by K. W. Jeter
With a few quick blows from a calibrated chisel, he split the skull open like a thick-shelled egg; the scalp tore from nape to brow, revealing the soft matter beneath. Between the two red, empty hemispheres of bone, McNihil set the big spider-that was what the asp-heads themselves called the device-and let it go to work.
McNihil stood up, knees creaking, and went over to the room’s window. The smell of burning architecture filled the night air. Now he wished he’d given the panhandling gantry a donation; his hopes of coming in here, doing the job, and getting back out with no big excitement had evaporated. Just getting out, with his baggage and trophy intact, was going to be something of a problem. The mob had improvised torches from the fire crackling through the 747 carcass; with all of the unoccupied buildings already lit, the action had spread to the others. McNihil turned from the window and inhaled, trying to detect whether the End Zone Hotel had become part of the action.
He glanced down at the prostrate form on the redly shining carpet. The spider was halfway through its procedures; the steel refrigerant needles had plunged through the brain, their course determined by the device’s initial mapping scan. The drop in temperature and simultaneous oxygen delivery from the fibers radiating out from the probes would prevent any gross cellular decay. The second, more detailed scan was under way-McNihil could tell from the pattern of LED’s flashing across the spider’s mirrorlike carapace. As he watched, the small lights blinked out; the articulated knives lowered from the device’s underside and began carving into the soft, wet tissue beneath.
Wedges of cortex, neatly sliced as though by a butcher’s knife, were expelled from the gaping skull, landing on either side, trembling and seeping into the blood-soaked carpet. From a storage bin in the spider’s thorax, delicate claws plucked out tiny cylindrical memory shunts, each with a self-branching data capacity. The little claws, precise as a watchmaker’s screwdrivers, tapped the shunts into place, soft-welding them to the brain’s neurons and synapses.
Another few minutes crept past, as the spider device continued its surgery. The hotel room was a relatively sterile and quiet environment, compared to the battlefield situations for which the technology had originally been devised. The asp-heads had made their own adaptations to it; they weren’t interested in stabilizing soldiers with head wounds as much as getting trophies reduced down to a convenient traveling size.
The twin piles of discarded brain matter had grown to mounds a couple of inches high, pinkly weeping blood. The core of the subject’s memory and personality, all that had made the kid the punk he was, had been reduced to an oblate sphere the size of a tennis ball. Almost all of the brain stem had been cut away; there was no longer any need for the stilled and equally discardable organs to be regulated. The connection between what was left of the cortex, studded with the shunts and a few other implanted devices, and the tube-encased spine, was pristine and inviolate. McNihil reached into the skull with one hand and lifted the cortical essence; with his other, he took from the pack another gel-filled casing and enveloped the exposed tissue with it. He flipped the activation tab and, as the gel inflated to protect the carved-down brain, sealed the casing to the longer tube.
On the hotel room’s wet floor were the remains of the kid, the gross, unbreathing matter of torso and limbs, the face still sheathed in the first gel that McNihil had used on him, back in the theater. Turned to one side, the kid’s face had a blank, empty gaze, mouth open but silent, as though the tongue were somehow trying to taste blood through the clear barrier. Whatever low-wattage spark had existed behind the dulling eyes had been caught in a jar like some bright, fluttering insect. Dead meat wasn’t trophy material; asp-heads brought back to their clients something a little livelier.
McNihil returned his scattered tools to their slots in the pack, folded it, and stood up. He wiped the pack off against the wall, leaving a long red hieroglyph across an ancient pattern of faded roses. He slipped it into his jacket pocket. Turning and reaching for the trophy container he’d left propped against the front of the dresser-with the spherical casing sealed to the tube, the result looked like a fatter version of a drum major’s baton-McNihil saw smoke laced with sparks rising past the window. The temperature in the room had gone up a few degrees, the heat penetrating from the floors below; much hotter, and the blood soaked into the carpet would begin to boil.
He didn’t bother saying good-bye to the corpse. Some asp-heads, he knew, were in the habit of leaving behind some indication of a mess like this being the result of an agency hit-some went so far as to sign their names and ID numbers with the point of a scalpel on the dead flesh-but McNihil had never seen the need for that. Anybody who couldn’t tell what had gone on from the evidence, the hydro-gel mask and the laid-open spinal column, was beyond educating.
Smoke, thick and black, rolled down the hallway outside the door. McNihil had drenched his jacket sleeve in the room’s tiny efficiency sink; arm raised, he held the wet cloth against his face, his eyes stinging as he made his way down the corridor.
From the landing one flight down, he could see into the lobby of the End Zone Hotel. The mob with its primitive torches had shattered the street-level windows and ripped the door from its hinges. A shrill, clanging alarm sounded above the voices and battering clamor. An iron bar had been used to tear the grille from above the counter; the desk clerk had either fled or been trampled beneath the crowd’s feet. The tethered junkies in front of the lobby’s wall-mounted television hadn’t bothered to move; through the obscuring smoke, the slumped figures on the sofa and upholstered chairs could still be seen, watching the dead screen or languidly rolling their heavy-lidded gazes toward the riot with equal interest. One of the chairs had already caught fire, the edges of the yellow-stained upholstery crawling with a charred red line, gray smoke billowing around the comatose figure sprawled there. The black hookups to the metal drug device writhed snakelike in the heat.
“There!” A voice split the laden air. The vocal cords emitting the words sounded raw with shouting and smoke inhalation. “There he is!”
McNihil recognized the voice as his recently acquired nemesis, the bearded operator of the panhandling gantry. With the encased trophy tucked under one arm, McNihil peered across his other forearm and managed to spot the mob’s leader through the thickening haze. In the face blackened with soot, the red-rimmed eyes glared with a fierce delight; the burning buildings and the excited mob were all to the bearded figure’s liking.
Torches and improvised weapons aloft, the mob surged up the bottom of the open staircase. McNihil backed up a few steps as he dug into his coat pocket, past the folded tool kit, for the hand-filling tannhäuser. He brought it out; barely having to aim, he fired into the center of the welling crowd below.
The gantry operator had the sense not to lead the charge; McNihil saw the bearded figure being toppled backward by the crowd momentarily retreating under the impact of the broken-chested corpse at their head. His fall had sent the gantry operator sprawling across the lobby’s floor, shoulders bumping up against the base of the desk clerk’s counter, the impact enough to knock the torch from his hand. He was still conscious; a shake of the head, and the gantry operator managed to refocus his gaze toward the top of the stairs. His eyes widened at what he saw.
This time, McNihil aimed. Above the heads of the crowd, toward one specific target-not from any hopes of improving the present situation, but just from the personal conviction that people shouldn’t be given extra chances to make trouble. He pulled the trigger and saw, through the smoke filling the lobby, a bright red flower substitute itself for the bearded face. The gantry operator’s body rolled shuddering onto its side.
Won’t hold ’em, figured McNihil. He’d been in crowd situations before; he knew that it would only be a few seconds before whatever panic and good sense that the tannhäuser’s shot had instilled would be overcome by the mob’s bloodlust. Seeing two of their number blown away was like gasoline thrown on the already-existing flames. Tucking the
elongated trophy container tighter under his arm, McNihil turned and sprinted down the corridor, away from the stairs and the shouting below.
A well-placed kick broke open one of the room doors. Any occupants of the hotel had either fled or joined the mob below. The tiny space’s window, bright and hot with the flames in the street, was jammed tight. McNihil shattered the glass with the butt of the tannhäuser, then used its muzzle to knock away the remaining shards. He climbed out with the trophy container, onto the rusting metal grid of the fire escape.
The irony of the term wasn’t lost on him, as McNihil scanned the scene beneath. Enough of the surrounding buildings’ contents had been dragged out and thrown onto the fire for it to have spilled from the central open space-the downed and uprooted 747 was by now a twisted, blackened skeleton-and across the streets. One major branch of the fire had rolled right up against the walls of the hotel; the bottom section of the rickety framework on which McNihil stood was engulfed in flames. The heat traveled up the metal and scorched the palm of his hand, as he tried to look past the roiling smoke.
No way down, at least not that he could see here; at the same time, McNihil could hear the sound of the mob, their adrenaline courage revved up again, filling the End Zone Hotel’s darkened interior.
The rusting iron creaked and swayed, bolts pulling loose from the building’s side, as McNihil reached and drew down the narrow ladder above his head. Climbing one-handed, with the gun tucked against the trophy container, he headed toward the roof.
ELEVEN
A DAMP CARNIVAL OF BILLOWING FOAM AND SLIPPERY HUMAN SKIN
T oo fucked-up to stay out of trouble, thought November. Too valuable to let suffer the consequences. From an alley tucked safely away from the flames, but close enough to feel the heat rolling in waves across her breast and face, she watched the action over at the End Zone Hotel. She wondered what would be the best moment to go over and save that poor bastard McNihil’s ass.
The mob rampaging around in the open space had made it easier for her to tail him and his incapacitated business, from the movie theater over to where McNihil would complete the job. All the excitement, the crowds and shouts and mounting flames, had obviously distracted McNihil, kept him from doing even the most cursory scan to see who might be following him. She’d watched him dragging along the skinny kid that he’d come up here to meet, the contact’s face swallowed by that hydro-gel glop asp-heads were always so fond of-November admitted it had its uses, but she preferred more direct and obviously violent methods. What was going to happen next to the kid, she’d already known; asp-heads weren’t exactly reticent about publicizing the consequences for copyright infringement. Too bad for the kid trying to peddle those old books-but that was what you got for being a wiseass.
For McNihil as well, it was going to be too bad; he didn’t know what he was getting into. November shifted her position in the alley, going a little closer to its mouth in order to peer toward the lobby of the hotel. The bottom floor of the hotel building was engulfed in flame by now; the crowd with the torches, who’d been so hot for McNihil’s blood, had streamed back outside, leaving their dead and wounded to cook. Maybe I’ve waited a little too long, thought November. She’d been pretty sure that McNihil would be able to take care of himself, but that might have been an overly optimistic prediction, given the present situation. The windows of the hotel’s next floor up had blown out from the heat, raining glass shards on the people below. It wouldn’t be long before the whole building was on fire, from top to bottom. If McNihil was still in there when that happened, her own scheming would take a considerable setback.
November stepped out of the alley, easing her way through the crowd. The mass adrenaline peak had been a few minutes ago; the smell of that hormone-laden sweat hung in the air as an invisible stratum just below the smoke. A certain fatigue level had set in, the result of all the incendiary excitement. The central fire, with the skeleton of the ancient airliner warping and blackening, had begun to die down into ashes and smoldering embers. Most of the crowd had gone into spectator mode, the upraised torches either nothing but charred wood or a few red tongues and brighter sparks, drawn horizontal by the night wind that had sprung up. Necks craned, faces turned in all directions around the totem 747; the gazes took in the surrounding wreckage with pleased smiles, the hard satisfaction of vandalism taken to its limits.
Keeping silent, November rapidly worked her way closer to the burning hotel, shoving her way past the crowd’s backs, knocking away without difficulty the hands of either sex that tried to clutch at her. She lost sight of the hotel until she had reached the curb right in front of it. The rest of the onlookers, pushed away by the heat of the flames, were watching with varying degrees of amusement what was happening in the building’s lobby. The ceiling had started to break up, raining plaster fragments and chunks of wooden beams onto the space below. A few human remnants, dark scarecrow figures, were visible in a semicircle of blazing furniture; it was hard to tell if they had been asphyxiated or were just narcotized to their own ongoing deaths. One, wrapped in flames, had dropped forward onto his hands and knees; under the rolling smoke and sparks, he crawled laboriously, dragging a melting black hose and a toppled-over I.V.-drip device along with him. The burning man’s progress was the main topic of discussion in the crowd; November heard bets being placed behind her. Before the figure reached the hotel’s hinge-smashed door, he fell over onto his side, curling into a fetal position, hissing bones revealed beneath his cracked flesh. When the figure had been still a few seconds, November heard the various wagers being collected.
By then, she had already started to move away from the front of the End Zone Hotel. She had spotted what she was looking for, what she had hoped she would see. What the others in the crowd hadn’t noticed: another figure, above their heads and closer to the building’s corner, climbing up the rickety fire escape. McNihil had completed his business, obviously; she could see that he had an asp-head’s trophy container-a thick, roundheaded tube-clutched tight by one arm against his ribs. With his free hand, he was pulling himself up the creaking, snapping iron construction, the smoke from the flames below obscuring him in its heavy coils. As November watched, head tilted back, a section of the fire escape pulled loose from the building’s exterior wall; loose bricks and bits of rusted metal tumbled into the fire at the hotel’s base, sending up a flurry of sparks that surrounded McNihil like luminous wasps. McNihil’s distant figure hooked one arm into the nearest strut as the grid beneath his feet gave way, dangling as though it were a slotted trapdoor; McNihil clung to the swaying metal, still grasping hard the elongated container.
Another sound, rapid and bass-driven, sounded from past the surrounding buildings. A cursing groan arose from the mob, the multiplex organism aware that its fun was at an end. Not from any city police-a zone like this was redlined by the various rental forces-but from the fire department of the Gloss’s Seattle division: the first of the ’copters, flying low to avoid the stinging attentions of the Noh-flies, appeared above the buildings’ roofs or through the gaps in the low skyline. The black shapes, like armored angels, swooped in close to the still-burning 747, the outstretched nozzle arms dispensing swiftly expanding, smothering foam. The roar of the flames was replaced by a steamlike hiss as the soft wave of the extinguishing agent flowed through the central open space and into the streets around it.
That wasn’t going to help McNihil any, judged November. The FD ’copters weren’t going to hurry to put out the buildings that were already ablaze. In these old sectors of the cities on the Pacific Rim, it was standard practice to incorporate arson into the various urban-redevelopment plans, like forest fires clearing the way for new growth. A second line of airborne equipment had descended into the area beyond the burning buildings, using the foam and other chemicals to keep the flames from spreading toward more valuable real estate.
All of which left McNihil stranded on the side of the End Zone Hotel, with the fire rapidly advancing through
the structure’s interior, blowing out the windows with each level it consumed. November could see McNihil on the swaying fire escape, desperately reaching one-handed for the metal struts just beyond his grasp.
Behind her, another party atmosphere had set into the crowd; the incendiary rage had transmuted into a giddy frivolity, a damp carnival of billowing foam and slippery human skin. The smell of wet wood and other debris, floating on the soft whiteness as though it were a slow-motion sea, mingled with pheromone-laden sweat. The streets that had been on fire a minute ago had been turned by the angels’ whup-whup-whupping above into a bed of earth-clinging clouds. A bed fit for general copulation; the scarred flesh of the squatters, the unshelled homeless, the urban gutter tribes, all looked like engraved pearls of every shade from sunless white to African aubergine, as limb tangled with limb, orifices were born and created, sealing lubricant tight upon any possible protuberance, blood-warm or steel-cold. A panting, industrious silence replaced the cries that had echoed off the buildings only a few minutes ago.
That’s all right for them, thought November. What about my plans? The slippery environment was obviously fun for the crowd, taking their minds off the interrupted torching of the city, but it was making McNihil’s situation even more precarious than before. November had a clearer view of him, now that the crowd had spread from vertical to largely horizontal. The foam had been blown outward by the downdraft from the ’copters’ blades; enough of it had landed on the fire escape to slicken the fragile metal. McNihil’s grip on the creaking strut had become even more of a desperate struggle; November noted with some satisfaction that he’d still held on to the elongated trophy container, instead of letting it fall to the street below.