Noir (48 page)

November knew what the cameraman was talking about. She’d never watched any of these real-time pornumentaries, not because she found them boring—just like everything else on the tube—but because she’d been able to calculate the sickly fascination of them. The sheer commercial appeal of this kind of coverage irritated her. Easy to see why the networks—and at least a couple of them were in whole or part owned and operated by DynaZauber—invested the setup expenses and devoted the on-wire time to these things, when and if they occurred. For the DZ subsidiaries, they probably got their share of the materials—the sterile nutrient medium, the barrier membrane—at cost from the mother corporation. The only real outlay was for a stake in the scouting pool with the rest of the networks, the constant search for and immediate response to the sex-fueled events.

If she’d been able to hang around awhile longer at the End Zone Hotel fire, instead of falling through the roof and several stories of burning building, November would’ve been able to watch the setup taking place, the godlike genesis of the poly-orgynism. She’d seen the prebirth, the first coition, the massing and interconnecting of the bodies still with their skins on, the human figures filling the streets around the trashed buildings and the open center area’s downed airliner. The conflagration that the foam put out had started thousands of others,
metaphorically speaking; November had seen them from the burning hotel’s roof, looking over the edge while either waiting for McNihil or getting stiff-armed by him. All that straight-on physical connecting, sweating body on body, overlapping each other into all possible variations, daisy chains of filled, swollen and exuding orifices, semen and blood striping flesh like knotted barber poles, the massed radiation from the streets rising up into November’s face as hot as any flames coming up the End Zone Hotel’s stairwells. She remembered the building shivering before a section of its roof had collapsed beneath her, as though the thrashing limbs had triggered some deep seismic fracture. The extinguishing foam sprayed by the low-flying helicopters, nozzles stiff beneath the numbered fuselages, had been all the extra ingredient needed, the only substance not produced by human flesh or imagination, making the connection between connections complete, the many organisms into one compound animal, a colony of undifferentiated sensual function.
E pluribus unum
was the creature’s motto, translated as “Let’s connect ourselves to oblivion”; its flag was the shredding tatters of skin, blood-edged, that chafed and peeled away from the flesh of its once-separate components. That much heat was produced by friction as well as lust; more skin-on-skin scouring, teeth-bared biting, and engorged piercing than human tissue could endure.
Maybe they don’t need scouts
, thought November,
on the prowl looking for this kind of thing
. Maybe all that were needed were some upper-atmosphere satellites, way beyond the reach of the
Noh
-flies, with thermal-imaging receptors trained on the earth’s surface. Any eruption specifically in the Gloss—if it wasn’t a volcano, then it was worth sending a hit-crew with cameras and broadcast equipment.

Of course, there was more required than just the cameras and the transmission antennae. November saw more of them now, the strategic placement of their derricks and elevated stations becoming apparent as she glanced up from the gel’s surface. The corporate medical teams had been here at the start and were now long gone, maybe coming back every couple of weeks to peel back a section of the barrier membrane and top up the sterile nutrient medium. Plus fish out whatever parts of the poly-orgynism that had finally dissolved their personal gestalt to the point of no longer being capable of maintaining even externally supported life functions.

“Hey, it’s not like I’m not
ready
to leave.” The network cameraman’s voice broke into November’s thoughts. “I’ve been out here on this particular tour of duty long enough to develop calluses on my ass; I’d love to
rotate
home for a little R and R. A decent meal and a hot shower would be heaven right about now.”

“A cold shower,” said November, “would probably be more like it.” She could feel the frequency coming off the slow ocean. The Sea of Sex; standing on the catwalk was like being on the shore of some desolate terra incognita, gazing out past where the continental shelf fell off into sunless depths. The Pacific, wherever it was out to the west of this Gloss section, was nothing by comparison. The wind sliding over the gel’s surface membrane cut past the nausea in her gut, softly fingering hormone outlets lower in her groin. This ocean had its trenches in the back reaches of the human mind, which meant infinite. The poor bastards who had dived into this harbor may or may not have known that, but they likely wouldn’t have cared, anyway. “That’s what you get,” murmured November, “when you finally get what you want.”

“What’d you say?”

She ignored the cameraman. The sonuvabitch was just passing the time, she knew, idling like the rest of the crews here until the poly-orgynism worked itself up into another thrash of broadcastable action. Just like the earth’s oceans, ones like this alternated between storm and doldrums; the DynaZauber limo, the transport arranged by Harrisch, had let her off here at a relatively quiet moment. The skinless, partially dissolved once-were-humans under the membrane drifted on slow currents through the gel, mingling their soft bones and loose organs with each other in lazy pre- and postcoital suspension. What in other waters might have been tangles of seaweed, November discerned as the branching nets of nerve endings, hooked up and knitted together from one dike wall to the farthest. Some of the neural systems still retained a rough human outline, like a scrawled ink sketch surrounding the appropriate bones and organs; others, propelled by an innate longing, had disengaged from their origins and entangled themselves with others, threading throughout in an endless chain. That was what made the streets’ contents a single entity: the boundaries between one body and the next had been erased, with no ability to tell where one left off and another began in the resulting soup.

They must put something in there
, figured November.
The corporations’
so-called medical teams
. Something to speed up the dissolution process, to hasten the shedding of the pink and yellow and brown rags, no longer necessary and impediments to requited desire. Or perhaps they didn’t have to add anything at all; that was a scary thought. That given half a chance, people would slough off the soft, thin barriers between themselves and achieve a nakedness of the exposed flesh, perfect for nonstop connecting. What was that old song? ’
Tain’t no sin/To take off your skin/And dance around in your bones, your bones/And dance around in your bones
… Might as well forget the bones, too; they weren’t needed for this horizontal tango.

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.

W
ake 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.”