by Jeff Noon
‘Who is it?’ Belinda shouts.
‘It’s the cops,’ a voice answers. ‘Come easy now.’
Belinda waits for five seconds. And then…
‘What do you want?’ Peering through the shadows to where a thin, dry shape trembles…
‘Don’t worry, Belinda. We know who killed your doggy friend. We know it wasn’t you.’
Seven seconds. The voice is kind of familiar.
‘I already know who killed him,’ Belinda says. ‘Persephone did, with Columbus’s help.’
‘You’re a very clever girl,’ replies the voice. ‘I’m going to have to kill you.’
Our various lives moving closer. My daughter is floating naked and mapped out in the pool. Kracker, the Chief of Cops, moves forward into the light, sweating like a wound. He sits on the edge of the pool, his shoes dangling into the water. Persephone’s flower is stroking her petals between Belinda’s thighs. The half-finished glass of Boomer is back on the pool-side. The cop-gun hidden in Kracker’s pocket. All the elements in place now. Myself working towards the scene. Columbus also, revelling in his new map. That underground swimming hole, that shimmering hole, my daughter at the centre, magnetic in the shadows and the marble. A compass of strange desires all around her, closing in like the far-apart streets that rest on top of each other as a map is folded.
The outside world still green-darkened by droplets of mucus. Inside, a stuttering of ghosts from the snot-covered window, the only light.
‘It’s you again,’ my daughter says. ‘Your name is passenger Deville.’
‘No longer, no longer.’ Kracker smiles. ‘A mere disguise. My name is Kracker, the Chief of Cops.’ His target looks so tender with her map of skin shivering under the water; she’s making the Casanova unfurl in his groin. He can’t keep his eyes off the floating flower between the girl’s legs, the one that has led him this far. He feels jealous of the flower taking its pleasure elsewhere, and he can feel Persephone’s eyes crawling all over his skin from the patterns of lichen that cover the ancient marble walls of this dungeon. All he has to do to please his lover is plunge a bullet straight into the target’s body. But he’s afraid of death, his own and anybody else’s. He has killed criminals before now, gleefully taking them out, but an innocent, a fellow sufferer? How can he manage this task?
‘What do you have to do?’ Belinda asks.
‘I have to kill you.’
Belinda stares at him.
‘I’d like you to,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘It’s simple. I want you to kill me.’
‘But why?’ His glands are dripping in the heat.
‘It feels right.’ Belinda’s mind is clear now, cold.
Kracker is taken aback by this. It really gets to him. A simple man, simple needs. He pulls the gun out of his pocket, snagging it on the cloth, so that he has to reach around with his other hand to free it. Then he has some trouble releasing the hammer. ‘Please…I’m sorry,’ he mumbles. ‘I’m sorry…I can’t seem to…There! I have it now.’ The gun is cocked, at last. This clumsiness makes him feel so normal. It gives him courage, the normality. He’s no longer trying to prove himself. Maybe he can really pleasure Persephone this time. He holds the weapon out in front of him, as far from his body as he can reach. The barrel is trembling, catching tiny glints of light from the shrouded window.
Belinda smiles. ‘Can you do it?’ she asks.
‘I…I can try.’
‘Go on then. Make it a good one.’
Be a man. Be a man at last. This is what the girl is saying to him. Despite all the Fecundity surging through his blood, be a man at last. And he cannot take it. His gun-hand is shaking. He brings his left hand up to hold the right hand steady around the butt. Still it shakes.
‘You’re laughing at me,’ he says.
‘No. I’m working this out with you. That’s what we both want, isn’t it?’
Belinda has picked up the glass of Boomer from the pool’s edge. She holds the glass up in front of her face. ‘This is Boomer. You know Boomer?’ Kracker nods his head. ‘You’ve taken it?’ Kracker tells her that he has. ‘You know the ruling then?’ Kracker does, but she tells him anyway: ‘One for the money, two for the show. Three to get ready for a clean and sexy death.’
‘Are you going to kill yourself?’
‘If you won’t do it.’
‘Please…’
‘There are over five measures in this glass, and I’ve taken two already. I’m feeling very good at the moment, very sexy. Don’t you want me?’
The gun is moving through the gloom, trying to fix upon her. Kracker cannot find his target. This girl is spooking him. ‘Please…I…’ he says. He fumbles at the gun. ‘I don’t think you should…’
Belinda dips her tongue into the poison. She lets the Boomer burn her nerve-endings for the tiniest part of a second.
‘Don’t…’
Belinda tilts the glass until the Boomer is edging against the lip. ‘This is what you want?’
‘No!’ The cop’s voice crying. He stands up from the pool-side. ‘No…yes…I…shit! Please…it’s all going wrong. I just wanted to…nobody should die. Nobody…’ Kracker can hear Persephone screaming inside his head. ‘Please,’ he says. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘It’s what we both want.’ Belinda’s Shadow has never been so fluid.
Kracker sweating. Sneezing. But the aim is firm now, he is motivated. The gun steady and true in his clenched fingers. If he could only break this circuit—his fingers and the handle and the trigger and the young skin of this girl. Maybe then he would be free of all this worry. Persephone’s perfume is yelling at him. The stench of her is filling the cellar. All he has to do is pull the trigger, complete this story. Belinda tips the rim of the glass. Kracker jumps into the water, making a fat splash, and then pushes through heaviness to get at Belinda.
‘Please, Belinda…don’t kill yourself!’
I drove my Comet into this tangled story. 6.22 a.m. Even time was becoming fluid under the new map. None of the old rules applied. The map was filled with broken roads. Twenty-five car crashes occurred that day, drawn together by the newly tangled roots of the city. But I was free of that structure now; I was driving on Shadows.
A dirt track running between factories. Everything was still and silent at the edges, ghost-ridden and abandoned, but as I rode closer to the centre of that lost industrial city, it was like entering into Babylon. A screaming woman ran towards the Comet, her clothing in rags and her face covered with mucus. I worked the wheel to avoid impact, and she glanced off the left-hand side of the bonnet. She was down on the track for a few seconds, but I didn’t stop the car. Let’s think about the daughter, this was my only vision. The poor woman staggered to her feet. I kept on driving until I manoeuvred the Comet into a wide open space between a square of warehouses and depots. A Gypsy-dog camp was set down in the arena, a chaotic mess of bone-piles, iron sculptures and tepee kennels. The whole place was covered in a glaze of nose-juice and bodies were covering the ground, some writhing around, many others lying as still as death. A black woman sporting an over-funded afro was administering to some of the victims of the quake. That would be Wanita-Wanita. I parked the Ford Comet and walked over to where Wanita was offering a glass of something to a sufferer. The dog man refused the drink, so Wanita drank it herself, and lowered her head to kiss the dog, passing the healing mixture from her mouth to his. I’d loosed my gun from its holster, but it seemed rather heavy in my fingers now, seeing that act of kindness. ‘Wanita-Wanita?’ I asked. She looked up at me, her eyes heavy with resignation. She saw the gun in my hands and knew me for what I was: a bastard cop, everything her whole life had raged against. I could see the deviance dying in her eyes. She looked over to a warehouse, where an Xcab and a painted van named Magic Bus were parked. Above the door the words Slavery House were partly obscured by flowers, so that the sign seemed to read S ave y ou. The whole building was covered in a verdant net of blooms. An
aerial feather fluttered from the roof, and I could feel Belinda’s Shadow from within the warehouse, struggling against temptation.
The time was pushing on towards fullness, and the morning air was inch-thick with yellow heat and pollen and snot.
I pressed a finger on the door’s intercom system. A metallic doggy voice answered me. ‘Who that?’
‘It’s the cops,’ I said. ‘Open up.’ The main entrance spread its two doors like a slow lover, a reluctant sigh, and then I was through to the lounge area of Slavery House. I was pulled along by anger, feeling Belinda’s Shadow from below my feet. Something was happening to her. The desk clerk was a balding masked-up robodog cowering behind his counter, clutching a copy of Nude Bitch Digest. ‘What want?’ the dog growled.
‘Key to the cellar, please,’ I responded, flashing the badge.
‘We no cellar.’
I pushed my gun into the dog’s face: ‘Shall we dig one together, mutt?’ The doggy clerk was lolling his long pink tongue out of his jaws, searching for good air. He looked over to a door beneath the stairwell. His left paw was reaching to a key that hung on a numbered board behind him. ‘This you want,’ he growled. As soon as the gun was off-target, that robohound was running out of the door on all fours. I felt his fetid breath pass by me on the furry wind as I worked the key into a door under the stairs, following the scent of Belinda.
A voice from below, soft and sweaty: ‘Who’s at the door?’
‘Nobody,’ I shouted. ‘Just your worst ever fear.’
‘Oh yeah? Like who?’
‘A Shadowcop called Sibyl Jones.’
‘Shit!’
‘That enough for you?’
‘Fuck!’
Panic from below.
I take the dark steps two at a time, three at a time.
Radio waves…
Colours in the black air as messages were sent. Febrile scents on the wing. Scrapings and breaths. Glimmers of blue transmitter lights. Iridescent purple feathers floating through the waves of panic. Dark aromas. Sweetness. Sweetness and fear. I was falling into those colours. Wires and sparks. A Sixties beat from the radio. My vision seeping away into the gloom, and the Gumbo Hippy himself rising up from the feathers.
‘You’re under arrest, Gumbo,’ I said to him.
‘Who’s taking me?’ he answered, ‘You’re all done, cop lady.’
‘Where’s Belinda?’
‘Who knows?’ Then he was stepping towards me, his long, raggedy hair swinging from side to side. ‘Who cares any more? Don’t you realise the whole fucking world is ruined now. What you cops gonna do, uh? Arrest a dream?’ Gumbo started to laugh. ‘Reality is fucked.’
‘I don’t care about the world right now. I want my daughter back.’
‘I can’t allow that.’
‘What’s your problem, Gumbo? If it’s really all over, what are you fighting against?’
‘I’m a lover, not a fighter, and this new world will still need a guaranteed shit-detector.’
‘I’m still a cop and you’re still breaking the laws of broadcast.’
‘I’m taking you into static.’ He had an electronic knife in his hands, wired into his equipment. Fire was shivering from the blade. I brought my gun up tight on his forehead but that pirate never even wavered. Belinda was screaming at me over the Shadow, and I was trying to make a homing signal. Gumbo thrust forwards.
A burning sensation in my stomach.
I made a swinging motion with the gun, glancing against the hippy’s head. It just made the blade turn slightly in the wound; I could feel feather waves entering me from the implement. It felt like I was being spoken to, deep down. Like I was full of feathery voices. The edge of chaos. I shot a cop-bullet into the heart of Gumbo’s equipment, which brought a lessening of the pain. Gumbo ran to his circuits, shrieking at the dying of the lights. He was working the switches like a madman, even as the feathers creamed at his touch. Gumbo was shouting over the dying waves, telling the world he was still fighting, still willing to give everything for the people of the dream. ‘This is the Gumbo calling the world. The cops are at my tail. Don’t believe the hype. We can still find ourselves in the map. This old hippy will always believe in you…’
I slipped a pair of cuffs onto Gumbo and fixed him to a steel bracket on the floor. Then I was slipping away along underground corridors, clutching the wound in my stomach, chasing the Shadow of my daughter, and the glimmer of water reflected on a marble wall.
Around a labyrinth of stone until a locked door came up close. I found Belinda’s Shadow in there, rippled with pain, and then the stranger’s—shiny red it was, coloured with anger and fear. Male Smoke. And the intent: his troubled need to kill. And then the name of that Shadow: Kracker. I brought out my tube of DoorVaz, poured some into the lock, and then tried my cop-key. The lock slipped a little, the tumblers complaining. More Vaz, that slick releaser, and then one well-aimed kick. The door banged open.
Steps leading down. Shouting out: ‘Police! Don’t do anything!’ The Shadows of love breaking. Fury. Screams. Please…Swearing. Christ! A sudden thrust in Kracker’s Shadow as he reached towards his climax. My feet falling on the pathway.
That picture I dropped into: my daughter taking a full drink of wine, her body naked and floating in a pool of shivering water, the Chief of Cops paddling towards her, cop-gun outstretched. The Shadows were dancing in fear and delight. I was feeling my daughter’s pleasure for a second, before the pain came to me. Not knowing what to do except to shout out, ‘Hold it right there!’ I was acting like some kind of soap-cop. That useful. Kracker was moving slow through the water, towards Belinda. Shadows dripping all over his thin body. That gun was going to make a big hole…
I did it. I managed the job. My one and only cop-job. I shot my chief.
The rules kicked in at the last second, causing me to aim wide. His gun arm folded up into a wing-like shape and then collapsed under him, blood-rich as he plunged into the water. My daughter’s head was disappearing under the surface. The glass was bobbing on the surface, loading with water, and then following her down. I jumped into the pool, to grasp Belinda’s body to mine, up to the surface, her body of maps…
‘Belinda…’
No answer. Her eyes were glazed with joy, far-off and wandering. Kracker was making sad noises from the side of the pool, his legs thrashing the water into waves, his arm painting the water red.
I turned my head quickly. ‘Shut the fuck up!’ I shouted. ‘You’re under arrest, Kracker.’ Kracker’s eyes full of panic, his Shadow jumping with fire. He couldn’t stop twitching, moving the water into scarlet waves, words from his slack mouth…
‘It was Boomer,’ he breathed. ‘Boomer. She took some Boomer. Too much Boomer. I was trying to…’
‘Is this true?’ I had turned back to Belinda now, taking in the sinking glass.
‘I was trying to stop her,’ Kracker said. ‘That was all. I’m sorry, Jones. I’m really sorry. Columbus made me do it. He was blackmailing me…my crimes…my petty crimes…what could I do?’
Everything was cool and slow, like a bad memory that was only just happening. Everything was struggling towards life. Everything was losing.
Losing it…
My daughter in my arms as I clung to her tightly, willing the breath back into her quiet flesh. Her eyes flickering for a second and then closing. And then the very Shadow of her drifting away into the water, into blood-reddened water. I lifted her up lightly, just like when she was a kid and had taken a fall in the back garden. Kracker was struggling towards the surface, clutching his mess of an arm with one good hand, shouting at me…
‘What about me! What about me!’
I carried Belinda out of that cellar, away from that sad noise, out of that warehouse. Her body…the breath of a ghost. My daughter’s life floating away in slow waves.
Coyote’s long legs are loping along the Princess Road towards Manchester Central. He no longer feels troubled by the fever. The map is changing co
nstantly as he runs, but that’s no problem to his flowering soul. He feels like a road himself, like a part of this new world. Coyote is a flower; the road opens up to him with parted petals. This is the travelling he has always dreamt about. But still something is missing, some vehicle for his desires. The scent of blossoms from Platt Fields Park makes his hind-stalks grip the pavement. The flowers are growing out towards him. Coyote is walking through their perfumes, adding his own sweet message to their throats. It is only then that he realises. It doesn’t have to be like this; I can travel freely. The flower in me is still growing, still learning. It’s easy. So easy. No one need see me. I can just…you know…just grow…
So then, Coyote just folds himself into the new flower map of Manchester, moving his patterns from stem to stem. He is living in the vegetation, remaking himself again and again like the seasons changing, from the flora that he meets upon the way. This is the coolest route he has ever travelled. Coyote Flower Dog is conjuring himself out of the petals and the leaves and the thorns, turning that greenery into a black-and-white Dalmatian plant. The Little Sir John seed is still growing inside his body, running with the sap; he can sense him there. All along his long and growing journey, the man in the root is trying to redirect Coyote. Coyote shrugs him off, or tries to; in fact all he can manage is to send him spinning back down into the deepest stem.
Now the city is opening up to Coyote’s patterns.
How it has changed. He remembers it as a dark place of wet desires; now the world is floral and choking. Coyote can journey anywhere through the green veins of Manchester. Flowers are cascading from every building, vines are clinging to lamp posts. A pink rain of blossoms is falling on Albert Square, brightly lit by lasers from the top of the Town Hall. The city is deserted, as though in quarantine. There are cop-cars on the streets but they seem to move like lost souls, screaming through the morning, making embroideries of noise with their sirens. A few Xcabs here and there; only these vehicles seem to be making any kind of progress. Coyote is blooming his shapes into a small bush growing to one side of the square. From there he pushes himself through lichens clinging to the pavement, through mosses growing on walls, through the very pollen that is breezing through the air above Manchester. By these routes he makes his way towards the back of Bootle Street cop station, where the impounded cars sit like fossils behind criss-cross wire.
