by Jeff Noon
‘Sure thing, kid,’ Zero wheezed. ‘Just take us to the love nest.’ He had little use for pros, less for Shadows. This combination had bitten. Miasma was just staring into an overgrown patch of the Belle Vue gardens. ‘Shadowslut, you best come clean now,’ demanded Zero. I was finding his mood hard to bear.
‘Zero! She’s scared.’
‘She’s scared! Shit, we’re all scared. Seems like the whole of society’s breaking down, running scared. It’s all getting too watery, Smokey.’ He was looking all around, breathing heavily through his mask, his furry brow matted with sweat, glancing every so often over to the zoo cages. ‘Shit! Who the fuck would pay to see such corpses? It’s not natural.’
I wanted to ask him to take a good look at his own furry face and then talk about natural, but how could I? The pro was crying, the flowers seemed to be creeping towards us through the darkness, and all I could hear from the cages was a soft slithering, like dry leaves rubbing against one another.
Zero was screaming by now. He was screaming at Miasma, at the Zombie cages, at the fleshcops, at me, at the whole world that had taken him this far. The dogcop was really suffering. He was reading off numbers from his wrist counter…799…801…802. Miasma could do nothing but sneeze, even with the mask in place, and keep on pointing towards the flowers. Her Shadow was calling to me, telling me to look, to look to the flowers. See the way the flowers are moving. See the patterns…
Zero was raising his paws in the air, protesting, ‘This is a strike-out, Sibyl. Let’s do this pro for wasting time.’
But I was turning to the flowers now, looking into the spaces between the petals. Seeing shapes there, seeing the body. Miasma had been right; he was indeed a young and lovely roboboy. Fair of face, strong in his plastic bones, soft in his feelings. A fine picture of flesh and info, all wrapped up together in beauty. But none of these elements were left to us. That corpse was just a picture that the petals made, as they drifted in the breeze from the cages, making patterns of colour that corresponded to the information. There was no physical body to examine, only the edges between states. It was the moment of death captured in a floral display. A wreath of memories.
‘The body is here, Zero,’ I said.
‘Can’t see anything, Smokey.’
‘You’re not looking, Zero.’ He went silent then, as his cloggy eyes caught a glimpse of a body’s shape in a certain combination of petals. ‘You making a Shadow-search?’ he asked, voice shaking.
‘There’s nothing much to search.’
But I tried it anyway. Putting my hands into the flowers. They seemed to grip, like desire. And when my mind descended into the Shadow of blooms, all I got back was the old tale of green; old in the sense that I felt by this time that I was keying into some kind of myth. The explosion of flowers I had seen in Coyote’s last thoughts. The Zombie’s. Now the roboboy’s. I had to make a pull-out.
‘Smokey?’ Zero’s voice came to my ears as I wilted from the greenness. ‘What’s going on here, Smokey?’
But I really didn’t have time for him, despite the fact that Kracker had now, effectively, made me the dogcop’s boss. Maybe this reversal of power was the source of his evident discomfort? But the way that Zero had lied about the Boda clues previously. How could I trust him? How could I trust Kracker? How could I trust anyone?
That sneezing girl needs help, Zero. I sent this message over the Shadow straight to his mind, not wanting to break the moment with speech. And may I suggest you start digging up the drifting patch?
‘You know I hate it when you do that smoking shit, Sibyl,’ Zero barked at me. ‘Talk to me in words.’ But I guess the message got through anyway, because the next second I could hear him screaming at those Gorton cops to bring some lights in, and to get that Shadowpro to hospital, and to start digging. ‘What the fuck is up with you? Give me that spade! Shit!’ He was taking his frustration out on his underlings, the human colleagues. Then he sneezed through his mask, again and again, and I knew this fever was getting bad, and going to get much, much worse. ‘Jesus-Dog!’ Zero’s voice was crackling. ‘The pollen count has reached 820, Sibyl.’
The Gorton cops found only the plastic parts of D-Frag, buried deep in the soil beneath his floating portrait. Wrapped tight by suckers they were, those plastic parts. The flesh had become flower. I learned that night that a girl of air and grass was out there in the city, name of Persephone. That our real killer was a young girl, a kid; something entirely different again. A new kind of species. I would have to issue a city-wide alert that night.
My eyes were finding dark shapes in the interior of the cages. Those Half-alivers were transformed by the flowers. The young girl…she must have reached in to them, spreading her powers. The Zombies were dancing and blooming around the shit and the dust, flowers sprouting from their tough skins, petals falling from their mouths. It was a fine show of fauna and flora, all mixed into one being.
New species.
I could sense Zero’s fear-ridden Shadow creeping up behind me. A strange blend of dog-smoke it was: fear of the Zombies, for sure, but more than that, a fear of me. A fear of the case. There were pitch-black swirls in his deepest Shadow, where all of his secrets were kept in cages. ‘What you doing, Jones?’ he asked.
‘Zombie-watching.’
‘One hell of a hobby.’ He was trying his best to keep up the old Z. Clegg hard-core persona, but what a strain it was on his dribbling Shadow. ‘You got anything on the Boda case yet?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You like to tell me about it?’
‘Do you like Vurtball, Clegg?’
‘Fucking hate it.’
‘That’s a shame. I’m taking you to tomorrow night’s big match.’
‘This to do with finding Boda? Shit—’ Another sneeze, so loud and violent that the Zombies rushed at the bars, fluttering petal-covered limbs at us.
‘Bless you, Clegg.’
‘Thank you. I’m sorry for lying to you.’
‘You’ve got a real heavy Shadow these days, dogcop.’
‘I’m suffering, Sibyl. I really am. So many reasons, I can’t begin to tell you.’
‘I know. You’re upset about Kracker giving me the Boda job.’
‘Well, yes, that hurts. I was only following orders, Sib. It really killed me when I learnt that she was your daughter. I didn’t know what to do.’
I reached out my hand and stroked at the fur on his arm. Stroked? Like you do to a dog? Well yes, I guess so. But Zero seemed happy with it, for a moment. And then he pulled away from me. His Shadow diminishing as he walked slowly through the jungle of flowers.
Miasma died that night, the first victim of the hayfever. The first victim not to have been killed by the killer, but by the things the killer had left behind: the grains of pollen. I knew then that the fever and the murderer were sisters. Flowers and death. The case turning on that moment…
Everywhere I looked, new species were springing up. Maybe the pundits were right; the world was becoming more fluid.
Later that night, I held Jewel close to me. Non-Viable Lifeform No. 57,261. How I loved him. His sneezing breath, his streaming eyes. The way he looked at me, full of longing. Jewel wanted nothing more than life. It was the one thing that nobody could give him. Not even I, his mother, could grant that. He would be forever on the borderline. Totally illegal. If Kracker ever found out that I was harbouring him, my career would explode. Zombies were not allowed inside the city’s circle. Jewel was my black secret.
But this was my son and I was keeping him. Hadn’t he fought his way through Limbo to get back to me? Didn’t that add up to something? Wasn’t he dying from the fever? Wasn’t he on the list of future victims?
Let them try and take Jewel away from me. Cops or flowers, they would feel my hands of smoke upon their necks.
Thursday
4 May
The sun was heating up the pitch as the crowd waited for kick off. An evening match with no need for floodlights. The brass band was pla
ying homage to the King. This is the land that I love, and here I’ll stay…until my dying day. Golden music shimmering over the manicured grass, which was so finely genetically controlled, it was the green of ripe apples, so tangy you could taste the pitch on the roof of your mouth. Even so, flowers were growing through the grass, and the whine of the pitch-cutting machines was another song on that day, their blades clogged up with thick stems.
Supporters all around me, plying their blue-and-white feathers with Vaz, hoping for a good game. The feathers had numbers on them, each corresponding to a player.
Interactive Vurtball.
Where you can play the game inside your chosen player. The left back defender is the cheapest feather; the centre forward the dearest. But I was just Sibyl Jones, only a spectator. Not of the match but the crowd. Just a watcher. And anyway, with the hayfever growing wild, the playing feathers kept getting sneezed into the air.
The semi-final of the Vaz International Golden Feather Cup. Thursday. Second leg. Derby match, grudge match. Manchester United were the opponents, and they had won the first leg 2–1. All around the Manchester City stadium adverts for Vaz, that universal lubricator, were sliding greasily from the hoardings. Giant, inflatable red and white feathers were floating above the opposite stand. The howling of supporter-dogs coming from the Kennel Lane seats.
I was staked out at pitch level, watching the people make their way to their seats. I had with me a pair of binoculars and a walkie-talkie. Zero Clegg was in place at the entrance gate that Belinda would have to use if she came to the match. Each ticket stated upon it the entrance to be used. Clegg had protested at having to be seen with a walkie-talkie. He was used to the feathers, and anything outmoded embarrassed him. I called him up now, asked how it was looking? ‘No sign as yet, Smokey Jones. I don’t know what I’m looking for.’
‘Keep looking.’ I closed off the communication and trained my binoculars on the four vacant seats I had identified. Earlier I had spoken to the stadium’s box office and they had told me that a certain Coyote Dog had purchased four adjacent seats for the match, some ten days previously. Okay, we know one was for himself—I had found it in his diary—another was for Boda/Belinda. Who were the other two for? Well, I would soon find out. But it was Belinda’s ticket, of course, that I was interested in. Would she turn up? I had tried to place myself into her feelings. If she really loved the Coyote, maybe she would turn up. But I had been wrong already about the funeral. After all, what was I looking for? Imagine, my own daughter, and I didn’t know what I was looking for.
A young woman makes her way into one of the seats. My fingers work the focus until I have the woman’s face in my sights. Is that her? That face beneath a fringe of red hair? No, the woman passes along all four seats to sit down next to a young dogboy.
I was getting nervous. I let the binoculars range over the adjacent seats and aisles. Every young woman I see leaps into focus. I’m seeing parts of my daughter in all of them. One in particular gets my attention. The right age and bone structure. A crimson peaked cap on long brown hair. The wrong seat, of course, but who knows what Belinda has planned? I touch the zoom button. The face floating in front of my eyes now, an expression of pain upon its fragile beauty. No. The Shadow is empty in that woman. I’m moving the sight back to Coyote’s seats. A woman is sitting in the one on the end right.
Zoom…
It’s her. It’s my daughter. Her Shadow. She’s wearing a wig. She looks like some kind of cowgirl, but it’s her. The image shaking as my hands tremble around the cool ceramic of the binoculars.
Boda’s sitting tight to the seat that Coyote had bought for her, not knowing why, and a fine spray of snot falling on her blond Country Joe wig. Her head-map is getting sweaty under the covering, but Boda feels at home in the new outfit. A woman’s clothes. What started out as a disguise ends up like a uniform. This is her first partaking of femininity. She’s a new being, a new road back to her childhood. The sun is torturing. Flowers are struggling through tiny cracks in the concrete stand, brushing against her shoes. Blue-and-white feathers floating down. Clouds of pollen in the air. Boda can hardly see the pitch through it all: the feathers and the golden dust and the fanfare of snot. She has spent the night hidden in a cheap bed-and-breakfast on the Wilmslow Road, Fallowfield. What is she doing here?
Somebody I want you to meet.
Coyote’s lost words coming back to her. The crowd pushing in strong from all sides, songs of joy in the face of imminent defeat, but the neighbouring seat still empty. And the one next to that as well. And the one next to that. Three empty seats. A vacuum in the panting. Why on earth have I come here, she is thinking. Because Coyote bought me the ticket, of course. I want to find out everything about him. Only then will I get a handle on why he was killed. But don’t I hate him for not telling me the story of his wife and puppygirl? Don’t I just? And anyway…haven’t I lost that liar for good? And Roberman and my job and the squeezing map of Manchester, along with him? I’ve maybe totally blown my road to comfort.
Good. Let comfort rot.
Boda is pleased with her new-found image of cowgirl strength, but still, despite all that, here Boda is. She’s waiting. Waiting for the players. Here they come. Pollen masks pulled tight over their faces. Their shirts sparkling with Vazverts. The sun just dripping on to the pitch. The grass is thickened with flowers. A whistle blows…
Kick off.
Vurtball.
The supporters screaming through their feathers, working their players towards a goal. Sneezing tactics.
Two people pushing through the crowd towards Boda. A human girl and a dog-girl.
Two people push through the crowd towards Belinda. I make an adjustment to the focus. They look like a young human girl and an even younger dog-girl. I’ve seen that puppygirl before. Where? Of course. Coyote’s funeral. This was Coyote’s daughter. Karletta was her name. The child of Twinkle and Coyote. She looks as sweet as before to my motherly eyes. And again, the stupid thought…Why couldn’t I have had a daughter like that? So I move the viewing field back on to Belinda. She looks scared. Why is that?
The human girl has corkscrew hair that is braided here and there with brilliant feathers of blue, yellow and scarlet. Each of these feathers gives Boda a bad feeling; feathery waves coming into her Shadow. She wants to vacate her seat, the fear is so bad. But no, the decision has been made. Let us sweat this out. The two newcomers sit themselves down next to Belinda.
Somebody I want you to meet.
Is this whom Coyote meant? Is one of these girls Coyote’s daughter?
Jesus!
Too much to take.
United score in the ninth minute. A collective groan from the followers. Now City need three goals to qualify. Some kind of impossible task. The human girl and the bitch-child are hypnotised by the play. She’s not really a bitch, that child, just some fine whiskers sprouting from her cheeks, that’s all. I’m watching all this through the sights from the touchline, thinking about when I should make my move, when I should call in Zero. To make an arrest now, in the middle of that sneezing crowd, would be a real riot-maker. So then, let them play for a while. I push my Shadow into my daughter, listening over the distance…
Boda thinks back to what she had drawn from Roberman’s mind at the canal side. Was this puppy really Coyote’s kid? So who’s the girl sitting next to the puppy? Maybe Coyote had another child? Christ knows what he had; Boda can’t trust him any more. Even when he’s dead.
City pull one back.
The crowd going wild. Feathers flying from their mouths.
The girldog has a feather lodged in her lips. The pure girl has no feather at all, but still her eyes are glazed over, like she’s living inside of someone else, some smart player on the field. And then Boda’s soul is shrivelling at the nearness of this girl. She wants to curl up at the very idea. Boda gets the message; this seemingly human girl is really a Vurt-girl. A juiced-up human with direct plugs to the Vurt world. This girl doesn’
t need feathers; she can just access the dream, no need for payment. And this is your enemy, Boda; this is your curse. The Unbeknownst cannot abide the Dreamers. Your genes are fighting a loser’s battle, just like the blue-and-white team down there on the cluttered pitch. Your fear is strong, Boda, but nothing like your mother’s, simply because your mother is more deeply into the clutch of death.
Believe me on this, my daughter.
Boda is shrinking back from the girl’s featherness.
United score another. 4–2. No hope for the final. The bluest feathers falling into despair, and the half-time whistle blowing. Brass band playing.
Where to go from here? Boda’s mind is turning.
Maybe talk to this Vurt-girl?
‘You know Coyote?’ Boda asks. It takes a half-time lifetime to say.
The girl just looks at her, eyes still sprinkled with passes and fouls from the first half just gone. ‘Yeah, I knew him,’ she answers.
‘Like how?’
What do you expect from this talk, Boda? Some kind of relief?
‘Crazy dogboy, Coyote,’ the girl says.
‘Wasn’t he just?’ Boda says, hoping for a come-back. Nothing does come back, so she asks of the girl, ‘Are you related?’
‘No, just a friend,’ the reply. ‘Karletta’s related.’ The girl is stroking the bitchgirl. ‘Karletta’s his daughter.’
‘Really?’ Boda’s Shadow is a dried-up husk, from being that close to Vurtness. Is this all she has travelled into town for? A meeting with two kids, one made from feathers, the other from dog-flesh? She had expected some of Coyote’s underground friends to be here, some rebel warriors who could possibly lead her towards Columbus.
‘You’re a Dodo, aren’t you?’ the girl says. ‘I can feel the missing parts where the feathers should go.’
