K Jeter - Noir

“You know something?” He turned toward McNihil standing beside him. “You’re a sick puppy. In your own unique way. You don’t even know this stupid broad-not really-and this is where you want to have a little meeting.” Harrisch shook his head. “Why? Is this the kind of thing you enjoy? Maybe you just like making people uncomfortable.”

“I know her well enough,” said McNihil, in a voice as emotionless as his in-progress face. “Or let’s say I know enough about her. She told me her name was November; I suppose she picked that out herself. Something she probably thought suited her image. That’s all I really needed to know. The rest I could figure out.”

“Like what?” From the corner of his eye, Harrisch could still see the breathing human form inside the machines. “What did you figure out?”

“That she was your backup system. In case I didn’t work out.” With his thumb, McNihil pointed to the unconscious figure. “She would’ve taken on your little job, the Travelt thing, if you hadn’t been able to push me into doing it.”

“But I did.” Harrisch didn’t feel like smiling, but dredged one up, regardless. “Or let’s say you did. You saw reason. An offer like the one I made to you isn’t anything to sneer at, these days.” The smile became genuine as he regarded the other man’s stiffened features. “Now you’re just about ready to go. So I don’t really need a backup anymore, do I?”

“Guess not.” McNihil glanced toward the narcotized woman. “So this one’s expendable.”

“Expendable enough. It’s not like there’s a shortage of fast-forwards. We keep a list over at DZ, of people like her on call, for various little jobs that come up. It’s a short list, with names falling off it all the time-let’s face it, hers is just about to be scratched.” Harrisch tilted his head toward the transparent barrier, still trying to avoid the sight beyond it. “Too bad, because she was right at the top. She’d worked her way up. First to be tapped. But we get new names. New volunteers. Wanna-be freelancers. It must be an attractive type of business. There’s the basic fast-forward rush that comes with drawing on your future-I’ve never tried it-plus you get to run around and do violent things.”

McNihil nodded. “That’s a kick right there.”

You’d know , thought Harrisch. “Plus,” he said, “there’s always the added bonus of engineering your own self-destruction.”

“Maybe.” McNihil glanced over at him. “But I don’t think she’s enjoying that part right now.”

“Nobody ever does. Suicide is one of the best drugs, from a mercantile standpoint. All the pleasure is in the anticipation, and none in the realization. Regret and payment are simultaneous, but by then it’s already too late.”

“You’ve put some thinking into this.” McNihil raised an eyebrow, slowly, as though mechanically cranking it into place. “Business philosophy, over there at DZ headquarters?” An equally stiff smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “The essence of TIAC-right?”

“Very good. You’ve been doing your research,” said Harrisch approvingly. “I was hoping you would. Maybe it’ll improve your chances.”

“I doubt it.”

“So who were you talking to about TIAC?”

“Come on,” said McNihil. “You sent me there to talk to the guy. Over at the Snake Medicine™ clinic. Your pet Adder clome. He’s kind of a chatty guy, when you get to know him.”

“Good.” Harrisch gave a single nod. “I figured the two of you would hit it off. You both… have some things in common.” He let his own smile widen. “Don’t you think?”

“Connect you.” McNihil’s voice grated deep in his throat. “Even if we did… I’d rather be twins with somebody like that, then have to admit being in the same species with you and the rest of your DZ exec crowd. He told me all about TIAC. More than you’d probably care for me to know.”

“Hey…” Wounded, Harrisch spread his open hands apart. “Did I hide anything from you? About TIAC or anything else? You could come down to my office and live in my file cabinet, root through my personal hard disk like a pig after truffles, for all I care. And you still wouldn’t find out anything more about TIAC than I’d already told you. So it stands for ‘turd in a can’; so it’s a formulation of the ultimate capitalist drive, to always deliver less than what the customer believes he’s paying for. So what?” Harrisch could hear his voice tensing with a righteous indignation. “That’s what people like me are supposed to do. In the marketplace, at least, rape is the natural order of things. And remarkably popular, too, on both sides of the exchange. People hand over their money, their lives, to DynaZauber or any other corporation, they know what they’re getting. They want to get connected; the customers are always bottoms looking to get topped, the harder and bloodier, the better. That’s the dirty little secret that corporations know. The successful ones, that is.”

“Whatever.” McNihil shook his head in disgust. “I’m not doubting it.”

“Fine. Because it’s true. You might as well get used to it.” A thrill of vindictive triumph flashed up from Harrisch’s knotted gut. One hand’s gesture took in both the burnt woman and the standing asp-head. “That’s what people like you work for, whether you like it or not. At least she didn’t walk around suffering from these boring guilt pangs-”

“Guilt’s hardly what I feel.”

“Good for you. So welcome back to the real world. The one in which you do what people like me tell you to do.”

McNihil gazed at him through slitted eyes, the lids puffy from the first injections. “I’ve never left,” he said in a low, taut voice. “Maybe I see a different world-I don’t make any secret about that-but the reason I like it is that over here, where I am, I see things the way they really are. I see you the way you really are.” He visibly swallowed the spit that had gathered under his tongue. “That’s the way it is with dreaming. It’s not dreaming at all. It’s the real world.”

“Then wake up.” Harrisch leaned his gaze close into the other man’s, almost touching the surgically hardened skin of McNihil’s face. He tilted his head toward the transparent barrier. “Like you’re always saying. And smell the burning corpses of your dreams. Like she has. Whatever dreams she’s having, they’re closer to the way things are in the real world than what’s inside your head.”

He watched as McNihil silently turned away and looked at the burnt woman. After a few moments, McNihil spoke. “How much longer does she have?”

“If your eyes hadn’t been so connected with,” said Harrisch contemptuously, “you could read the meters.” He pointed toward the red numbers counting down on the life-support machines, though he knew McNihil couldn’t see them. “This November person’s drawing down the last of her accounts. She was pretty close to tapped out when she came in here, when the ambulances zipped her in from that hotel-in-flames where you left her. That’s the way it is in her line of work: she was betting the farm on getting this job away from you, or on you blowing it so bad that we’d have to give it to her afterward. So she could clean up whatever mess you’d left and have herself a nice, fat payday. Which would’ve taken her out of the red, cleared off everything she’d tapped against her own future, and left her with numbers written in black. A lot of numbers.”

McNihil glanced over at him. “It’s worth that much to you? Even if she’d been the one taking care of the job, instead of me?”

“Sure.” Harrisch nodded. “What can I say? Maybe we’re just sentimental types over at DynaZauber. Corporations are heirs to that old military mind-set, now that there are no armies anymore: we take care of our dead, we don’t just leave their corpses out on the battlefield.” He knew he was talking bullshit-McNihil probably knew it as well-but it didn’t matter. The asp-head was already on track, wired into his fate, by this point; there were just a few details to be nailed down before McNihil would be on his way, diving pinkly down into the Wedge. “We would’ve been happy to pay good money-to anyone-for the results we want.”