The Peripheral Read Online Free PDF Page B

place?”
    “These questions,” she said, the child’s diction growing more precise, “suggest that you don’t understand our situation. Neither of us can afford any interest in the answers to questions like those. We’re going to take a hit on this one, Wilf, professionally. But that—” She left it unfinished.
    He looked into the rental’s still eyes. “Is better than being the object of another one?”
    “We neither know,” the child said, firmly, “nor desire to know.”
    He looked at the whiskey. “They had her covered with a hypersonic weapons-delivery system, didn’t they? Something orbital, ready to drop in.”
    “But they would, her government. It’s what they do. But we shouldn’t even be discussing this now. It’s over. We both need it to be over. Now.”
    He looked at her.
    “It could be worse,” she said.
    “It could?”
    “You’re still sitting here,” the child said. “I’m home, all warm in my jammies. We’re alive. And about to be looking for work, I imagine. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?”
    He nodded.
    “This would probably be a little less complicated if you hadn’t had a sexual relationship with her. But that was brief. And is over. It is over, isn’t it, Wilf?”
    “Of course”
    “No loose ends?” she asked. “Didn’t leave your shaving kit? Because we need it over, Wilf. Really. We need there to be no reason at all that you ever have to communicate with her again.”
    And then he remembered.
    But he could fix it. No need to tell Rainey.
    He reached for the whiskey.

11.
    TARANTULA
     
    L ocked her bike in the alley and used her phone to let herself into the back of Forever Fab, smelling pancakes and the shrimp rice bowl special from Sushi Barn. Pancakes meant they were printing with that plastic you could compost. Shrimp special was Shaylene’s midnight snack.
    Edward was on a stool in the middle of the room, monitoring. He wore sunglasses against the flashes of UV, with his Viz behind the glasses, on one side. In the low light the glasses looked the same color as his face, but shinier. “Seen Macon?” she asked.
    “No Macon.” Near comatose with boredom and the hour.
    “You want a break, Edward?”
    “I’m okay.”
    She glanced at the long worktable, stacked with jobs needing removal of afterbirth, smoothing, assembly. She’d spent a lot of hours at that table. Shaylene was a solid source of casual employment, if you got along with her and were quick with your hands. Looked like they were printing toys tonight, or maybe decorations for the Fourth.
    She went into the front, found Shaylene watching the news: ugly-spirited sign-carriers. Shaylene looked up. “Hear from Burton?”
    “No,” Flynne lied. “What’s happening?” Didn’t want to have the Burton conversation. Odds of avoiding it were zero.
    “Homeland took some vets away. I’m worried about him. Got Edward to sub for you.”
    “Saw him,” Flynne said. “Breakfast?”
    “You’re up early.”
    “Haven’t slept.” She hadn’t said what it was she’d needed to do, wouldn’t now. “Seen Macon?”
    Shaylene flicked through the display with a fancy resin nail, Luke 4:5 tumbling back into the green of some imaginary savannah. “Wasn’t that kind of night.” Meaning she’d pitched the all-nighter because there was excess work to be done, not because Macon needed peace and quiet to fab his funnies. Flynne wasn’t sure how much of Fab’s income was funny, but assumed a good part of it was. There was a Fabbit franchise a mile down the highway, with bigger printers, more kinds, but you didn’t do anything funny at Fabbit. “I’m dieting,” Shaylene said. Flamingoes rose from the savannah.
    “That the purple?”
    “Burton,” Shaylene said, standing, slipping in a finger to tug at the waist of her jeans.
    “Burton can take care of himself.”
    “VA aren’t doing shit, to help him recover.”
    What Shaylene saw as Burton’s primary symptom of traumatic stress, Flynne