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  “If DynaZauber hadn’t put the screws on,” the Adder clome said sullenly, “I wouldn’t have had to go with her. But DZ’s cut the margins so tight-”

  “You don’t have to explain it to me.” McNihil shrugged. “Either I understand already, or I don’t care. All the same to me. Besides… I don’t really think it’s a money issue. People get involved with Verrity for other reasons besides profit. That’d be too rational. Verrity deals with the irrational side of things.”

  “True enough,” said the Adder clome. “I wish… I’d known that sooner.”

  McNihil could hear the bitterness of regret in the other man’s voice; it touched a string tuned to the same pitch inside himself. “I know how you feel. I found out too late, myself. That’s the problem with self-destructive behavior. All the benefits are front-loaded; the bad shit comes after.” He brushed a dark speck of dirt from the shoulder of the Adder clome’s white coat. “But getting back to specifics,” he said. “This is why you were connecting around with me, isn’t it? All that talk of figuring out why Harrisch sent me here in the first place, and then your little list of services and products-that was all just stalling for time. Right? You were hoping maybe I’d get so tired and disgusted that I’d just go away. Without getting what Harrisch had already ordered up.”

  “You’re so sure about that.” The Adder clome had regained some of his composure. After dabbing away a trace of blood below his mouth, he smoothed his jacket’s lapels. “If that’s the case, why don’t you tell me what Harrisch wanted you to get from me. Or maybe you don’t really know.”

  “Oh, I know well enough. I know what Harrisch is pushing for. What he’s been pushing for all along.” McNihil felt a cold rock form and harden in his chest. “That’s what the real job is. Harrisch knows that the only way to find out what happened to Travelt-what happened to Travelt’s prowler-is for somebody to go where the prowler went. Down in the Wedge.”

  The Adder clome’s gaze shifted away nervously, then inched back toward McNihil. “That’s right,” he said. “Harrisch wants you to do the pink dive. He wants you to go down there, in your own body. Your own flesh. Not by way of some proxy; not with a prowler bringing back the information to you.” The Adder clome’s voice went low and intense, as he laid a hand on McNihil’s arm. “This is what you’d use.” The hand squeezed tight through the sleeve. “Nothing between you and the Wedge.”

  McNihil didn’t push away the other man’s grip. “That’s not a very inviting prospect.”

  “Some people-some of my customers-would love to do it. If they weren’t afraid.”

  “They’ve got good reason to be.”

  Inside the office of the Snake Medicine™ clinic, the air temperature seemed to drop a few degrees, as though from a night breeze too soft to be felt. McNihil’s skin prickled at the sound of his own words, the skin of his arm contracting tighter beneath the Adder clome’s hand. Good reason… He and the Adder clome knew what that was. Death, mainly, and not in a particularly pleasant way. McNihil’s colleagues at the Collection Agency, the ones who’d been part of the operation years back against Verrity, weren’t the only ones who’d gotten chewed up by the Wedge’s seductive teeth. There were still bloodied bits and pieces washing up on the shore of McNihil’s memory, if not his conscience.

  The Adder clome dropped his hand. “You’re right, though.” He nodded slowly. “That’s what Harrisch has wanted all along. Or at least since Travelt was found dead. How else is he going to find out what happened? Or get back his… property.”

  “More that than the other,” said McNihil wryly. “Harrisch couldn’t give a rat’s ass about what happened to Travelt. Something of his got lost, and he wants it back. That’s all. And he thinks I can go get it for him.”

  “But not without my help. Not without what he paid me to do for you.”

  One more thing I know. McNihil regarded the Adder clome for a moment longer. “There was something else… about Travelt’s tattoo. It wasn’t just a letter V. There was a banner with a word, some kind of a name in it.” McNihil tilted his head to one side, watching the other man. “Tlazoltéotl. You know what that means?”

  The Adder clome returned a gaze somewhere between suspicion and offense. “Maybe… there are some things you shouldn’t try to investigate.”

  The clome’s response brought back a memory. Of a room even darker than this one, with himself and one other in it. McNihil had gone to the Bishop of North America and Central America by Proxy, asking questions and getting not much in the way of answers. The word Tlazoltéotl had turned up there as well, on the screen of the bishop’s monitor. With the same attitude on the part of the bishop as McNihil had caught just now from the Adder clome. Like some religion, it seemed to him, with observances both shame-filled and fiercely devout.

  “I don’t have a choice,” said McNihil. “About whether I investigate or not. I have a call.”

  That hit the mark. He saw the resentment behind the Adder clome’s eyes shift to grudging acceptance. “Maybe you do. I’m not the one who’d decide about that.”

  “And who would be? Tlazoltéotl?”

  The Adder clome was silent for a few seconds. Then his words were soft, almost a whisper. “You’re a lucky man, McNihil. More than you know. You’ll come out on the other side of your questions… or you won’t. Either way, things will be different for you.”

  “I already knew that,” said McNihil. “But you still haven’t told me what the word means.”

  “Don’t worry.” The Adder clome smiled. “Where you’re going, you’re likely to find out.”

  “All right.” McNihil knew there weren’t any more answers here. “Get out your knives.”

  FIFTEEN

  COLD-EYED FINANCIAL TRIAGE NURSES

  The burn ward at the hospital smelled of disinfectant and the pumping cylinders of sterile machines. I wonder what it smells like to him, thought Harrisch, watching the asp-head walk down the white corridor toward him. In that world that McNihil walked around in, saw all around himself, the deep monochromatics of old and forgotten movies layered over the bright, shiny, and uninteresting real world… Harrisch supposed the hospital odors might be translated to simple carbolic acid and iodine and hot, soapy water. The new stuff, most of which was manufactured in some DZ subsidiary factory, worked almost as well.

  “You tracked me down,” said Harrisch, smiling as the other man approached. “See? I knew you still had it.”

  “I’m not in the habit of losing things.” McNihil looked tired, his face stiff and puffy, as though from bad sleep and an alcohol-toxic liver. “Unlike some people.”

  Harrisch felt his own brain stall, unable to produce even a minimal retort. The hospital’s whispering silence and industrial atmosphere oppressed him; he would rather have met up with McNihil anywhere but a place like this. McNihil’s suggestion; it struck Harrisch as being typical of the gloomy bastard. Corporations like DynaZauber, and the execs in the boardrooms, couldn’t afford to be as dark and antilife as some twisted little independent operator with a history and agenda of self-defeat. It’s a Darwinian thing, Harrisch figured. Only the corporations and the execs who embraced life, swallowing it whole in their sharklike, all-devouring mouths, survived in this world. Any other one, he wasn’t interested in.

  “You look like hell,” said Harrisch.

  “That’s how I feel, pretty much.” McNihil prodded the side of his face with one fingertip, like a sculptor testing the consistency of wet clay. “I thought maybe around here, I could bribe a nurse and score a little relief. Maybe a little morphine or fentanyl. Even paraldehyde would take the edge off.”

  “You gotta be kidding.” With a quick laugh, Harrisch shook his head. “You’re talking ancient history. Nobody makes that stuff anymore. There’s no money in it.” The DZ pharmaceutical division worked full shifts every quarter, tagging different atoms on their old formulas, generating new patentables one step ahead of the knockoff communes down in Belize. “And morphine,” he
mused aloud. “Jeez…” Years ago, routine shots from the commercial rent-a-spy satellites had passed across Harrisch’s desk. Sand and airborne rust drifted through the withered Afghani and Southeast Asian opium fields, the dry poppy stalks victims of Sahara-like desertification and market-demand shifts profounder than any changes in global weather patterns. “You’ll have to update your habits, if that’s what you’re into.”

  “I’ve found a new kick.” Rainwater dripped from the bottom of McNihil’s coat; a few clear drops clung to his waxy face. “Over at that little establishment you sent me to.”

  “Ah.” Harrisch nodded, a degree of satisfaction cutting the unease the hospital evoked in him. “You’ve been talking to the good doctor. You must have found him to be… helpful.”

  “Very.”

  Harrisch leaned forward, examining the other man’s face more closely. “You know,” he said after a moment, “I was hoping for rather better results than this. I can still see you. I mean… if I look away from you…” He shifted his gaze to the corridor wall as if to demonstrate, then looked back toward McNihil. “Then I’ve still got a clear picture of you in my mind. That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

  “We’re not done yet.” McNihil rubbed the side of his face; he looked like somebody just risen from the dentist’s chair, flesh numbed by Novocain. Harrisch wondered if the guy was feeling any pain at all, or whether that had been all talk for sympathy. “Your doctor just got started,” said McNihil. “There’s a time gap between the first setup and the final stages. Just enough time, actually, for me to take care of a little business. Like coming over here to talk to you.”

  “What’s there to talk about? You know what your job is.”

  “True enough.” McNihil gave a slight nod. “But maybe we need to talk about payment.”

  You poor stupid bastard-Harrisch tried to keep pity out of his own gaze. For people to get paid, they had to be alive after the job was done. He hadn’t even bothered filling out a petty-cash voucher on McNihil’s account.

  “No need to worry,” said Harrisch. “You’ll be taken care of.”

  He didn’t expect a smile from McNihil, and he didn’t get one. “Let’s go in here and talk.” McNihil pushed open the door to one of the burn ward’s intensive-care chambers.

  “You know… I don’t find this a good working atmosphere.” Harrisch had let himself be shepherded into the cramped space, as though the other man’s suggestion had held some inarguable force. As the door sealed shut behind them, he’d started to find it hard to breathe the filtered air, his lungs binding from some deep atavistic dread. “Maybe we could find someplace else… like down in the cafeteria or something…”

  “Don’t let it get to you.” In the room’s semidarkness, McNihil stood right behind him, voice whispering almost directly into his ear. “Somebody getting traumatically connected-up is just a natural part of life. It’s no big deal.”

  “Easy for you to say.” Harrisch felt nausea moving around in his guts like a wet rat. The sonuvabitch probably wasn’t even aware of the burn-ward chamber, experiencing it, in anything close to its dismal reality. In that other world inside McNihil’s eyes, the whole hospital probably looked like some benign and comforting environment, with white-suited doctors with stethoscopes dangling around their necks, nurses with air-pillow shoes and wing-starched hats, all trotting around dispensing their healing mercies. He doesn’t see, thought Harrisch with a sudden rush of envy. The medical technicians in their full moon-suit antibiocontamination gear, square faceplates tinted dark and unidentifiable, moving around a factory with anesthetized bodies for workstations, shadowed by the similarly masked insurance agents and HMO accountants with their key-membrane clipboards and expenditure-review videocams, whispering on tight-link headsets with the cold-eyed financial triage nurses monitoring the taxi-meter gauges on the respirators and other clicking, sighing pieces of life-support equipment-the corridors were so thick with the cash-cure-or-kill types that it was amazing that the reality-blind McNihil could even make his way past them.

  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-”