Novahead

by Steve Aylett

  ‘Oh wow,’ said the Fed, standing beside me. It was obvious she could see the car clearly.

  What was the true thing I would not want to believe? I approached the area hesitantly as if blindfolded, until my hand touched hot metal. The new perception poured down with the rain, filtering gradually into place. The car lay visible in front of me, warped open like a seashell. Its innards were ash.

  My way home was obliterated. It would be easier to unlock a door closed in a photograph.

  ‘What’ll I do now, Gamete? What do I do?’

  The Fed was unimpressed. ‘So you lost your car, so what?’

  ‘It wasn’t a car. It was a door.’

  ‘A door.’

  ‘I’m stuck with you people. I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Calm down.’

  So I was fated to die on stage among actors who couldn’t shake off their roles.

  4 THE BATTLE OF BETTY’S FORT

  Standing in molten rain, my heart springing leaks. My skin felt like ground glass. I wanted out, to be redeemed from the abyss of disguise.

  Murphy loaded the kid in the front passenger seat of her car and me in the back, where I started to push off a thick layer of myself that I had worn like an invisible rubber suit. With every push the car’s engine threatened to stall out. The private detective analog had always been strange in a town where a living body was more incongruous than a dead one. Now the whole accretion was sloughing off in one go. The Fed frowned back at me.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘it’s worse than it looks.’ There was another clamp of pain and the ambience guttered. The longest night of the mind. ‘It doesn’t count if it’s easy.’

  Razors of light across the brain. It was visceral bloody detox.

  By the time we pulled up at Betty’s Fort everything felt brighter, but it still hurt. It wasn’t meant to be a cure. Parked outside Betty’s was a stretch limo apparently made entirely of bone. I was thirsty. I went into the Fort like a whipped hunchback.

  A profitless pat-down in the carbine corridor - the gunsels seemed nervous, glancing at the chamber entrance beyond which voices were nattering: ‘The end won’t occur because an innocent mind desires it. If there’s no-one home and no lights on, we turn them on.’

  The Fed led me and the kid into Betty’s throne room. The gunsels stayed behind, big steel doors meeting to complete the raised design of a trilobite. This creature revolved once, clanking as the door locked.

  It was a little confab of the city fathers. Betty, Blince, Ract, Darkwards.

  Betty leaned forward from her beetle-black throne. ‘So you’re defecting, Murphy. Where’s Pivot?’

  ‘Undertakers’ arrest.’

  ‘Dead? Time to act thunderstruck, everyone.’

  ‘And this one had some sort of phantom miscarriage in the car.’

  Betty squinted. ‘Atom, is it?’

  ‘I’m nobody,’ I said. ‘You’ll be dealing with me now.’

  ‘No name so death can’t find you I suppose? We’ll call you Atom, dear.’

  The giant and the dwarf were sat on the kevlar couch. Ract was paging around in a lifestyle magazine for the upper classes called Immune, but he glanced up when I was mentioned. ‘This one-eared bravo - he’s really the shamus? Looks a bit queasy.’

  Blince was at the drinks cabinet behind them. He seemed completely at ease, even half amused. ‘He used to be one tough customer,’ he remarked, building an October Surprise with his left hand. He had some kind of bandage arrangement at his shoulder and his right arm in a sling. ‘Seems kinda ragged and emotional today.’

  ‘You’re rather more manlike than the galoot described you,’ said the giant in a mild tone, tilting his big log-like face at me.

  ‘He was socked in the eye by a bit of Pivot, I think,’ said the Fed, with a smirk.

  ‘Nasty bump on the old noggin, eh?’ said the giant in a louder tone, as if to a child. His apparently upholstered forehead shone in the artificial light. ‘My name’s Darkwards. Like it?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Yes, well yours isn’t up to much either.’

  ‘Get rid of it.’

  ‘Enough of this nonsense,’ Betty said pleasantly, and stroked her pet ganglion.

  Without looking up from his magazine the dwarf muttered ‘Pivot and his intrepid cheats have nearly damned us all, as usual.’

  ‘Oh, come,’ said the giant mildly. ‘We recognised him as one whose ethical dexterity allowed him almost anything at any time. Why condemn that quality now?’

  ‘Generally speaking I regarded him as an equal, so long as his face was obscured and he didn’t interfere. But he never hid his indifference to my attempts to manipulate him. Just sat there eating a fruit and staring at me as I went on. Incredibly annoying.’

  Darkwards gave a sick and quiet chuckle.

  ‘What about the Mexican?’ Blince asked.

  ‘Who cares?’ Betty declared. ‘A man who sees intelligence as ugly paunch and denies that his body is anything more than a combat chassis. His mind embodies a human mind in miniature. Good luck to him.’

  Blince agreed without enthusiasm.

  The kid was wandering, looking at the curios and bookshelves.

  ‘We’re in lockdown,’ announced Betty. ‘And if a new personality signature does show its face, these sentinels will activate.’ She looked to the Mission-style gun emplacements on either side of her throne. ‘It’s good, gentlemen, that we all joined forces at last - formally. So much noise and waste at the Gate. Our core values entwine. See the structure of material power, Mr Atom? It’s guns all the way up.’

  ‘The blonde kid,’ said Blince. ‘He’s Partenheimer?’

  ‘Yes, the Head Perilous. Come here, Heber.’

  The kid put aside a Gamete book and walked over to the front of Betty’s throne-stage, looking up at her.

  ‘See all this?’ Betty said to him. ‘These days entitlement can be manufactured - after all, who’s keeping track? You’ll stay here with me a little while.’

  The expected gratitude was unforthcoming. Heber looked up at her like a hollow saint. The mercy of Betty’s leopardskin philosophy seemed to stretch a little this way and that, then relax.

  ‘Well,’ she said with a control that sounded prim. ‘I’m good at a certain kind of negotiation. You understand that word? I’ve been doing this my whole life. Just this. The market and its monarchy of confidence. You would have found it an excellent consolation. Remunerative dissonance once enhanced the flow of life, but it became so lopsided it broke. Trade became a labour of mourning. The pattern persists without content. How simple it all is.’

  Betty stopped, looking at him.

  ‘Little Prince Myshkin is blank. I’m speaking to myself.’

  ‘He’s definitely Partenheimer,’ said the Fed. Stood next to a big plant vase near the door, she looked a little wide-eyed and out of her depth.

  ‘What do you want, a medal?’

  ‘Or the value I’d trade it for.’

  ‘He’s a dud,’ I said, ‘the balloon standard in stupidity. Even more than Blince over there.’

  ‘This phoney gumshoe’s playing you!’ shouted the Fed.

  ‘Your glittering conjecture tells me nothing.’

  ‘Who does he work for?’ asked Ract, looking up to scowl. ‘Eh, you? Who do you work for?’

  ‘I don’t understand the question,’ I said. Ract had seemed to be damn near frothing with disinterest but he and Darkwards were basically of a piece. I detected some acoustic difference between their positions but that was all. In fact the chamber gave me the feel of an intertidal zone of motives, all together in avarice. ‘Love isn’t friendly. And I’m full of love.’

  Betty’s pet ganglion let out a scionic squeal.

  ‘My spine wants to know how an alibi so frequently disproved is still exalted.’

  ‘Cos he’s a goddamn throwback, why it is,’ said Blince. ‘Headcrime, artcrime, installation capers. The currency’s spent.’

  M
urphy the Fed piped up, frowning. ‘Listen, old timer. I missed alot of that and I like to think there’s still some wine in the bottle.’

  Betty was stood forward with a Jericho out of nowhere and I heard a crack. A beauty spot on Murphy’s forehead started spurting and she sat down sadly in a corner. I felt bad for her last words, for what she’d missed and wouldn’t realise. Some unfairness is a hole, pure and simple. After firing, Betty stepped back appraisingly like an artist. She hadn’t shot anyone in years. This whole setup was some sort of special occasion.

  Blince had reflexively pulled an AMT pistol at the shot, and stood with it aimed left-handed and awkward at Betty Criterion.

  ‘Chief Blince,’ said Betty, sitting back in her throne. ‘For whatever reason, the fates saw fit to put you and your immense interior at the disposal of the state. You could have refused.’

  ‘I could.’

  ‘Some people have that wisdom. Very few. Not you.’

  ‘So what if I am? - Which I doubt!’ he exclaimed confusedly. ‘And what’s the gun for?’

  ‘Emphasis. I’ve put mine up. Do the same, please.’

  Obedient as a match on the third strike, Blince put the gun up.

  Blood began to lake outward around Murphy.

  ‘I might declare it the slaying of the season,’ remarked Ract without inflection.

  The kid had wandered back to the book shelves. I stood like an idiot. It was the most lateral standoff I’d ever been a part of. I wondered if they were waiting for her to give a signal.

  ‘What’s coming to you, Atom,’ Blince muttered. He snipped the tip from his cigar, looked at it, put it between his lips, lit up. ‘Will arrive.’

  Instead of a heart he had a huge shut eye.

  ‘Your timetables for the absolute are insulting,’ I said.

  ‘The schedule’s published and the tickets have been sold,’ said Betty. Her pet spine had shuffled off when the shooting started but I noticed she was still dandling the Jericho pistol from her knee. ‘Humanity has so far set up a rather makeshift torment and there is still much to do. Its short memory allows it to forget even its own apocalypse, its escalating terms in hell. Re the nuclear stuff they’ve been smug since the big deal. The EMP wave five years ago knocked out a city and nothing was learnt. Same with the quakes. It isn’t funny and it isn’t clever.’

  ‘I still contend the first of Feb’s the date for that asteroid of yours,’ Ract baited Darkwards. ‘That infernal marvel of velocity’ll have everyone holding their bones but my atomic loop’ll get there first.’

  ‘I’m talking about a comet, as you well know. A scabby red card, a timely bubo. We had it coming.’

  ‘Let’s hope and pray the world will be assailed with every kind of cataclysm and upheaval. At the same time, I mean, rather than spread out as people expect. It will be exactly like a race, neck and neck!’

  ‘My asteroid has it in the bag, Mr Ract.’

  ‘You see?’ said Betty, turning to me. ‘We’re just protecting our interests.’

  ‘Nothing can do that at this stage. Are you really unaware of it? The bet’s off.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Ract snapped, dropping his magazine.

  ‘Taking us all by storm are you,’ said Betty. Her eyes were nonsignifying insets. ‘Smashing upwards into our lives.’

  ‘Maybe I am.’

  ‘What’s this about the bet? What happened, who won it?’

  ‘None of you.’

  ‘Whaddya mean?’

  ‘It’s simple. You made a bet as to the method by which civilisation will end. But everything you’ve done, everything you’ve said, thought, observed, should have made it clear to you that civilisation has already ended.’

  Ice cold behind the face, Ract glared at me. ‘Shamus, this explanation you seem to have coughed out of your ass has done nothing to reassure me.’

  After a dead silence, Blince piped up. ‘Huh. He had me going for a minute.’

  ‘He’s quite right,’ said Betty. ‘It’s over. And let’s not point the forearm of blame. Pivot didn’t realise either. Goes to show you can’t subpoena wisdom. I used to think it would fall amid a battle, with governments clutching at what they might lose to the people. As it turned out, everyone just kept pretending, as best they could amid the ashes. Here in Beerlight it’s the comforting old gangland modality. Parts of the Fadlands have gone full pasta, as you probably know. Humanity has tanked. Get used to it. It might be called its “death” or “destruction” were these not somewhat grandiose names for so small an affair: an empire falling silently as snow on old bones. Just another self-vanquished species.’

  ‘But the bet!’ Ract shouted.

  ‘Forget what you think you know about the apocalypse. It’ll destroy the head, the torso, and other cherished misconceptions about the human body. Something else is clearly at stake. Raise your sights, gentlemen. The world. The bet is the world.’

  Ract and Darkwards turned to look at each other, then back at Blince, who nodded.

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘That’s why we’re here, after all.’ She smiled slowly, almost realistically.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Betty asked. ‘It’s such a slight matter. The end of the world. It’s come rather late, I’m afraid. But more interesting than some breakaway empire.’

  She had a gun and was taking her sweet time about shooting me. They were holding back, waiting on something. Which had happened before.

  ‘Get to the point.’

  ‘Say what you mean, Atom.’

  ‘I mean, quit stalling. I think that’d be the local term. What are you counting on? What’s the deal here?’

  There was a sudden bang as the kid dropped a bound book on the floor - he bent to pick it up. When I looked back at the others I saw they were coming back from a bad scare, covering up.

  They were at once hopeful and terrified of the innocent opulence that might propagate all at once behind his eyes. I could not honestly bring these thoughts to any other conclusion. The notion burned phosphorescent inside. My heart was burning with grief and anger. ‘This sort of thing never ends well,’ I said. There was silence. ‘Aren’t you going to ask what I mean?’

  ‘Not a chance,’ said Ract, looking scared - his eyes flicked to the kid.

  ‘Oh, you people have had value out of me,’ I told them. ‘I’ve done everything wrong this time. Following leads. Following! What a chump! Now you fuck up my window out of here. I don’t know how I’m getting home. And worst of all, you’re boring me!’

  Betty was staring straight at the kid, her claws clenched to the arms of her throne.

  ‘I’m sick of all this. My deepest contradictions are of one accord when compared to you alien fucking smithereens.’ I barely knew what I was saying. I was seething. My body shook. ‘MUST I REALLY TAKE CARE OF THIS MYSELF?’

  The connective tissue between the walls and floor seemed to contract.

  ‘You’re standing there like a gunslinger,’ Darkwards said with a sort of sniggering gasp. ‘You’ll have to reach deep to make a difference here.’

  I swept the Hand of Glory from the etheric holster and aimed it into the midst of them. The ground hardened under my feet. I understood even as I squeezed the trigger that they had all changed their bets. Everything on the kid.

  The whirr of acceleration as the unfamiliar gun powered up for ignition scared me and then it was extruding baffles and rivetted armatures and reversing pulsations up my arm. The cylinder rotated through a dozen modes I didn’t recognise. Threads of blue light were running along its fluted cowling as it Swiss-Armied open, enclosing my arm like armour and flipping out six circular projections like directional propellor guards. The weight belied the fact that I was now holding something bigger than a Harley-Davidson.

  As if its understanding of the scene led to a terrifyingly compressed urgency, it exploded upon the roomful of gaping targets. I think I saw Darkwards jerk with a bolting charge of realisation and then
there were leaping outlines in blinding incandescence. Being in back of that gun was like being on a rollercoaster. Shrill blasts of backdraft batted from the six muzzles as they exchanged sinewless patterns of swooping matter, motive particles shooting in vertices, gathering denser compression until it all locked together in a thunderclap of mutuality.

  I dropped the gun.

  Betty, Blince, Ract and Darkwards seemed to be gone.

  A massive, gutty beachball stood in the centre of the throne room. In its fleshy surface, four faces stretched like melted cheese. Poking from one was a cigar, still smoking.

  ‘Let’s go back over this thing a little,’ said Blince.

  The pyramidal gun drones on either side of Betty’s throne came to life, firing upon the group anomaly. It exploded in a storm of blood and shredded matter.

  It was messy. Me and the kid were red statues in a red room.

  ‘Well,’ I said, dazed. ‘You alright?’

  I went over and slapped him on his slimy shoulder.

  ‘I’m not much used to this sort of thing.’ I looked at the red room, my red arms. ‘Thank god I was disgusted with those bastards, or I might have been part of that. Ah, I’m all verklempt.’

  The kid seemed overcome by it all. His eyes had a surprised look of imminence like he was about to sneeze. I didn’t immediately realise it was the confluence of nitrophages in his uterine mind. Then he looked at me.

  ‘Oh.’

  The air around Heber was starting to wrinkle, bunching inward. Then it tore in places, light blazing through like pain. Gravity became precarious.

  ‘Oh, kid,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He smiled faintly. The world bent open, ripping.

  I was incredulous with light.

  [end]

  www.serifbooks.co.uk/SteveAylett

  Beerlight books in chronological order of events:

  THE CRIME STUDIO

  Some stories in TOXICOLOGY

  ATOM

  One story in SMITHEREENS

  SLAUGHTERMATIC

  NOVAHEADs