K Jeter - Noir

The foam had been sluiced away, down the street’s gutters and out to this world’s hidden sea, by endless centuries of storms. Leaving behind the remains, in this world, of what had been alive in that other one. Whitening bones were knitted together, a stiff tapestry of static coitus. The human skeletons reached as far as McNihil could see, as though a tide had receded from among the buildings, revealing coral reefs at their base. Empty eye sockets gazed back at him, darkness and silence inside the bone, hollow grins fixed in transports of idiot delight. We came here , said the skeletons to McNihil, in more ways than one . He could hear them inside his head. And it was worth it .

“Sometimes she dances,” the barfly said softly, “arrayed in skulls. Those ornaments have to come from somewhere, don’t they?”

“I suppose so.” This was part of the memory, he knew. That they had given him in the barfly’s kiss- This is what they want me to see , thought McNihil. “I guess it’s all part of the gig.”

“She has one name when she’s like that. And one dreadful visage. Probably better-for you, that is-if you don’t see her in that form.”

McNihil glanced back over his shoulder. “Do I have a choice?”

“No…” The barfly shook her head. “Not really. Not here. But you have luck; at least for a little while. You’re lucky you’re from the Gloss, the real one outside. That’s where her worshipers know her as Tlazoltéotl. Also Ixcuina, or Tlaelquani, depending upon whether you want the Nahuatl, the pure Aztec, or the original Huaxtec.”

He’d seen that name, the first one, before. On the sandwich-board advertisements of the homeless marching single-file in nocturnal alleys, on a bishop’s monitor and a dead man’s stomach, revealed and hidden. McNihil supposed it’d been inevitable that he’d meet up with her someday. But not just yet.

“It doesn’t feel like luck,” said McNihil.

“You don’t even know.” The ultimate barfly slowly shook her head. “To have any encounter with Tlazoltéotl at all, to have seen her in my face the way you did, and still be walking… you’re a totally lucky bastard.”

“Why? Who is she?”

“Like I said.” The barfly gave a shrug. “Different names, different forms. But always the Filth Deity-that’s what the name means-the goddess of sexual impurity and deep, bad, annihilating sin. First a seductress, with no thought in her immaculate head other than connecting. Then comes her first destructive form, the one dedicated to gambling, risking and daring everything, including your own life. Then the redemptress, the form that can absorb and absolve human sin. That form can forgive sinners and remove all the world’s corruption. But it’s not her last form. The last form is the hag with teeth of iron, the destroyer of pretty youths and all innocence. Like I said-everybody meets up with her eventually. But not many walk away.”

“She’s the one with the wild black hair? The crazy eyes?”

“Very good,” said the barfly. “You’ll know her when you see her again. The wild hair, the crazy eyes-and wearing the flayed skin of one of her victims.” The barfly smiled. “Rather appropriate for around here, I think you’d have to say.”

“And this is her world,” said McNihil. “Isn’t it?”

“Of course it is.” The barfly regarded him with amusement. “What else could it be? This business with the prowlers, people trying to protect themselves from the dark and scary stuff… what good does it do? Nothing at all. The prowlers can’t help you. Nothing can. Just because you created a world without Tlazoltéotl in it doesn’t mean it was ever going to remain that way. The doors will be broken down and the dark, scary stuff will come flooding in.” One of her hands flicked a tiny gesture toward him. “Same way with your own little world. Yeah, you made up Verrity… but it didn’t end there. You made her up- and then you made her real . You made the place for her, out of your own lusts and fears. And Verrity came to fill it. You should’ve known that was going to happen.”

He knew she was right. But he still had a job to do.

“What about Travelt?” McNihil turned away from the window. “That’s who I came here to find. That’s my job. You said she did something nice for him. So I take it he’s still alive?”

“Sure,” said the barfly. “But that’s not going to help you.”

“You mean because of him being inside his prowler? I can deal with that.”

The barfly shook her head and laughed. “He’s gone way beyond that. He was looking for a place to hide. From everything. Just walking around inside a prowler wasn’t going to do it for him. He knew they could still find him. Somebody like you could find him.” She leaned back, smiling. “So he’s gone where you won’t be able to reach him. He had a Full Prince Charles done on himself. That’s what she did for Travelt: he got it for free. On the house, as it were.”

That was just what McNihil had expected. If somebody was going to run, they might as well run all the way.

“All right,” said McNihil. He’d come prepared; that was what the stuff in his jacket pocket was for. “Take me to him. To where he is.”

The barfly stopped smiling, and regarded him for a few moments in silence. “You’re the boss,” she said with a shrug, and stood up from the bed.

Nothing going on in there.”

November turned and looked behind her. “What did you say?”

“You heard me.” Another cameraman, different from the one she’d talked to at this slow ocean’s perimeter, but with the same lazy-and-hip attitude-he watched her from behind an identical pair of dark-lensed glasses. November wondered if they were part of some network-issued uniform. “That wreck’s all burnt out.” He was perched in the molded plastic seat of a camera boom, extending across the expanse of gelatinous liquid and the catwalks below like the neck of some mechanical brachiosaur; the visual echo of a small microphone arced from his headphones. The cameraman pointed to the End Zone Hotel, or what had been the hotel before the fire. “Nothing’s going on, because there’s nobody inside. Gone, gone, gone-a long time ago.”

“Yeah, I know.” November had walked all the way across this contained sea, like Christ keeping his feet dry at Galilee. Around the catwalks’ and derricks’ pilings, little ripples and gurgles sounded, the sighs of bubbles that flowered, broke open, and disappeared with the heavy glacial quality of magma as she’d made her progress along the planks. “I was here when it happened.”

“So was I.” The cameraman tilted his head to listen to something in his ’phones, made a sotto voce reply into the mike, then redirected his attention to the woman standing in front of him. He’d angled the camera boom to impede, if not totally block, her way. “I was one of the first on the scene when the word went out. The combine had me up here so fast, I still had my toothbrush in my mouth and I was rolling tape. Been a while since the last big poly-org outbreak-that was the Goose-Pimpler up by the Bering Strait. I was on that one, too. We had to wire the whole place up with space heaters to keep the thing from freezing over and turning any exposed flesh blue. Got so hot up above that me and the rest of the crew were riding our gear in shorts and T-shirts. Like a summer day with melting glaciers all around.”

“How nice for you.” She hadn’t come all this way-not just across the catwalks, but the hitch up from the hospital down south-to wind up listening to this idiot brag. At the same time, she didn’t want to blow him off too fast, maybe arouse his suspicions about what she was doing here. There was probably some kind of security detail around here, sleeping on the job at the moment, but capable of being roused. “You don’t seem to have that kind of a problem.”