Dead Girls, Dead Boys, Dead Things

by Richard Calder

  ‘No! Not the marvellous toy!’ Spalanzani dashed from an arbour of bougainvillaea and frangipani and placed his body before Primavera’s. The air exploded; Spalanzani’s head snapped back, and he dropped to the gravel, his pince-nez welded to his flesh as if by a thermic lance. Primavera staggered, then regained her balance. A pink smoking hole had appeared between her eyes, its edges bubbling like molten plastic. She looked at me with the insouciance of a wasted loony toon, and then she began to laugh.

  The dome opened. The Pikadons ran to Morgenstern’s side. ‘Don’t get /1 said Primavera. ‘I’ll go quietly...’ Shrugging her shoulders, she again took my hand. ‘He needn’t have done that, you know. The poor dweeb.’ Her wound was bloodless, though I could see it furrowed deep into her brow. Tentatively, she explored the burn-hole with her fingers. ‘Looks as if I’ll have to go heavy on the make-up.’

  Turning our backs to our captors (Primavera gave a flick of her hair, a little wiggle of her rump), we resumed our gallows walk.

  ‘Wait!’ cried Kito. I looked over my shoulder and saw that she was manipulating the dome’s entryphone. Like her transcom, it folded into a lightstick. ‘This time no become steely dan.’

  ‘This time,’ said a Twin, displaying her own gun, ‘no fire joke-shop flag.’

  The three half-humans faced each other, good, bad and /1 like protagonists in a psycho-zygo western.

  ‘Golden flower trash,’ said Kito. Her lips were puffy and she sported a bloody nose. ‘You think you take Nana so easy? I mamasan of /1 before they cut you from plastic womb. From orphanage to beauty queen -Miss Cashew Nut, Miss Watermelon—all time circuit in brain making fucking /1 till come Bangkok work bar, buy bar, buy /1, buy Nana: you think can slap me on head? And you,’ she said to Morgenstern, ‘you number one bullshit man. I such fool . .

  ‘I’m too old to be frightened by an entryphone, Madame.’ Coherent light, in a microsecond of invisible, but noisy, drama, vaporized a small portion of Jack Morg-enstern’s thigh. His own weapon discharged—several exotic plants burst into flames—before clattering to the floor, to be smothered by a Whumpf! of unconscious meat.

  A click, click, click was emanating from the Pikadons; they were pulling the triggers of their particle weapons to no effect; and now Kito covered them. ‘Stop it!’ said Kito, as if she were scolding two mischievous children. ‘I wake up first. Take Duracell from gun.’ The Twins swapped embarrassed stares. ‘Bad day for you when Smith and Wesson merge with Mattel. Into dome!’ Kito sealed the door from the outside and left the Twins battering their fists upon steel plate.

  ‘Finish him, Madame,’ I said.

  ‘I no want CIA after me. Mr Jack not small-time thug can off without trouble. Come, Primavera, I re-hire you. You too, Mr Ignatz. We take car. Elevator go all way down to garage.’

  Primavera poked her head above the oubliette of her despair. ‘We did it again,’ she yelled—the venom of a murderess combining with the enthusiasm of a cheerleader—‘A, B, AB, O, that’s the way I wanna go! Rhesus factor, rhesus factor, ya, ya, ya!’ But then the depths reclaimed her.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Desperadoes

  We hit Route Two before daybreak, slipping through Bangkok’s dreaming sprawl, until the dawn struck out the asterisks of the stars. By early morning we were driving across the plateau of Korat. Beneath us, the Pak Chang reservoir glistened amidst the deforested wasteland of the plains. Primavera and Kito were asleep, slumped across the ZiL’s back seat. I was glad. Ever since we had cleared Sukumvit Kito had talked incessantly of how she meant to revenge herself on the Pikadons; and Primavera -though she complained of migraine as well as stomach cramps—had been equally garrulous in insisting that the former mamasan’s influence, no longer dark following her ouster, was now so minimal that she had little chance of being offered a free bowl of noodles and none of being offered the Pikadons’ heads. ‘So why didn’t you stick them when you had the chance?’ asked Primavera. ‘Lost your nerve? Got too used to relying on lowlife like me? Now a real Cartier doll would have...’ At last, the night’s capers had called in their debts of exhaustion; I had driven fifty kilometres in silence, if not in peace.

  I pulled in by a roadside cafe. ‘Hey,’ I said, shaking Primavera awake, ‘this place sells tourist stuff: T-shirts, jeans; you interested?’

  Primavera rubbed her eyes. ‘I can’t go about like this, can I?’ Primavera’s flesh, as cool and fine as alabaster ground to a talc, radiated against black leatherette, primary and secondary sexual characteristics a golden triangle of adorned erogeneity.

  Kito stirred. ‘Madame, can you spare a few satang?’

  ‘I no carry money in dressing gown, Mr Ignatz. Here—’

  She passed me her lightstick. ’Buy shop.’

  I could get no food. The clothes were effort enough. The proprietors thought my weapon a toy and I had to vaporize a small dog before the wisdom of acceding to my demands was perceived. It was only when I was back in the car that I noticed that I had been palmed off with screaming blue jeans.

  ‘So tacky,’ said Primavera, ripping out the audio. ‘So old-fashioned. My Mum used to talk about these.’

  ‘Poor Primavera,’ said Kito. ‘No ten-inch special. No tutu. No ultrascenic itsyritzy.’

  ‘I can’t help it, Madame, you know I have this neurosis.’ 1 Primavera held up a T-shirt printed with a smokestack and the words Khao Yai Industrial Reserve. ‘

  What is this?’

  ‘You lucky,’ said Kito. Her shirt featured a dancing prophylactic and the slogan Don’t Be Silly, Put A Condom On That Willy. She gave Primavera an accusing glance. ‘Bad time when roboto make sick.’

  ‘Yeah? Well a piece of rubber never protected any guy from me.’

  We drew away. The landscape, crystallized by the waste of derelict salt mines, was bone-white; eucalyptus struggled out of the spent earth. It was about seventy kilometres to Korat. I put my foot down. ‘We’ll be there in under an hour,’ I said.

  ‘And just where that, Mr Ignatz? I no make decision...’

  ‘You don’t decide anything,’ said Primavera. She put a hand over her eyes as the road twisted and we caught the glare of the morning sun. ‘Don’t you understand? You’re nothing now. Nothing.’

  ‘Don’t start that again,’ I said. Primavera mumbled something in Serbo-Croat, in French, again in Serbo-Croat, and scrabbled for her sunglasses. ‘Listen, Kito, we’re going to Korat, and there we’ll say our goodbyes.’

  ‘Korat? You say goodbye when I say goodbye. You work for me. Both of you.’

  ‘Forget it,’ I said.

  ‘We don’t work for no one,’ said Primavera. ‘And we don’t trust no one. Right, Iggy?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Nothing out there’s real. It’s just all too bad. Too crazy. Too ape shit.’

  ‘Fecal,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah. Everyone can go to hell. From now on all this doll needs is her junkie.’

  In the rear-view mirror Kito fidgeted with her ridiculous T-shirt like a sulking, hyperactive child. ‘Take me with you, Mr Ignatz. I nowhere to go...’

  Primavera, wearing the cheap shades that were part of our pathetic heist, had discovered a tube of plastic cement in the ZiL’s tool kit, and, as best she could, began filling in her cavernous head wound. ‘You’re in no worse position than us, Madame.’

  ‘Better,’ I said. ‘The police would never risk incriminating themselves by charging a former paymistress, no matter how big a reward the Pikadons offer.’

  The fields had turned green; we passed through a little sea of fertility. ‘I no care about police,’ said Kito, staring out at the sun-trap of the paddies. ‘I care about Mr Jack.’ ‘Morgenstern’ll be coming for us too. Best to split up.’ ‘Mr Ignatz. Please—’

  Primavera, her DIY complete, teased her fringe forward in an attempt to conceal her labours. She clicked her tongue. ‘I suppose she did get us out of Klong Toey.’ ‘Well, isn’t she the model of altruism.’

  ‘I did,’ s
aid Kito, ‘yes, I did! Mr Ignatz forget many things...’

  No; I didn’t forget. Primavera and I had stowed away on a container whose registration number we had been made to memorize during our days in the Seven Stars. We hadn’t known where we were going; we hadn’t cared. We were kite-high on freedom. Six weeks later we had docked at Klong Toey, the port of Bangkok. For weeks we had lived in the waterlogged slums, hiding from the authorities, surviving on rotten vegetables and fruit, until, in desperation, I had prompted Primavera to kill (‘but Lilim don’t do that, Iggy—we live to ’) and rifle her victims’ pockets. And then the reports of blood-drained corpses had reached Madame Kito’s ears, and she—with her nose for the ways of English bijouterie—had investigated the sensation of ‘The Vampire Of The Slums’.

  Kito had begun to whine. ‘I find you, teach you, give you false paper, place to live...’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘may my heart burst with gratitude.’ But it was true: we would have been deported if it hadn’t been for Madame K. Could I really leave this woman by the roadside, as friendless as a scabby three-legged dog? Of course I could.

  ‘Jinx,’ I said. ‘Jinx told you about “The Vampire Of The Slums”, didn’t he? Wasn’t he the one who convinced you to help us?’

  ‘Fuck Jinx. I help you now.’

  ‘You’ve never helped us. Jinx worked for Jack Morgenstern. We’ve all been working for Morgenstern. Been working for him for years.’

  ‘When I say I help, Mr Ignatz, I mean I help.’

  ‘Oh come on, Madame,’ said Primavera.

  ‘You think you so rich? Where you get money? Madame can get. Madame have friend.’

  ‘She’s bullshitting, Iggy.’

  ‘In Korat. Madame have friend in Korat. Old friend.’ It was hard to believe anybody would extend friendship to Kito except out of fear or avarice. And Kito could inspire neither. The news of her fall would already have been posted on the Net. But apart from grand larceny (with Primavera out of action that was a terrifying, hopeless prospect) our resources would be inadequate to carry us over the border.

  ‘This friend—’

  ‘Can trust, Mr Ignatz.’ Confidence had entered her voice; she sensed my prevarication.

  ‘Told you, Madame,’ said Primavera, ‘we don’t trust no one.’

  ‘Primavera, we’re running low on H.’ If only, I thought, the ZiL ran on synthetic; these big imported cars with their fussy diets were a pain. H was big bahts.

  ‘My friend rich man. Number one in sericulture.’

  ‘So why’s he going to help you?’ I said.

  Kito smiled thinly: a smile of pleasure overlaying one of bitterness. ‘You no understand. You think Kito so hard. You think she no can love.’ She fanned herself with her hand. ‘What you know? You children. Children who think they know world. I know friend help. My friend, ah. I tell you he is amour.’

  ‘What?’ said Primavera.

  ‘Amour,’ said Kito. ‘Amour, my amour. Mosquito is mon amour.’

  There was a corridor in the Seven Stars that, we were told, was over a hundred kilometres long. Jo had led us through its shadows for most of the day. Too slender to admit a car (Jo explained that, anyway, we were too near the surface and couldn’t afford to be heard), the corridor impelled us to use bicycles. Primavera and I commanded a tandem; Jo, a lightweight racer. Our lamps probed the darkness, overreached themselves and were lost. Jo said she would have flown if she hadn’t been so new to that skill. Lifting the two of us would have been impossible. Said Jo: ‘Dolls don’t often bring along.’

  We stopped to eat. I partook of an apple and some cheese, the girls, of blood-filled chocolates. In midcourse, Jo ran Primavera through her catechism.

  ‘Who is Lilith?’ said Jo.

  Who indeed, I thought, that all the dolls commend her? Meaning. Pride. Vengeance. She was all these things to Primavera. Our two-month stay in the Seven Stars had been one of indoctrination...

  Arm in arm, we would stroll through the palace’s sensory havoc—its uncertain corridors that ended in cyclora-mas; its false rooms; its stairwells that led nowhere -as through the heart of a honeymoon hotel, Primavera expounding on Titanian philosophy, while I fed in silence upon the oozing sap of my chatterbox’s half-green eyes. She was happy. Not humanly happy. She would never be that. She had nothing human to look forward to. No; the consolation she possessed, discovered at an age when she had also discovered (as no child should) a deeper than human despair, was the celebration of her own nature, a nature England had sought to deny. Not humanly happy. But possessed of a dark joy. She knew now why her kind had been put on this Earth. To destroy it. That was the consolation of Titanianism.

  I would recall what Peter had said of the birth of this strange, new faith...

  He had been a fool to run away from the Seven Stars; ten times the fool to have told his father. But Dr Toxico

  philous was too sick to rise from his bed. Titania, for the moment, was safe.

  For several nights, lying sleepless in the midnight heat, he waited. And then she came, a child dressed in scarlet; above her head, a crown of seven stars. Through the window and into the night they flew, until they reached the night-town streets of the East End.

  Inside the warehouse a fluorescent sign proclaimed Seven Stars, adding, in smaller Milk Bar. The cellar had been refurbished with bar, dancefloor and stage. Peter Gunn growled its welcome. Spewing music roll, a Pianola provided the music’s bass line; nearby, a girl wrung the theme from a rusted sax, while others trance-danced before her.

  ’Our song,’ he shouted.

  ’Our planet,’ shouted Titania. at least it will be soon.

  Do you remember when we first discovered this place? The forbidden journeys! But nothing is forbidden now.’

  Titania led him to an empty table.

  ’Peter,’ she said, 7 am going to make it real. I am going, to give them something to believe in. My girls -1 am going to make them proud of their little green stars. And the Seven Stars shall be their temple. I’m the last one, Peter. The last of the Big Sisters. I must make sure my daughters succeed me. L’Eve Future they called our series. But I shall be Lilith...’She pulled his hand beneath her skirts. Her pubis was as cool and smooth as marble. ’Isn’t it just like a doll? Sexless, he wanted us, your priceless Papa. Not like those cheap imports from the Far But his subconscious desires made us whores. Virgin whores, forever enflowered!’

  An icy draught swept across the cellar. The candles flickered and died. In the darkness screams, caterwauls; a dozen pairs of green eyes ignited. But the music continued, the relentless bass line vibrating through his body, a body that was turning to ice. ‘Help me,’ she whispered, *me find a human womb.’

  Against a night sky, a crown of stars like a new constellation bobbed, weaved and settled between his thighs. Sharp fingernails fluttered about his groin. And he felt the icy touch of lips and tongue draw him into a cold, still landscape...

  During our walkabouts through the Stars I often saw, in the corner of my eye, or reflected in some bizarre arrangement of mirrors, the sometimes nervous, sometimes guilty, always imploring face of Peter. He never spoke; I never gave him the opportunity; on seeing him I would quietly steer Primavera through the palace’s illusory web and deeper into its brainstorm of perspectives. Neither Peter nor his silver-tongued queen had won my trust; both seemed manipulative, well-practised in tweaking the strings of other people’s lives; but their words, for Primavera, had been a revelation, the promise of re-birth. She would not have tolerated, could not have borne, an inquisition into their motives. I had let my suspicions rest. Titania and Peter sheltered us. They said they would help us escape. And they had made Primavera happy. It was enough.

  Escape. Escape to what? What was the world like out there?

  ‘You really want to know?’ Primavera had gone to the palace chapel to be drilled for confirmation, and—since Primavera and I were inseparable—Titania had had Jo show me some of the farther-flung marvels of the Stars to
prevent me (I realize now) learning the bitter (though not the bitterest) secrets of the Titanian mysteries. During our peregrinations, I had asked Jo about England, the forbidden England that lay outside London’s walls; about the green fields, the villages, the booming coastlines featured in the interludes that scrambled our TV. My tour guide—until then stone-faced with the effort of accomplishing an unpleasant but necessary task—sniggered and quickened her step. It was, I suppose, the hope, the eagerness in my eyes, which, as much as the resentment of doll for boy, lit the tinder of her spite. ‘I’ll show you,’ she said, and led me down a painted colonnade, skipping faster, faster, until my feet blurred beneath her flapping hemline, and the columns—distressedly roseate with forged age—became as one. She braked, inertialess; we collided. ‘Oh!’ she cried, the carmine torque of her mouth hard as the maidenly iron of her body. ‘You’re such a klutzV She opened a concealed door and led me into the darkness.

  A hemisphere of light hovered like a glow-worm-infested hillock amidst the blackness of a country night, like a planet amidst the nullity of space; Jo pushed me forward, and the apparition disclosed itself as a glass bubble sunk into an oak surround. ‘The Peeporama,’ announced Jo. She placed her hands upon the glass; the glass digitized, blooming from the bright seeds of pixels. ‘Dummies,’ said Jo. ‘Showroom dummies. Automata fifty years dead. Karakuri Ningyo. Titania has called out to them. Opened their eyes. Their ears...’ A street scene, pointillistic, distorted, stretched across our fish-eyed field of view. ‘You’re looking through the window of an old department store. A department store in mad, mad Manchester.’ The colour began to drain. ‘A black and white city,’ said Jo, ‘is mad Manchester.’

  An army of beggars filed across the convex landscape. It was dusk, and the monochrome outlines of Victorian civic pride had melted, run together, each building spilling into a grey puddle of light. Faces were downcast; collars turned up; but still visible—in tones that matched the lividity of the streets—was the flesh, the meagre, wasted flesh of each member of that platoon of lost souls. ‘And they call us dead,’ said Jo.