Noir

November had already turned, following the bright tracery of the parsifal’s bullets. Now she gazed at the torn front of McNihil’s shirt and jacket, the fabric ripped by the bullets, a few shreds dangling like frayed ribbons. There wasn’t even any blood, though enough of McNihil’s flesh was exposed to show that he hadn’t been wearing any body armor, Kevlar mesh, or anything capable of stopping the hot, fast metal.

Her gaze moved up to McNihil’s face. A simmering anger showed there.

“That really pisses me off,” grated McNihil’s voice. “When you do something stupid like that. I’m trying to keep it together. For a little while longer, at least.”

TWENTY-FOUR

CORPSES KICK ASS

You shouldn’t be standing…” Harrisch gazed up in fear at the figure looming in front of him. “Not anymore…”

Standing, hell. November had watched in amazement as the asp-head had strode across the hotel’s buckling, crumbling rooftop. He shouldn’t even be moving, she thought. McNihil looked in even worse shape now, with the front of his shirt all torn up from the bullets out of Harrisch’s weapon, than when she had found him downstairs in the hotel.

McNihil reached down and plucked the emptied weapon out of the exec’s trembling hands. “You don’t need this,” said McNihil. He flung it away, over the side of the collapsing hotel, past where his own tannhauser had skittered across the roof. “You should’ve asked, before you started going off like that. I could’ve saved you the trouble.”

“Wait a minute.” November’s gaze moved between the two men. Or man and whatever McNihil had become. A corpse? she wondered. Corpses kick ass like this? “What’s going on?”

“It’s simple.” McNihil glanced over at her. “All this stuff about the job-that was all crap. It was never the important thing.” He gave Harrisch a sharp nudge in the shoulder, jabbing a fingertip at the other man. “Was it?”

Harrisch shrank back into himself. He nodded, as though trying to mollify the specter standing before him. “That’s true,” he said in a quavering voice. “What we wanted out of you wasn’t the job-we didn’t care whether you completed it or not. Just your taking it on was enough for us to win. All you ever amounted to was a delivery system.”

“I know all about that.” McNihil showed his version, even uglier, of the other’s smile. “I know that I wasn’t the first, either. The first one was Travelt, wasn’t it? Only he found out what you were doing with him; he figured out that you’d made him into the vector, the infectious agent for the TOAW project. That was the only reason you gave him the prowler he used. The transference of his personality, his core essence, into the prowler wasn’t an accident, something that wasn’t supposed to happen; it was planned that way from the beginning. His prowler was specifically designed that way, to receive Travelt’s essence and carry it into the Wedge. Because he’d already been infected with TOAW. With Travelt aboard, the prowler could sneak TOAW in past whatever defenses the Wedge might’ve had, infect and spread TOAW throughout the whole Wedge until it was one big vector pool. Like a venereal disease, only a custom-built one. Anybody going in or out of the Wedge, whether they were using a prowler to have their fun or doing it in their own skin, would be infected. Pretty neat.”

“True…” Harrisch gave a weak shrug. “The Wedge and its… inhabitants, let’s say… they were our pilot project. The idea was to see how it worked out with that subject population, assess the results, and refine the technology, see how we wanted to go on from there.”

“But it didn’t work out that way.” A measure of satisfaction sounded in McNihil’s voice. “Travelt’s prowler, with Travelt’s contaminated essence, went into the Wedge-but nothing came back out. It didn’t matter whether Travelt or the prowler ever showed up again, and it was just as well if they didn’t. As a matter of fact, you made sure it was a one-way trip for him; once the transference between Travelt and the prowler had been made, you had his original body killed, right there in his cubapt. Or did you do it yourself?”

“That’s not important.” Harrisch’s expression turned to a scowl. “But you know there are some things better left… undelegated.”

“Doesn’t matter to me,” said McNihil. “And the result was the same for Travelt. But what you weren’t expecting was that there was no indication of TOAW having been delivered into the Wedge by Travelt’s prowler. Within days, there should’ve been some signs of infection spreading. The first victims should’ve been turning up, both inside the Wedge and outside, all through the Gloss. But nothing happened. That’s when you knew something had gone wrong. That’s when you figured you’d need another delivery system.” McNihil’s voice tightened, harder than it ever had before. “And that’s when you came to me.”

“We wouldn’t have had to,” muttered Harrisch, “if that little connector Travelt had done things right.”

“What you mean is, if he’d done what you’d wanted him to. But somehow he figured out what was going on, that he’d been infected with TOAW, that he’d been turned into a vector for spreading the contagion. And he found a way of containing it. Of not spreading it. So you had to come to me. Not because you wanted me to locate Travelt’s prowler, or find out what’d happened to him, or any of that line you handed to me. Like you said, all I had to do was take the job, just go into the Wedge and try to find out what happened to Travelt, and that’d be enough. Because you’d made sure I was infected as well, that I’d become a TOAW vector the same as Travelt and his prowler had been. You figured that somebody-or some thing-in the Wedge had caught Travelt’s prowler on the way in and eliminated it, so it wouldn’t spread its contagion. But you knew I’d be smarter and tougher than Travelt and his prowler, and I’d get past whatever barrier had been put up for the Wedge to defend itself. That would’ve been a real good plan,” said McNihil with grim vehemence. “If it’d worked.”

“What do you mean?” A new apprehension appeared to rise inside Harrisch. “Of course it worked. It had to. You went into the Wedge-you were carrying the TOAW infection-”

“You dumb connector.” McNihil’s voice tinged darker with contempt. “You screwed up with Travelt because you didn’t realize that the prowler you laid on him would also give the game away. There was something in the Wedge, all right; something that could figure out what you were trying to do. Something a lot older and smarter than all of your corporation put together. It read out Travelt’s prowler and what it was carrying like a neon sign on a dark night; you could’ve put it on a billboard and it wouldn’t have been any plainer. So even before the transference took place between him and the prowler, he knew something was up. He knew you’d connected him. And he found someplace to go.” McNihil’s voice softened, as though still impressed. “Someplace where the contagion would be locked up, where TOAW wouldn’t spread from him to the Wedge. Someplace where you wouldn’t be able to find him, where he’d be… safe. And even happy. Someplace where you’d never be able to find him. But I found him, all right. And he told me all about it. Everything. Some of it I knew before. And the rest? It just confirmed all my suspicions, about you and DynaZauber and TOAW, about all of it. Believe me; there weren’t many secrets left when Travelt and I got done talking.”

“Then you should’ve realized,” said Harrisch, “that you’re the one who’s connected. Just by being here, you’ve spread TOAW into the Wedge. And from here, it’ll go everywhere. The Wedge is now the perfect vector pool for us-”

“That’d be true… if I hadn’t taken a few little precautions. To keep the contagion from spreading. To eliminate my vector potential.”

“How could you do that?” The asp-head’s words seemed to baffle Harrisch. “If you didn’t find out about it until you went into the Wedge and found Travelt, and talked to him-it’d be too late by then!”

McNihil slowly shook his head. “You’re assuming too much. I knew enough about it-about the contagion- before I got to the Wedge. When I came and met up with you at the hospital, I had already taken care of it. It was too late for you then. I had already done what I needed to do.”

“But… that’s impossible. You wouldn’t even have known you were infected with TOAW. How could you do anything if-”

“Because I did know,” said McNihil simply. “I knew I’d been infected, and I knew how it’d been done. What the