Noir

by K. W. Jeter

  “Look, uh, you have to understand something.” McNihil pointed across the bleak landscape gradually forming out of darkness. “I made my living out in the field, working for the Collection Agency; I’m an operative, not an ideologue. People like you, you start going on about some big cosmic notions, and then I just want to go home and lie down. Lick my wounds, crank up the music, wake up with an empty bottle beside me. I don’t have time or inclination to listen to your theories about how the universe is stitched together. Why don’t you try giving me some kind of clue? About why you wanted to talk to me so much. And this job you’re so hot for me to take on. About looking into what happened to your boy Travelt.” His bruises and bone-aches, from being thrown around inside the toppled passenger car, twinged as he looked at the exec. “I can’t imagine you start off all your appointments this way.”

  “Perhaps not.” From above, Harrisch bestowed an indulgent smile. “But you have to admit that it got your attention.”

  “Right now, you could have my attention. In exchange for aspirin and morphine.” McNihil shifted his aching bones inside his jacket. “And that was before the unscheduled stop.”

  “You’ll be on your way soon.” The other man nodded toward the work crews, farther back along the rails. Between the sizzling sparks of the welding torches and the softer blue of the anti-SCARF generators, the thin lengths of rust-colored metal had been restored, straightened into level functionality. “Our times together are brief, though I hope this one will prove at least… memorable to you. Even after your scars heal.” A slight signal passed from Harrisch to the dark-uniformed assistant at the crane’s levers; the circle and cross dipped hoveringly closer. “Tell me, Mr. McNihil. What do you know about TIAC?”

  “‘Kayak?’” Out of the blue; that puzzled him. “You mean, like Eskimos used to paddle around in?”

  “Bigger than that.” Amused, Harrisch shook his head. “It’s an acronym. Tee… eye… ae… see. Any idea what that is?”

  “Not a one.”

  “You should,” said Harrisch. “It has to do with your new job. With the late Travelt. And a lot to do with what happened to him.”

  “Ah.” Could’ve guessed that much, thought McNihil. “So I take it that this TIAC thing… it’s got something to do with DynaZauber? Maybe it’s a DZ project of some kind? That seems like the kind of code designation that you and your friends would be fond of.”

  “Very good,” Harrisch nodded. “It’s DynaZauber’s baby, all right. And mine, in particular. I’ve been in charge of it for a long time. Exclusively; I don’t have any other corporate responsibilities at the moment.” A shrug. “Well, almost none.”

  “Really?” With one hand, McNihil gestured over toward the tracks. “What about all this rail stuff?”

  “A little diversion, is all. I’ll be handing it back to the exec who’s actually in charge.” Harrisch’s smile widened. “Let’s just say I borrowed it for a little while. Just to make a grand entrance.”

  “Whatever.” McNihil felt more weary than amused. “So this TIAC thing. The letters. So what do they stand for?”

  “Actually,” said Harrisch, “you have no need to know. And in fact, perhaps it’s just as well that you don’t know.” The smile disappeared. “All you really need to know is that it’s something that belongs to us. To DynaZauber. And we don’t like losing things that belong to us. Or having them taken.”

  “Really?” McNihil wasn’t surprised by that. “How’d you lose it? Or to put it another way… who took it?”

  “Those are very good questions.” Harrisch turned his cold gaze around, like aiming a gun. “That’s the reason we hired you, Mr. McNihil. To find out exactly that.” The two black holes at the centers of his eyes were as deep and reflectionless as the surrounding night. “We figured-or I did, at least-that it would be the kind of thing you’d be very good at finding out. Somewhat perfect, actually.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Simple.” A few empty seconds passed while Harrisch regarded him. “Where it’s lost, is someplace you’ve been. Someplace you know all about. Rather a specialized area of knowledge for you.”

  McNihil said nothing. He had a premonition of where this was all going.

  “The Wedge.”

  He looked over at Harrisch. “You’ve been misinformed,” said McNihil. He kept his voice quiet and controlled. “I don’t go there.”

  “Not anymore?”

  “Ever.”

  “How interesting.” One of Harrisch’s eyebrows lifted in mock surprise. “My sources are very reliable. And they tell it differently. You had some big times in that little district. Famous times. People are still talking.” The bad smile again. “You don’t hear them, but they are.”

  McNihil felt his own anger stacking up inside himself. At this point, after those words, he didn’t care if the other man had his corporate flunkies and thugs all around. I’ll unload on him, swore McNihil, letting the hands dangling at his sides tense in fists. I don’t care what happens. Not anymore…

  “I seem to have upset you,” said Harrisch smoothly. “My apologies.”

  “Don’t bother.” McNihil supposed that the vein he could sense pulsing at the corner of his brow was the dead giveaway about his emotional state. “You can go back and congratulate your sources. They’ve got it right this time.”

  Ancient history. It felt that way, like something engraved on rock-faced stelae on the mountainsides, the records of fallen empires. Though the only thing that had fallen was McNihil himself. A bad fall, the kind that you survive. But I wish I hadn’t, he brooded. Another night, older and deeper than this one, folded around him.

  The truth of the matter: any line McNihil handed out about not working as an asp-head anymore was pure shuck and jive. He knew the score; it was burned into not only his personnel file back at the Collection Agency, but into the file he carried around inside his head. The file marked both Learn to Forget and Not to Be Forgotten.

  “You have to expect things like this.” Harrisch’s voice slid into his thoughts. “You have to expect that I’d know all about what happened. Back then.”

  “Big deal,” growled McNihil. “So you know I didn’t leave the agency voluntarily.”

  “That’s one way of putting it. Another would be to say that they canned your ass.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Look at it this way.” The exec’s voice needled farther under McNihil’s skin. “Forced out of one job, forced into another one-it’s a wash. I’m giving you a golden opportunity.”

  He turned a heavy-lidded glare toward Harrisch. “To do what?”

  “To finish what you started.” The smile went lopsided as Harrisch tilted his head. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  McNihil went silent again. A few seconds ticked away before he spoke. Then, quietly: “How would you know what I want?”

  “Come on,” said Harrisch. He spread his unstigmatic hands apart. “It’s human nature. You might not think I know anything about that, but I do.” One hand lifted, as though in preparation for laying a benediction on McNihil. “More than you might imagine, as a matter of fact; it’s kind of a speciality of mine. So when I say that you’re still pissed about what happened to you-what went down in the Wedge-I’m pretty sure I’m right.”

  The man was right; that was the problem. McNihil coldly regarded the DZ exec. “Human nature,” said McNihil, “isn’t the problem with the Wedge. It’s the inhuman parts that screw people up. You think you’re clued in on that as well?”

  “Enough. Enough to know what happened to you.” Harrisch’s voice went monotone and level, a deliberately flattened recitation of facts. “You were the head of the Collection Agency team that was going to sort out the Wedge. That’s how high up in the agency you were; you had total control over-and responsibility for-the operation.”

  “That’s right.” McNihil nodded. “I reported straight to the agency director. No levels, no organizational hierarchy, between me and the top.” />
  “You even initiated the operation. It was your idea. So when things went wrong-and they did, badly-there was nobody to take the fall except you. Nobody to blame but yourself.”

  Also true. The Wedge, that amorphous zone of sexual license, existing everywhere and nowhere simultaneously, in the human mind and in flesh and somewhere in between-it was only to be expected that a place and a concept like that would become the home for other excesses, other crimes. If not against nature, then at least against property. Specifically, the kind that the Collection Agency was supposed to protect. Copyright infringement as sexual stimulation; that was to be expected as well. One perversion always led to another. Where Eros linked up with Thanatos; the fact that in the daylight world, the social universe outside the Wedge, that kind of screwing around led inevitably to one’s death, or worse, only ratchetted the thrills up even further.

  “All right,” said McNihil. “That’s all true. I took the fall… and I deserved to. If for no other reason than because I was the guy in charge. But I don’t have any regrets about it. I’m sorry about the way it turned out, but I still believe we had to do it. We had to give it a shot.”

  “‘Sorry’?” That got a laugh from Harrisch. “You’re sorry? Hey, there were people who died in that little fiasco. I’ve seen the body count. Your fellow agents; some of them came back in bags, others didn’t come back at all. No wonder your reputation went to shit inside the Collection Agency.”

  “They knew what they were getting into.”

  “Did they?” Harrisch peered closer at him. “Did you?”

  “There were some… surprises,” admitted McNihil. “Things we weren’t expecting.”

  “I’ll say.” Nodding, Harrisch folded his arms across his chest. “There’s one thing in particular you didn’t expect. Or should I say ‘someone’?”

  He knew what Harrisch was going to say next, the name that would be spoken.

  “You weren’t expecting Verrity, were you?”

  “No,” said McNihil. “We weren’t. We didn’t know. We’d heard of her-at least I had-but nobody thought she was real. I thought she was just… legendary. Just the kind of myth that grows in places like the Wedge.”

  “So she took you by surprise.” Harrisch’s gaze was close to pitying. “When you found out she was real.”

  “That was… the last thing I expected.”

  “Not just real,” corrected Harrisch. “More to it than that, wasn’t there? More to her. Realer than real-at least inside the Wedge. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it? That’s enough of a world for Verrity to be queen of. Enough of a world to kick your ass in.”

  “Not just mine.” McNihil’s turn for a grim smile. “You’re the one who’s complaining about someone having your valuable missing property.”

  “True.” Harrisch nodded. “So you see-we do have something in common, you and I.A common enemy. Verrity has something of mine-something that belongs to DynaZauber-and she also has something of yours. Your past, a great big bloody piece of it. Which translates to your pride. Your self-respect.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” McNihil shook his head. “I don’t have any of those things. I never did. They’re not important.”

  “So you say. But if that’s the case-” The needle of Harrisch’s gaze probed deeper. “Then why do you want revenge? Why do you want to get back at her so badly?”

  For a few seconds, McNihil made no reply. Then: “Because. Like you said”-simply and quietly-“I just want to finish the job. The one that I started.”

  “And that’s why you’ll take this one,” said Harrisch. “The one for us. Finding out what happened to Travelt. You could’ve gotten out of it; there are ways. A person like you would know how to just… disappear. Where you couldn’t be found, even by the regular police. But you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t want to. I’m way too tired for that kind of shit.” Another shake of the head, more ruefully intended. “Like the old lines go: Better to die where you stand.”

  “Dying would be one of your easier options.” Harrisch didn’t appear impressed. “Easier than going up against Verrity again.”

  McNihil knew what the DZ exec was talking about. When the Collection Agency’s operation into the Wedge had gone down, the operation he’d planned and overseen, he hadn’t been there. In the Wedge-even the agents who’d died, the ones who’d taken the big hit, the one you didn’t stand up from afterward; they hadn’t gone into the Wedge, either. There was no need to… or at least that was how the reasoning had gone. Nothing made of human flesh went into that zone; that was what the prowlers were for. To go and fetch, like human-shaped dogs in artificial skins, the physical equivalent of the so-called intelligent agents that’d been created before the end of the century, those software entities programmed to scour the old on-line networks for desired info. Prowlers, on the other hand, were really real; they went out into the Wedge and brought back another kind of hot blue info, for the remote-and safe-consumption by their masters. The Collection Agency troops who ventured into the Wedge may have done so for reasons other than those of the zone’s habitués-to extinguish rather than experience-but they did so using the same means. Not their flesh at risk, but their surrogates’; the Collection Agency’s own little squad of purpose-built prowlers.

  The agency’s prowlers went into the Wedge, and found the hot blue zone wherever it faded from mental concept into physical reality; only sometimes, they went in and didn’t come back out. A few did, and brought back death with them. The asp-heads who’d been working for the agency back then, the ones who’d volunteered for McNihil’s clean-up-the-Wedge squad, wound up sticking their tongues into those wet red sockets… and had received a fatal communion in their bloodied saliva.

  “But you knew-you found out-who was responsible.” Harrisch’s voice crept through all those old memories, as though he had some direct line into the skull that held them. “Didn’t you?”

  McNihil remained silent, knowing that there wasn’t any answer required. The other man was way ahead of him. He must’ve been rooting through the agency files, thought McNihil. Or else DynaZauber itself had a direct line; maybe DZ had bought out the Collection Agency somehow, and was operating it as a wholly owned subsidiary, just as they were apparently doing now with the rail network. It could happen; Dyna-Zauber was one of the big predators in the corporate world, and the Collection Agency was going through a headquarters shake-up, at least according to McNihil’s own longtime contacts inside.

  There was another possibility. Maybe, thought McNihil, the information came from the other side. That was something to be considered: that DZ was forming its partnerships and strategic alliances from among the bad guys, the technically, legally bad guys. Wouldn’t be the first time-McNihil dredged up a reference from ancient history. It’d be like some sort of Hitler-Stalin pact of the intellectual-property sphere, the collusion of entities that were supposed to be at each other’s throats.

  “Whatever.” He turned away and looked across the rubbish-strewn landscape. His distaste for the conversation extended, permeating everything he saw before him like a bad smell. This is what I get, thought McNihil grimly. For getting involved-for letting himself get involved-with all this happy horseshit. Enough morning sunlight spilled over the distant mountains that the world’s details were even more depressingly revealed to him. The scavenger dead were already out, creeping away from the ashes of their tiny, perfunctory campfires; the scrabbling, black-nailed hands had begun their owners’ hunchbacked rituals of turning over each crumbling leaf of trash, looking for something, anything, that could be converted to the usual small profit. McNihil felt as if he had already joined their number.

  Then again… maybe he wasn’t the only one. He looked over at Harrisch, having suddenly realized something else. “You wouldn’t be talking about Verrity,” said McNihil, “unless she was important to you, too. If you’ve lost something… she must be the one who has it.”

  Hanging on the cross, Harr
isch looked even more uncomfortable. “Well. We don’t know that for sure.”

  “But that’s what you suspect.”

  The exec shrugged. That was answer enough.

  “So what is it,” said McNihil, “that she’s got of yours? You must want it back awfully badly. Or otherwise you wouldn’t be putting up with my shit.”

  “God, that’s true enough.” Harrisch rolled his eyes up toward the sky, then sighed. “What we lost is one of our own. We lost Travelt.”

  “No, you didn’t. We were all standing around looking at him, back there at his cubapt.”

  Harrisch shook his head impatiently. “That’s what’s left of him. The outside part. We lost the inside part of him. That’s what we want back.”

  For a few seconds, McNihil mulled that over. “Why?” he asked at last. “What’s so valuable about a junior exec? They’re not that hard to replace. Promote one out of the copy room, you need one so badly.”

  “Look, pal. You don’t need to know why we want him back. Maybe we’re sentimental at DZ-”

  That’ll be the day, thought McNihil.

  “All you need to know,” continued Harrisch, “is what. And where. You go and do the rest.”

  Dream on, connector. “Just what inside part of Travelt do you think I should go looking for? The package I saw back there at the cubapt seemed just about ready to be picked apart.”

  “Shouldn’t be all that difficult.” Harrisch’s irritation appeared to have simmered down. “For somebody of your talents and experience. Except that it’s still walking around. Not in the Gloss per se. But in the Wedge.”

  McNihil wasn’t surprised. “What you’re talking about,” he said, “is a prowler. You want me to go find the prowler that your little junior exec was using. Gone missing, has it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So what?” McNihil had started to get a crick in his neck from looking up at the exec on the cross. “It probably didn’t come wandering home, because there’s no reason for it to do so. Its user is dead. Who’s it going to come back and down to? The refrigerator?”