by K. W. Jeter
With the thumbnail of his other hand, McNihil scraped the decayed insulation from the tips of the radio’s wires. “I’ve figured out what I’m going to do. You don’t have to worry about it.”
“You’ve figured it out, huh? I don’t think you got what I’m talking about. Even if you’ve got some great idea, God knows what, of yanking what’s left of Travelt and his prowler out of her, it’s not going to help you any. It’ll kill him. Her too, probably.” The barfly’s voice became tighter and more severe; she had pushed herself away from the side of the doorway. “Do you understand that? If you want to add murder to your job résumé, that’s the way to do it. You’ll wind up with a nice bloody mess and two dead bodies, a little one and a big one.”
“What are you so worked up about?” McNihil glanced over at the barfly. “I thought that whatever’s going to happen, has already happened. This is all memory, right? From your kiss into my head. That’s what you told me. So it’s all foreordained. Right?” He watched for any reaction from her. “Whether I wind up killing her and Travelt and the prowler or I don’t; it doesn’t matter. Because it’ll be just the way I’m supposed to remember it. Won’t it?”
A sullen expression clouded the barfly’s face. “It doesn’t work that way. There’s some… allowance made. For variables. It’s like a free-will thing.”
“Yeah, right.” Figured as much, McNihil told himself. There was undoubtedly some truth to what she’d told him; just not the whole story. Why should the ultimate barfly be any different from the others? “So let’s just see how it goes, then.”
“What…” Her voice twisted with concern. “What’re you going to do?”
“I don’t need,” said McNihil patiently, “to take this FPC version of the prowler out of her. I don’t have to do that just to talk to what’s left of Travelt.”
“You’re not going to be able to do it with that… that piece of junk. “The barfly pointed to the old radio. “Travelt and the prowler-it doesn’t have any means of communicating with you. There’s no vocal apparatus anymore; nothing that it can signal to you with. It can’t even hear you; that stuff got all taken off in the Full Prince Charles conversion process. You can insert a microphone, a little loudspeaker, anything you want, and it’s not going to work.” She regarded him from the corner of one eye. “So that was your big plan?”
“Not really.” McNihil looked at the sleeping girl, then back to the woman in the doorway. “I knew that if I found what was left of Travelt, I wouldn’t be able to communicate with him in any… ordinary way. I knew I was going to need some kind of interface; something that could hook up with what was inside of the prowler, no matter what kind of condition it was in. A translator; something to go between me and Travelt, with its own intelligence built in. Something that was a cross between a wire and a human nervous system.”
“Wait a minute…” The barfly looked as if she was just about to understand.
“It’s all part of the job.” McNihil pulled his hand out of his jacket pocket. Looped around his fist was the cable he’d ripped out of Turbiner’s stereo system. The trophy that had once been a would-be intellectual-property thief, skinned down and reduced further than any Full Prince Charles number. “And I got just the thing for it.”
TWENTY-TWO
ALL SMOKE AND ICE AND FATAL PERCEPTION
You look like death warmed-over.”
But also heavier than he looked. November slung the asp-head’s arm around her shoulders and managed to get him to his feet. McNihil’s head lolled back, a trickle of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth.
“That’s… funny…” McNihil managed to open his eyes, the lids cranking back partway and then stalling, like defective machinery. “You look… great…”
“Yeah, like you’d know.” No telling what McNihil was actually seeing. Especially now, thought November. His vision had been all connected-up before, and now he looked like somebody had been working him over with a crowbar. “Just shut up and try to walk, okay?”
She’d found him on one of the upper floors of the End Zone Hotel. Just getting up there had been a hazardous enough process. The building was little more than a burnt-out shell at this point, damaged as much by the dousing of the fire as the fire itself, most of the lower floors, above the lobby level filled with the sex-ocean gel, were tangled mazes of collapsed, charred timber and heat-twisted structural girders, their broken ends rooting snout-deep through strata of water-soaked carpeting and acoustic ceiling tiles mounded like crumbling dominoes. A lavalike flow of sodden ash, solidified into black glue, hid the steps of the hotel’s central stairway; November had to clutch the swaying handrail, her careful weight producing groans of nails and bolts pulling free from the walls, and drag herself upward, boots miring and slipping beneath her.
What had kept her heading upstairs, after climbing into the End Zone Hotel from the catwalk outside, was first the impression, then the certainty, that there was someone else in the building. Despite what the cameraman on the boom platform had told her, she could hear voices coming from the dark reaches overhead, faintly at first and then with increasing clarity. She recognized one of the voices. That’s him, November had thought. That’s McNihil. A perfect memory of the asp-head’s voice remained in her head, from when she’d been in the hospital burn ward; somehow it had managed to leak in through the transparent barrier while she’d been floating in the sterile nutrient medium. She’d stood somewhere around the End Zone Hotel’s second or third floor, gripping the stairway’s wobbly handrail while the wet ash had crept across the steel toes of her boots, and had listened. She couldn’t make out what he’d been saying; the words were muffled by distance and the intervening layers of wreckage.
There had been other voices she’d been able to hear as well, faint and fragmentary. A woman’s voice, husky and almost as low-pitched as McNihil’s. For a few seconds, November had wondered if he was watching one of those old movies up above, the kind that had been inserted into his eyes and optic nerves, that made everything look dark and moodily dramatic to him; maybe on a portable monitor and video-player, though she couldn’t imagine what the reason would be for that. Her imagination had provided another scenario, as she had worked her way up the tottering stairs. Maybe the old movies had finally leaked out from McNihil’s private universe to the world at large, so that everyone could see them at last the way he did. And hear them-that was what the woman’s voice had sounded like, even from the distance November had caught it. Like one of those killer broads from the old thrillers-November had watched a few of them, part of her own research on McNihil and how his mind worked. Possessed of a murderous glamor, all smoke and ice and fatal perception. If that was what had happened, if those cinematic archetypes had gotten loose-Then we’re all in trouble, November had thought as she’d climbed the stairs. Even more than we already are.
A third voice, high-pitched and whiny, like a teenage boy’s, had sounded as if it’d been coming over a wire, crackly with static and sunspot interference. That one had been even less intelligible to November, though she’d been able to pick up on the rapid, stammering urgency in its words.
She’d been relieved to find McNihil all by himself. Unconscious, passed out on the shabby bed in one of the rooms nearly to the top of the hotel. A dead radio sat on a little table beside the bed, a thick, metallic-sheathed cable dangling out of its back like a baby boa constrictor with bare, unattached wire for a head. The room itself and the rest of its furnishings were scorched by the long-ago fire, but not completely destroyed; enough of the original carpet showed that November’s ash-muddy boots could leave prints on it. No video equipment, but no mystery woman, either, though a trace of scent, tobacco mixed with a cheaply heady perfume, filtered through the airborne cinders. As November stepped forward from the doorway, the toe of her boot dislodged a cigarette butt from the rubble on the floor. Fresh gray ash fell from the tip. Either somebody had been here with him, or McNihil had taken up smoking since she’d investigated his
personal habits. She doubted the latter.
“Let’s go,” said November. “One foot in front of the other.” She pressed a hand against McNihil’s chest, trying to keep him from toppling over on her. “You can do it.”
“Where we going?” The trickle of blood from McNihil’s mouth had gone all the way down his throat and under his shirt collar. “Maybe… I don’t want to go…”
“Sure you do, McNihil.” She pulled him toward the hotel room’s doorway. “This place sucks. Not first-class accommodation at all.”
“Wait a minute.” He halted, planting himself unmovable in the middle of the room. His heavy-lidded eyes gazed at November with half-conscious obstinacy. “How do you know?”
November sighed, feeling his weight growing more oppressive against her. “Know what?”
He touched the side of his mouth, took his hand away, and stared uncomprehending at the blood on his fingertips. His gaze refocused on her. “How do you know… it’s me?”
“What’re you talking about? I’m looking right at you. Of course it’s you.”
“But… I’ve got a mask on…”
“Connect you do.” November swung him around toward the room’s chest of drawers; he swayed unsteadily against her as she halted. “Take a look for yourself.”
The mirror mounted on the chest was just clear enough to reflect McNihil’s image back at him. The asp-heads on either side of the glass peered at each other, bending slightly forward, eyes narrowing to slits. Suddenly, McNihil tilted his head back and laughed, hard enough to make the mirror shiver.
“Those sonsabitches…” He wiped his mouth, smearing the blood across his chin and fingers. “That’s really good. They really had me going there…”
November braced herself, keeping McNihil upright. “Who? I don’t know what you’re-”
“It’s what you get for going to a Snake Medicine™ clinic. You wind up getting connected, one way or another.” McNihil pulled himself up straight, maintaining his own balance for a moment. “That sneaky little Adder clome-he was in on it, along with everybody else on that side.”
“That side of what?”
“Never mind.” McNihil shook his head. “It’s a Wedge thing. You don’t need to understand.”
November figured she understood already. I was born knowing. If not the specific details, then the general picture.
“The anesthesia’s worn off,” said McNihil. With one hand, he poked himself in the side of his face, fingernail digging in to leave a little bloodless crescent-moon mark. He winced-unnecessarily-at the self-inflicted pain. “That I got shot up with at the clinic.”
“I don’t see any marks.” November still had his arm slung around her shoulders. “Except what you’re doing to yourself.”
“That’s the way it always is.” The eyes in McNihil’s face had cranked open another couple of increments, though the gaze inside them didn’t look much less muddled. “You remember stuff happening-they make you remember-and that’s supposed to be enough.” He looked over at November close to him, bringing her into focus. His expression turned puzzled, as though he were trying to remember who she was. “Why’d you come here?”
“I’m beginning to wonder,” said November sourly. The guy was getting on her nerves again, the way he had before, when she’d had any contact with him at all. Her skin might’ve been replaced at the hospital burn ward, but nothing had been done to her own memories, the ones that were coming back to her, like the furnishings of the ruined hotel. It didn’t make any difference that the skin she wore was McNihil’s money transubstantiated-it was still too thin to keep her from feeling annoyed. “Why I bothered. I was told there was some bad shit that was about to happen to you. That you didn’t even know what kind of trouble you were in-”
“Maybe.” McNihil rubbed his thumb across his bloodied fingertips. “But I found out soon enough.”
“I must’ve thought I owed you one.” She watched him smear the blood off onto the front of his shirt. “You bought this much help from me.”
“Who told you I was in trouble? Was it Harrisch?”
She nodded. “At the hospital-he came by to brag, among other things.”
“Yeah, well, he’d know, all right.” McNihil gave his head a shake, as though trying to dislodge the last remnants of sleep. “Since most of this particular bad shit comes from him.” He almost had to admire how thoroughly the DZ exec had made himself the latest incarnation of a long line of corporate evil-mongers. There’ll be others after him, thought McNihil. “Though this much bad shit-Harrisch must have problems keeping track of it sometimes.”
“Not when I talked to him.” November slid out from beneath McNihil’s arm. The guy still looked wobbly, but at least he didn’t appear to need help standing up anymore. “Harrisch seemed pretty on top of his affairs. At least to hear him tell it.”
“How long ago was that?”
November shrugged. “Maybe… about twelve hours or so ago.” She’d lost track; the only way she could calculate it was by figuring how long the journey up to this section of the Gloss might’ve taken. “Something like that.”
“Then he should be showing up pretty soon.” Using the sleeve of his jacket, McNihil wiped the rest of the blood from his chin and the side of his mouth. He turned away and spat a red wad out into the rubble on the floor. “Count on it.”
She believed it as well, but wanted to hear how McNihil could be so sure. “How do you know?”
“Because,” said McNihil simply, “the job’s done. That I came here to take care of for Harrisch. It’s all nailed down for him, but he’ll still want to hear all about it. That’s how his mind works. He wants to look straight into my eyes and have me tell him. That’s his kind of trophy. Bragging rights. He can’t just have what he wants; everybody’s gotta know about it, too.”
That was also true, November figured; it was probably part of the reason that Harrisch had come by the hospital and bent her ears about what he was planning on doing. Something wasn’t quite right about the explanation, though.
“Wait a minute.” November set her hands on her hips. “How would Harrisch know that you succeeded? The job he wanted you to do was to find out what happened to that Travelt person-the whole business with his prowler and where it disappeared to.” She studied the figure in front of her more closely. “Even if you did find Travelt’s prowler-how would Harrisch know that?” November’s gaze swept around the hotel room. “Is this place wired or something? Hidden watchcams?” She didn’t see any signs of it, any telltale lenses glinting among the cinders. “Or did Harrisch put some kind of tracking device on you, a bug so he’d know what you were doing?”
“No bug.” McNihil smiled and shook his head. “Harrisch would know better than to try and hook me up with something like that. Asp-heads don’t like being followed when they’re going about their work; cramps our style. We’ve got ways of finding those little devices and getting rid of them. All you gotta do is flush ’em down the toilet and then all the people on the other end are listening to is the gas bubbles popping down in the sewer.”
“Then what?”
“You’re underestimating our mutual friend Harrisch.” McNihil still looked weary and beat-up, but he managed to keep the smile from completely fading away, as though it were some ragged medal he’d won on the battlefield. “There’s things you don’t know about this little job of his. If you had known, you wouldn’t have wanted it so badly, no matter what it payed. If Harrisch had told you, he wouldn’t have had his backup system ready, in case he wasn’t able to push me into taking it on.”
“So?” November was unimpressed. “They never tell you everything about the job. Nobody does. They always want to connect more out of you than what they pay you for.”
“This one,” said McNihil, “would’ve connected you right into the ground.”
“Really?” That pissed her off. Even with this delicate new skin of hers-I could kick your ass, she thought. “And you pulled it off, I suppose, becau
se you’re so much connecting tougher than I am.”
“No…” The last of the smile faded as McNihil shook his head. “It nailed me into the ground, too. Even before I started the job.”
She wondered what the hell that was supposed to mean. But she didn’t get a chance to ask him. A shudder ran through the End Zone Hotel, as though the remnants of its structure were giving way at last. Ash and ancient dust sifted down from the ceiling; November could hear, out in the hallway beyond the room, a few of the beams pulling free and crashing in the darkness.
“What’s going on?” November pushed past the asp-head and looked out the single window. “Shit-” Past the jagged fragments of glass in the frame, she could see what was going on down below at street level. The gelatinous sea, which had appeared so relatively peaceful when she had traversed the catwalks over it, had changed since she had climbed up into the building’s ruins and found McNihil.
Now the slow ocean looked storm-tossed, with swells rising beneath the transparent surface membrane, high enough to rip the catwalk sections loose from each other; the sections of broken pathway tumbled down the gel’s nearly vertical flanks like the timbers of a capsized ship. Around the sea’s perimeter, just visible beyond the farthest buildings, the booms of the networks’ video equipment tilted upward, the cameramen on the platforms furiously working the position controls to stay out of the swells’ mounting reach. Scattered throughout the gel, the derricks between the buildings swayed with each ponderous roll of the surrounding element, the camera operators riding out the dizzying, nausea-producing motions at their perches; they desperately clutched their vid equipment, both for safety and to swing the lenses down toward the furious action below.