K Jeter - Noir

She stood up on the catwalk and wiped her fingertip against her trousers, though nothing wet and sticky had gotten on it. Just the nearness of the thing in the thick liquid-she’d already dropped the plural in her own mind-the spark coming through the membrane, half warning (As we are, so could you be) and half invitation (So why not join us today?) , evoked an uneasy response in her gut and spine. The sun had lifted a little higher, pooling her shadow around her boots; now she saw thin black shapes, like clots of ashes, sliding between the top membrane and the poly-orgynism a few centimeters farther down. An arrow-pierced heart with a Mom banner beneath, a cartoon devil riding a pair of dice- The tattoos , realized November. The permanent ones and those that traveled from body to body; the skins might’ve dissolved, but not the images that had been inked upon them. A side effect of the poly-orgynism’s creation: the tattoos had been set free, achieving a new life in the habitat of the sterile nutrient medium. They swam about now like pilot fish, cutting knifelike through the gel, darting among the blind kidneys and lungs, past the loose ropes of nerve tissue. Another realization, a little glimpse of the future: Someday they’ll breed . She could see it now, the intermingling of design and motivating codes. Another generation, and the laughing devil with rolling-dice eyes would climb up on the Rock of Ages, the neoprimitivist tribal tiger stripes would tie themselves into Celtic knots, the banner toted by mourning doves would read out the name of a yet-unnamed god…

“Stick around,” said the cameraman. “If you can.” He’d gotten a cigarette going, dangling from the corner of his mouth, and was amusing himself by flicking lit matches onto the surface of the sex ocean. The little flames, before they died, left puckered scars on the barrier membrane; a visible shiver ran through the interlinked components of the poly-orgynism beneath. “Me and some of the other guys-” The cameraman gestured toward the other boom-platforms’ derricks, with their almost-identical network crew members watching from behind their dark lenses. “We’ve got a break coming up in a few hours; union regulations. We could skip the catering wagons and go straight to dessert, if you know what I mean.”

“I was born knowing,” said November. She couldn’t even be bothered to make a display of weariness, recognizing the variations on the same old lines. The stuff she’d gotten from the businessmen on the trains, back when she’d been into all that, back in her previous life. “Maybe you and your pals should go for seconds this time.” Sad to think that nothing ever really changed, for most people, anyway. These network guys were probably getting all sweaty from watching the poly-orgynism’s action for so long. “Because,” said November, “there isn’t going to be anything else happening. Not with me, at least.”

“Why not, sweetheart?” The cameraman leaned his elbow on the controls of his equipment. He knew he’d been blown off, but didn’t mind making light conversation to pass the time. “Could be fun.”

“Could be.” November copped a line from McNihil. “But I’ve got a job to do.” She started down the catwalk to the burnt-out shell of the End Zone Hotel. Harrisch and the exec crew at DynaZauber had some reason for ferrying her up here in a private car; she might as well find out what it was. “Catch you later.”

“If you’re lucky.”

She didn’t look back. As she walked, the surface of the gelatinous liquid rippled, as though the spread-out multi-creature below were scratching at the underside of the membrane, trying to tell her something.

Wake up and-”

McNihil opened his eyes and gazed up at the charred ceiling. “I don’t need to hear the rest of it.” He rolled onto one arm, then managed to sit up, pulling himself together piece by piece. He’d heard the woman’s voice, but couldn’t tell where she was just yet. “Besides… all my dreams were incinerated a long time ago.”

“That’s what you think,” said the ultimate barfly. “Seems like there was enough to get this place going again.”

He turned his head and found her sitting on the edge of a sagging mattress, blackened but no longer burning. She sat with her legs elegantly crossed, regarding him with cold and casual amusement. A thread of smoke drifted from the cigarette held aloft in one hand.

“I thought you didn’t smoke.” McNihil pulled his legs up and slapped dust and ashes from his trousers. “That’s what you told me in the bar.”

“That’s right, I don’t.” The barfly made no move to take a draw from the cigarette. “I’m just doing it for your sake. To set the scene. Complete the picture.”

“Don’t bother.” The floor was covered thick in ash, the hotel room’s walls broken open by the long-ago fire, shattered plaster revealing the burnt beams and studs of the framing inside. The door stood open, showing its brass number in the center and an expanse of similarly damaged hallway. “I’ve got these.” With a smudged fingertip, McNihil tapped the corner of his eye. “They already show me things pretty much the way I want them.”

“Thank God.” The barfly stubbed the cigarette out against the narrow bed-frame. “It’s a filthy habit.” She flicked the dead cigarette out into the rubble in the middle of the floor, then tossed her golden hair back behind her shoulder. “I wouldn’t have made it back then, in those old movies. All that smoking all the time-looks great, a real air of mystery, but I would’ve started coughing and wouldn’t have been able to stop.” The barfly smiled at him, eyes half-lidded. “Not very glamorous, huh?”

“Depends.” He wasn’t making much progress in cleaning himself up. His clothes looked as if he’d been rolling in the ashes and charred bits of wood for hours, like some rummy undergoing the DT’s in an abandoned building. “There might be a few lung specialists in the audience. They always get a thrill out of the death scene in La Traviata .”

“Yeah, I love that part where she says she feels so much better, and then she croaks.”

McNihil looked around the ruins of the End Zone Hotel. “This is stuff I’m remembering-right? From when I kissed you.” He figured this room must be on one of the upper floors; the brass number on the door started with a five. “I like it better this way. That fire shit was making me nervous.”

The barfly shook her head in mock exasperation. “We work so hard on your behalf, and what do we get? Complaints. You should hear yourself sometimes. Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

He ignored that comment. “What happened to the other one? The Adder clome?” McNihil stood up; he leaned over in a futile attempt to brush more gray ash from the knees of his trousers, then straightened. “He still around here?”

“That guy? The connector’s a stone nuisance.” On the barfly’s face, the exasperation was genuine this time. “Always hanging around here-”

“What? In my memories?”

“No, you idiot.” The barfly shook her head. “In the place where your memories came from-these memories, at least.”

“Where’s that?” McNihil tried to wipe the black traces of ash from his hands. “The Wedge?”

“Bigger than that,” replied the woman. “Bigger and older. Come on-you know all about it. You must, or you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have come around looking for me.” She smiled, as if enjoying her own reminiscence. “You wouldn’t have found me. And we wouldn’t have had that kiss.” A tilt of the head, the golden hair falling past one flirty eye. “ I enjoyed it.”