by Jeff Noon
‘You’re Columbus?’ Belinda asks.
‘So nice to meet you, Belinda,’ the passenger says, ‘in the flesh after all these years of caressing. That is what it was, you know? Animating your chariot was a loving massage, and I very much regret your mishap. It hurts me to know that you no longer prefer my chosen cab-name. This is only my human shape I’m showing you.’
‘Fuck you, Columbus!’ Belinda screams. ‘You killed my Coyote.’
A cab drive into the sun.
‘This is where I get out, driver,’ Columbus says. ‘Just here is fine.’
Belinda stops the cab beside a wooden gate that leads into a field. Columbus gets out of the cab and then asks Belinda how much he owes her for the journey. Belinda replies with the life of her lover. Columbus asks the driver to follow him into the fields, where maybe a more fulfilling payment can be made.
Belinda makes the journey.
And in a vast expanse of golden corn, Columbus tells Belinda that this fecund world is a projection of reality once the Vurt has taken over the governance. ‘Don’t you feel like helping the passage along?’ Columbus says to Belinda. ‘Doesn’t the new world smell good?’
‘This is Limbo?’ Belinda asks.
‘Not at all,’ the Xcab King answers. ‘This is Manchester in the future. This is where Manchester will live once the Vurt has taken a hold upon the city. Isn’t it very beautiful? No more crime or pollution. No more welfare or poverty.’
‘Yes, it is very beautiful,’ Belinda has to admit. ‘But where are the people?’ The roots of myriad plants are gathering around her ankles, tightening.
‘The people are too busy playing to be seen.’ Columbus plucks a flower from the earth. An orchid. He smoothes back the petals. Nothing can have petals that big, six of them, arranged like an unfolding map. The fat stamen is ripe for love. Columbus sticks his tongue into the flower’s head. The orchid seems to be reacting to his touches, growing firmer, riper. His tongue comes away covered with pollen, which from there floats upwards through the sunlight towards a tiny hole in the sky’s roof. The air is thick and humid, and the globes of pollen give off a glistening light. Belinda can hardly breathe. Her mouth is dry.
‘Columbus, you killed Coyote!’ she screams. And the roots tighten some more.
Columbus ignores her. ‘Isn’t it quite beautiful, this flower?’ he says. ‘Oh, look at those grains dissipate! Do you not see the way that they cover this city with a golden map. Look at them come out of the flower!’
‘I want to kill you.’
‘There’s a new map coming up, driver. A map of pollen. Can you not see it peeling away from the stamen? This is the cock of John Barleycorn. He has been very kind to me. I bet you’ve never heard of him, have you? You ignorant fool. You are not worthy of the tale. For too long now, the map has followed reality. Now reality will follow the map. This is why I set up the Xcabs, with Barleycorn’s help. A way through for the Vurt. Now that journey is almost complete. I’m going to change this city, driver. It will all belong to me.’
The more that Belinda struggles, the more the roots tighten around her ankles. ‘I’m not your fucking driver, Columbus!’ she cries, finding her purpose once again amidst the flowering.
Columbus laughs at her. ‘I must praise you for getting this far, Belinda. But I’m afraid that I cannot allow you to go any further. With the new map, the people of Vurt will find a way through to reality. The stories will come home. It will be very beautiful. What is presently inside the head will shortly be outside the head. The dream! The dream will live! Because what is human life, human flesh? Merely a vessel for the dream. Can you not see the logic of it? Without dreams you humans would still be apes. Please, have some respect for your creations. This is all we are demanding. Is it so very bad? When my new map falls over your saddened streets, you will all get down and worship me. I’m bringing your imagination into flower, and all you do is complain. How pitiful. You make me want to retch. The dream, the dream is good!’
‘Why did you kill Coyote?’ This is all that Belinda can say.
Columbus’s eyes sparkle for a second, and then fall dark. ‘What can I say? Some can make the trip, and others cannot. Some will live, and some will die. Am I to blame for evolution? The road goes to the best.’ A droplet of saliva falls from Columbus’s mouth. It lands on the orchid. ‘No, no…I am being impolite. Despite your transgressions, Belinda, I have great respect for you. You were always one of my favourite drivers. Why, the very fact that you have managed to sneak back onto the map without my knowledge…this is most excellent driving. I must apologize for the death of your friend. This is a pastoral dream, and Persephone can be a little tempestuous at times.’
‘Persephone? Coyote’s passenger…’
‘Persephone is Barleycorn’s wife. She is the bringer of the new map to the city. Perhaps you should see your black-cabber friend as a deliverer. Why, he’s a kind of John the Baptist figure. He will go down in history. That was his role in life. We all have our tasks.’ And then Columbus opens his hands to Belinda. On each palm, a ragged hole. Blood flowing from each wound.
‘Persephone killed Coyote?’ Belinda asks. ‘Is that right?’ The roots of the field are reaching up to bind her hands to her body, tight in vines.
Columbus looks away. Again, ‘Some must die,’ is all he says.
‘Where can I find Persephone?’ Belinda demands.
‘Could you find a seed in an acre of ground?’
‘You arranged Coyote’s death, Columbus, and then tried to blame me for it.’
‘You must understand the urgency of the situation.’ Columbus looks back at Belinda. ‘You must make your decision, Belinda, between the old world and the new; between the dismal and the bright. Which shall it be?’
‘I loved Coyote.’ Belinda has managed to free one of her hands from the roots’ grip.
‘Belinda, I’m asking you to come back to the map. It’s your home. You’re not happy, are you, away from the map? Isn’t real life proving rather a struggle?’
Her free hand digs deep into her shoulder bag. ‘I gave nine years of my life to the Xcabs, Columbus. You betrayed me.’
‘Belinda, I need you.’
Belinda pulls the Colt .45 from her bag and fires without hesitation, repeatedly, until the hammer clicks on empty. Five silver bullets fly from the gun, heading straight towards Columbus.
‘Belinda…’
My head is severed. Falling…
This black world of green revolving as my head tumbles towards the garden. The hole in the sky is sealed, Tom Dove vanishing forever. Even as I fall, I can see the hole in the forest’s floor opening wider to greet me, like a wound welcoming a bullet. Another door. My head was popping as the flowers surrounded me. Thorns pricking into my skin…
Through the wall of Vurt my head tumbled into darkness…
Through a long tangle of roots like a dense underground map of my city.
Into a thick stench of soil, and then from there into a bright yellow light. The sun. The fields of love. The smell of paradise. Grasses and flowers I was stumbling through, my body made out of pure air and a Shadow’s breath. Two people standing in the grass in the distance. I reached into their space, finding Columbus the Cab King and my own daughter, Belinda the wayward child.
Closing in on love.
A cloak of roots, a cloud of pollen. The wet tongue of an orchid. My daughter was there, entirely covered with the vines that were also the roads of the city. One of them was wrapped tightly around her neck. Five bullets were travelling from my daughter in dreamy slow-motion towards the young man with the golden hair, name of Columbus on the Shadow. My floating head was moving to the same funereal rhythm.
‘Mother…’
That word travelling Shadow to Shadow.
‘Please help me. He’s hurting me.’
The five bullets were moving like listless silver.
‘What have we here?’ the Cab King asked. ‘Another visitor. Columbus is popular.’ He
caught one slow bullet in his left hand, another in his right, and then threw both cartridges away. The bullets vanished into the dense blue sky of this new green world, tunnelling their way towards another story. The third bullet missed the cab-controller’s body by some few inches, likewise vanishing into the air. The fourth bullet hit Columbus dead square in the chest, opening a small wound in his skin from which bright orange blood poured. He laughed at the blow and then grimaced, slightly, as though troubled by some minor ailment. The floating pollen grains seemed to waver a little as the bullet struck home, as though they were linked intimately to this controller. ‘You’ll regret this, Belinda.’ He said this slowly, his eyes full of a murderous intent upon my daughter. The fifth and last bullet was still moving towards him, moment by moment. He gathered his strength together and then redirected the bullet through the dreaming air, until it was heading directly towards my face. The bullet moved like a tortoise dream.
‘Columbus, leave her alone!’ This was Belinda’s cry.
Tom Dove’s voice came shivering through from nowhere: ‘Sibyl, where are you? I’m getting wounds to the Vurt all over.’
‘I’m with Columbus, Dove,’ I answered. ‘Centre of the map. Paradiseville. Come and get me.’
‘It’s difficult.’
‘Try it, why don’t you.’
The bullet was three inches from my face. Belinda was pleading with Columbus to save me. ‘She’s nothing to do with this, Columbus. This is between me and you.’ Simultaneously, in the Shadow, she sent this message, ‘Please, Mother. I’m sorry for this.’
Oh, my love…
The bullet was one inch away from me and I was powerless to move. And then I heard the voice of Gumbo YaYa coming through in roots of Shadow towards Belinda. BELINDA, I’VE GOT YOU BACK ON LINE AT LAST. I’M GOING TO PULL YOU OUT OF THERE. HANG ON TIGHT. And Tom Dove caressing at me the same time, with winged fingers…
(The bullet kissing my skin.)
…pulling my head back into reality.
(Bullet still kissing.)
Belinda, you make a harsh landing into Gumbo’s Palace. Blush is yelling at you, waving the feather around. ‘You’ve ruined it,’ she’s screaming. ‘You’ve ruined my Black Mercury! Look what you did to my prize. You creamed my Black!’ Blush is almost weeping with her anger. And now the black feather is totally cream, and totally dead. Creaming is what happens to Vurt feathers when they are used up, and you can no longer dream with them. Belinda wants to tell her that it was Columbus who had creamed the black feather. It was his way of sealing the clue-door. But what can she say?
There is a flower between your fingers, Belinda. A murderous orchid. Something you have carried from the Black Mercury. It has six petals. Five of them silver like bullets, the other rippled with a portion of the Manchester map. You spread apart the petals, to reveal the stamen and the stigma; the cock and the cunt. The stamen is heavy with pollen, and even as you gaze into the swirl, the grains detach themselves from the anther. They drift into the air, explore your nostrils for a second, find no comfort there, and then head straight for Blush. And for the Gumbo. And for Wanita-Wanita. All the creatures of this room. These players scramble for their masks, screaming as they do so.
Belinda, the flower glowing silver and map-like in your hands. Coyote’s death, all for nothing. The murderer still loose. The fever still rampant. A new map of hell. A flower in your serious hand…
The realisation bites home just as Gumbo peeks at you from behind his mask, ‘Jesus Jagger, girl. You brought something back with you! You plucked a flower from Vurt. You know what that means?’
You know. You can’t even remember taking the feather, but you know…something has been taken in return. You reach into your shoulder bag for the A–Z map, finding only peanut wrappers and a woollen hat.
Five silver bullets and a Manchester map you have lost to the Vurt.
Bubbles. Bubbles of froth. Words. Splutterings? My own? Somebody’s? How could I speak, having no head? Where was I anyway? My house in Victoria Park? Darkness. Greenness. Prickles. Bubbles of words. No head. Just fruit. The black garden. Thorns pricking me. My head. No head. Was I dead? Was I being Shadow-searched? Darkness. Then greenness. Two small glow worms flittering. My eyes, they were. No head, but eyes? What was I growing? Fruity? With a bullet’s kiss. Turn those glow worms up to full.
Let me open…
Let me open my eyes.
Zero was leaning over me, his mask respirating his words into bubble-talk. ‘You do any good in there, Sibyl? Any good at all?’ His body was crumpled from the fever, but I could not find the words for him. ‘Anything at all, Smokey?’ he repeated. ‘This a waste of resources?’
I was back now, my hands searching at the creases in my face. Making sure it was there. I was lying on my bed, shaking from the bail-out. ‘I…I don’t know…’ I was desperate to speak, but my voice was Vurt-lagged.
‘Fuck you, Sibyl. You got no news for me? No news about how I’m gonna live forever?’
This is all he wanted? A cure to his ills? Justice had vanished with the bad air he was sucking into his nostrils.
‘Play the feather-tapes,’ I said.
‘Tapes couldn’t follow you through the hole, Jones. Tom Dove couldn’t get his head around it. Get down and worship his skill, it was all he could do to pull you out. It’s up to you, Smokey.’
‘Belinda was in there. My daughter, she was…and Swallow, Brian Swallow, the swapped boy…he was there as well. It’s terrible, Zero…a terrible place. The cabs are in there as well. Columbus was there. There’s a paradise where Manchester used to stand.’
‘What are you going on about? Jesus-Dog! What about a cure? Anything?’
‘The girl…Persephone…she’s the fever.’
Zero sneezed though his mask, a mighty blast that Jewel echoed from his bedroom. ‘What the fuck have you got in that room, Smokey?’ Zero’s voice. ‘Sounds like the whole fucking world is sneezing.’
Later that day, around my dining table. Zero drunk on cheap wine, head slumped. Tom Dove playing with the food I had given him. Myself thinking over and over upon the details of my Vurt journey.
‘It’s a bad story,’ Tom said. ‘I’m fearful. I don’t think we stand a chance.’
Earlier I had shown them my secret. My secret son. My Zombie. Zero had raised some half-hearted indignation, but really they were okay with it. All three of us were so far from the cop-law now, what did one more illegal Zombie count for?
‘It’s a serious Vurt case, Sibyl,’ Tom Dove was now saying. ‘This fever…’ He placed a morsel of meat into his mouth, chewed on it for a while. ‘This fever comes from John Barleycorn. He’s one mean demon.’
‘Tell me about this John Barleycorn,’ I asked. I had already told Zero and Dove everything I could recall from my journey. Zero had retreated into a passive, alcohol-fuelled stupor, Dove into a snot-filled gloom.
‘He’s the snake that bit you in the garden,’ Dove answered. ‘He can show himself in many forms. All of them are evil.’
‘Let me get this straight. He’s just a Vurt creature, right? A character in a story. A story that we, us humans, made up. How can a story harm us?’
‘I don’t think you understand the true nature of Vurt. The stories are alive now, thanks to Miss Hobart.’
‘The inventor of Vurt?’
‘The discoverer of Vurt. Get this right. Vurt was just lying around waiting for us to find it. John Barleycorn is one of the oldest stories, and one of the most popular. One of the best. Because of this he has many names. The green man. Fertility. Swamp Thing. The horned god. Because of his pagan image he was stolen by the Christians, turned into the horned devil, Satan, the serpent, Lucifer. In the old Greek myths, he was called Hades. They banished him to the underworld. Because of this John Barleycorn is angry with us, still.’
‘But he’s just a Vurt figure, right? He’s not real. I can’t take this.’
‘The Vurt wants to become real. It is a living system. It
carries on even when we are not dreaming about it. Miss Hobart made it so. John Barleycorn lives in the feather called Juniper Suction. This is a Heaven Feather. An underworld. A place to store our memories when we die. So we can live beyond death, in the Vurt. Only the dead can visit there.’
‘I managed it.’
‘Yes. For a few moments. The Shadow is the trace of death in life. Also, you’re immune to the flowers. They couldn’t harm you in there, Sibyl, and I think they know that now.’
‘The pollen is Persephone? Barleycorn’s wife? She’s the fever?’
‘That’s right. A goddess called Demeter is Persephone’s mother. She’s a half-and-half creature: spends her life halfway between the real and the dream. My guess is that she wants Persephone to be allowed to play in the real world, Manchester. She wants her daughter to have a world for herself.’
‘Don’t we all?’
‘Demeter wants an empire for her daughter, and the real world is up for grabs, especially since the world has become so fluid. I believe that John Barleycorn has agreed to this exchange, and now he’s using his wife to get through to the real world. He wants a life beyond the story. The new map that Columbus is bringing in, this may be Barleycorn’s entry point.’
‘This is crazy.’
‘Of course it is. But it’s happening. The Vurt is breaking through. If they succeed…’
‘Yes?’
‘The dream will take us over.’
‘This is the vision that Columbus showed to my daughter?’
‘Columbus is also a half-and-half creature. He lives partly in the Vurt, partly in the real world. He’s an edge-walker. The nephew of Barleycorn. Columbus is playing the part of Hermes in the old myth. He’s the messenger, the god of travel. From what you’ve told me, I believe him to be the door through which the fever travels.’
‘The hayfever is a new map?’
‘Each pollen grain is a new road. If this new map succeeds, there will be no freedom in the city. The city will change to suit the map. Reality following the dream, rather than vice versa. We won’t know where we are any more. One moment your best friend will live two minutes away. The next moment, twenty miles away. A map of chaos. The dream will come though this new map. The dream will take us over. We will be like lost children.’
