Outside the hotel room, the corridor whiplashed around them, the floor rolling in exact echo of the next wave that hit the building; the numbered doors swung open or ripped free of their hinges as the blackened walls came apart like a cheap film set being struck, shooting over. McNihil’s shoulder broke through water-soaked plaster as he was thrown against the baseboards; a distorting web of burnt timbers and beams opened around him. November grabbed his forearm and yanked him to his feet. Keeping her head down against the clouds of dust and ash, she shoved him toward the unseen stairway.
TWENTY-THREE
There they are.”
The pilot, one of the best in the DynaZauber transport pool, nodded toward the cockpit’s windshield. He took one hand from the controls and pointed.
Harrisch followed the direction of the gesture, leaning forward from the seat behind the pilot’s. The interior of the jet was a cylindrical coffin, cramped and unluxurious; the craft was built for speed and low detectability, not comfort. “I don’t see anybody…”
“Right there.” The pilot pointed again, indicating the roof of the burnt-out End Zone Hotel. “By the stairwell exit.” Large sections of the roof were gone, caved downward into the building’s ruined floors below; the remaining areas were being pelted with new fire, debris from the jet’s accompanying drones as they were shredded by the Noh-flies. “They just came up.”
Coming out of a banking turn, the jet avoided an ugly-faced contingent of the antiaircraft devices. Harrisch looked through the side of the cockpit at the tilting urban scene, this time spotting the two human figures on the hotel’s roof. They hung back in the small sloping structure with the sprung door, peering out at the bits of fiery metal coming from the sky, as though waiting for the storm to pass.
That’s a relief, thought Harrisch. He would’ve hated to have come all this way, and under such hazardous conditions, for nothing. To get here and find that McNihil hadn’t made it all the way through, finished his job and survived, would’ve been somewhat depressing. Not that it would’ve changed anything; McNihil had been connected as soon as he’d taken the job, and if he’d died in the performance of it, the results would have been the same for DynaZauber. Because that’s the way we like it-Harrisch didn’t have to remind himself of that. He’d constructed the operation, the whole TOAW project, that way. Other people had to deal with win-or-lose situations; he’d made sure that his own contained no possibilities other than winning.
“So you can put me down there?” Harrisch nodded to indicate the rooftop, now swung back toward the front of the jet. “There’s enough room?”
“Not a problem.” The pilot pushed the jet’s rudder forward. “I can do a vertical drop, and then hover long enough for you to get out. As long as I don’t actually touch down, it should be okay.” The ruins of the End Zone Hotel were fast approaching. “But I won’t be able to hang around. These little connectors-” He meant the Noh-flies swarming in the air around them. “They’ve already latched on to me. I’ll have to swing out and pick up another fleet of drones. Just hit my pager number when you’re ready, and I’ll be back for you.”
The wash from the jet’s flow-directed nozzles was enough to bend the roof of the hotel ruins; Harrisch felt the structure flexing upward again as the jet ascended from where it’d deposited him. Beneath his feet, the burnt-out building continued to shift even after the corporate jet moved off horizontally, dragging the remaining drones and the shrieking Noh-flies along with it. The hotel trembled as though from a giant hammer, the impact stretching through a few seconds. It’s the sea, realized Harrisch. For a disoriented moment, he’d thought he’d missed something when he’d been up in the jet, that the actual Pacific had somehow gone tsunami, a tidal wave thundering this far inland and inundating the streets. Then he’d remembered the poly-orgynism that had been established in the zone; he’d seen the network ratings on the DynaZauber morning balance sheet, the viewer figures and advertising revenues. That was as much of the creation as he was interested in.
Another wave hit, almost knocking Harrisch from his feet on the hotel roof, smelling of tar heated up by the bits of molten metal strewn around. If the mess of gel and interconnected human tissue down below was getting 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?”