by Jeff Noon
The morgue door slides open with a whisper of breath.
The cop steps into the room.
Robo-Skinner is working on the body of a new fever victim. His camera eyes whirl up at the sound of the door opening. ‘Chief Kracker, what are you doing here?’
‘I…I was just…’ Kracker doesn’t know what to say. Skinner’s presence is an irritant to his lust-driven system.
‘Yes?’ Skinner asks.
‘I was following up some clues about the fever.’
‘Same here. This boy is the latest to go down.’ Skinner pushes a scalpel through firm flesh. ‘There are some fascinating anomalies.’
‘Aren’t there just?’
‘Look at this, Kracker. The pollen grains are growing in his testicles. Come closer, take a look.’
Kracker comes close to the slab. He picks up a scalpel from the steel tray.
‘The pollen is fusing with his sperm,’ Skinner says. ‘It’s like some new—’
Kracker jabs the scalpel into Skinner’s plastic stomach. Lenses whir like crazy, like a camera dying from lack of light.
‘Kracker? What are you…’ Skinner’s voice slows to a metallic drawl.
Kracker moves the blade back and forth until wires and robo-juice are spilling out into the open. He cuts through the undergrowth until he reaches deep enough to sever Skinner’s nerve centre.
‘I never did like you, Skinner,’ says Kracker. ‘Fucking bunch of plastic.’
Skinner falls to the floor beside the slab, a tumble of flesh and equipment.
Kracker wipes the scalpel clean on his trousers and then lets his eyes move over to the locked cabinet, number 257, the one that contains his mistress. He feels an almighty urge to join his lust to hers, to make the same pleasure as last night. Every night it is the same: the guilt, the pain, and then the giving in to sick desire.
Already Skinner is forgotten.
Pollen is drifting through the rotten air of the morgue.
The cop sneezes then, and curses the god he had bargained with. Columbus had promised him immunity. All the time his watery eyes are gazing towards the cabinet. He can feel the heat coming from the soil in there. For one last sad time he spits denial at the urge, and then puts his hand on the cabinet door, punching the security combination that only he knows. Fat bees are buzzing around the morgue, eager for what this cop can reveal. This is nothing to do with me, he says to himself, as he watches the cabinet slide open. He sneezes one more time. This is just nature calling. How can I deny nature her blessing?
Petals opening.
Kracker looks down at the young girl who is sleeping there in a bed of soil…
Petals opening. Her name is Persephone. Her body is buried underneath layers of dark earth. Only her face is visible, breaking through the top soil. Flowers are growing out of her mouth, her nostrils; every soft curve of her naked flesh is a garden. She is planted in rich soil but really her body is everywhere amongst the vegetation of Manchester. She is the elegant arrangement of roses in Sibyl Jones’s Victoria Park garden. She is the succulent orchid that Belinda has brought back from her home world. She is journeying through the lichen that clings to the walls of Gumbo YaYa’s secret palace. She is at home in the flowers that cling to Coyote’s gravestone, which are fed by death even whilst they make some trembling attempt at life. Her whole consciousness is at one with the greenery of the city; she has made for herself a map of flowers, and she is every street, every root, every road and every branch of this tangled map. Really, she should be at her happiest now. She is free from her mother and her husband. Persephone is adrift from the tug of the feathery seasons at last. So far she has travelled from her own world, to Manchester, to Alexandra Park, and from there to this dark, wet home. And from this nurtured darkness she has established herself and burst like a floral fire through all the ways of the green. But this new world only fills her with the floral blues. At the edges of her map of leaves she can feel a disease gaining hold. A rottenness at the outskirts like the mildew is setting in. This world is turning against her. No, not the world, nature is turning. Ordinary nature fighting back. Reality. She is dying here, slowly dying by degrees. Now her darkened world is opening. Now she feels the gaze of her lover upon her flesh. Persephone lets her petals open to this visitor. She puts on a good show of petals.
The way the heat comes to her body, the way she caresses her own petals, fingers sticky with sap. The way the petals are ruby red, glistening with dew. The precise way in which the petals interlock, six in number. Child Persephone lets one of them float free from the flower head. She sends it through the air towards her mouth. The petal rests on her long purple tongue for a second. Then her sweet, wet mouth closes over it. She can feel her lover watching her.
A young girl eating the petals of a shining flower.
She feels like the sun is sliding down, inside her throat. Her fingers are reaching down between her legs to where the lips are parted below her soft belly, like petals, and the dew has formed on them. The way her lips are wet with seed, and the way her lover gazes at the wetness there.
Petals opening and closing…
Now Persephone’s slippery tongue is licking at a thick juicy stamen. Specks of gold drifting in the air of the morgue. Her long tongue comes up, the tip coated with pollen, and keeps rising until it dabs at the spot between her eyes, and then away.
Eyes of green flowers.
The tongue leaves a stain of yellow on her forehead which, like the eating of pomegranate seeds, is the sign of marriage. Her husband, John Barleycorn, had given her pomegranate seeds to swallow, nine in number. ‘These seeds bind you to me,’ he had said. ‘Once and forever.’ He had spoken to her in a dark English, and he could be very angry with her sometimes, if she didn’t follow the rules closely enough. But still, despite the anger and the fear, she felt that she loved her husband more than her mother, which was only proper.
She is only eleven years old now, lying in Kracker’s bed of soil, but sometimes she feels that she is ancient, an old woman growing older, a willing participant in many lives, many cycles. Planted as she is in the earth of Manchester, tuning into all the flowers of the city, gathering messages of love from all the petals and buds, her legs break through the top soil, so they can stretch apart. Her lips are ready for the insects again. Both lips, the upper and the lower, smeared with nectar. The bees are crawling all over her body, sick and slow-paced from the scent. Now they are lapping their tongues into her crevices, and gathering pollen on their limbs from her vulva of petals. They tickle. They tickle and play, sucking. Feeding. She is dizzy from their wanderings, over her skin, over her sex. Persephone is drifting through the feelings, making a meal of the gathering; nectar for pollen, pollen for nectar. All of these sweet exchanges, wet with a young girl’s juices.
Let them buzz and fly, away into the map of flowers.
Having supped at the root, eaten of the berries, sucked at the stalk…she was ready. Having felt the sap leaking from her lips, and the dew on her petals…she was ready. Having spread herself like a flower, secreting nectar from her womb, and having bees with it; having coated her tongue in pollen, made in the garden of her body…the young girl was ready. Her mother and her husband had deemed it so.
And now the lover calling himself Kracker is staring down at her wetness. Persephone waves her petals ever so temptingly, and like a bee that man comes buzzing. The cop is sweating and sneezing. Drops of moisture are landing on Persephone’s exposed face. She receives them gratefully, letting her petals taste the perspiring rain. She is feeding off him, making a meal of the man. He has a look of concern on his wet and sadly human face, but she can feel his excitement growing; Persephone is revelling in his discomfort. She forms her petals into words his small brain can understand.
‘What’s worrying you, my darling?’ Persephone asks. The cop’s thin, dry face is creased with doubt, but all he can do is shake his head, back and forth, back and forth, as though denying his own worth. How pathetic
these creatures of flesh are, Persephone thinks. What a pity she has to keep this one happy. She has some need of his skills. ‘You can tell me. I’m your prize.’ Persephone lets her petals fall into these shapes. ‘You know you can’t resist me. Tell your sweetheart everything. Maybe I’ll be nice to you then.’
She hates to speak like this. How it reduces her.
‘They’re on to us, my precious,’ Kracker replies.
‘I know this already. Tell me something new.’
‘Her name is Belinda,’ Kracker continues. ‘She was asking about Coyote, the black-cab driver. Columbus told her that you killed him.’
‘Can’t you handle it?’
‘I’m trying to, Persephone.’ The cop sneezes. ‘You promised me I would never sneeze.’
‘You must not be weak. You’re not going to deny me, are you?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Remember the pact you made with Columbus. You wouldn’t want to make him angry?’ It is a simple question, and she lets her petals ask it firmly. She has to stop them from shaking. She doesn’t want the cop to know her fears. Because for the first time during her visit to this world, Persephone is worried. She has sensed the girl called Belinda in the map. She has tried to push her green fuse into the girl, searching for identity. Finding only a barrier to her growth. Persephone could not grow in that visitor. The girl was a dark nodule on the map of flowers, a tightly clenched bud that would not open. The girl was immune.
‘I’m not making him angry,’ Kracker is saying. ‘I’m just telling you my fears. Somebody has found us out. Persephone, I’m so scared. I fear that Belinda knows about us…about our…’
‘I want you to take care of her, my darling.’
‘Me? Take care of her? I…What do you mean?’
‘Uproot her.’
‘No more of that, please. I tried it once already. Failed. Then I employed a good officer to do it. Even that loyal dog made a mess.’
‘Come to me, my darling. Let me comfort you. Soon I will show this sad town my power.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Keep watching, my gardener. I will make the people explode with pleasure. Tomorrow I will bring my new home into existence. The people of this city will feel the shock of their little lives. The dream will take them over. This Belinda girl will soon be no more, believe me. I will find her with my flowers. And then you will do what you must, for she is beyond my touch. And also her mother, Sibyl Jones. You must kill them both. I will not allow another mistake, do you hear me?’
‘I hear you.’
‘Tell me what you hear, my sweet?’
‘You will not allow another mistake.’
‘What must you do?’
‘I must kill Sibyl and Belinda.’
‘You must finish their story.’
‘I must finish their story.’
‘And then we will be safe once more…to enjoy each other. Come closer now, taste my need for you.’
Petals opening and closing…
Kracker is clambering into the cabinet. He can’t stop himself. His fragrant lover is opening up to him. Her midriff pushes up through the soil. A flower is growing from her vagina. Its petals are pink and moist, opening and closing. Her stigma is splitting apart for him. Kracker lowers his thin body onto hers, letting his penis enter the tight orifice. Persephone’s petals are clutching at his cock, opening and closing, opening and closing…an earthy, natural rhythm that teases out the sap from the stem. Kracker is in heaven.
Heaven is sweaty, and blossoming.
Southern Cemetery. Saturday. Midnight. Coyote’s grave. Darkness breathing through the trees. The dog driver’s stone memorial completely covered with flowers. They are taking over the image, these flowers, moulding it with petals. The dirt is rich in nutrients from a decomposing body.
Belinda’s gift of an orchid placed there.
A new stalk breaks through the grave’s soil. It blooms in an instant into a brilliant flower. Petals of creamy white with the darkest brown spots.
Call it Dalmatian Flower.
May the road rise with you.
Sunday
7 May
Shivers of dark light floating over water, shining from a cellar’s pavement-level window, and then reflected from pillars of marble that are rooted in the pale water. Shadows shimmer around the floating shapes of a young woman whose naked, street-lined body takes on the glimmers of light and turns them into a movement of glittering feathers. As though from underground wings.
The underground swimming pool at Slavery House, the Gumbo’s Palace, cleaned up and renovated by the illegal residents. Early, early morning, Sunday, all the house still sleeping except for one lonely drifter.
Shadows shimmer, and Belinda floating there.
The birthday girl.
3.50 a.m. Sunday morning. I’m woken up from fitful slumber by the telephone. Dove’s voice on the other end…
‘Come to the cop station, Sibyl.’
‘You know I’m not allowed there. What’s happening?’
‘Kracker’s vanished. Just get over here.’
I see to Jewel’s needs and then head on down to the Comet.
Kracker is parked outside Sibyl Jones’ house, drinking down some small measures of Boomer just to get his edge running. He needs all that he can get, having failed in his previous attempts to please Persephone.
How far have I got to go? he asks himself. All the way, Biscuit Boy, is the answer. He pulls his gun loose from the cop-holster.
The pollen drifting through the darkness, golden and global.
A light comes on in Sibyl’s house.
‘Uh huh.’
The front door opens, and Sibyl Jones walks down the drive towards her car. Kracker watches all of this from the other side of the street. ‘Shit. Where’s she going now?’ he murmurs. ‘This time of the morning?’ He raises his gun and listens to the gentle whirr it makes as the auto-aim focuses on the woman, the good cop. Kracker’s finger starts to squeeze at the trigger, and then relaxes.
‘Shit!’
He can’t do it. Not yet anyway. He can’t stop seeing her as a cop, and a woman he’s known for years.
It’s easier to kill strangers.
Kracker decides to take the other route first, the one that leads towards Belinda.
Tom Dove led me down into the cop morgue, where robo-Skinner was piled like a heap of dead trash.
‘What happened to him?’
‘Somebody took a blade to his circuits,’ Dove told me.
‘Kracker?’
‘That’s a good guess.’
‘Why?’
‘Maybe something that he saw. You following me?’
‘I’m trying to.’
‘Skinner kept his head going way past bedtime. That was one good robocop.’
‘It’s still in there?’
‘Let’s take a look.’
So we opened up Skinner’s head and found the film and the recording there. The video image came up negative but the soundtrack produced the goods. The quality was bad and only muffled fragments could be heard amidst the static of Skinner’s dying head. Kracker’s voice was in there but it was like he was talking to himself. Kracker called the other person Persephone at one point.
‘He met the flower girl in here?’
‘Maybe she came visiting,’ replied Dove. ‘Keep listening.’
It was obvious now that Skinner was reaching the end of his tape loops. Kracker’s voice was growing misty and distant as the robo-circuits spluttered into final sparks. The last thing we heard him say was this: ‘I must kill Sibyl and Belinda.’ Kracker said it like an automaton following orders.
I didn’t know what to say.
‘I think the girl has told him where Gumbo lives.’
‘How can she know that?’
‘I believe she’s moving through the flowers of Manchester.’
Skinner’s final information died to a crackling of wires.
‘What can
I do, Tom?’
‘Find Belinda before Kracker does.’
We drove over to the Strangeways Feather Prison. There was a lone warden on the graveyard shift, a low-down-the-ladder robopensioner name of Bob Clutch. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked with a mouth full of bacon and eggs. I told him the cop-code for the day and introduced Tom Dove as Tommy Veil, long-lost brother of one Benny Veil, currently serving the full pillow. The full pillow was the street name for a life sentence in the Vurt prison. ‘There ain’t no visiting hours.’ Clutch spat this out around slivers of meat. I then explained about the request that had come from the Town Hall Authorities, regarding the urgent need to override the usual rights in the Veil case. Clutch stopped chewing the fat whilst his piggy eyes darted from me to Tom Dove. ‘I’ll have to check that,’ he said, reaching for his cop-feather. I then did something I hadn’t done since childhood; I sent my Shadow out to the warden’s and made him believe me. I made him believe; I forced the overruling into his brain. This was totally against the Shadow Laws but even a good cop must sometimes step out of line. Clutch’s face took on a crumpled look for a second. ‘Yes, that’s fine,’ he spluttered. ‘Let me show you the way.’
Down through banks of sealed cabinets we walked, Tom and Clutch and myself, moving through a cold air that raged against the outside heat, each cabinet containing a sleeping prisoner. The pillow cases were kept in the deepest part of the prison and Bob Clutch led us there along a wall of controls that the wardens used to regulate the prisoners’ life-support systems. These were the mechanisms that kept the inmates alive, even whilst they were feather-dreaming. Finally he found the cabinet marked Benjamin Veil, and pulled it open to reveal a sleeping near-corpse with a crease of pain etched across his features. A black feather protruded from his mouth. I pulled it loose from the prisoner’s lips and then turned on the warden. ‘What’s the game here?’ Clutch’s face moved in waves of flesh before he managed to get control again.
