, done its hair, and put on makeup. The dress Ash had chosen fit it better than anything Flynne had worn in her life. Nothing fancy, Ash explained, because Annie Courrèges wasn’t wealthy. But Ash’s idea of not too fancy was a little black dress, made of something that felt like velour but looked like fresh black carbide sandpaper, supple as silk. Her jewelry was a heavy round bangle made from antique plastic dentures and something that looked like black licorice, and a necklace that was a rigid loop of black titanium wire, strung with lots of different zipper pulls, like they’d been buried somewhere, the paint or plating corroded away. Ash said both of these were real neoprimitive, the bracelet from Ireland and the necklace from Detroit. The black shoes were made of the same stuff as the dress, had wedge heels, and were more comfortable than her sneakers at home. She wished they’d waited until she got there, so she could’ve put it all on, herself. But that familiar pang, when she looked into the tall mirror: Who was that? She was starting to feel like the peripheral looked like somebody she’d known, but she knew it didn’t.
The badge with the gold crown appeared in the mirror, and she thought for a second of the bull in the mirror at Jimmy’s, but it was just Lowbeer calling.
“Tommy thinks Homes is coming after us,” she said.
“Assume as much.”
“Can’t Grif do anything?”
“Not yet. In spite of being able to prove, should the opportunity arise, that the head of their Private Sector Office is in Chinese pay. But we do seem to have reached an impasse. Basically, we need to be able to command them to stop. Rescind the order.”
“What if he tells the president she’s going to be assassinated, but you can stop it, if she orders them to turn around?”
“It isn’t that simple,” said Lowbeer. “We’ve not yet established sufficient trust. Her office is riddled with those aligned with the people who’ll soon be plotting to kill her. And the rest is simply politics.”
“Seriously? There’s nothing we can do?”
“Clovis,” Lowbeer said, “my Clovis, here, is allowing the aunties to root about in her documents. She managed to extract an archipelago of data, before her flight to the U.K. I’d no idea how much, at the time. More a hoarder than a spy, Clovis. If there’s anything of use there, in our present situation, they’ll find it. In the meantime, if you’re successful tonight, it should be a game changer. Though how, exactly, is impossible to predict.”
She bit her lip, then stopped, not wanting to mess up the peripheral’s makeup.
“You look marvelous,” Lowbeer said, reminding her that she could see what the peripheral was seeing. “Have you said hello to Burton yet?”
“No,” she said.
“You should. He’s in the lounge, with Conner. You’ll be unable to see him, once you’re on the way to Farringdon. He’ll be in the trunk. I’m delighted he’s able, after his injury.”
“The trunk?”
“Folds quite flat. Like a piece of old-fashioned Swedish drain-cleaning machinery, folded. Say hello to your brother for me.” The crown was gone.
She went to the door, opened it.
They were sparring, the two of them. She remembered this from before Conner’s injury, even from before they’d enlisted. They had rules of their own. They’d hardly move, shifting weight from foot to foot, watching each other, and when they did move, mainly their hands, it was too fast to follow, and then they were back, the way they were before, shifting their weight, but one of them had won. She saw that it was the same, now, except that Conner was in Lev’s brother’s peripheral and Burton was in the white exoskeleton workout thing, with a bell jar glued where its head would be if it had one, and a pair of creepily real-looking human hands where she remembered it having white cartoon robot hands before. There was a little robot in the bell jar that did everything the exoskeleton did, but actually the other way around, because Burton was in that. Homunculus, they called it. The new hands on Burton’s exoskeleton were tanned a color that reminded her of Pickett. Then their hands moved, blurring, but Conner was faster, she thought.
“I break a finger on your Tin Woodman ass, you’re in deep shit,” said Conner. His peripheral was in a skinny black suit that looked about as restrictive as karate pajamas.