K Jeter - Noir

“As I said: Who cares?” The expression on Harrisch’s face was all politeness and charm. “It comes from somewhere. So do cockroaches. But it doesn’t ride these trains to get here.” He looked even more pleased with himself. “Kansas and Ulan Bator aren’t on the schedule.”

“Nobody is, if you keep taking out the tracks.”

“That’s how they learn to appreciate us.” The smile remained, but Harrisch’s gaze had hardened to simulated diamond. “The Rail Amalgam was too soft on them. We have to put the squeeze on every once in a while. Remind the paying public of all we do for them. How we make their world possible. If we don’t do that, they mistakenly assume that the railroad, the great circle of transport around the rim, is something fixed and eternal, that they can depend upon to be there always, like gravity keeping their feet glued to the earth.”

“Silly bastards,” said McNihil.

“Exactly.” The other man pretended not to notice the sarcasm. “There was a time when they thought that about air travel. Or, to be more precise, they didn’t think about it at all. But their unspoken assumption was wrong. As the world found out.” The glint in Harrisch’s eyes was one of scary earnestness. “How wrong they were-the Noh -flies showed them that. Which was, of course, a good thing. It’s always best to find out the truth, no matter how painful.”

“Or profitable.”

“Oh, admitted.” Harrisch smiled again. “DynaZauber gains thereby-and why shouldn’t we? The truth, the new world, brought us into existence. Therefore, we’re necessary. Therefore, the world should appreciate us, and all we do for it.”

Past the overturned engine and cars, past the crews bashing away beneath the banks of worklights, past the dunelike heaps of rubble mottled with the embers of the dead scavengers’ campfires, a thread of violet had seeped around the edges of the true hills to the east. McNihil was grateful for that vision, the little bit that his own night-filled eyes allowed him to see. It meant that eventually the night would be over in that other world and some form of day would roll across the earth. At least for everybody else , thought McNihil.

“So what do you want from everybody?” He glanced over at Harrisch hanging on the cross beside him. “A letter of thanks? A testimonial dinner?”

“Of course not.” The smile faded a little. “Those kinds of things are always lies. Because they’re made up of words, aren’t they? And thus they would have to be lies, wouldn’t they?”

“I don’t know.” McNihil shrugged. “You tell me.”

“More words. When all that really counts is money.” In the flares of light coming from the base of the rubbled hill, Harrisch’s eyes looked ancient and cold. “It takes a lot of money, both officially and under the table, to keep everything rolling along. It costs a great deal to put things where they need to be. Real things, that is; but that’s all that matters, finally.” White-and-blue marbles of ice filled Harrisch’s eye sockets. “All that cute blather people talked about a while back, about how the future would be nothing but little bits of information being zipped back and forth, the whole world on-line and freed of the constraints of gross materiality-that didn’t come to pass. Atoms endure, Mr. McNihil; they have a tendency to do that. Solid things are built out of them. Whereas information is mainly lies. Nacht und Nebel; night and fog. So in that sense, it’s not even information at all. Misinformation, disinformation; something like that. Therefore, it doesn’t exist at all, for the most part.”

What the hell . McNihil rubbed the dried blood on his forehead. He hadn’t followed that at all. Or even why Harrisch had bothered laying it on him. Maybe when the sun came up, when the shadows of the hills would gradually shrink like detumescing male genitalia, maybe Harrisch would disappear as well, as though his dark image were constructed of the Nacht he spoke of, encasing the pale Nebel of his flesh, which would burn off with the day’s first heat.

“You see,” continued Harrisch, “it’s important to concern ourselves with what’s real. What’s really real. Who was the wise man who said that reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it’s still there?”

“Beats the connect out of me.” McNihil brushed his own dried blood from his fingertips as he glanced over at the other man. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“That’s a shame. Because it really is important.” The mad spark at the dark centers of Harrisch’s eyes was as ice-cold as their surroundings. “I’m talking about how the world is constructed. Our world, Mr. McNihil, the one in which we exist, for good or ill.”

Mainly the latter , thought McNihil.

“You know,” continued Harrisch, “I share some sentiments with your little friend, back there on the ground. I know a lot about what she thinks and feels. She has the same coital phobia, the disgust and rage that come with all that sticky, messy wiring-up and networking. The erosion of one’s sharply defined outlines, the loss of one’s individuality, subsumed into the great puddinglike mass.” He shook his head. “After all, I didn’t become such as I am by having any great fondness for ego loss. But November-that’s her name, I believe-she thinks the ocean is just sex. Whereas I…” The narrow face’s expression darkened, generating its own shadows in its etched crevices. “I take a considerably wider view. A definition of greater compass. One that takes in all the world, and not just that smaller one bound by sweating skin and mucosal emissions.”

“I either don’t know what the connect you’re talking about,” said McNihil, “or else I just don’t care.” A glyph of ash had been smeared across the back of his hand, sometime during the extended, steel-crumpling crash; he rubbed it away with the ball of his other thumb. “Either way, it doesn’t matter.”

“Perhaps not, Mr. McNihil.” The sharp gaze regarded him, as though he were some small creature suspended on needles. “Why don’t you tell me what does matter to you, then.”

“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?”