Pollen

by Jeff Noon

  ‘I don’t know…the new world looked very beautiful.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Belinda shot Columbus. She wounded him. The pollen cloud dispersed a little.’

  ‘Without Columbus the grains would not know where to travel.’

  ‘So if we kill Columbus…’

  ‘Yes, that’s possible. But he will now be on his mettle. He’ll put some mighty defences in place. He’ll cream the Black Mercury feather that your daughter used to find him, and then hide himself in the remotest part of the map. Columbus is very elusive; he who makes the map knows best where to hide.’

  ‘Kracker?’

  ‘He’s the weak link. I suspect he’s made some kind of deal with Columbus. Kracker is power-mad, remember, and sex-mad. He’s got too much Casanova inside of him. I think the chief has overshot his mark and he knows it. His job was to guide Persephone into the city, keep her safe. And to take out all witnesses. This is why he wanted you and Belinda taken out. You knew too much. This is why he’s now desperate to blame you and Clegg for misconduct. Kracker has failed, and he’s fearful of Persephone getting back at him.’

  ‘Where do you think Persephone is?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somewhere safe. Kracker would make sure of that.’

  ‘I can’t follow this, Tom. It’s all too much. The myth is breaking through? What sense does it make?’

  ‘Vurt people don’t talk about sense. They’re dream creatures, remember? They talk about movement. It’s action over words.’

  ‘They want to kill my daughter…oh God!’

  ‘She’s become the main threat to them. Especially now she’s broken through to the new map.’

  ‘We have to find her, Dove…Clegg…you listening? We have to find Belinda before the Vurt creatures do. We have to find out where Gumbo YaYa’s keeping her.’

  Clegg raised his head at last and looked at me with bleary eyes. ‘I don’t think I can carry on with this, Smokey. I’m getting mighty sick.’

  ‘Zero, you can do anything now. Kracker’s no longer in control.’ Clegg fell silent as I said this. His eyes dropped to the wine glass in front of him.

  In those moments I saw all the failure of his last few days come home to him. He had spent his life following the master, even to the point of almost killing innocent people. His subsequent attempt to go against Kracker’s back, only to result in one more failure, had really taken away his spirit. And now that he was alone, Zero no longer knew how to act.

  ‘What about your investigations into Gumbo?’ I asked him. ‘Didn’t you get anything?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Oh come on! Aren’t you a cop any more?’

  ‘Was I ever?’

  ‘Zero?’

  ‘Okay; okay. I applied for special dispensation.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘To go into Strangeways.’

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘You remember Benny Veil?’

  ‘Remind me.’

  ‘He was floated into Strangeways two years ago, on a charge of murder. Four life sentences, to run consecutively. We always knew that Benny was a former associate of the Gumbo YaYa, but he had this heavy condom-veil in place all through the trial. We put on all the legal pressure we could muster for a truth-feather trip, but you know what the Authorities are like about that torture?’

  ‘Nothing, huh?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘But now you’re hoping to go back in?’

  ‘Not any more. I talked to the Authorities.’

  ‘No response?’

  ‘Less than that.’

  Once a person was feathered into a Strangeways dream, there was no access allowed to the imprisoned mind. It was a big civil liberties case from a few years before; given that Vurt prisons were only set up to relieve overcrowding and violence, which was stated to be a direct result of Government underfunding, it was decreed that all prisoners were to be allowed a peaceful, even pleasant stay in His Majesty’s Vurt. ‘No dream cruel or unusual,’ ran the statute, ‘shall be allowed to roam a prisoner’s imagination during his sentence of sleep.’ It was further decreed that no access was to be allowed into a prisoner’s mind during this sentence, ‘even for the purposes of law-enforcement or national security.’

  ‘There’s no way through,’ Zero said. ‘We’d have to break into Strangeways.’

  Moments passed, none of us speaking.

  Zero came up from his wine. ‘What chance do we have, Tom?’ he drawled. ‘How can we stop this fever? This new map?’

  ‘I don’t think we can. We would have to visit John Barleycorn.’

  ‘How would we do that?’ I asked.

  ‘We can’t. He’s got strong locks on Juniper Suction. You have to die to go into a Heaven Feather, fully. It’s like the old Mummer plays, Sibyl. Like Saint George of England. You have to die, and then be reborn inside the Vurt.’

  ‘You’re telling us we’ve failed?’ Zero asked.

  ‘More than that. I fear for Manchester, for the world. For reality. I fear that reality is doomed.’

  ‘What?’ Zero’s voice.

  ‘I can’t see a way in. The door is closed.’

  At 4.00 p.m. we got a call from Jay Ligule over at Manchester University. He had something that we might like to see. I was up for it, so was Tom Dove. Zero, however, said he had more important matters to settle.

  So it was Tom and I who drove over to meet Ligule at the University. Vurt and Shadow. The journey was easy; the people had now left the streets once again, after the failure of Gumbo and Belinda to destroy the source of the fever. Ligule was agitated. He paced back and forth in the botany department, totally masked-up. Strangely twisted blooms sprouted all around his feet.

  ‘What have you found?’ I asked.

  ‘Let me take you on a journey.’

  My second flight that day, this time in a helicopter that belonged to the department. Its cockpit was filled with electrical equipment. Ligule was the pilot. Tom and I were pressed tight in the passenger seat. His Vurt-presence no longer bothered me as we rose above the city. Maybe I’d been cured of something.

  ‘The best way to study global plant change is to get above the jungle,’ Ligule was saying. ‘We use this equipment to monitor the progress of species. Take a look down there. What do you see?’

  I looked over the copter’s lip. The city of Manchester was laid out below me in patchwork. The clouds of pollen were now clearly visible as they raced through moments of change. ‘It looks like chaos,’ I said.

  Ligule laughed. ‘So it should. Pollen is dispersed by the wind, and the wind, of course, is a chaotic system. Take a closer look.’ He handed Tom and me pairs of goggles, which were plugged into the copter’s analysis banks. Through these glasses the pollen solidified into strict patterns of movement.

  ‘Jesus-Vurt!’ Tom breathed.

  ‘Exactly,’ Ligule said. ‘This new pollen isn’t governed by the wind.’

  Through the goggles I could plainly see that the clouds of golden pollen were following very precise lines, each line corresponding to a Mancunian road.

  Here was the new map unfolding itself.

  At 4.37 that same afternoon, Zero Clegg reported back at the cop station. He walked into Kracker’s office without knocking, handed in his resignation, without saying a single word to his former master. By 4.40 he was back outside, walking across the car-park to his vehicle. The duty-officer would later recall how slowly the famous dogcop was moving, compared to his usual swagger. He put it down to the effects of the fever.

  Just before Clegg got into his car, the duty-officer saw him take off his mask.

  5.30 p.m. I was back in my flat, alone. Ligule had brought us back down to earth, and Tom had gone home from there. There wasn’t much we could say to each other. This case was well beyond our means.

  Another ten Dodos had been killed by vigilantes in the last day or so.

  I attended to Jewel as best I could, drank some more wine, and then co
llapsed into a deep sleep on the lounger. I had dreams then, filled with green. No, not dreams as such, because how can I do them? It was the last vestiges of my flight into Vurt wearing off. I could not stop my Shadow from revisiting those hot, wet, dark climes. My daughter was trapped in the forest; thick, snake-like tendrils wrapping themselves around her. I could do nothing to save her. Patterns of pollen grains moved over the dream, images I had captured from Ligule’s specimens and from the flight over the city. A bell was clanging Belinda’s death knell in the darkness. It was my phone ringing, calling me from slumber. The clock moved into and out of my focus. Jewel was calling from his room. The clock also was calling, a blurry-eyed 7.42. Was this still the same Saturday? What else could happen during one day? I picked up the telephone. It was Dove’s voice…

  ‘Clegg is down.’

  Jesus!

  Over to Manchester Royal Infirmary. Fiery Comet burning the roads into smoke, not even wanting to think about it.

  Zero was lying in a neat bed, his mouth covered by an oxygen mask. He looked so beautiful, just sleeping, his eyes totally gone from this world. A doctor and a vet were in attendance.

  ‘What are you doing for him?’ I demanded of them both.

  They could only remain silent.

  ‘Sibyl…’

  Dove was trying to talk to me. He looked like cop-shit.

  ‘What went wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘He took his mask off.’

  ‘And…’

  ‘The street-dogs got him.’

  Oh shit. Total shit. Why did he have to go out like that? This was Zero Clegg. He was the best dogcop ever. Okay, so the street-dogs hated him for the treachery. Did they have to take it this far?

  ‘He reported into the station at 4.37,’ Dove said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘He said he was going home to his kennel.’

  ‘Zero wouldn’t call his home a kennel.’

  ‘Sibyl, Clegg handed in his resignation.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just before he left, he ripped his mask off.’

  ‘Nobody did anything?’

  ‘Sibyl…what could they do? It’s not a crime to take a pollen mask off.’

  ‘It should be.’

  ‘We found him at seven o’clock. Somebody rang in. Unknown caller. What could we do, Sibyl? He was asking for it.’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  ‘Jones!’

  ‘You let him get caught.’

  ‘We did not. He chose to get caught. He headed straight for Bottletown. He knew where the street-dogs were living. Who knew more than Clegg? Nobody. We think he waited for a pack to take him. You know how much they hate him. They got him down on the ground. They sneezed into his nostrils. We think he wanted to die.’

  ‘He’s not dead yet,’ I answered, turning to Zero’s bed.

  He was just lying there, breathing in second-hand air.

  ‘Skinner did a lung pump, Sibyl,’ Dove said. ‘They’ve tried everything.’

  I looked over to where the doctor and the vet were standing. And Skinner there as well, his robotic grimace playing on me. ‘You did fuck all, Dove,’ I said. ‘You let this happen.’

  ‘Officer Jones…’

  I was about to tell Dove all the bad things, but then a small sound from the bed made me bend down low over Zero.

  ‘Smokey…’ His low growl.

  ‘That’s me,’ I answered. ‘Smokey’s here.’

  But his voice and his bark and his fur and his eyes, they had all drifted off into nothingness.

  No! Please, no…

  He collapsed in my arms.

  And then I was going deep, Shadow-searching. Desperate and swimming, down into Zero’s final thoughts, through layers of fur and bone, molecules and genes, hoping for consolation.

  Searching…

  Shadow-falling.

  …Floating inside a dog’s body…down here…this far down…Zero is all dog…total dog…a world of growling fur…a meadow of fur…I am stepping through the meadow…up ahead, a dog is digging the ground up…his front paws working like blades…I come up close to him, calling his name…Zero looks up at me…

  ‘Smokey? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I thought you’d like to talk, Zero.’

  Zero goes back to his digging, ignoring me…no trace of the human in him now…just the old voice inside the body of a dog…‘Where is it? I buried it here, somewhere…’

  He gives up on the hole…moves to the side…starts digging again…

  ‘What have you got to tell me, Zero?’

  ‘Where is it? Where?’

  ‘What’re you after, Zero?’

  ‘My bone. I buried it here…years ago…where is it? I can’t find it any more.’

  ‘Zero?’

  ‘Leave me alone. Let me find it.’

  ‘You’re dying, Zero.’

  He gives up on the latest hole…moves over…starts again…digging…and then stops…he looks up at me…‘What’s that, Smokey?’

  How can I do this to him? My eyes are blurred.

  ‘You’re dying, Zero. I’m doing a Shadow-search. These are your last moments…’

  ‘My…last…my last moments?’ His eyes are darting from me, to the meadow of fur, to the places he has already dug, to the places he will dig, and then back to me. ‘That’s not true. I’m looking for my buried bone. Where is it?’ He starts digging again. ‘Let me find it.’

  ‘Who did this?’

  He looks up at me.

  ‘We haven’t got much time, Zero.’

  ‘That’s not my name,’ he answers.

  ‘Okay. Zulu.’

  He barks a laugh at me, and then his voice drifts into emptiness. His eyes locked on to mine. I could see that old Zero magic in there, hidden behind deep layers of dog.

  ‘Is it really all over, Smokey?’

  ‘Very nearly.’

  ‘That’s sad, I guess.’

  ‘You want to tell me who attacked you?’

  ‘The pack was filled with cop-hatred. But it wasn’t their fault.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was my fault. I wanted it to happen. Now, where was that bone I buried? It’s around here somewhere.’ His eyes stretched out over the meadow of fur. ‘Oh well, I guess I’ll never find it now…’

  ‘I guess not, Z. Clegg. Why did you do it? You wanna tell me?’

  ‘It was for you, Jones. And for Dove and Belinda, and the whole damn crew of Manchester. I thought I was on a good ride back there. Thought I had the answer…’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was something that Dove had said, about having to die to visit the Heaven Feather. So I just took off the mask, headed over to Bottletown, where I knew a good dealer. No names, okay? He was one of my pigeons. He sold me a copy of Juniper Suction. I paid a fortune for it. I came out of the house, stuck the feather in my mouth, dog-throat deep. Nearby a pack of boy-canines were tormenting my cop-car. I went over to them, pretended to arrest them, put up some struggle. You know me, Jones, I wanted to die in action.’

  ‘It didn’t work?’

  ‘It worked enough for me to know that Juniper Suction doesn’t want me there. I couldn’t even kill myself, not properly. Shit, I’m sorry, Sib. I’m sorry…’

  ‘It’s okay, Zulu. Really. I’ll get you back, I promise…’

  ‘I feel tired, all of a sudden. I feel like I want to lie down in the meadow for a while. That okay with you, Smokey?’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ I made a deep search of his soul, found the bone resting deep under layers, and the exact place where he’d buried it. ‘The bone’s over there, Clegg.’ I pointed, and Clegg started to dig in that place, and he came up with a big, juicy bone in his paws, and he was smiling again.

  ‘I’ve found it, Smokey! I’ve found the bone!’

  ‘Well done, Clegg. You want to eat it now?’

  He clamps his jaws around the bone, breaking it open for the jelly within with his sharpened teeth. He sucks deep of
the marrow, it smears across his lips. I see the glint coming back to his eyes. I tell him I’m going back to the surface now, but I’ll be waiting for him up there.

  ‘Smokey, I love you,’ he says.

  He kisses me then, bone-jelly smeared all over my lips, and it sends shivers through me.

  ‘If I ever get out of here alive, Smokey, I’ll maybe be wanting to marry you.’

  Of course I ran from the feeling.

  Shadow-rising.

  Leaving the dogman to wander.

  But still, after leaving that field of buried bones and finding myself back in the hospital ward, I can’t help carrying the message back with me. Was that a message of love from Zero?

  What was the world coming to?

  I told the doctors to keep the mask on Clegg, and to keep a good eye on him. He remained in his coma and Dove wanted to know what was happening. I told him that Dogcop Zulu Clegg was fighting for his life.

  Then I walked out of that ward, down corridors into dark skies, praying for the good bones of Zero, and all who give up their life for a dream. The dream of others. The good dream of maybe giving up your everything for the sake of friends and strangers.

  Oh shit. I think Clegg asked me to marry him back there in the Shadow.

  The night air was graphed with pollen, each grain following a secret road through the city. The drifting lines were blurred by the tears in my eyes. Zero Clegg, you stupid man. Why did you leave it so late?

  The cop station. Saturday. Midnight. A lone cop punching the security code on the door that leads to the morgue. As always he feels a new lease of blood coming into his penis, as he senses the rich emanation coming from the bodies stored in there. He tries hard not to want it. He’d taken his solitary pleasure there last night and that had been an overwhelming experience, followed by a severe bout of physical guilt. And now the cab-riding Shadowbitch calling herself Belinda had worked her way into the map. She had found out about Columbus. She had told the secret to Gumbo YaYa, and that hippy bastard was broadcasting it to the whole of the city. And this cop has been so careful. Covering his traces. Oh shit, what is he going to do? Especially when his new mistress finds out. There were no secrets to be kept from the girl of flowers. If only he hadn’t made this deal. Still, the need was strong, and the blood was flowing towards his penis already.