Noir

“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.”

“I bet you did. Leaving men on the floor must be a kick.”

Her smile broadened. “Maybe you should try it sometime.”

“Yeah, in my next life.” McNihil straightened out his jacket. He could feel the weight of the coiled cable dragging it to one side; he rummaged with one hand in the pocket, to check if everything he’d been carrying with him was still there. With all the banging around and getting decked senseless he’d gone through recently, there was a chance it might have fallen out along the way. “If I get one.”

“Shouldn’t be that hard.” The barfly shrugged. “All you gotta do is finish up the job you came here for… and then you can go wherever you want. And do whatever you want to do.”

“Where’s ‘here’? The Wedge? The ur-Wedge? Wedge Beyond Wedge?” He couldn’t think of anything else to call it. “Or just the End Zone Hotel?”

“Like I’ve been trying to tell you.” She leaned back, balancing herself against the charred mattress with one hand; her gaze radiated sultry languor. “We’re very accommodating here. You can have it however you want.”

“That sounds like the pitch the Adder clome was making to me.”

The barfly’s gaze hardened. “I told you: that guy’s a nuisance. At least he is around here. We only tolerate him because we have to.”

“Why’s that?”

“He’s got the right.” The barfly gave a shrug. “Somebody like that… he stands outside the gates of the palace. Typical male mentality; half worshiper, half guardian. So he serves a function, in his own way. Both here and on the outside, out in that other world. He’s the first circle you have to pass through to get to where you want to go. If you can’t get past him-if you find the things you see at a Snake Medicine™ clinic too scary or too disgusting to deal with, or maybe you find them too fascinating to get past-then you’re not ready for the real thing. It takes a little courage. Even a little wisdom.” Her free hand gestured lazily toward McNihil. “That’s why you’re here. You must have what it takes. Even if you don’t know it.”

“I’ll take it on faith,” said McNihil.

“You pretty much have to. There aren’t any other options. Not around here.” The barfly pointed to the room’s single window. “Take a look outside. Tell me what you see.”

McNihil picked his way across the rubble-strewn floor, over water-soaked scraps of wall plaster, timbers that had fallen from the ceiling, carpeting that had once been industrial gray and threadbare and was now crisped black, an empty bureau that had toppled over in the fire, spilling its drawers like a stack of lidless boxes lined with yellowing newspaper. The glass had shattered out of the window frame, leaving jagged splinters that crunched beneath McNihil’s steps. He brushed any sharp bits from the blackened sill and leaned his hands on it.

Outside was the urban zone, a slice of remote-north Gloss, that he remembered from before-from the world outside, his real memories-when he’d come up here to take care of another job, icing the would-be pirate kid. Like coming home: the remains of the kid, a living length of neural and cortical tissue, were now the fat coiled loop in McNihil’s jacket pocket. The buildings looked the same, at least; McNihil could see the one a couple of blocks down that had the shabby movie theater on the ground floor, where he’d done the hit on the kid, and from where he’d dragged the face-muffled and squirming body back here to the End Zone Hotel. And farther away, past the corner of the tallest building McNihil could see, was the open space where he’d gotten panhandled via remote control from the burnt-out ’net-twit headcases in the downed jetliner…

“Pretty good view from up here, huh?” The barfly’s voice was soft and patient. “You can see all sorts of things… if you try.”

The woman was right about that. McNihil’s eyes felt tense in their sockets, as though the pupils were somehow being overwhelmed with the rush of optical information from outside. A fierce clarity seemed to fill the air, as though the smoke from the hotel fire had managed to scrub the constant, obscuring impurities that had hung between each atom of oxygen and the next. I can see for miles and miles, thought McNihil. It had been a long time since that had been the case. If the End Zone Hotel had been tall enough, or if the Noh-flies would’ve let him ascend into the sky, he could have seen all the way across the Pacific, to the far shores of the Gloss, Kamchatka and Xinjiang. The godlike headiness of the sensation rushed through McNihil’s body like pharmaceutical-grade amphetamine, sparking every cell and setting his heart stumbling until it hit the right up-tempo beat. This is what Harrisch wanted, he realized. When he climbed up on that cross. To see everything at once, all the universal data flowing into the receptors in your palms, like reverse stigmata. Jesus bled for the world; Harrisch and the rest of the execs at DynaZauber would improve on that, and let the world bleed for them.

“Yes…” McNihil’s voice was a murmur, words tinged with awe. “I can see… everything…”

“Except for what’s different. About how you see.” From behind him, the barfly pushed another hint in McNihil’s direction. “It’s not just what you see. Come on. You gotta think about it, pal.”

Then he did see it. McNihil looked up to the sky, just as the heavy, dark-gray-bellied clouds parted, as if on cue to help him along, a hand parting the curtain. His gaze dropped back to the zone’s surrounding buildings; their shadows etched sharp and knifelike across the streets and against each other in a way that he hadn’t seen for a long time. Long enough to have forgotten.

“It’s daylight,” said McNihil. The realization struck him with wonder. Ash slid under his palms as he gripped the windowsill tighter, as though the view beyond it might slip away if not held to him. “That’s what it is. The sun’s out.” He turned his head, glancing back over his shoulder toward the woman sitting on the bed. “I haven’t seen that… in years.” How long had it been? That was lost as well, along with so many other things. “Because of…”

“I know, sweetheart.” The barfly regarded him with outright sympathy. “Because of the eye thing. What you had them do to you. And the way you see. All that eternal-night business. But that was what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

“Back then.” McNihil slowly nodded, looking out at the bright window’s view again. The direction of the building’s shadows indicated early morning. That makes sense, he thought. Just as if a real night had ended. Hours or centuries could’ve passed while he’d been wandering around in this version of the End Zone Hotel; millennia-or seconds-since he’d met up with the barfly in that dive at the Wedge’s neon-lit perimeter. For all he knew, he was still lying on the floor of the bar, hammered beneath the memory load her scarred tongue had given him. His lips could be just parting from hers, the blue spark of contact fading into the taste of battery metal in his own mouth. He didn’t know. Just like a lot of things, he mused. “You think you know,” he said aloud. “What you want. And then you change your mind.” He turned back toward the woman behind him. “Or you have it changed for you.”

“You should be grateful.” She gave a small shrug. “Most people aren’t so lucky. They don’t get the opportunity. They have to live with what they decide on. Usually, there’s no going back.”

The hotel room’s window faced east; McNihil could see his own shadow now, black cast across the ashes and rubble. The top of his shadow, his head, just barely reached the tip of one of the barfly’s spike-heeled shoes, as though genuflecting there. Not in worship of her, the vessel, the instrument of transmission. But what was behind her. The other one, that he’d had that momentary glimpse of, back in the bar. Verrity-he’d never thought he’d actually see her. And for good reason.

“There shouldn’t have been for me, either.” The implications of what had happened, what he was able to see now, had started to work themselves out inside McNihil’s head. With one fingertip, he touched the corner of his eye. “There’s no way you should’ve been able to get inside here. It’s private. It’s locked in. What’s in here-” He tapped the curve of bone at the side of his face. “It’s not in this world… or the other. It’s all my own, the way I see things.”

“You should’ve known better than that.” The barfly looked unimpressed. “You underestimate what-and who- you’re dealing with. At least the other guy, the Adder clome, is up to speed on the situation.”

“Really? So who am I dealing with?” McNihil knew he’d have to ask just this question, eventually. “If it’s Verrity,