K Jeter - Noir

Whereas the thin-film insertion surgery that he’d paid for-and gotten; McNihil still didn’t regret it-was basically a businessman’s product. He supposed that some of the execs that had been standing around the corpse probably had accessible over-layers inside their own eyes. Controlled by the muscles of the eye socket, the interplay of the rectus lateralis and the superior and inferior oblique muscles, pulling and distorting the spheres of aqueous humor-not to focusing on nearer or farther objects, but activating one inserted layer or another, switching the perceived world into translucent spreadsheets or databases floating above the hard objects of people and other real things.

“That’s how it works for them,” said McNihil. He’d told the cube bunny all about it, as he’d gotten up and poured himself the remainder of the coffee in the pot. He stood leaning against the side of the kitchen doorway, sipping the lukewarm, kerosenelike fluid. “Strictly business.” It was a big reason why he had such an aversion to executive types, like that DZ bunch with Harrisch at their head. “You can be talking to them,” he mused aloud, “and you’ll be looking at them, right in the face, and they’re looking back at you. And then you see the eyes shifting, like they’re looking past you into the distance, or at some place just past their noses. And you know they’re not really looking at you, they’re reading some market-update numbers that’d just crawled in over the wire.” McNihil shrugged. “I’ve always just found that kind of offensive.”

“But that’s not what you see.” The cube bunny held her own empty cup enfolded in her hands. “I mean… it’s not some kind of business thing with you.”

“Well… maybe.” McNihil shook his head. “I don’t really know, anymore. I’ve been seeing things this way for a long time now. I don’t make any distinctions between what it was I wanted to see and…” It was hard to say. “And what it’s useful for me to see. I don’t know if those are two different things.”

The cube bunny had another question, very serious and important, the way children’s questions are. “Am I… pretty? The way you see me?”

The way he saw her… the way he saw everything. He supposed there was no way of really telling her. Just what it was that he saw. There wouldn’t be any shared points of reference between himself and a creature of survival-oriented sexuality such as the one sitting in front of him, like some kind of grayed-out butterfly caught in a dingy cardboard box with his name on it. The whole perceptual system of hard and firm and soft reality-he might’ve been able to explain that, with some effort on both their parts. It was really just the difference between the hard components of the world, the things that really existed, that didn’t go away even if you’d wanted them to; and the firm overlay that was programmed in over the hard stuff, that transformed the other world into the one he felt and saw and smelled and tasted; and the soft, which was all that he could pick up and move around, change and destroy. Just as in that world, the unaltered one, on the other side of the reality line: there were some things you could do something about, and other things you couldn’t.

“You look fine,” said McNihil truthfully. “You’re absolutely lovely.”

“Really?”

“Why should I lie to you?” She did look lovely to him; better than in the smeared, wavering reflection on the side of the coffeepot. He’d paid to see a world that was to his liking. Not beautiful-it was based, after all, on cultural artifacts of more than a century ago, the bleak and brooding crime and thriller movies of the 1930s and forties-but with beautiful things in it. More beautiful, actually, for being surrounded by constant threat and darkness. So that if he could sit in a shabby, too-small room that smelled like dust settling on bare, flickering lightbulbs, if he could sit across from a girl who looked-at least to him-like an actress from those ancient films that nobody watched anymore, a woman with heartbreaking eyes… that was all right by him. And if she looked both sad and desperate, fragile and eternal, a mouth that was softly red even when seen in black and white…

Then the money he’d paid to the surgeons had been well spent.

The cube bunny hadn’t said anything, but had smiled at him. McNihil supposed he’d said the right thing. Even if it was the truth. Sometimes it worked out that way.

He supposed her smile meant something else as well. You shouldn’t think so much , McNihil told himself. About the things you see. The way you see them .

“But… you don’t really know.” The cube bunny’s smile faded. “If I’m pretty or not. ’Cause you don’t really see me.” A tear trembled against her lashes. “You just see that stuff that’s in there, inside your eyes.”

“That’s not how it works.” McNihil set his empty cup down on the counter and walked back out of the kitchen. “It’s a little more subtle than that. It has to be.” He didn’t imagine he had any way of explaining these things to someone like her. The world she’d come out of was too far different from any he lived in, on either side of the firm line. “Only idiots want to inhabit a world separate from anyone else. I mean literally idiots, would-be idiots; you know, from that idios kosmos notion of a private universe.” He could see that he’d lost her on that one. “There’s just no point in thinking that you’re picking up things that don’t exist, or talking to people that are just part of some dummied-up sensory load. That kind of stuff died out back in the mini-theme-park days. Kids standing around with big ugly goggles on, swatting away at nothing. That kind of stuff’s crap. But seeing the same things that everybody else does, but just seeing them differently… hey, that’s the way it is for everyone .”

“It is?”

“Sure,” said McNihil. He was on a roll now. He’d walked over behind the couch, standing just in back of where the cube bunny sat. “There might even be some people who’re so connected up… that they wouldn’t even be able to see how beautiful you are.” Like that other poor bastard , thought McNihil. The dead one . What’d the late Travelt’s problem been, that he’d gotten into that prowler shit? When he had someone like this available and willing. Just went to prove something that McNihil had believed for a long time. That people engineered, with all the craft and will they could summon, their own annihilations.

The cube bunny said nothing. McNihil wondered if she had a name. He supposed he could give her one, something cute and temporary; it only had to last as long as whatever connection existed between them. Which was probably measurable in hours. If that , he thought glumly. She was the loveliest thing that had ever been inside the dark, cramped space of his working and living accommodation. Like some self-destructive flower that had bloomed here, begging to be crushed inside anyone’s fist.

He wondered how much the late Travelt had ever given in to those provoked desires. A little bruise, partly healed and fading, could be seen at the hinge of her jaw, just below her delicate ear. Given the stupid shit that the dead man had gotten into, it was entirely possible that the mark came from him, that the corpse’s thumb and fingers would match up, like an ID handprint to buzz him through the door and into that private space where desires were satisfied.

“Why did you come here?”

She twisted about on the couch and looked back up at him. She shook her head. “I don’t have a reason.”

“People always have a reason,” said McNihil. “At least in the world I live in. The one I see.”