by Jeff Noon
And then a burst of colour that made me weep.
…oh my God! The flowers are dancing…dancing…
I was travelling inside a dead dogboy’s head, drifting from a spectrum burst into a fall of emptiness…
…think about me, Boda…sing that song one last time…
That last line of Coyote’s life drifting into silence…that name he called with such need. It was a sweet death.
‘What did you say?’ Clegg’s voice.
‘What?’ I was still feeling the passage into darkness.
‘You said it was a sweet death, Jones?’
‘Did I?’ I don’t know what I said. Maybe I just sent the message on the Shadow-paths, mind to mind, Shadow to Dog.
‘Is there such a thing, Smokey? A sweet death?’
‘There’s flowers in his head, Zero.’
‘I noticed.’
‘No, no. In his mind. Like an explosion…a burst of flowers…I…’
‘What’s wrong with you? All I want is a clue.’
‘I can’t describe it…an explosion of flowers…’
‘Some fucking use you are.’
I ignored the remark, reaching instead for one of the flowers in Coyote’s mouth. I made a move to pull it loose from the bunch.
‘You want to tell me how he died?’ Clegg asked.
‘That’s Skinner’s province.’
‘Don’t get me going, Smoke. You find a name in that brain? The murderer, maybe? Is that too much to ask?’
‘She was young. A girl, maybe. The name of Boda came up. That mean anything to you, Zero?’
‘No it doesn’t. And stop calling me Zero.’
The flower was not coming loose. Something was holding it tight inside the dogboy’s mouth. I gripped both hands around the stems of the full bunch, and then gave a good tug on them. No good. It felt like the roots of the flowers were being gripped by a hand equal to mine, somewhere deep in the throat.
‘Who the hell would stick a bunch of flowers into a victim’s mouth?’ Zero asked.
‘They won’t come out,’ I answered, still struggling.
Zero pushed me aside. ‘Here, let me…’ He knelt down and grabbed the stalks out of my hand.
‘Zero! The prints…’
‘It just needs a good strong dog-pull…Jesus-Canine!’
‘Told you.’
‘Pissing bunch of flowers!’ The dogcop made an almighty effort. There was a tearing sound, and then Zero was falling backwards to land on his hindquarters, the bunch of flowers in his two front paws. ‘Bleeding flowers!’ he exclaimed, and then sneezed, violently. And I saw that the liquid in his eyes wasn’t just tears, not just tears of pain. ‘This damned hayfever!’ he snorted, desperately trying to get himself back on to two legs. ‘It gets earlier every year.’ He handed the flowers over to me and I made a quick examination of the ends of the stalks. They were ragged and juice laden. I put my hands deep into the dead dog’s throat, feeling for something there. My fingers passed over a series of sharp needles. And when I pulled my fingers out they were smeared with sap. I looked over to Zero.
‘What’s going on, Smokey?’ he asked.
‘The flowers weren’t just placed in the mouth,’ I answered.
I had my fingers back down deep in the victim’s throat. I could feel where the roots of the plants were embedded in his throat muscles. It was totally beyond my training.
‘What are you saying, Shadowgirl?’
‘I’m saying that I’m way past a girl.’
‘Cool down on the politics, Jones. Spill it.’
So I told him: ‘The flowers are rooted in his throat.’
‘This is one bad scenario. Smells crazy-bad to the good nose. Take a look at this, Sibyl…’ Using my first name, he was gesturing over to the cab. ‘Take a look at the meter.’
I looked into the cab. The driver’s window was broken, and a greasy smear was spread all over the door and the bonnet. I dabbed some onto my finger, sniffed at it. ‘Zombie juice, right?’ Zero said. ‘Looks like he ejected a hitcher.’ Then I saw the tariff, shining in luminous yellow.
‘Where was he delivering from?’ I asked. ‘Australia?’
‘Further than that, Smokey,’ Zero replied, moving around to the boot. ‘Dog must have been picking up from Limbo. Must have dealt with some bad Zombie. Boot-luggage was registered.’
‘You tried it yet?’
He shook his head and pulled out a tube of Vaz, squeezed some into the lock, worked his cop-key until the boot lifted with a slow wave. Just emptiness in there. ‘We got a call from the cops out in Frontier Town, northern sector,’ Zero said. ‘They traced him bringing in an immigrant. Lost him in the maze. Jesus-Dog! Sure was a mean dancer, that Coyote. Some big hero on the streets, so I’m expecting flak from this. I’m expecting another dog-riot. Kracker’s going to have my hide if I don’t deliver.’
The first dog-riot had taken place some years ago, fired-up by the random slaying of a young bitchgirl in Bottletown. Robo-Skinner and his team in forensics had found that the victim had been Shadow-raped. One more incident in the war between the smoke and the fur. We had tried our best to keep it from the streets but Gumbo YaYa stole the knowledge from our Wave. He then proceeded to broadcast it over his station, and the dogs had risen up in protest, demanding justice, equality and revenge. Since then the dog-people had been on a fur-trigger; exploding periodically—on some kind of canine cycle—whenever a dog was taken out. Coyote was just the latest in a long line.
Zombies, Dogs, Robos, Shadows, Vurt and Pure. The ladder of worth falling into war, rung against rung.
‘You got any clues, Clegg?’ I asked.
‘You know what, Smokey? I’m reckoning this is a mist job. I’m thinking a Shadow did it.’
‘Right…I see…’
‘You got any other suspects, Smokey?’
‘Every time a dog dies, you think a Shadow’s done it.’
The dogcop ignored my remark. ‘Let’s try the back seat,’ he said. The door opened and a soft wave of yellow air drifted out into the street. Zero was holding his nose against the smell…
‘Jesus!’ I breathed.
‘You said it, Smokey…oh shit…not again—’
He was going to sneeze…it was the smell…
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHCHOOOOOOOSSSSHHHHHH H H H H H H H H H H H H H!
‘Dog-Christ!’
The smell of flowers from the back of the cab. The air inside seemed to be glowing with the scent of a thousand blossoms. Sparkles of colour floating, and something else under that, like flowers on a wound…the smell of death submerged.
‘You ever smelt that before, Jones?’ Zero was wiping his nose with a sodden rag. ‘Some perfume, uh?’
‘No. Never.’ I looked over to the other cops. They were all sneezing now…soft explosions…cries…curses…
‘You want to close that door now? Please!’
I didn’t answer him. Something about that other smell, the hidden smell…I leaned into the passenger compartment…
‘One question, Jones. How come we’re all sneezing our guts out, and you’re just walking free? How come you’re not sneezing?’
Inside the cab…
…the world was a scent…I was climbing into it…changing senses…the sparkles of colour on the seat…same as on the dogboy’s face…look closely…yellow…intense…tiny…smear one onto my finger…it tickles…head fuming…foggy…underneath that…the hidden…there…the seat…a smear of grease…Sneeza Freeza?…No…not that…too purple…familiar…fingers in it…burning…cold…smell it…death…half-death…
I climbed out of the cab, to face Zero.
‘Jones?’
‘Bad news.’
‘Spill.’
‘He brought one through. A Non-Viable Lifeform.’
‘A Zombie?’
‘It was still alive, Zero. There were no last thoughts in
there.’
‘A Zombie. Excellent. Well done, Sibyl. A Zombie killed Coyote. Couldn’t be better. We’ve got a bona fide street-hero killed by a Non-Viable. The way Bottletown is at the moment, any other scenario, any king of Shadow-scenario, we could’ve had another dog-riot on our hands. Guess I just call up the Zombie squad, let those low-level cleaners deal with it.’
The flesh cops were sniggering and sneezing in turn. It was a joke to them now, this case. Zombies were high in the public’s mind, mainly because the half-dead were invariably ugly and brutish, and the whole image of some creature born from the desperate mating of a living person and a corpse was still reviled in those days. In fact, to the cops they were classed as a nuisance more than anything, something they had to clean up, like litter on the municipal road. Zombies were weaklings away from their Limbo, especially when the light shined upon them; that was the paradox of their hitching travels.
Zero shoved a Vurt cop-feather into his mouth, so that he could talk to Chief Inspector Kracker direct. And being made the way I am, Vurtless, it was all silence to me—just the happy grimacing of Zero’s face as he relayed the news to the boss, who was no doubt clinging to his wife’s hand at the moment of birth.
All I could do was watch and shiver from the sidelines. Coyote’s final message playing around and around in my mind, making patterns. Shadow patterns…that name he called out at the last…think about me, Boda…sing that song one last time…
Zero pulled the feather from his mouth, and then he was growling loud to the fleshcops, ‘Let’s clean up here, officers. It’s a wrap.’ The cops were already going through the motions, telling the tribe of dogs to clear the area, game was over.
‘Is this wise, Zero?’ I said.
‘What’s your problem, Smokey?’
‘I think you’re being a bit premature.’
‘Try me in bed one time, then we talk about premature.’
‘What about the flowers?’
‘Zombie put them there. Coyote picked up a Zombie. The Zombie killed him, stuffed the flowers into his mouth.’
‘That deep?’
‘Shit, I don’t know how these Zombies work. They learn some strange arts and crafts out there in Limbo, I guess. What else they got to do?’ He was shouting at some voyeurs to get back home, ignoring me.
‘What about this Boda reference?’ I asked.
‘Kracker’s well happy with the Zombie angle. I reckon I’m with the chief on that.’ He snarled at the dog-tribe beyond the ribbons.
‘How about an autopsy?’ I asked.
‘Sure. I’ll book robo-Skinner for tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘You think this is the most important death in town, Smokey? Listen, I’ve got a disappearance case on my hands already. The only son of the Inspector of Dripfeed got stolen by the Vurt this morning. Officer Dove’s on the case. You think maybe I should refuse him back-up? Also, I’ve got to organise a patrol of Bottletown. Kracker’s told me to clamp down on any sparks. No more riots. You hear me?’ He turned to the squad. ‘Okay, you officers, keep moving that shit away.’
I was a lonely figure around which a cop circus performed. I was two feet away from the body of Coyote. The ripped-out bunch of flowers was lying on the pavement. A fleshcop scooped it haphazardly into a specimen bag. One of the blooms fell free, rain washing away the petals, grains of yellow merging with the water, and some wayward thoughts flickering through my Shadow.
Thirty-six years old I was.
Days of cop-work. Days of juice and smoke, mist and flesh. Days of wondering and wandering. Days of air.
All gone now, all gone…
Xcab driver Boda is travelling back towards Manchester, having made a good drop in the Bottletown zone. The time is 6.01 a.m., the same day. She had had some trouble some minutes before, whilst riding Claremont Road past Alexandra Park because a cop-van had pulled in from a side street, speeding like a dose of Boomer drug to the brain. The van was iridescent purple, with one-way windows, and the cop logo painted on the side—a glistening map of Manchester bound by handcuffs. It raced alongside Boda for a spell, forcing her into a bad kerb-jump, until the Xcab had sprouted long knives. Boda knew all about how the cops and cabs were supposed to be working together for the common good these days, so she had set the blades to caress level only. The cops didn’t feel a thing as the knives scratched five delicate lines in the purple paint job. Well, it would give the boys something to do when the shift was through. Boda had then asked Charrie for Boomer speed, which left the cop-van standing, and Boda was the queen of the road again.
‘Nice work, Charrie,’ Boda had said to her cab, and the words ALL PART OF THE SERVICE, DARLING had scrolled back across Boda’s taxi-vision. Boda is her Xcab name. Short for Boadicea. Just like Charrie is short for Chariot. Drivers were obliged to give up all their possessions, all of their hair, all their memories and treasures when they joined the cab-hive. Their pre-cabian lives vanished into a trail of road-dust, and one of the treasures given up was the original name, the parents’ name. Boda wasn’t the name she was born to, but it’s the only one she knows.
Boadicea’s chariot riding the waves of Manchester with customized blades sliding back into recesses.
The Wilmslow Road now, back into town.
The Oxford Road.
6.05 a.m.
Which is when she sees Coyote cruising by in his beautiful black vehicle. Imperial driving, dogboy she had sent out to him, not even knowing if that feeling would get through. But some hazy message had come back from the dogboy’s brain. Something about having a girl called Persephone on board, so Boda had sent back, Good Limbo tripping, Coy. The blackcabber brought out the best in Boda, he brought out the song of the road. Romantic shit, of course. But what the hell, isn’t she feeling good this morning?
Columbus comes onto the taxi-waves. STOP THAT SINGING, DRIVER BODA. And Boda did stop then, as she always did when Columbus came on line. YOU FEEL LIKE GETTING BACK TO THE ST ANN’S RANK SOMETIME TODAY, DRIVER? MAYBE PICK UP A FARE OR TWO?
‘Will do, Columbus,’ Boda answers.
It is 6.12 or so when Boda touches base at the St Ann’s rank, and she gets landed with another journey straight off: a clean run carrying a robocrusty back home to Chadderton, after an all-night Boomer session. The way he talks about it sure makes Boda hungry for some of that sweet stuff. Maybe later on…with Coyote in tow? Sure, worth a try. Boda makes that drop-off, gets flagged down on the way back, some loony hippy-dog wanting to make an early start at a Vurt Convention. She gets some crazy feelings about Coyote, just from the smell in the back; bad dog! Despite that, it was a simple journey, slick and smooth, no problems. Well, almost none. On the way back a small lump of something had lodged itself to the underside of her cab, some chancer hiker, hoping to parasite its way back into Manchester. That was the trouble with suburban fares; some of the smaller Zombies had managed to get that far. Now one of them was reckoning on an easy ride; it hadn’t reckoned on Xcab’s in-car monitoring system. A red warning light blinked on the dash, and the words SYSTEM VIOLATION flooded into Boda’s taxi-eyes. SCENE OF VIOLATION…THE MANIFOLD. CAUSE OF VIOLATION…UNIDENTIFIED HALF-DEAD BEING. DO YOU WANT TO TERMINATE, DRIVER? Boda thought that yes, yes she did want to terminate. ‘Do it good, Charrie, babe.’ TERMINATION SEQUENCE COMMENCING. ‘Going through some turbulence, passenger,’ Boda said aloud. Her voice was picked up by the in-car system, transmitted to the hermetically sealed executive suite in back. ‘No need to panic.’ TERMINATION ACTIVATED. The Xcab shone fiery red for a moment, as the current flowed towards the manifold. One thousand volts of anger. Boda had tuned into the down-side camera. She saw something shit-coloured screaming, its pathetic claws burned to a crisp. Must have been some stray Ghost Cat clinging on for dear furry life. And then the lump of stuff falling off into suburban nothingness, bouncing like a sponge ball on the tarmac. ‘Chew on that, Zombie fucker!’ SYSTEM CLEAN, DRIVER. ‘You bet! Let’s ride.’
So they ride the g
rey roads together, Boda and Charrie, rider and chariot, joined into one being. She’s keeping her eyes on the traffic, her ears on the radio, but really Charrie is driving alone; Boda is too busy thinking about Coyote. The blackcabber had come into her life three weeks ago at the Nightingales cafe, where all the cabbers hung out when off-duty. Coyote didn’t visit there that much, because the Xcabbers looked on him with suspicion, but this night he had, and he and Boda had got to talking. In fact they had got to beyond talking, but just sly looks from eye to eye, you know? Boda can’t be sure as yet, but she was certain that something good was developing between them. Something that Xcabs didn’t allow, especially not with a rogue black-cab driver. Xcabbers were supposed to marry only with other Xcabbers. This was their way of keeping the cab-genes pure. Columbus had come on super-strong, saying to Boda that she was a breath away from termination. Boda hadn’t listened. How could she listen? The road was getting too wild, especially when Coyote had told her he had actually visited Columbus a few times. None of the drivers had any clue as to where Columbus was, or even what he looked like so Boda was curious to know more. Coyote had only hinted at deeper secrets but the fact that he had more freedom than her had really heated Boda’s desire. She had met up with Coyote four more times, and on the second time she had felt her thoughts drifting away from her mind into his, like she had the Shadow, or something, Cab-Christ! What is happening to me? Boda’s thoughts in the presence of dogboy flesh. It really was too much to bear. Coyote had responded to her secret whisperings, as though her mind was being shared. And on their last meeting, two nights ago, she had given him the clue to a Limbo fare. Xcabs were banned from driving over the boundaries. The internal map stopped at the edges of the expanded city, and all the Knowledge faded away there, Frontier Town, so that no Xcabber could venture forth. And on that passing of a fare, they had kissed over two half-empty cups of Chrism juice, and it was very juicy that kiss, full of potential. Boda had not been able to sleep that night, just from thinking about it. Maybe this taxi-dog was going to take her somewhere beautiful.
Boda is eighteen years old, a few boyfriends here and there, nothing special as yet; she’s just about prepared for something good. She lights up a Napalm with the in-car lighter. The pack message reads SMOKING IS GREAT AFTER SEX—HIS MAJESTY’S OFFICIAL MISTRESS.
