A field of some kind induced a moderately dissociative state, as they were scanned and prodded, by a variety of unpleasantly robotic portals, for perhaps the next fifteen minutes, and then they were being greeted by an artfully distressed Michikoid in an ancient kimono.
“Thank you for honoring our celebration of the life of Aelita West. Your personal security attendant has been admitted separately. You will find him awaiting you. The elevator is third from the left.”
“Thank you,” said Netherton, taking the peripheral’s hand. The tattooed couple was nowhere in sight. Nor was anyone else, the lobby as welcoming as Daedra’s voice mail, though typical in that.
“Celebration of life?” Flynne asked, as he led her toward the elevator.
“So it said.”
“Byron Burchardt’s parents had one of those.”
“Who?”
“Byron Burchardt. Manager at the Coffee Jones. Got run over by a robot eighteen-wheeler, Valentine’s Day. I felt guilty because I’d been pissed at him, for firing me. But I went anyway.”
“They seem to have accepted that she’s gone.”
“I don’t see how they could be sure she is. But I wish we’d known. Could’ve brought some flowers.”
“Daedra never suggested this. It seems to be a surprise.”
“A surprise funeral? You do that, here?”
“A first, for me.”
“Fifty-sixth floor,” she said, indicating the bank of buttons.
The doors opened as he touched the button. They stepped in. The doors closed behind them. The ascent was perfectly silent, rapid, slightly dizzying. He was sure that drink would be served.
114
When they came out of the elevator, she saw, between two knots of people in black, the view from her first time here, that curve in the river. All the windows were unfrosted and the interior walls had been removed. Not so much removed but like they’d never been there. One big space now, like Lev’s dad’s gallery. Conner stood near the elevator, scoping everything. He looked completely on his game, and she guessed he was finally back to some version of what she imagined he’d been, before whatever it was had blown him up. He wasn’t quite smiling, because he was in full bodyguard mode, but he almost was.
“No way up or down except this elevator,” he said, as they reached him. “Stairs to the floor above and below. Some seriously ugly mofos in here. They’d be like me, security. Mofo-ettes too. Like a bad-ass convention sprinkled on a small town’s worth of rich folks.”
“More people than I’ve ever seen here in one place before,” she said, and then something howled, deep in every bone in the peripheral’s body. “Testing the entanglement,” the nastiest voice she’d ever heard said, a kind of modulated ache, but she knew it was Lowbeer. “Please acknowledge.”
Twin taps of the tongue’s tiny magnet, left forward palate-quarter.
“Good,” said the bones, horribly. “Circulate. Tell Wilf.”
“Let’s circulate,” she said to Wilf, as a crowd of tattooed New Zealanders passed them. Tā moko, she remembered, from Ciencia Loca. Technically not tattoos. Carved in. Grooved. The skin lightly sculpted. The boss, she guessed, was the blonde with the profile like something on a war canoe. They definitely didn’t look like they were here to party, or for that matter to celebrate life. Something had happened, around the blonde’s face as she’d passed them, a stutter of image-capture, barely visible. She remembered what Lowbeer had said, about artifacts in her field of vision.
“Keep a minimum of two meters distance,” Wilf said, to Conner. “When we engage in conversation, double that.”
“I’m housebroken,” Conner said. “She had me taught that in a virtual coronation ball, king of fucking Spain. This is like poolside casual.”
A Michikoid with a tray of glasses, pale yellow wine, offered her one. “No thanks,” she said. She saw Wilf reach for one, smiling, then freeze. Like seeing the haptics glitch Burton. Then his hand changed course, for one with fizzy water, near the edge of the tray. He winced, picking it up. “Follow me,” he said.
“Where?”
“This way, Annie.” He took her hand, led her toward the center, away from the windows, the glass of water held near his chest.
She remembered how long it had taken her to fly a circuit around this space. Wondered if the bugs were out there now, and what they’d really been.
There was an entirely black screen, square, floor-to-ceiling, near the middle of the space, people around it, talking, holding drinks. It looked like a giant version of one of those old flat displays that Wilf had on his desk, the first time she’d seen him. Wilf kept moving, looking as though he knew where he was going, but she assumed he didn’t. From a slightly different angle, now, she saw the black screen wasn’t entirely blank, but showed, very dimly, a woman’s face. “What’s that?” she asked Wilf, nodding in its direction.
“Aelita,” he said.
“Is that something you do, here?”
“Nothing I’ve ever seen before. And I-” He broke off. “And here’s Daedra,” he said.
Daedra was smaller than she’d expected, Tacoma’s size. She looked like somebody in a video, or an ad. At home that was something, even just to see someone like that. Pickett had had a little of it, sort of by osmosis, but not like he’d ever really tried. He was local. Brent Vermette had a lot of the guy version, via Miami and wherever else, and if he had a wife she’d have a lot of it too. But Daedra had it all, and tattoos on top of that, squared-off black spirals, up over her collarbones, out of the top of her black dress. Flynne realized she was waiting for the tattoos to move, and no reason to assume they wouldn’t, except she thought Wilf would have mentioned it, if they did.
“Annie,” Wilf said, “you’ve met Daedra before, at the Connaught. I know you weren’t expecting this, but I’ve told her about your sense of her art, her career. She’s very interested.”
Daedra was staring at her flatly. “Neoprimitives,” she said, as if she didn’t entirely like the word. “What do you do with them?”
Did she have to be asked directly about Daedra’s art for the bullshit implant to kick in? She guessed she did. “I study them,” she said, some part of her reaching back to the ragged yellow-spined wall of National Geographic, to Ciencia Loca, anything. “Study the things they make.”
“What do they make?”
The only thing she could think of was Carlos and the others making things out of Kydex. “Sheaths, holsters. Jewelry.” Jewelry wasn’t true, but it didn’t matter.
“What does that have to do with my art?”
“Attempts to encompass the real, outside of hegemony,” said the implant. “The other. Heroically. A boundless curiosity, informed by your essential humanity. Your warmth.” Flynne felt like her eyes were bugging. She forced herself to smile.
Daedra looked at Wilf. “My warmth?”
“Exactly,” said Wilf. “Annie sees your essential humanity as the least appreciated aspect of your work. Her analysis seeks to remedy that. I’ve found her arguments to be extraordinarily revelatory.”
“Really,” said Daedra, staring at him.
“Annie’s quite shy, in your presence,” he said. “Your work means everything to her.”
“Really?”
“I’m so grateful to meet you,” Flynne said. “Again.”
“That peripheral looks nothing like you,” Daedra said. “You’re on a moby, headed for Brazil?”
“She’s supposed to be meditating,” Wilf said, “but she’s cheating now, in order to be here. The group she’ll be embedding with insists on visitors having all of their implants removed. Remarkable dedication, on her part.”
“Who’s it supposed to be?” Still staring at Flynne.
“I don’t know,” said Flynne.
“A rental,” said Wilf. “I found it through Impostor Syndrome.”
“I’m sorry about your sister,” Flynne said. “I didn’t know that this was about her, until we got here. Must be so sad.”