K Jeter - Noir

• The principle being that if the valuable property was widely dispersed-as with cattle across grazing land, or intellectual property digitized on the wire-and therefore easier to steal, the antitheft forces had to amp up the consequences for theft: death to rustlers and horse thieves, trophy-ization for copyright infringers.

• Draconian measures have something of a life of their own. Plus, the Collection Agency had its own public-relations wing, to make sure that the fate of trophies was broadcast as widely as possible, to make sure that anyone contemplating a little info-larceny would know what would happen to them if they got caught. If you wanted to spend the rest of your life-a long life-as a toaster, it could be arranged.

• A certain immortality could be achieved, though nothing that anyone would want. Self-destruction has its seductive elements, but this was something else again. Purged of the grosser elements of the human body, the essential brain tissue, and the consciousness and personality locked inside the soft wiring, could last decades, perhaps centuries-only a few of the earliest trophies had crapped out in the field. The agency’s packaging, the cellular life-support technology contained in the cable sheathing and the little sealed boxes inside the toasters, was designed for low maintenance and an indefinite run.

• Thus, into the economy inside people’s heads, that private assessment of potential risks and benefits, the element of catastrophic price was introduced. Price beyond death, beyond the notions of desirability for even the terminally self-destructive.

• Nobel prizes in economics had been handed out in the twentieth century for deep thinkers who’d figured out with charts and graphs what cops had known for millennia: people, weighing a course of action, factor in the consequences of success or failure as well as the chances. Amp-up the negative consequences high enough, and you can scare a lot of little bastards from connecting around.

• In that sense, the Collection Agency dealt in sanctioned terrorism. The agency didn’t have a problem with that.

I don’t have a problem with that , McNihil told himself. He pulled the probe tips loose from the cable’s readout sockets, wrapped the wires around the meter, and dropped it back into his pocket. Glancing over his shoulder at Turbiner, he saw the old man still absorbed by the music, the third movement dancing ominously to its close. Turbiner looked drowned, as though the audible tide had taken him down to its depths, the strands of his silver hair drifting like seaweed. Those are pearls that were his eyes -McNihil stood up but didn’t move away from the equipment rack and its glowing power tubes, as though cautious of breaking the spell.

All through the Gloss, in their scrappy or plush flats or other living-spaces, old writers like Alex Turbiner, and composers and musicians, artists and programmers, symbolic manipulators all-they were listening to their bloodily enhanced stereos or dropping slices of bread into their silently screaming toasters, maybe not even thinking about the little thieves canned inside. It didn’t matter. It also didn’t matter whether the writers and others, including Turbiner sitting here, knew as well what a shuck the trophies were. If they knew that the cerebral material, the boiled-down residue of pirates, really didn’t improve the sound any, really didn’t make the toast come out any closer to a perfect golden brown… so what? In an imperfect world, it was not just the thought that counted, but the consequences as well.

Turbiner raised his eyelids a bare fraction of an inch and glanced over as McNihil sat back down on the couch. “You enjoying this?” One eyebrow lifted slightly higher. “You must be.” Turbiner held his glass up in a toast. “My thanks are hereby extended to you. And my congratulations.”

“You’re welcome. My pleasure.” McNihil had drained his glass; he let it dangle at the tips of his fingers. The alcohol had slowed his thought processes; it took a moment for the puzzled frown to draw across his face. “Congratulations for what? Just doing my job…”

“I thought you weren’t working anymore. That you were on the outs with the agency.”

“Somewhat.” McNihil shrugged. “But I can still do a favor for my friends.”

Turbiner picked up the remote control from the arm of the chair and thumbed the mute button. The music vanished between one chord and the next, all harmonic progression left unresolved. “Doing favors for people… that’s a nice thing.” Silence had filled the flat again, the contrast making Turbiner’s voice seem louder than before. “You know, in my world… that one I used to write about… there are no favors. Nobody does favors for other people.”

“I guess we’re lucky,” said McNihil. “That we don’t live there.” He rubbed his thumb across the rim of the empty glass. “We live in this one. Or at least some of the time we do.”

“Maybe that’s the way it is.” Turbiner gave a judicious nod. He looked like a shabby owl dressed in thrift-store feathers. “Some of the time.”

The silence thickened, more oppressive than the music could ever have been. Time, stabbed by alcohol, had congealed in the spaces of the flat.

“Well.” McNihil tried to shake himself free, by leaning forward and setting the glass down on the low table. “I’m glad you like the… present.” It had taken him a few seconds to think of the right word. “Maybe I should be taking off.”

“Not just yet. Stick around for a moment or two.” Turbiner’s words were clipped and precise, as businesslike as the sharp gaze studying his guest. “I wanted to ask you a couple questions. About the… present.”

“Like what?”

Turbiner shifted in the chair, redirecting himself in McNihil’s direction rather than to the point between the main loudspeakers. “The fellow you got this from. The donor, as it might be put.” Turbiner’s voice sounded unusually loud and distinct, as though he were setting each word down in a row of numbered stones. “He was ripping me off, wasn’t he? My copyrights, my old thriller titles, that is. He had some kind of scam going.”

“What’re you talking about? You know that.” McNihil’s puzzlement deepened. “You were the one who told me about it.” That was true: he remembered getting the call from Turbiner a couple of weeks ago. He tried smiling. “Are you starting to forget things?”

“Maybe I am.” The voice held no hesitancy, but was still loud and forceful. “Because I don’t remember telling you anything about some guy like this.”

A few seconds slid by, the flat’s silence weighing upon McNihil’s shoulders. “You know… perhaps I really should leave now.” He felt uncomfortably sober, the scotch doing nothing more than souring the contents of his gut. “I’m not sure where this is headed.”

“Sit down. It’ll all be over soon.”

Something’s going on -he felt stupid, even reaching a conclusion that obvious. At the same time, a degree of tension ebbed out of his muscles, a fatalistic relaxation taking over. So many times, he’d been the agent of enclosure, his own voice the click of the lock snapping shut, the last thing somebody heard with any degree of freedom at all. Autonomy fled, control begun; now he was going to find out what that felt like.

“What’s the deal?” A last measure of resistance was summoned up. “What’s with the weird questions?”

“I just want to make sure.” Turbiner’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “About the details.”

“Like what?”

“Like your claim that this person-the one you rolled over, the one whose head is inside this cable you just brought me-that this guy was ripping me off. Violating my copyrights.”