Noir

“Whatever.”

“Look at it this way.” The exec’s voice needled farther under McNihil’s skin. “Forced out of one job, forced into another one-it’s a wash. I’m giving you a golden opportunity.”

He turned a heavy-lidded glare toward Harrisch. “To do what?”

“To finish what you started.” The smile went lopsided as Harrisch tilted his head. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

McNihil went silent again. A few seconds ticked away before he spoke. Then, quietly: “How would you know what I want?”

“Come on,” said Harrisch. He spread his unstigmatic hands apart. “It’s human nature. You might not think I know anything about that, but I do.” One hand lifted, as though in preparation for laying a benediction on McNihil. “More than you might imagine, as a matter of fact; it’s kind of a speciality of mine. So when I say that you’re still pissed about what happened to you-what went down in the Wedge-I’m pretty sure I’m right.”

The man was right; that was the problem. McNihil coldly regarded the DZ exec. “Human nature,” said McNihil, “isn’t the problem with the Wedge. It’s the inhuman parts that screw people up. You think you’re clued in on that as well?”

“Enough. Enough to know what happened to you.” Harrisch’s voice went monotone and level, a deliberately flattened recitation of facts. “You were the head of the Collection Agency team that was going to sort out the Wedge. That’s how high up in the agency you were; you had total control over-and responsibility for-the operation.”

“That’s right.” McNihil nodded. “I reported straight to the agency director. No levels, no organizational hierarchy, between me and the top.”

“You even initiated the operation. It was your idea. So when things went wrong-and they did, badly-there was nobody to take the fall except you. Nobody to blame but yourself.”

Also true. The Wedge, that amorphous zone of sexual license, existing everywhere and nowhere simultaneously, in the human mind and in flesh and somewhere in between-it was only to be expected that a place and a concept like that would become the home for other excesses, other crimes. If not against nature, then at least against property. Specifically, the kind that the Collection Agency was supposed to protect. Copyright infringement as sexual stimulation; that was to be expected as well. One perversion always led to another. Where Eros linked up with Thanatos; the fact that in the daylight world, the social universe outside the Wedge, that kind of screwing around led inevitably to one’s death, or worse, only ratchetted the thrills up even further.

“All right,” said McNihil. “That’s all true. I took the fall… and I deserved to. If for no other reason than because I was the guy in charge. But I don’t have any regrets about it. I’m sorry about the way it turned out, but I still believe we had to do it. We had to give it a shot.”

“‘Sorry’?” That got a laugh from Harrisch. “You’re sorry? Hey, there were people who died in that little fiasco. I’ve seen the body count. Your fellow agents; some of them came back in bags, others didn’t come back at all. No wonder your reputation went to shit inside the Collection Agency.”

“They knew what they were getting into.”

“Did they?” Harrisch peered closer at him. “Did you?”

“There were some… surprises,” admitted McNihil. “Things we weren’t expecting.”

“I’ll say.” Nodding, Harrisch folded his arms across his chest. “There’s one thing in particular you didn’t expect. Or should I say ‘someone’?”

He knew what Harrisch was going to say next, the name that would be spoken.

“You weren’t expecting Verrity, were you?”

“No,” said McNihil. “We weren’t. We didn’t know. We’d heard of her-at least I had-but nobody thought she was real. I thought she was just… legendary. Just the kind of myth that grows in places like the Wedge.”

“So she took you by surprise.” Harrisch’s gaze was close to pitying. “When you found out she was real.”

“That was… the last thing I expected.”

“Not just real,” corrected Harrisch. “More to it than that, wasn’t there? More to her. Realer than real-at least inside the Wedge. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it? That’s enough of a world for Verrity to be queen of. Enough of a world to kick your ass in.”

“Not just mine.” McNihil’s turn for a grim smile. “You’re the one who’s complaining about someone having your valuable missing property.”

“True.” Harrisch nodded. “So you see-we do have something in common, you and I.A common enemy. Verrity has something of mine-something that belongs to DynaZauber-and she also has something of yours. Your past, a great big bloody piece of it. Which translates to your pride. Your self-respect.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” McNihil shook his head. “I don’t have any of those things. I never did. They’re not important.”

“So you say. But if that’s the case-” The needle of Harrisch’s gaze probed deeper. “Then why do you want revenge? Why do you want to get back at her so badly?”

For a few seconds, McNihil made no reply. Then: “Because. Like you said”-simply and quietly-“I just want to finish the job. The one that I started.”

“And that’s why you’ll take this one,” said Harrisch. “The one for us. Finding out what happened to Travelt. You could’ve gotten out of it; there are ways. A person like you would know how to just… disappear. Where you couldn’t be found, even by the regular police. But you didn’t.”

“I didn’t want to. I’m way too tired for that kind of shit.” Another shake of the head, more ruefully intended. “Like the old lines go: Better to die where you stand.”

“Dying would be one of your easier options.” Harrisch didn’t appear impressed. “Easier than going up against Verrity again.”

McNihil knew what the DZ exec was talking about. When the Collection Agency’s operation into the Wedge had gone down, the operation he’d planned and overseen, he hadn’t been there. In the Wedge-even the agents who’d died, the ones who’d taken the big hit, the one you didn’t stand up from afterward; they hadn’t gone into the Wedge, either. There was no need to… or at least that was how the reasoning had gone. Nothing made of human flesh went into that zone; that was what the prowlers were for. To go and fetch, like human-shaped dogs in artificial skins, the physical equivalent of the so-called intelligent agents that’d been created before the end of the century, those software entities programmed to scour the old on-line networks for desired info. Prowlers, on the other hand, were really real; they went out into the Wedge and brought back another kind of hot blue info, for the remote-and safe-consumption by their masters. The Collection Agency troops who ventured into the Wedge may have done so for reasons other than those of the zone’s habitues-to extinguish rather than experience-but they did so using the same means. Not their flesh at risk, but their surrogates’; the Collection Agency’s own little squad of purpose-built prowlers.

The agency’s prowlers went into the Wedge, and found the hot blue zone wherever it faded from mental concept into physical reality; only sometimes, they went in and didn’t come back out. A few did, and brought back death with them. The asp-heads who’d been working for the agency back then, the ones who’d volunteered for McNihil’s clean-up-the-Wedge squad, wound up sticking their tongues into those wet red sockets… and had received a fatal communion in their bloodied saliva.

“But you knew-you found out-who was responsible.” Harrisch’s voice crept through all those old memories, as though he had some direct line into the skull that held them. “Didn’t you?”

McNihil remained silent, knowing that there wasn’t any answer required. The other man was way ahead of him. He must’ve been rooting through the agency files, thought McNihil. Or else DynaZauber itself had a direct line; maybe DZ had bought out the Collection Agency somehow, and was operating it as a wholly owned subsidiary, just as they were apparently doing now with the rail network. It could happen; Dyna-Zauber was one of the big predators in the corporate world, and the Collection Agency was going through a headquarters shake-up, at least according to McNihil’s own longtime contacts inside.

There was another possibility. Maybe, thought McNihil, the information came from the other side. That was something to be considered: that DZ was forming its partnerships and strategic alliances from among the bad guys, the technically, legally bad guys. Wouldn’t be the first time-McNihil dredged up a reference from ancient history. It’d be like some sort of Hitler-Stalin pact of the intellectual-property sphere, the collusion of entities that were supposed to be at each other’s throats.

“Whatever.” He turned away and looked across the rubbish-strewn landscape. His distaste for the conversation