by Jeff Noon
‘Charrie! It’s you.’
YOU DON’T GET RID OF ME THAT EASILY. LET’S DRIVE, BABY.
She gets a tight smile on her face; Xcabs will also be lost without her cab in the Hive. For sure Columbus will bring up some back-up copy, but until then Boda is free to roam. It may only be a few minutes, but that is all she needs. Ignoring her pained skull, Boda reaches over for her shoulder bag on the dash and pulls out a tattered, antique copy of the Manchester A–Z. She looks up Cloak Street in the index, locates her position, and then scans the first pages with their overall coverage of Manchester. Her eyes come to rest on a place called Whalley Range. That makes a connection. Her home. Her little bedsit with its posters of Kid Bliss and its broken Boomer bottles. Fifteen seconds later she’s turning the cab around into the adjacent land, driving back along the Mancunian Way towards Whalley Range. She doesn’t know how to get from A–B, never mind A–Z, but with the map propped up on the dash, Boda is going to make a good road of it. Charrie’s voice in her mind, how can that be? WE CAN DO THIS, BODA.
‘I hope so.’
TOUCHY, TOUCHY.
Charrie is now driving free, along the way, turning and turning.
There is something in the air, something Boda can’t quite work out, some kind of heavy presence along with her pain. Chorlton Road, the sight of four Xcabs chasing after her in the mirror. Boda is working the wheel like a natural, but her nose is starting to itch, tears forming in her eyes. The scent of flowers penetrating her nostrils. She wants to sneeze. It feels like gunpowder up there, packed into her nose…
Now it is going to…
But then the feeling passes, and Boda is left with only a sense of emptiness and a headful of frustrated desires, and a wondering about what the next note will bring.
She does a handbrake turn onto Stretford Road. The first Xcab overshoots the junction, but the other three make the curve quite easily. From Stretford she makes Henrietta. Straight on towards St John’s the trio of Xcabs following; the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost of her past life. Boda’s eyes are darting from the road to the mirror, from the mirror to the A–Z. The leading Xcab is nudging her rear bumper as she drives onto Russell Road, and then a right onto Dudley, where she lives. The smell of flowers coming from a nearby garden.
Once again Boda tries to sneeze.
The moment…the moment…
Flowers in the rain.
She is going to…
Sneeze!
Sneeze!!!
Come on, you bastard! Blow it out! Do it!
No. Not happening. Absolutely no good, no sneezing to be done.
This is not fair.
Boda is feeling like some kind of unexploded bomb.
She rides the curve of Dudley Road until her house is in view. Two Xcabs are parked outside her garden. Boda presses her foot down to the cab-floor. The cab streaks between the two vehicles, licking yellow and black paint off the sides of each one. She watches in the mirror as the two Xcabs try for a U-turn, getting caught up in the three cabs that were following. Two of the cabs smash into each other. Boda makes a left onto College Road. A right onto Withington. She hits the speed-till-you-die button, checking the mirror. Two cabs following her. Left onto Wilbraham Road. It’s a fast route, Wilbraham; Boda burns the tarmac to escape the pursuers. The truth is, she hasn’t a clue where she is, or where to go. This girl is just driving. Another Xcab pulls out of Wilmslow Road, heading straight for her. Columbus is all over the system, tracking her every route. How can she possibly escape his gaze? Boda makes a hair’s-breadth adjustment to the steering wheel. Her cab peels by the intrusion, clipping the wing of the Xcab. And as the Xcab crumples under her impact, she can see the other cabs wandering lost for a second as the hive-map adjusts to the loss. Now she’s turning onto Kingsway, wherever that is; her A–Z has fallen from the dash with the turning. Boda Jones is lost in a village called Burnage, two Xcabs still desperate to catch up with her. She turns into a side street called Kingsway Crescent, stops the cab, activates the old Boadicea wheel-blades. The Xcabs are dancing their way into her rear-view vision. She reverses her cab at high speed into the front of the first Xcab. A satisfying crunch of steel on steel, as she pushes the follower backwards, bumper-locked, until she can make the new right back onto Kingsway. Boda takes two wheels to the pavement, shaves some paint off a parked car, rips two long slashes in the Xcabbers tyres at the same time. The second Xcab drifts loose as the first Xcabber breaks down. Boda’s radio comes on. Boda is sailing. Back down Kingsway. Home free. No idea where home should be any more.
The scar on her head runs down a tattooed Kingsway, and the road she is travelling is equally wounded, a phalanx of crashed cars and burning houses. Her mind settles at last onto Columbus’s betrayal of her. What the fuck was that bastard up to? The boss had tried to have her killed! What was happening to the world?
‘Thank you, Wanita, for that rendering of the latest news. Your sweet voice can make poetry out of death, even, and isn’t that bad news about the taxi-dog? Coyote is down, people. The Gumbo has travelled in that fine black cab many the time when the Magic Bus was off-road. Call me old-fashioned but this hippy has always had a soft spot for the rugged individual, the rebel, the outsider. Coyote was a hero to me.’
‘And to me,’ Boda says.
‘His ride was so much more of a journey than the super-clean and efficient Xcabs. Who, by the way, are having a little trouble today with their ever-so-big metamap.’
‘You bet, Gumbo.’
‘I’ll be tapping into the map later to find out just what’s going wrong there. And the secret cop-news for today? Zero results, as per usual. Oh yes, some splendid creature meets an ignoble end at the hand of yet another dog-voider, and what are the cops up to? Absolutely nothing. When a dog gets killed, the cops go to sleep. Ya Ya! Coyote was a fine specimen, and his murder will make waves in the canine kingdom. Meanwhile, back in the garden, pollen count is coming on strong. 195 and rising. This next record is for the memory of Coyote. May he find a big bone in doggy heaven. A Day in the Life by The Beatles. I read the wave today, oh man. About a lucky dog who made the grave. He blew his mind out in a blacker-than-black cab. Mr Lennon, as usual, on the total case. Take it away, boys…’
The sound, then, of the Beatles making music out of death, and Boda listening with tears as she drives down Kingsway. Charrie comes into her mind again, SAVE THE TEARS, HONEY, he tells her. LET’S GET HIDDEN.
‘Like where?’
The blood from her scar flows south from Kingsway, down her neck into the dark realms of her clothing.
THERE’S ONLY ONE SAFE PLACE, DRIVER.
Tuesday
2 May
The first slice with the scanner knife cut a deep trench down the left cheek, from the edge of the lip, towards the neck muscles. And then came the second cut, the same, but on the other side, the right side. The cop-doctor’s name was robo-Skinner, and he had fitted job to name quite perfectly. I watched him peel back the twin slices of skin until I was looking deep into the inner reaches of the victim’s mouth. I had his throat muscles on view, a violent abstraction on the screen, and I could see the broken stalks of the flowers nesting there. His throat had been pierced by them. Skinner made the third cut straight across the skin of the throat, left to right, and then another, lower down, searching for the source.
Those feelers went deep inside, suckers to the root.
Skinner opened up Coyote’s black and white chest with the video gun. Cracked some ribs, pulled them loose, reaching into the body with both lenses, fondled the stalks, followed them with camera fingers, all the way down into dark flesh, the flesh and blood map of the body. I was watching all of this on the monitors from the observation room, the same time replaying Coyote’s last thoughts in my head…
let me sleep there…sleep and grow.
Some more deep, deep cuts, before Skinner found the roots. They were imbedded in Coyote’s lung walls, a hard fist of growth like a plant cancer.
…Jesus! Nobody can have a tongue that long!
Zero Clegg, dogcop, was just standing around, dancing paw to paw, bumping into exhibits. I’d never seen him like this before. Usually he took to autopsies like a dog to a butcher’s counter. ‘Dog-Christ!’ he snarled. ‘Will you look at that root, Jones!’ Then he smiled a little bit, like the smell of death was getting to him, but wasn’t he fighting it?
‘Anything on the flowers yet?’ I asked.
Clegg lets go of his armour, sneezes, violently…and then comes up for clean air, grimacing.
…the flowers are dancing…dancing…
The smell of death, the scent of flowers—an intimate link.
‘Sibyl, we’ve got botanists working overtime.’ My real name being used, again, telling me that Clegg really was out of his depth, reeling from the impact of Skinner’s digging.
‘And?’
‘Listen to this.’ Zero plugs in a tape. A fruity voice responding from the speakers…
‘Report on floral sample 267/54, by Jay Ligule, Department of Botany, University of Manchester. May 2nd, 8.04 a.m. Initial findings: A variant of Amaranthus Caudatus. Petals of a deep red colour arranged in a spiral formation, making up long tassels. Nineteen inches at the apex. The flower responds eagerly to testing. Secondary findings, spreading the petals: triple stamen. Clusters of pollen on anther pod. Brightest yellow ever seen. 75 microns. Too large for the species. Should be in the range 20–40. Pollen clinging in groups of six. They seem to be moving. Tertiary findings: pollen grains respond to electric stimuli. They shift away from pain and death. Carbon molecules found there. Some kind of flesh-life? Unknown variant. Notes: is this a joke being played? Never seen anything like it. Request sample sent to Kirkpatrick, Professor of Cytology, University of Glasgow. Shit! Pollen grains have escaped the micro-slide! Where are they? Shit! Pollen is dancing. Other notes: cannot stop sneezing. This is one powerful flower. Never seen anything…shit! Unless my eyes are mistaken, pollen is moving towards me. Jesus! Why do I get all the shit jobs?’
The track ended with the sound of violent sneezing.
Skinner came up with his cameras full of tears and blood, and a sneeze in his metal throat. Even the robos were suffering. What kind of hayfever was this? And why wasn’t I suffering? Usually, every spring was a nightmare for me. But now, whilst Dog and Robo were suffering all around, here was this Shadow woman totally immune. Maybe it wasn’t the usual hayfever strain. And I couldn’t stop thinking about Boda, for some reason; a lost girl in the final dreams of a taxi-dog from the filthy streets. Think about me, Boda…sing that song one last time. Why was that final line calling out to me so strongly?
‘This is no Zombie killing, Clegg,’ I said.
‘What is this, Justice for Zombies Society?’ Zero had pulled in his nerves.
‘We need to let Kracker know,’ I continued. ‘Because if this isn’t a Zombie killing, then what the hell is it?’
‘We can’t allow it to be anything else.’
‘I think that’s too simple, Zero. I think we should keep on looking for this Boda clue.’
‘You think so?’
‘Zombies don’t put roots into the lungs of their victims.’
‘Kracker says wind it up, before another dog-riot starts.’
‘I say we keep on looking. Word from the street is that Boda was Coyote’s girlfriend. You know that most murders are committed by partners?’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘You ever had a girlfriend, Zero?’
‘Kracker has released the body.’
‘What?’
‘The funeral’s tomorrow.’
‘Clegg, isn’t that a little early?’
‘Kracker wants the dogs happy. What would you have me do, Sibyl? Go against the boss?’
‘The master’s voice. Bow wow.’
Clegg gave me his best show of teeth, but I could feel the hurt over his bristling Shadow. A strain of fear.
Maybe even then I knew that this investigation was to be mine alone.
Coyote had lived in a small flat perched above a fish-and-chip shop on Ladybarn Lane, Fallowfield. The shop was called Bingo Rex’s, and a cluster of angry dogboys bayed around the entrance as Zero and I pushed through them, Zero snarling at them with his cop-teeth. Bingo turned out to be a greasy Vaz-dripping dog-husband who led us through a damp living room where a tattered and very human wife was smiling through a bruised face, dipping pieces of fish into a tub of low-grade batter. From there a staircase ascended into darkness, and the musty stench of a high dog. Zero was holding his snout from the smell, like he didn’t want to recognise this victim as one of his own.
‘You okay, Zero?’ I asked.
‘Sure thing, Smokey,’ he answered. ‘Keep climbing.’
It was just gone 2.15 p.m. The papers and the daily feathers had pounced on the story.
Hero-dog Killed by Blooms?
The Killing Fields.
Death by Petals.
Headlines. Worst of all, Gumbo YaYa was on the march, mocking the cops with his easy access to the info-wave. The Flowers of Evil, Gumbo was calling the case.
And so, here we were, a reluctant dogcop and his Shadow, looking for clues. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Zero, torn between the good cop mode, and his loyalty for the master, Jakob Kracker. Zero had told me he was coming along just out of friendship, which I was grateful for, even if I didn’t believe it.
A paw-scratched door opening onto a vista of cleanliness. A recently hoovered carpet. A single bed freshly laundered. A shelf of books. A collection of AirVaz plastic models—all neatly arranged, dangling from the ceiling on pieces of string—and a big, laminated map pinned to the wall.
‘Victims’ rooms,’ Zero said.
‘What about them?’ I asked.
‘Always so lonely.’ He was pulling drawers out from the sideboard. ‘Oh yes!’ he announced. ‘Pornography!’
Zero had a pink feather in his paws. He pushed it into his mouth, and his eyes closed in bliss for a second. He pulled the feather loose, and then said, ‘Very nice. Very human. Not a sign of a bitch in heat. This man has taste.’
‘Sometimes, Zero…’
‘What?’
‘Sometimes I can’t make you out.’
‘Sometimes…’ And Zero Clegg looked at me then, as though to say Sometimes I can’t make myself out. So shut the fuck up.
I got all this bitterness over the Shadow, so I did what I was here for. ‘Let’s search,’ I said.
The two of us going through a taxi-dog’s personal belongings, hoping for a trace, finding nothing but trivia, the collected fare-droppings of a lonely life: biscuits crumbling and model aeroplanes dancing and cold tea solidifying in a china cup. Cheap crime novels folded open beside the single bed. Manchester City Vurtball programmes piled up neat in files. An official supporters’ club diary lying on the dresser. I opened it up, turning to the latest pages, saw the name Boda there, shut the book tight. I slipped it into my pocket, not wanting Zero to see.
‘What you found?’ Zero asked.
‘Nothing yet,’ I lied, not knowing why. Except that Zero was looking for traces of a Zombie pick-up, because that would pacify the dogs of the city, or so Kracker believed. The cops were still hoping to close this case down quickly, with a Zombie at the end of it. But the Zombies were not natural-born killers, they were just desperate survivors. The world in those days was on a constant knife-edge between species. Through the tiny window above Coyote’s bed, I could hear the dog-people barking, their growling voices full of hatred and fear.
‘Jesus, I hate this,’ Zero said. ‘Searching through victims’ things. It’s so depressing.’ He was holding up a clear plastic container.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Nano-fleas.’
‘What?’
‘Robo-fleas. You buy them from the pet shop. Symbiosis, Smokey. The give-and-take scenario. Keeps a doggy clean.’
I shuddered, right down to Shadow-level; the
things that dog-people got up to. Now Zero was twisting off the lid, and I was scared suddenly, irrationally. Please don’t let those monsters out of the jar! What can you do with such feelings?
‘Come look at this, Clegg,’ I said, hoping to distract him. My eyes were scanning the big map on the wall. ‘You seeing what I’m seeing?’
Cop-dog sneezed: ‘Just looks like a mess to me. What you saying?’
‘I’m saying this is where he went.’
The map was pricked with pins, and scribbled over with felt-tip markings. It was a map of Manchester, and all the outlying regions. Limbo was represented by snakes creeping along dirt roads. ‘You see, just here?’ I said, and Zero came in close. ‘This is where Coyote made the pick-up.’ I was pointing to a lonely pin stuck into the map, into the Limbo out beyond Littleborough, north-east of the city, where the map went fuzzy with bad knowledge. Blackstone Edge. Just beneath the pin, written in a doggy hand, yesterday’s date, May 1, and a time, 4.00 a.m. Below that, a featherphone number.
‘I think you should call that number, Clegg,’ I said.
Clegg breathed in loudly, and then sneezed, sending the jar of nano-fleas flying. ‘Jesus-Dung! Look what you made me do now.’ Already he was scratching at his fur.
‘I’m not saying this Boda killed him,’ I said. ‘I’m just saying that she might have. Are we good cops, or not?’
‘You think we’re good cops?’ Zero was itching from the flea-bites.
‘Can you get Columbus to download a picture of Boda for me? If Boda didn’t kill Coyote, she just might know who did. We can at least try.’
‘Kracker says no, Kracker says close it down. That’s it.’
I couldn’t believe that Kracker and Zero Clegg were so mightily against searching for Boda. Surely that was the major route? Was something secret going on, some hidden cop-story? Or else was I just full of bad Shadows? Whatever, I was sure that I didn’t want Zero to see the taxi-dog’s diary.
