Noir

agitated-and the last wave had been bigger than the first one he’d felt-he supposed that would be good for the corporation’s numbers. Just what the Gloss-wide audience liked. Maybe not so good for me, thought Harrisch. Not at the moment. He was starting to entertain some misgivings about having gotten out of the jet.

“Come on-ride it out!” A voice called to him from across the rooftop. “Don’t be such a pussy.”

He looked over and saw McNihil. The asp-head had stepped out from the small stairwall enclosure; the former burn victim and fast-forward November stood behind him. She had to keep one hand on the open doorway to keep from being knocked over by the increasingly violent shock waves running through the structure. McNihil, on the other hand, stood with his arms folded across his chest, legs slightly spread as though bracing himself like a sailor on a storm-tossed ship.

“Well… good to see you.” Through sheer force of will, Harrisch swallowed down his own nausea and apprehension. “Glad you made it.”

“You didn’t have to worry about me.” The dark clouds overhead let through just enough light to reveal the angles of McNihil’s face. His real one-if there had been a mask at one time, it was gone now. “You should spend your time worrying about your own ass.”

The self-assured tone in McNihil’s voice had the opposite effect on Harrisch. Something’s up, he thought. What could’ve gone wrong? By now, the asp-head should’ve known just how badly he’d been connected over-in degree, if not in detail. But McNihil was acting like he was completely in charge of the situation; he even looked bigger, as though the skies’ dramatic backdrop were some special-effects number out of the movies, magnifying McNihil’s shadowed outline.

“Big talk.” Harrisch felt his own pulse revving up, pushed by fear and adrenaline. “You don’t-” A section of the rooftop, inches from his feet, split open, the ancient tar paper ripping apart to show the blackened planks and beams underneath. Harrisch managed to keep back from the gaping hole, holding his arms out for balance. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“The job,” said McNihil flatly. “The job’s done.” He didn’t even sway as another deep tremor ran across the rooftop. “Now it’s payday.”

Harrisch heard other voices, shouting in the distance. He realized that it was the cameramen and all the other network technicians, down on the equipment platforms at street level. They were shouting to each other over the basso groans of the gel and its thunderous impacts against the mired buildings. Harrisch couldn’t make out their words, but he knew what was happening: they were abandoning their posts, leaving the toppling camera derricks and booms, scrambling across the buckling catwalks to safety at the sea’s bounded perimeter.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a section of the roof’s raised edge crumble away, the bricks and mortar sliding guillotinelike down the hotel’s shattered front. He looked back toward McNihil, who’d taken a few steps away from the stairwell enclosure, out into the center of the rooftop.

“We pay off on performance,” said Harrisch, converting some of the adrenaline inside himself to courage. “Did you find Travelt?”

“Oh, I found him, all right.” McNihil’s voice turned harder. “Whether you wanted me to or not.”

“What… what’re you talking about?” Another wave hit the building, sending Harrisch sprawling onto his hands and knees. He looked up to see McNihil walking forward, stepping across the open patches of roof, until the asp- head loomed right in front of him.

“It didn’t matter,” said McNihil, voice grating like stone on stone. “Whether I found the prowler that still had Travelt inside it. Because either way… you got what you wanted.”

“You’re crazy.” But he knew the asp-head was fearsomely sane. Inside himself, Harrisch felt the molecules of adrenaline breaking into some other, frightened chemical, oozing out of his pores and draining into his bladder. Time to go, the still-thinking portion of his brain announced to the rest. “Maybe we should talk about this later.” Much later. “I’ll make an appointment for you.” Harrisch let his words go rattling on, unhooked from any thought processes, hoping that McNihil would be sufficiently distracted. He reached inside his coat and started punching a familiar number into his tight-cell phone. “You can tell me all about it-”

“Not a good idea.” McNihil leaned down, his hand striking and grabbing Harrisch’s wrist. “You’re pissing me off.” Without straining, McNihil pulled the captured hand toward himself, the phone loosening in Harrisch’s grasp. McNihil took the phone, letting Harrisch fall back onto the rooftop’s rolling surface. “Looks like something on the DZ switchboard.” McNihil looked at the digits on the device’s LCD readout, then back down at Harrisch. “Calling for a ride home?”

Something in the look in the other’s eyes terrified Harrisch; his spinal column contracted like a spring-driven mechanical device. It was only a momentary relief when McNihil turned and slung the phone in an underhand pitch, back to November. She caught it in both hands.

“Hang on to that,” instructed McNihil. “Don’t hit the connect button just yet.”

November had followed McNihil’s example, managing to let go of the stairwell enclosure’s support. Standing near the center of the rooftop, surrounded by the gaping holes that had already been torn in the structure, she rode out the building’s shuddering motions, knees slightly bent for shock absorbers. “All right-” She’d glanced at the phone before tucking it inside her jacket. “You need help with him?”

This has all gone wrong, thought Harrisch, somewhat dazed. Control of the situation had slipped out of his grasp, or had been snatched away as easily as the tight-cell phone. I wasn’t expecting this. The notion of having a final confrontation, all by himself here with McNihil, was seeming less of a good idea by the second. Obvious now, but he still wasn’t sure how it’d come apart like this. There had only been, at best, a fifty-fifty chance that McNihil would still be alive now, let alone in any kind of functioning condition; Harrisch had actually entertained the notion that he might have to bring along some kind of medical crew, a first-aid team to scrape up whatever might’ve been left of the asp-head, inject him with whatever cardiac and cerebral stimulators were necessary to bring him to even partial consciousness. But that would’ve brought on the scene more potential witnesses than Harrisch would’ve been prepared to deal with; he’d been glad that it’d worked out that the DZ corporate pilot had had to split for the time being, leaving him here on his own. It was one thing to have somebody like that November person around as a witness; she could be eliminated if she somehow became trouble afterward. But if he’d had to take out people on the DynaZauber payroll, like pilots and med techs, the corporation’s human-resources department would’ve given him more grief than it would’ve been worth.

“Naw-” McNihil shook his head as he called over his shoulder to November. “But thanks for asking.” He turned back to Harrisch at his feet, reached down, and pulled the DZ exec upright. “Me and this guy go back a ways. We know how much-how far-we can trust each other.”

“You’re not scaring me-”

November watched as Harrisch snarled at the asp-head. McNihil’s fist at his collar choked some fragment of determination through the exec’s throat. She didn’t figure that what he’d said was true, but it looked as if Harrisch was at least determined not to let McNihil walk over him without a show of struggle.

“You don’t-” Harrisch gasped for breath. “You don’t even know-”

“Know what?” McNihil lifted the exec up onto tiptoe, then back down a couple of inches, relaxing the pressure against Harrisch’s windpipe. “What is it you think I don’t know? Because by now, believe me, I know a lot of things.”

“You idiot.” Chin thrust back by the asp-head’s knuckles, Harrisch still managed to get a sneer up and running on his own face. “You don’t know just how badly you’ve been connected over. By me. You were connected even before you took the job.”

“What’s he talking about?” November came up beside McNihil, maneuvering her way across the bucking rooftop. The moans and shuddering low-octave noises from the street level grew in volume and intensity, like a real ocean scudding into white-topped waves, as she peered at Harrisch. “He told me the same stuff, about you and this job, back at the hospital.”

“It’s TOAW.” McNihil didn’t look over at her as he spelled out the acronym. “That’s what it’s been all along. That’s what the job was about all along.” He let go of Harrisch, shoving him a step backward. “His big secret, that he didn’t think I’d be able to figure out.”

“What if you did?” Rubbing his bruised throat, Harrisch glared venomously at McNihil. “Even if you did find out, there’s nothing you can do about it. Not now.” A wild sense of triumph seemed to surge