Noir

by K. W. Jeter

  “Ah. That used to be doctrinal. But that was a long time ago. Mankind has progressed since then, in so many ways. Including sin.”

  “What about guilt?”

  The bishop pursed his lips, mulling over the question. “Actually,” he said, “I think guilt’s stayed pretty much the same since the beginning. There’s never really been a lot of incentive to improve on it. Not a lot of market fluctuations there. Whereas with sin… people want to enjoy themselves, don’t they? They just never want to pay the price.”

  McNihil knew how that was. From professional-and personal-experience. “Was that this Travelt’s problem?”

  “Guilt and sin?” The bishop twirled the cross in a vertical loop. “Man, it looked like he was covered in it. Like he’d been skinny-dipping in the tar pits. Metaphorically, of course; the most you’d have been able to see with your eyes would’ve been the way the guy was sweating and shaking. You know that sick gray look people get just before they disconnect the life-support systems in the hospital, when there’s no more reason to run up the electric bill? Only this poor bastard was still walking around.” Another flip, and the bishop caught the cross in his fist. “But I could see the rest; I’ve got a little expertise in the line. That dark, sticky stuff was spread on his soul an inch thick and rancid.”

  Another thing that McNihil knew to be a fact. To his regret. You sleep with the wrong kind of people-he’d told himself this before-and there’s no telling what you’re going to wake up and find on yourself. The corpse on the cubapt’s floor hadn’t learned that lesson until too late. Or, seen another way, the late Travelt had learned it and had checked out early, rather than deal with the consequences. Not having to walk around caked in sin and guilt… maybe the guy hadn’t been so stupid after all.

  “Did he talk about… anything specific?” The terminal had switched itself back on; the numbers on the screen tugged at the corner of McNihil’s eyes. Tran or con, substance or accident; it didn’t matter. The dead were still here in this world. The only difference between this Travelt and McNihil’s wife was that he could still talk to her. Whereas Travelt’s silence had to be picked apart, tweezed out of other people’s memories. “Something that he’d done, or had been done to him?”

  “He talked about having been someplace, and having seen some things; that he wished he hadn’t gone there, and hadn’t seen whatever it was.” The bishop gave a little round-shouldered shrug, his own admission of guilt. “I suppose I should’ve asked him for the particulars, gotten him to let it out, tell me all about it. That probably would’ve made him feel better. The only problem is that it would’ve made me feel worse. I’m not interested in that sort of stuff.” His gaze moved away from what was hidden inside his fist and over toward McNihil. “And I’m not paid to be, either.”

  “That makes two of us.” McNihil felt his own minor remorse, the awareness of wasted time. “I only came here because I was mildly curious about this guy. But I’m not going to take the job.”

  “What job?”

  “The one this guy’s old bosses are leaning on me to take. They want me to find out what happened to him. Besides bad luck, that is.”

  For a moment, the bishop was silent. He laid the chain and cross over the flat of his palms, regarding it as though some reduced metallic pietà had been left in his care. “You’re a wise man,” he said finally. “You may not be a particularly nice one, but a certain degree of wisdom… you’ve got that.”

  McNihil lifted the object from the other’s hands, letting the cross and the free end of the chain dangle from the other side of his fist. “Why do you say so?”

  “You’re better off,” said the bishop, “not getting involved with this one. Some dead are… cleaner than others. This Travelt person… if he thought he was mired in sin, there’s a reason for it. Some of the things he told me, before he realized I’d stopped listening… or that I was trying not to hear… they weren’t pleasant kinds of things.”

  “Like what?” Obvious to McNihil that the bishop had been avoiding the question he’d asked before. Theology was fine enough, but it didn’t provide any answers in this world. “Come on, tell me. That’s what I paid for.”

  The bishop looked sulky. “You got enough for your money.”

  “Not quite,” said McNihil. “And if I think I’ve got change coming back to me, believe me, you’re not going to enjoy the process.”

  A lung-deflating sigh escaped from the other man. “All right. He talked about a woman-”

  McNihil seized on those words. “Did he say what her name was?”

  The bishop shook his head. “No. Because he was too frightened of her. He tried to, but he couldn’t say her name out loud. That’s why he was shaking so bad.” The bishop let a sickly smile appear on his face. “Isn’t that funny? In a way. Considering that she didn’t even exist.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Not hard.” The bishop barked a sharp laugh. “This Travelt guy was obviously losing it.” His finger, still shining from the solvent, tapped the side of his head, close to the network of spider veins curving around his brow. “Up here. Where it counts. He was imagining things. Weird, bad stuff,” said the bishop. “Stuff that just can’t be. About this woman he was so afraid of… and other things.” A shake of the head. “I don’t get out much-I’m just too busy, taking care of my flock-but I can still tell when someone’s undergoing a psychotic break with reality.”

  “You can, huh?” McNihil wished he could say the same for himself. Maybe, he thought, it’s because I don’t think it’s such a bad thing. He wouldn’t see the world he did, the one that continuously leaked out of his scalpeled eyes, if he’d been satisfied with the other one. The one that everybody else saw.

  Darker thoughts connected with that notion. That he didn’t want to get into right now, or any other time. Maybe the world he saw wasn’t in his eyes, but was farther back, inside his head…

  The bishop’s voice pulled McNihil away from that cliff.

  “Sure,” said the bishop. “With the kinds of things this Travelt was raving on about, it wasn’t hard. Like that woman he was so afraid of. Catch this: He said what made her so scary was that she was realer than he was.”

  McNihil heard that, and a sliver of soft ice threaded through his heart.

  “He was afraid that he didn’t even exist at all.” This time, both the sickly smile and a shake of the head from the bishop. “Compared to her, that is. And then the loathsome gynophobic fantasies, all of his talk about contamination and disease. This Travelt guy might as well have been some nineteenth-century French decadent, rhapsodizing about syphilis or something.”

  “Stigmata,” murmured McNihil. “He talked about stigmata, didn’t he? Some kind of mark or sign…”

  “Yeah, he did, actually. Something that wasn’t just in his blood, but on his skin. Something that he’d caught from this woman, that she’d passed on to him like a black fungus…”

  McNihil said nothing. He closed his eyes for a moment, and saw in that darkness a capital letter V, with serifs sharp as teeth, its slanting edges defined with a knife’s-edge precision against dead pale flesh.

  “What he said,” continued the bishop, “was that he couldn’t even see himself-if he looked down at his body, or looked in the mirror. ’Cause he wasn’t real anymore; all the realness had been drained out of him. All he could see was this mark she’d left upon him.”

  I know how that feels. McNihil opened his eyes, steadying himself against a faint current of stomach-roiling vertigo. An after-image of the black letter, as though burnt by some negative light, floated and ebbed from his vision of the small chamber. The woman’s unseen presence, con- or transubstantiated, bled away as well.

  “Know what else he told me? This is good-”

  “I thought,” said McNihil, “that you didn’t listen to him.”

  The bishop shrugged. “I caught a few things.”

  McNihil dropped the cross and thin chain back into his pocket. “Than
ks for your time.”

  “That’s all right.” The bishop followed him to the damp cement steps that led up to the street. “I shouldn’t even have charged you. It was a pleasant break for me.” He gestured toward the computer terminal. “From my usual routine.”

  The bishop caught McNihil’s jacket sleeve, just as he was about to emerge into the nocturnal city. “You know,” said the bishop, “it’s not too late.”

  McNihil looked back at him. “For what?”

  “For your confession. I’ve got the hang of it now. Of doing it in person, I mean.” The bishop raised himself up, gazing deep into McNihil’s eyes. “It’d be good for you.”

  “No, it wouldn’t.” McNihil shook his head. A chilling night wind sifted between the buildings’ unlit shapes. “You’re wrong. It’s too late. It was too late a long time ago.”

  “I wonder…” The bishop had already started to draw back down the cellar steps; his form merged with the hole’s shadows. “What you see…”

  “When?” He knew he shouldn’t ask, but didn’t stop himself.

  “When you look in the mirror,” whispered the bishop. “What do you see?”

  The figure disappeared down the steps. McNihil regarded the empty space for a moment, then turned and walked away.

  SEVEN

  THE ENTIRE ECONOMY OF THE DEAD

  Tell me a story,” said the professional child.

  The man sitting by himself-in fact, the only other person on the train-looked up. It seemed to take a little while for him to focus on her, as though there was something wrong with his eyes.

  “All right,” said the man after a moment. “How about a Bible story?”

  “That’d be fine.” The professional child flounced the ruffly skirt of her party dress over her bare, red-chapped knees. She dangled her shiny black Mary Janes above the train’s littered floor as she sat in the seat next to him. “Whatever you like.” The man looked lonely and a little sad. He needs, the professional child thought, what I have. “Go ahead.”

  This is the story he told her.

  “‘1AND IT CAME TO PASS,’” he said, “‘AS THEY JOURNEYED FROM THE EAST, THAT THEY FOUND A PLAIN IN THE LAND OF CALIFORNIA, AND THEY DWELT THERE.

  “‘2AND THEY CALLED IT THE LAND OF ORANGES, BECAUSE THAT FRUIT WAS OF PLENTITUDE THERE, AND FREE FOR THE PLUCKING AND EATING.’”

  “You’re making this up,” said the professional child.

  The man shook his head. “It’s all true. ‘3AND SO PLENTEOUS WAS THE GOLDEN FRUIT, AND SO DIZZYING THE GOLDEN SUNSHINE, THAT THE PEOPLE SAID, “WHY SHOULDST NOT ALL THINGS BE AS FREE AS THESE? ESPECIALLY TO US, WHO ARE SO DESERVING. WHY SHOULDST WE PAY FOR THAT WHICH WE WANT?”’”

  “You’re right.” The child scowled darkly; she’d been stiffed a couple of times in her career. “People always say that.”

  “‘4SO THE PEOPLE OF THE LAND OF ORANGES SENT OUT TO THE PEOPLES OF ALL THE OTHER LANDS, AND SAID UNTO THEM, “GIVE US THAT WHICH WE WANT, AND PUT IT ON OUR TAB.”

  “‘5THEY SAID, “GIVE US, AND YOU SHALL HAVE OUR SACRED PROMISE THAT WE WILL PAY FOR ALL THESE THINGS. YOU CAN TRUST US.”’”

  “Yeah, sure,” said the professional child.

  “‘6AND SOON,’” continued the man on the train, “‘THE PEOPLE OF THE LAND OF ORANGES HAD PARKS AND LARGE HOUSES, WITH GARAGES OF MANY DOORS; AND THEY HAD BOAT HARBORS AND MULTILANE FREEWAYS AND FIBER-OPTIC CABLES ROOTED THROUGH THE EARTH, SO THAT THEY MIGHT CONVERSE WITH EACH OTHER AND ORDER MORE THINGS FROM ON-LINE CATALOGS.

  “‘7AND THEY BUILT WALLS AROUND THEIR HOUSES, AND GATES WITH TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR MANNED SECURITY, SO THAT THEY MIGHT NOT HAVE TO SEE ANYONE OTHER THAN THEMSELVES. AND THEY DID LOOK AT EACH OTHER, AND SMIRKED AND SAID, “ARE WE NOT EXCEEDINGLY FINE IN OUR EYES AND GOD’S EYES?”’”

  “Then what happened?”

  “‘8AND THEN THE PEOPLES OF THE OTHER LANDS CAME TO THE PEOPLE OF THE LAND OF ORANGES, AND THEY DIDST HAVE THE BILL IN THEIR HANDS, FOR ALL THE PARKS AND THE FINE BIG HOUSES AND THE BOAT HARBORS AND THE BOATS THEREIN.

  “‘9AND THE PEOPLE OF THE OTHER LANDS DIDST SAY, “THIS IS HOW MUCH YOU OWE, AND THIS IS WHEN YOU SAID YOU’D PAY UP.”

  “‘10AND THE PEOPLE OF THE LAND OF ORANGES DIDST QUAKE BEHIND THEIR GATED WALLS, AND GREW ANGRY, NOT BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT PAY BUT BECAUSE THEY DID NOT WANT TO PAY.’” The man slowly shook his head, playacting a storyteller’s weary disgust.

  “‘11AND THE PEOPLE OF THE LAND OF ORANGES SAID TO THE PEOPLE OF THE OTHER LANDS, “WE WILL NOT PAY. WHY SHOULDST WE? WE ARE TOO FINE AND NOBLE AND TOO CONNECTING WONDERFUL TO HAVE TO PAY A BILL LIKE THAT. YOU CANST TAKE YOUR BILL AND SHOVE IT.”’”

  The professional child’s brow creased. “Bastards.”

  “‘12AND THE PEOPLE OF THE OTHER LANDS, WHO’D PAID FOR ALL THE PARKS AND HOUSES AND BOAT HARBORS, VERY CALMLY SAID, “ALL RIGHT. HAVE IT YOUR WAY. BUT THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES.”

  “‘13AND THE PEOPLE OF THE LAND OF ORANGES LOOKED AT EACH OTHER AND SMIRKED SOME MORE, AND SAID, “WHAT CONSEQUENCES CAN WE POSSIBLY SUFFER? FOR IS NOT OUR GOD A GOD OF GREED, AND ARE WE NOT HIS CHILDREN? HE’LL LOOK OUT FOR US.” AND THEY DIDST WIPE THEIR ASSES WITH THEIR BONDS OF THEIR SACRED PROMISES.’”

  “Yeah,” said the professional child, “I think I know the people you’re talking about.”

  The man waited a moment before continuing, in a lower, spookier voice. “‘14BUT THE SKIES DIDST DARKEN OVER THE LAND OF ORANGES, AND THE EARTH GREW SOUR AND DIED, SENDING FORTH ONLY DEAD THINGS.

  “‘15AND THE TIDES CEASED TO ROLL IN THE HARBORS, AND THE SHIT AND WASTE FROM THE SEWERS MIRED THE BOATS AMIDST THE DEAD AND ROTTING FISH.

  “‘16AND THE GATES RUSTED AND FROZE IN THE WALLS AROUND THE FINE HOUSES, SEALING IN THE PEOPLE OF THE LAND OF ORANGES. WHICH WAS NO GREAT LOSS, FOR BY THEN THEY HAD BECOME DEAD THINGS, LIVING-SORT OF-IN A DEAD PLACE.

  “‘17AND THE PEOPLE OF THE OTHER LANDS DIDST SAY TO ONE ANOTHER, “THAT’S HOW IT GOES. THEY BROUGHT IT ON THEMSELVES. WHEN YOU DON’T PAY, YOU CAN’T PLAY.”

  “‘18AND THE PEOPLE OF THE OTHER LANDS HAD DEAD OF THEIR OWN AMONGST THEM, AND THEY DIDST SAY, “NOW WE HAVE SOMEPLACE TO SEND THEM.”

  “‘19AND SO THEY DID.’”

  The man fell silent, eyes closed, head tilted back.

  “Is that it?”

  Raising one eyelid, the man glanced over at the professional child, then nodded.

  “Well,” she said, “it’s not a great story. And I don’t think it’s really from the Bible. Is it?”

  The man shrugged. “Depends upon whose Bible you’re talking about.”

  “But it must mean something important to you, huh? Or otherwise you wouldn’t have told it to me.”

  “That’s true, at least.”

  “So?” The professional child smoothed her frilly skirt above her knees, and waited.

  He didn’t need any more prompting than that. The man shifted in the seat, reaching into the back pocket of his trousers for his wallet.

  This sucks, thought McNihil as he gazed out the train’s window. I would rather in heaven be. That just didn’t seem to be an option these days.

  Having that conversation with the Bishop of North America (and Central America by Proxy) must have put him in a religious frame of mind. So that making up Bible stories came easily. The little bit of time spent storytelling just now with the professional child had been marginally satisfying, in a melancholy way. McNihil and his wife, when she’d been alive, had never put in for a childbearing license, and now it was too late. Her ova had been harvested long ago and sold to pay off some tiny fraction of her debt load. So for him, a bit of child exposure, even from one whose eyes had been as ancient and cold as a DynaZauber exec’s, had been worth it.

  “‘20AND INTO THAT LAND-’” McNihil murmured another piece of the story to himself; there was no one to overhear him in the train. “‘TO CONVERSE WITH THE DEAD, THAT HE MIGHT LEARN OF THEM THAT WHICH WOULD BE TO HIS PROFIT, NAY, SURVIVAL; TO THAT REGION OF THE DEAD CAME A STIL
L-LIVING MAN, WHO HAD COME THERE BEFORE MANY TIMES ON SIMILAR ERRANDS. BUT IN THIS TIME, THE LIVING MAN’S THOUGHTS WERE OF RELUCTANT NATURE. SO THAT HE DID SAY TO HIMSELF, “CHRIST AL-CONNECTING-MIGHTY, I DON’T WANT TO BE DOING THIS…”’”

  But such petition, thought McNihil, availeth not.

  Rattling on the poorly maintained tracks, the train made slow progress across the blighted landscape. Slow and southward, leaving the ill-defined outskirts of True Los Angeles behind. There had been a time-McNihil had seen the photos, watched the videos-when L.A. had merged seamlessly with the densely suburbanized zones below it, like a corpse on the slab of God the Mad Doctor, a somewhat living thing stitched together by arteriosclerotic freeways. All flowers die eventually, though, even the ones that are already toxic, and the black blooms wither and curl up on their black stems.

  McNihil looked out the window, his breath against the glass, and saw ashes and the charred skeletons of buildings, steel girders twisted by the heat of long-extinguished fires, rows of square, empty eye sockets staring past fields of jewel-like glittering broken glass. A grid of streets remained embossed on the deathscape, with the cracked emblems and nonsense words of what had been backlit plastic signage on tottering or spine-snapped poles, all transformed into an idiot language by having melted into one another. The logo of a defunct international hamburger chain merged with the trademark of what had been the West Coast’s largest retail purveyor of automobile tires, the resultant muddle sliding into the blinded facade of an abandoned full-service Church- &-Shop™, the combination seeming to promise seminutritious grease and small plastic toys served as a holy sacrament inside a steel-belted radial. Overall, the air looked and smelled-it seemed to seep through the solid glass and into McNihil’s nostrils-as if the smoke from the ancient fires had never dissipated, the ocean winds no longer rolling over the petroleum-striped beaches, the clouds heavy and listless above the waves too sullen to crest. The air had yellowed and turned rancid, becoming some sort of breathable cheese, a substance accumulating on one’s alveoli like the stuff found at the bottom of backed-up drains.