Noir

around in on a regular basis. The images and other sensory data were just beginning to decompress and sort themselves out along his scalded neurons:

• A black-ink tattoo, a two-dimensional face whose carbon pixels pulled the mouth open into a silent howl of fury, as it crept across a woman’s naked back (Whose? wondered McNihil);

• On the woman’s flesh, between the small bumps of her spine and the angle of her right shoulder blade, a bubble of skin rose, as though blistered by some laser-tight application of heat; the bubble grew wide as a man’s hand, a perfect glossy hemisphere tinged with pinkish blood; the thin membrane shimmered like a frog’s pale throat, an artificial tympanum driven by a faint sound growing louder;

• Loud enough that McNihil could decipher the words it spoke, synch’d to the flat motions of the tattooed face’s open mouth; the bubble sang, in a woman’s crooning alto voice; the song was a down-tempo bluesy rendition of the old standard Taking a Chance on Love, the pitch-bending rubato husky as though the nonexistent vocal cords were writhed in blue cigarette smoke;

• That song the echo-warped, trance-mix soundtrack to the next vision and the ones after that; the lyrics devolved into melismatic Latin, then Sanskrit, then the nonverbal cries of human-faced animals in love with the moon and the slow shiver of their self-lubricating convulsions;

• The voice went on singing even after the bubble of skin snapped into pink-edged rags, burst by the woman turning over on an antique divan of acidic green, the watered silk darkening as the blood seeped from the now- hidden tattoo; the song was inside McNihil’s head, his own palate trembling in sympathetic vibration as the woman smiled with drowsy lust and reached up for him;

• You see? said the ultimate barfly, wrapping her naked arms around him, her blond hair tangling across his sweat-bright face; I knew you’d like it here…

“I’d really… rather not…” McNihil pressed his hands flat against the floor of the bar. His singed tongue scraped painfully against his teeth as he spoke. “I’ve got… work to do…”

“Oh, I know you do, sweetheart.” Outside of the kiss-induced visions, the barfly was untinged by any reddening wounds. “I’m just trying to help you along.”

“You should let him go…” Another voice spoke, male and flattened monotonic. “Verrity’s waiting for him…”

McNihil shifted the wobbly focus of his gaze, and made out one of the other prowlers standing next to the barfly. The face could’ve been his own, or nothing at all; the same thing, he supposed.

“That’s right,” said McNihil. The paralysis had started to ebb, leaving his large muscles jittering as though in electroshock aftermath. All that shivering made him feel cold, as though drained of his own blood. “Listen to that guy…”

The male prowler spoke again. “You’re just connecting around with him.”

“Shut up,” said the barfly, more amused than angry. “I know what I’m doing.” She nudged McNihil with her shoe. The pointed toe of the vampy five-inch-heeled number was almost sharp enough to penetrate his ribs. “You don’t have any complaints, do you, pal?”

“The hell I don’t.” McNihil had managed to roll over onto his side; he felt his own weight pressing against the tannhauser inside his jacket. He gathered and spat an evil-tasting substance out of his mouth, the residue of the kiss’s transmission of gathered memory. “This… this is just uncalled for.” Lying on one shoulder, McNihil fumbled his hand across the buttons of his shirt, trying to get his stiffened fingers onto the weapon, not caring whether they were watching him. “Not… friendly at all…”

He was starting to wonder if he’d misjudged the situation into which he’d wandered. Maybe they don’t want me to find out, thought McNihil. Prowlers obviously had more secrets than he’d known of… and maybe the prowlers wanted them to stay secrets. If there’d been time, and some way of clearing his head of the stuff the barfly’s kiss had put in there-the memory download went on unfolding like a toxic flower, each petal made of human skin-he might have tried figuring out what it meant. Something was going on, that was way outside the original prowler design parameters. Even the barfly-She shouldn’t have been able to pass for human, he decided. At least not so easily. The transference effect that Harrisch had told him about-maybe that hadn’t been just an isolated occurrence between the late Travelt and his prowler. Maybe it had been going on all along, with all the prowlers and their users. And maybe, the thought struck him, maybe Harrisch knew about it. Perhaps from the beginning; and not because something was going wrong, at least from the viewpoint of that DZ executive bunch.

Another flower threaded its black stem through McNihil’s skull. One that he was going to let remain unopened, rather than forcing the hothouse blossom of revealed conspiracies. That was a particular garden path he didn’t want to go down, at least not at the moment: the possibility that whatever was going on with the prowlers wasn’t something outside the original design parameters… but inside. If they were becoming human, in whole or part, soaking up their owners’ thoughts, minds, maybe even souls-maybe that was just what they were designed to do.

Those considerations tumbled through the murk inside McNihil’s head, as though his fingertips were reading tactile Morse code on the tannhauser’s checked grip. I’ll think about ’em later-he seized the weapon and dragged it out of his jacket.

“Oh, great,” said the male prowler standing nearby. “Now look-he’s packing.” An anxious hubbub rose from the others at the little tables scattered through the bar. “Somebody should’ve taken that thing away from him.”

“But you didn’t,” said McNihil. His legs still didn’t seem to be functioning, as though some link down his spine had been snapped by the barfly’s kiss. He managed to push himself up on one elbow, raising the tannhauser in the other hand. “Lucky for me.” The gun wobbled as he swung its pendulumlike weight toward each of the hovering onlookers in turn. “Sorry… it’s not in your plans…”

“It’s your own that you’re connecting up.” The barfly looked down at him with mingled contempt and pity. “You came here to do a job-to get that job done and over with-and we’re just trying to help you out, pal.” The tough-girl persona from the old movies firmed up around her like a suit of armor, one made of cheap silky stuff molded to her ribs and hinged down the seams of her smoky-dark stockings. “Come on-that’s why you came here in the first place. Because you knew that we could do that for you.” Her smile held legions of superior wisdom. “Because you know that this is the door in.”

“I changed my mind.” McNihil flopped back against the bar’s padded flank. He held the tannhauser in both hands, trying to steady it. The implications about the prowlers-what they were, what they’d become-had gone spiraling out, despite his intent not to think about that. “I gotta fall back… and punt. I thought… I knew what was going on. Or at least part of it.” The weapon had started sweating in his tight grip. “Plus what… I was going to do about it.” The conceptual territory had shifted beneath his feet, as though the edges of one of the tectonic plates underlying the Gloss had broken through the asphalt and concrete, totally rearranging the map he’d stood on. “So it’s been nice, but…” A little tingling sensation had returned to McNihil’s legs; he made a tentative effort at getting them beneath himself. “I think I better be running along…”

“I don’t think so,” announced the barfly. Contempt outweighed pity in her gaze. “You shouldn’t make appointments you don’t plan on keeping. There’s somebody waiting for you.”

“Somebody important.” The male prowler loomed ominously above McNihil. Behind the prowler, the others had left their places at the bar’s small tables and had assembled in rough, anonymous formation; the crowd of extras had morphed into an ugly mob scene, their muttering anger directed at the figure sprawled between the stools. “Somebody…”-the prowler’s flat voice ratchetted down into a growl-“somebody you’ve needed to meet for a long time.”

The words inside McNihil’s head, the few that had been left after the power surge of the barfly’s kiss, were replaced by quick, overriding panic. In instinctive self-defense, he raised his clasped hands up in front of his chest, the tannhauser cranking into position as though on an invisible hoist line.

“Don’t be stupid.” The barfly shook her head in disgust. “That’s not going to help.”

McNihil let the tannhauser take the initiative, whatever small mind it had inside its works substituting for his own exhausted one. The weapon spoke in true operatic fashion, a Wagnerian basso roar hitting the bar’s walls as an orange gout of flame spat out of the muzzle.

“You dumb shit.” In the fuzzy mists beyond him, the voice that spoke sounded like the male prowler who’d been getting so ugly with him. He’s still standing? wondered McNihil. “There’s a time,” said the voice, “and a place for everything. This ain’t it.”

With the back of his head against the padding, McNihil opened his eyes as wide as possible, the furrows of his