K Jeter - Noir

Coming out of a banking turn, the jet avoided an ugly-faced contingent of the antiaircraft devices. Harrisch looked through the side of the cockpit at the tilting urban scene, this time spotting the two human figures on the hotel’s roof. They hung back in the small sloping structure with the sprung door, peering out at the bits of fiery metal coming from the sky, as though waiting for the storm to pass.

That’s a relief , thought Harrisch. He would’ve hated to have come all this way, and under such hazardous conditions, for nothing. To get here and find that McNihil hadn’t made it all the way through, finished his job and survived, would’ve been somewhat depressing. Not that it would’ve changed anything; McNihil had been connected as soon as he’d taken the job, and if he’d died in the performance of it, the results would have been the same for DynaZauber. Because that’s the way we like it -Harrisch didn’t have to remind himself of that. He’d constructed the operation, the whole TOAW project, that way. Other people had to deal with win-or-lose situations; he’d made sure that his own contained no possibilities other than winning.

“So you can put me down there?” Harrisch nodded to indicate the rooftop, now swung back toward the front of the jet. “There’s enough room?”

“Not a problem.” The pilot pushed the jet’s rudder forward. “I can do a vertical drop, and then hover long enough for you to get out. As long as I don’t actually touch down, it should be okay.” The ruins of the End Zone Hotel were fast approaching. “But I won’t be able to hang around. These little connectors-” He meant the Noh -flies swarming in the air around them. “They’ve already latched on to me. I’ll have to swing out and pick up another fleet of drones. Just hit my pager number when you’re ready, and I’ll be back for you.”

The wash from the jet’s flow-directed nozzles was enough to bend the roof of the hotel ruins; Harrisch felt the structure flexing upward again as the jet ascended from where it’d deposited him. Beneath his feet, the burnt-out building continued to shift even after the corporate jet moved off horizontally, dragging the remaining drones and the shrieking Noh -flies along with it. The hotel trembled as though from a giant hammer, the impact stretching through a few seconds. It’s the sea , realized Harrisch. For a disoriented moment, he’d thought he’d missed something when he’d been up in the jet, that the actual Pacific had somehow gone tsunami, a tidal wave thundering this far inland and inundating the streets. Then he’d remembered the poly-orgynism that had been established in the zone; he’d seen the network ratings on the DynaZauber morning balance sheet, the viewer figures and advertising revenues. That was as much of the creation as he was interested in.

Another wave hit, almost knocking Harrisch from his feet on the hotel roof, smelling of tar heated up by the bits of molten metal strewn around. If the mess of gel and interconnected human tissue down below was getting agitated-and the last wave had been bigger than the first one he’d felt-he supposed that would be good for the corporation’s numbers. Just what the Gloss-wide audience liked. Maybe not so good for me , thought Harrisch. Not at the moment . He was starting to entertain some misgivings about having gotten out of the jet.

“Come on-ride it out!” A voice called to him from across the rooftop. “Don’t be such a pussy.”

He looked over and saw McNihil. The asp-head had stepped out from the small stairwall enclosure; the former burn victim and fast-forward November stood behind him. She had to keep one hand on the open doorway to keep from being knocked over by the increasingly violent shock waves running through the structure. McNihil, on the other hand, stood with his arms folded across his chest, legs slightly spread as though bracing himself like a sailor on a storm-tossed ship.

“Well… good to see you.” Through sheer force of will, Harrisch swallowed down his own nausea and apprehension. “Glad you made it.”

“You didn’t have to worry about me.” The dark clouds overhead let through just enough light to reveal the angles of McNihil’s face. His real one-if there had been a mask at one time, it was gone now. “You should spend your time worrying about your own ass.”

The self-assured tone in McNihil’s voice had the opposite effect on Harrisch. Something’s up , he thought. What could’ve gone wrong? By now, the asp-head should’ve known just how badly he’d been connected over-in degree, if not in detail. But McNihil was acting like he was completely in charge of the situation; he even looked bigger, as though the skies’ dramatic backdrop were some special-effects number out of the movies, magnifying McNihil’s shadowed outline.

“Big talk.” Harrisch felt his own pulse revving up, pushed by fear and adrenaline. “You don’t-” A section of the rooftop, inches from his feet, split open, the ancient tar paper ripping apart to show the blackened planks and beams underneath. Harrisch managed to keep back from the gaping hole, holding his arms out for balance. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“The job,” said McNihil flatly. “The job’s done.” He didn’t even sway as another deep tremor ran across the rooftop. “Now it’s payday.”

Harrisch heard other voices, shouting in the distance. He realized that it was the cameramen and all the other network technicians, down on the equipment platforms at street level. They were shouting to each other over the basso groans of the gel and its thunderous impacts against the mired buildings. Harrisch couldn’t make out their words, but he knew what was happening: they were abandoning their posts, leaving the toppling camera derricks and booms, scrambling across the buckling catwalks to safety at the sea’s bounded perimeter.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a section of the roof’s raised edge crumble away, the bricks and mortar sliding guillotinelike down the hotel’s shattered front. He looked back toward McNihil, who’d taken a few steps away from the stairwell enclosure, out into the center of the rooftop.

“We pay off on performance,” said Harrisch, converting some of the adrenaline inside himself to courage. “Did you find Travelt?”

“Oh, I found him, all right.” McNihil’s voice turned harder. “Whether you wanted me to or not.”

“What… what’re you talking about?” Another wave hit the building, sending Harrisch sprawling onto his hands and knees. He looked up to see McNihil walking forward, stepping across the open patches of roof, until the asp-head loomed right in front of him.

“It didn’t matter,” said McNihil, voice grating like stone on stone. “Whether I found the prowler that still had Travelt inside it. Because either way… you got what you wanted.”

“You’re crazy.” But he knew the asp-head was fearsomely sane. Inside himself, Harrisch felt the molecules of adrenaline breaking into some other, frightened chemical, oozing out of his pores and draining into his bladder. Time to go , the still-thinking portion of his brain announced to the rest. “Maybe we should talk about this later.” Much later . “I’ll make an appointment for you.” Harrisch let his words go rattling on, unhooked from any thought processes, hoping that McNihil would be sufficiently distracted. He reached inside his coat and started punching a familiar number into his tight-cell phone. “You can tell me all about it-”

“Not a good idea.” McNihil leaned down, his hand striking and grabbing Harrisch’s wrist. “You’re pissing me off.” Without straining, McNihil pulled the captured hand toward himself, the phone loosening in Harrisch’s grasp. McNihil took the phone, letting Harrisch fall back onto the rooftop’s rolling surface. “Looks like something on the DZ switchboard.” McNihil looked at the digits on the device’s LCD readout, then back down at Harrisch. “Calling for a ride home?”