Read Online The Peripheral by William Gibson - Free Book Online Page A

treatment,” Lev said, ignoring the question. “He made that absolutely clear.”
    “Gordon wants in,” Netherton said, having just noticed the thylacine at the glass door, darkness behind it.
    “Tyenna,” corrected Lev, glancing at the animal. “She’s not allowed in the kitchen when we’re eating.”
    Netherton quickly flicked the red Lego off the table. He heard it click against something, roll. “Hyena?”
    “Medici doesn’t like the look of your liver.”
    “Eggs look wonderful—”
    “Laminates,” Lev said, evenly, looking Netherton in the eye, the heavy black frames of his glasses accentuating his seriousness, “and a cognitive therapy module. Otherwise, I’m afraid this will have to be your last visit.”
    Fucking Dominika. This was about her. Had to be. Lev had never been like this. The yellow Lego was brick-shaped again. Pretending innocence.
    Lev looked up, then, and to the side. “Excuse me,” he said, to Wilf. “I have to take this. Yes?” He gestured at Netherton’s eggs: eat. He asked something, briefly, in Russian.
    Netherton unrolled his knife and fork from the cool heavy napkin. He would eat the eggs and tomato in exactly the way a healthy,relaxed, responsible individual would eat them. He had never felt less like eating eggs, or broiled tomato.
    Lev was frowning now. He spoke again in Russian. At the end of it, “Aelita.” Had he really said her name, or only something in Russian that had sounded like it? Then a question, also in Russian, which, yes, definitely culminated in her name. “Yes,” he said, “it is. Very.” His hand came up, to scratch the skin just above his left nostril with the nail of his index finger, something Netherton knew he did when he was concentrating. Another question in Russian. Netherton dutifully tried the eggs. Tasteless. The thylacine was gone now. You almost never saw them leaving.
    “That’s odd,” said Lev.
    “Who was it?”
    “My secretary, with one of our security modules.”
    “What about?” Please, Netherton begged the uncaring universe, let Lev be more interested in this, now, than in any behavioral modification in Putney.
    “Aelita West’s secretary just canceled lunch. Tomorrow, in the Strand. I’d reservations for Indian. She’d wanted to know more about her polt. Your gift.”
    Netherton forced himself to take another half-fork of eggs.
    “The Met was listening in, when her secretary spoke with mine. We were surveilled.”
    “The police? Seriously? How did it know?”
    “She didn’t,” said Lev, annoyingly personalizing a program. “The security module did, though.”
    Klept as established as the Zubov family’s, Netherton assumed, was layered in byzantine tediousness. He refrained from saying so.
    “The security module interpreted it as being related to a very recent event,” Lev said, adjusting his black frames to peer at Netherton.
    “How could it know that?”
    “Any listener necessarily assumes a particular stance, informed byintention. Our module’s more sophisticated than that which was listening. The shape of their listening suggested what they were listening for.”
    So unexpectedly welcome was this distraction that Netherton had scarcely been paying attention, but now he realized that it fell to him to keep the conversation going, and as far away from Putney as possible. “What would that be, then?”
    “Serious crime, it assumed. Abduction, possibly. Even homicide.”
    “Aelita?” It struck Netherton as absurd.
    “Nothing so clear as that. We’re having a look. She held a reception, just this evening. While you were sleeping it off.”
    “You’ve been watching her?”
    “The security module’s done a retrospective, since her secretary’s call.”
    “What sort of reception?”
    “Cultural. Semigovernmental. It would originally have been about your project, in fact. One would assume celebratory, if Daedra hadn’t killed your man and had the cavalry in. Rather than cancel, it seems, Aelita