The Peripheral by William Gibson Read Free Book Online

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National Geographic
, shelved in the hall. Downstairs, she found lukewarm coffee in the pot on the stove, then went out back for a shower, in the fading light. Sun had warmed the water just right. Came out of the stall wrapped in Burton’s old bathrobe, rubbing her hair with a towel, ready to dress for the job.
    Something she’d gotten from Burton and the Corps, that you didn’t do things in the clothes you sat around in. You got yourself squared away, then your intent did too. When she’d been Dwight’s recon point, she’d made sure she got cleaned up. Doubted she’d be doing that again, even though it was the best money she’d made. She didn’t like gaming, not the way Madison and Janice did. She’d done it for the money, got so good at one particular rank and mission in Operation Northwind that Dwight wouldn’t have anybody else. Except that he would, by now.
    She wanted to be sharp tonight, not just for the job. She wanted to see as much as she could of that London. Maybe it was a game she could get into. Burton said it wasn’t a shooter. She wanted to know more about the woman, see more of how she lived.
    She went back upstairs, dug through the clothes piled on the armchair. Found her newest black jeans, which were still really black, and the short-sleeved black shirt from when she’d worked at Coffee Jones.Sort of military, patch pockets and those strap things on the shoulders. She’d taken the Coffee Jones embroidery off, left the F LYNNE in red script over the left pocket. Her sneakers didn’t work with black, but they were all she had. She was planning on having Macon fab her some funny ones, but she hadn’t found any she really liked, for him to copy.
    Back in the kitchen, she made herself a ham and cheese sandwich, snapped it into Tupperware, bent her phone around her left wrist, and headed down to the trailer in the dark, listening to a new Kissing Cranes track. Leon rang her before the chorus. She left it on her wrist. “Hey,” she said. “Get him out yet?”
    “Homes getting ready to let ’em all go. Luke’s decided the Lord’s work’s about done, for now.”
    “So what have you been doing?”
    “Fucking the dog. Shot a bunch of pool, slept in the car, kept my ass off the street.”
    “Talk to Burton again?”
    “No,” he said, “they put ’em all in the center of the track at West Davis High. I could go up in the bleachers and watch him playing cards, or eating MREs, or sleeping. Not much point.”
    Maybe dull enough to keep Burton from going up there next time, but she doubted it. “When they let him out, you get him to call me.”
    “Will do,” Leon said.
    As Kissing Cranes came back on, she saw the tube of hand sanitizer on the door of the composting toilet. It was covered with QRs and requisition numbers, their ink starting to fade. But she’d already used the toilet in the house.
    As she opened the trailer’s door, it struck her that Burton never locked it, didn’t even have a lock. Nobody was coming in without him asking.
    She’d forgotten how hot it would get, sitting closed all day. Leon wanted to AC it, but Burton wasn’t interested. He usually wasn’t there in the daytime. Maybe her shirt and jeans hadn’t been a good idea.She put the sandwich in the fridge, got the windows open as far as she could. A gold and black spider had started spinning a web across one of the foam tunnels, outside.
    She tidied up a little, straightening things. As she moved around, the Chinese chair tried to adjust itself for her. She wasn’t sure she’d want to live with that, but when she finally sat down on it, it was just right.
    Took her phone off, bent it to her preferred controller angle, waved it above his display. Checked Badger. Shaylene was already back at Fab, still showing anxiety, and Burton was now indicated off-map. Which turned out to be the Hefty Mart parking lot in Davisville, which she guessed would be filled with big white Homeland trucks, one of them with