Noir (38 page)

And what did he see on the other side of the transparent infection barrier? Some old-fashioned hospital bed, probably, with a crank at the footboard and a paper chart with a hand-drawn red line, a jagged little mountain range, hanging from a hook. And in the bed, something else from those crappy old movies that nobody watched anymore, a human form wrapped up head-to-toe in white bandages like a mummy, de-sexed, depersonalized, even somewhat funny-looking, a joke thing …

“This her?” McNihil nodded toward whatever it was he did see.

Involuntarily, as though his own head were fastened to a gently tugged wire, Harrisch looked at the living and mechanical aggregate on the other side of the barrier. Just enough of the human part’s charred flesh showed, glistening with an antiseptic nurturant gel, to start Harrisch’s stomach climbing into his throat.

“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.”

“You’ve got a corpse already,” said McNihil. “If that was all that was on your mind, you could’ve buried Travelt and gone on with your business. Your TIAC business. Except it’s not just TIAC anymore, is it?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Come on.” McNihil’s shoulder brushed against the contamination barrier, sending ripples through the transparent membrane. “Like I said before. That little Adder clome at the Snake Medicine™ clinic that you sent me over to see—he’s a real talkative sort. More than you might even have expected. He told me all sorts of interesting things.”

A new sense of unease percolated through Harrisch’s remaining nausea. “Like what?”

“It’s not TIAC now. Your canned turd is ancient history.” Something less than a smile turned the corner of McNihil’s mouth. “A whole other acronym. A little more exotic-sounding. Almost oriental … but not quite the same. TOAW—with a
W
on the end. Right?”

The unease flashed to anger, like a match on spilled gasoline. “You’re not supposed to know about that.”

“You wanted me to find out stuff.” McNihil glared straight back at him. “You can’t complain now, just because I’m doing the job you wanted me to do. If you want the lid taken off the box, you’d better be happy with what somebody else finds in there.”

“TOAW,” said Harrisch with teeth-gritted fury, “is not any of your business.”

“It wasn’t any of your little Adder clome’s business, either. But he knew about it.”

“I’ll take care of him later.”
Connecting sonuvabitch
—Harrisch didn’t know exactly to whom he was referring, inside his head. The clench in his gut tightened, a response to the specter of losing control over the situation. “He’s my problem, not yours. Plus …” His brain finally dropped into gear, producing the right line to take. “Let’s face it. The guy was lying to you. He’s deranged; it’s probably one of the inevitable hazards of the business he’s in. Somebody like that, with the kind of work he does—there’s no way he wouldn’t wind up nuts. Inventing stuff to tell people like you. It’s all crap. TOAW—there’s no such thing. Not really.”

“Sure. That’s why that blue vein on your forehead is about to break open.” McNihil emitted a quick, harsh laugh. “Then again, if you’re going to work yourself into a stroke, you’re in the right place for it. Want me to call a nurse in here?”

Harrisch ignored the other man. For the time being; his thoughts had sped up, sorting themselves out, in regard to what McNihil had just told him. If some sort of leak had sprung open, in the form of that nonstop blabber over at the Snake Medicine™ clinic, then that would have to be shut down, and soon. When he got back to the DZ offices, he’d have to arrange for a damage-control team, a crew of silent heavies, to make their way to the clinic; whatever was left after their operation, including the Adder clome, would be in pieces small enough to be swept up with a dustpan and broom. No big loss, especially to the DynaZauber bottom line; the division would have another SM clinic—with an Adder who could keep his lips zipped—up and running in a matter of days. The customers would hardly be inconvenienced.
Connect ’em anyway
, thought Harrisch. The lag time between a bunch of perverts’ desires and fulfillment of the same was not a big issue for him.

Though what would also have to be determined—Harrisch saw it now—would be where the Adder clome had gotten his information. The TOAW operation files were locked down tight inside DynaZauber, with only a few of Harrisch’s most-trusted subordinates having even the most rudimentary access.
If one of them has been talking
, vowed Harrisch,
his ass is mine
. Or the researchers down at the DZ neurology labs—it could’ve been a white-coat directly on the payroll, even though they were all supposedly laced up with various secrecy and nondivulgence agreements. Some of the top researchers, the ones with the most TOAW pieces inside their heads, had death-pact employment contracts—the DZ human-resources department had paid plenty for the constitutional-rights waivers on those—or somewhat grislier surgical-extraction modules already wired into their skulls. Unauthorized talk would bring about tissue-loss results ranging from idiocy to corpse-hood. For somebody in the labs to have spilled, the person would have to be either suicidal—not impossible; long-term TOAW work tended to corrode morale among even the most blithely scientific—or high-pressured by outside forces.
One of our competitors? Inside or out?
—Harrisch kept a short list inside his head of enemies belonging to other corporations, rivals in the various DZ branches, and divisions not
directly under his control or adequately in liege to him. Any one of those names could be seducing or leaning on the TOAW technicians; if somebody inside DZ, they could’ve learned the techniques from watching Harrisch himself, the way he’d cracked McNihil. Harrisch supposed that was something of a personal tribute, but it still meant ferreting out the parties responsible and eliminating them, one way or another, either shipping them off to the Kamchatka regional office or laying them in the ground with bloodied lilies clenched in their teeth.

Anyway
, decided Harrisch,
it doesn’t matter right now
. That was all housekeeping stuff, things that would have to be cleaned up later. The nausea ebbed lower in his gut, like a brown sea’s low tide, when he considered just how well things were going. If a hospital’s human charcoal ward wasn’t his favorite place for a conference, so what? McNihil wouldn’t even have wanted to come here to talk if he weren’t caught on this particular hook, too tight to wriggle free.