by Jeff Noon
All things in his life fell into place, like an expert play at the bones, a network of connections, or else a convoluted complex equation, whose many variables finally add up to zero. Until that day, in 1979, when Hackle told them that the maze was coming alive. Down in the cellar, where the dark numbers twist and turn. Blank, blank, vanishing.
Poor old Georgie.
‘Poor old Georgie,’ James Love muttered to himself, shaking the memories away. He looked at his watch, an hour had passed. The police car was nowhere to be seen. Just to make sure, he waited another thirty minutes.
A lonely blurb landed at his feet. It started to sing.
Play to win. Play to win.
Very well.
There was a phone box on the corner. From there he rang Max Hackle’s number. It cost him one nanopuny.
Jazir called in at the Golden Samosa on his way back from Cheetham Hill. He banged on Daisy’s door for ten minutes, calling her name. No answer. His father was working the rice downstairs, and was most surprised to see his son come rushing into the kitchen. Tonight I was expecting you, not so soon.’ Stirring the mixture. ‘Sunday afternoon, very quiet.’
‘Father, have you seen Daisy?’
‘Who?’
‘The lodger!’
‘I wish I had. She is owing me rent.’
‘Do you have a key?’
‘A key?’
To the flat. Please! I think something’s happened to her.’
‘What is happening?’
‘Something bad.’
‘No more scandals, I am hoping?’
The key?’
‘Oh, yes. Somewhere…’
He didn’t know why he checked the flat, just that he had to. He was hoping against hope, I suppose. Hoping she was hiding in there, perhaps with Celia in storage until the coast was clear. That would be brilliant. That would be a miracle.
But nothing, just lots of workbooks, creamed-out bones in careful piles, her clothes, folded neatly. No mess, no struggle, no Daisy. He wrote her a quick note and left it on her desk.
His father had followed him in. Jazir asked if he could keep the keys for a while, just so he could keep checking.
‘If you must. Will my son be working tonight?’
Yes, his son would be working tonight. Already out of the door.
‘Good, because I said you’d be here.’
Jazir stopped on the stairs. ‘What?’
‘The woman—’
‘Woman? What woman?’
‘Asking for Jazir or Daisy.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Name? She was a beggar woman. Do they have names?’
‘Father…’
‘You’re knowing I don’t like beggars in my establishment. Especially not asking for free curries as promised by somebody.’
Jazir wanted to embrace him, but couldn’t. It just wasn’t done. He did it anyway.
‘Get off me! What is wrong with you now? First nakedness out of windows, now offering free curries to all and sundries—’
‘Tonight, I’m gonna work my pants off!’
Next stop, West Didsbury. He was trying his best to follow the rules of cool, don’t set yourself on fire, but after waiting five minutes for a bus, decided that fire was worth something after all. He flagged a taxi, because what were punies against Daisy’s well-being? Every red light, every zebra crossing stoked his anger. He didn’t stop until Sweet Benny opened the door to him.
‘Where is he?’
‘Joe?’
‘Hackle! That bastard! Where is he?’
‘He’s entertaining—’
Jazir pushed Benny aside. ‘Not any more, he isn’t.’
Joe met him in the hallway. ‘Calm down, boy.’
‘I want Hackle.’
‘He has a visitor. Is there a problem?’
‘The problem?’ Jazir caught his breath. ‘The problem is this fucking game…’ He opened the nearest door. ‘Where is he?’
‘In his study. I don’t think he’d appreciate—’
‘I don’t fucking care anymore. Just let me at him.’
‘Is it to do with Daisy?’
‘Yeah. Daisy. They’ve got her! Is this his study—’
‘Ah, Jazir.’ Hackle rose to meet him. ‘We were just talking about you…’
Jazir rushed into the room, ignoring the other man present. He went face-up, close to Hackle. ‘The bones have got Daisy, and I’m blaming you, Hackle! You dragged her into this stupid scheme. What now, eh? What move shall we make next? Shall we all kill ourselves, and get it over with?’
‘Please. You’re giving me a headache. Have you met Daisy’s father, by the way…’
Daisy was on her twenty-ninth game of solo bones when Inspector Crawl came into the cell. She ignored him, of course, and continued playing one tile against another. Her father’s special set of numbers; so well played over so many years, the dots had almost vanished.
‘Is it fun?’ he asked.
‘Nah, nah, nah.’
‘I haven’t played since I was tiny.’
‘Nah, nah.’
‘Can’t be much fun, not on your own. I mean, don’t you always know what the opponent’s going to do?’
‘Nah.’
‘Maybe you could teach me a few moves.’
‘Nah, nah, nah.’
He sat himself down opposite her. ‘Go on. Humiliate me.’ Daisy sighed, turned all the bones face-down and shuffled them. ‘Choose five’, she said. ‘Play to win.’
‘I always do.’
‘Domino,’ said Daisy. The game was over in a minute.
‘Hmm. You knocked the spots off me, Daisy.’
Daisy didn’t laugh.
‘Is there some trick to it?’
‘Just play.’
Domino. The second game also over in a minute.
‘Can we go a bit slower, please?’
‘Play…’
‘I’m playing. You know, I had a very interesting call a few minutes ago.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Professor Hackle, from the university. He thinks very highly of you. He tells me you’re one of his best students. Mathematics, is it?’
‘Your go…’
‘I was hopeless at maths. Still am. As long as my arrest quotas add up, I don’t really mind. Still, it must be nice to be talented.’
‘Play…’
‘It’s not something you’d want to waste, is it? A talent?’
‘Your go…’
‘Knock, knock.’
‘Draw another one.’
‘Professor Hackle has agreed to pay for any damages done to town hall property. Obviously, he’s a highly respected member of the community. The trouble is, I’ve had my men go over that door to the Room of Holes. It’s not been forced, has it? And there’s some strange substance been found in the lock. The science boys are looking at that. But there’s no damage to pay for. And you only took what was rightfully public property. So what am I keeping you here for?’
‘Domino,’ said Daisy. ‘Game over.’
‘You know what the game is, and I know what the game is. And you know that I know what the game is. And I know that you know that I know—’
This could go on forever,’ said Daisy.
‘It needn’t. It’s about the bones, isn’t it? The House of Chances. Mr Million. Cookie Luck and Tommy Tumbler and Play to win and bet your punies on a dream of lovelies. And aren’t we all going to benefit? Consider the number of people that have moved to Manchester in the last ten months, just to have a bit of fun. It’s for charity. It’s good for local business. Extra funding for the jolly coppers. Bigger burgers, more chances, a better class of person, and we all live happily ever after, isn’t that the ticket?’
‘What do you want, Crawl?’
‘It’s a nightmare, Daisy. The bones sponsor the burgers, and the burgers sponsor us. It’s not working out. This is off the record, you follow me. No tapes.’
‘How can I trust you.�
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‘Come on.’ Crawl stood up.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Outside. Fresh air.’
Albert Square. A bench. A plague of blurbs, circling.
‘Your father sat here for over an hour this morning, waiting.’
‘For me?’
‘No. For my boys to leave him be. He took off eventually, shook us off in a taxi, somewhere in Altrincham. Good player, right?’
Daisy laughed. She was holding tight to the box of bones, like it was the last treasure of the world.
‘So then, what’s the score, eh? Who’s winning? The Anno-fucking-Dominoes, that’s who. Who’s losing? Everybody else. I know that things are going wrong.’
‘You know they’re killing people?’
‘My hands are tied, Daisy. It’s not me, and a group of us here are getting mighty pissed off. Two cases have been closed. The big boys up top are expecting compliance. It’s money. That’s all.’
‘Now there’ll be a third.’
‘Eddie Irwell? Nah, there’s nothing wrong with him. He’ll be let free.’
‘The bones have got him?’
‘Yeah, and that’s where I should’ve taken you already.’
‘Why haven’t you?’
Crawl looking around for a few seconds, kicked away a blurb. ‘The thing is, I’m not sure which side I’m on any more. If I’m on the bone side, I get a pay rise. If I’m on your side, I get sacked. Or even worse, I get put back on the street. I don’t think I could wear one of them big Ws, not with my figure.’
‘I’m not on any side,’ said Daisy.
‘You know about this Celia Hobart character. She’s a lucky bleeder, right? The bones would like to wring her dry, of course they would. Who are you working for?’
‘Just myself.’
‘Yourself…and a friend?’
‘The two of us, yes. But I’ve given up trying. It’s too dangerous.’
‘Maybe we could work together, Daisy? With my resources…’
‘No. It’s over.’
‘I see.’ The inspector stood up. ‘Thanks for the game.’
‘I’m free?’
‘Go on. Before I change my mind.’
‘You won’t follow me?’
‘Daisy, I know where you live.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Tell that Hackle prof to make the cheque out to me, personal. OK?’
Daisy smiled at him.
By the time she got back home, the Golden Samosa was closed until the evening. That was OK, she didn’t want to see Jazir, not yet. She didn’t want to see anybody. Everything was here that she wanted: her desk, her work, her bed. Sleep, she wanted, and some comfort. Most of all, some time to think. She saw the note while taking off her clothes. ‘Daisy, gone to find you. Jaz.’
She laughed, quietly. He found her two minutes later, in bed.
It was the best love they had ever made.
An unmarked police car waiting outside. Two cops, chewing gum, rubbing their dancing bones to keep warm. Not a scarlet W in sight.
All the pieces were poised for the game by the time the Golden Samosa opened for that evening. Jazir Malik was to work as normal; he would only be the messenger. Daisy Love was upstairs, hanging on the signal. Joe Crocus and Sweet Benny were making a five-course curryfest last all night. Their car was outside, waiting for action. Nobody knew where DJ Dopejack was and nobody much cared. He hadn’t been seen since Friday’s argument, no loss. Max Hackle was waiting back at his house, having dinner with Jimmy Love. Hackle had given Jazir the punies required for a special curry. This was paid to father Saeed Malik, in compensation for a free meal to a beggar.
If she ever arrived that is. The whole game hanging on that one final bone.
Ten o’clock came and went. Eleven. The restaurant always shut at midnight, no way was Mr Saeed keeping open after that—on a Sunday, even!—just for some hare-brained scheme, even if the most esteemed Professor Maximus Hackle of the University of Manchester had set it up special.
She was the last customer. At ten to twelve she arrived, demanding, ‘A free curry as promised, for me and my friends.’
‘Friends?’ shouted Jazir’s father, when told of this. ‘Since when has anybody been mentioning friends?’
‘Please, Father, you’ll be compensated—’
‘And ten to shutting time it is, I shall have to pay my staff extra wages, no? And what is it these filthy beggars is wanting, only the Chef’s Very Special times seven?’
‘Fully compensated.’
‘I shall be expecting more than fully.’
Jazir went back to the table. All the other diners had left, apart from Joe and Benny and these seven ragged brethren of the streets, come to claim reward for information. They could not be contained, constantly moving around from table to table, trying on serviettes, nibbling at every passing poppadom and relish tray, singing bawdy songs of following the endless road to the perfect resting hole, guzzling the finest lagers, burping, farting, kissing the menus, demanding, in the loudest voices, that their starters arrive.
Jazir tried his best to keep them happy, and with every dish he served, always asking the main beggar woman if she would tell him where Celia was yet. ‘When I’m finished,’ she replied, smacking chilli sauce around her lips. ‘Lovely grub!’
‘You do know where she is?’ Jazir asked, worried now.
‘More food!’
‘More, more, more!’ chorused the brethren.
The Yawndale Monstermarket was opened in the early 1970s. A grotesque slab of prefab, its birth destroyed whole streets of shops and an outdoor market; it gobbled them like a glutton. Its twenty-five-year reign as the ‘ultimate shopping experience’ was only relieved by four separate terrorist attacks, each carried out by a different group, the last by the now-famous Children of the Swamp. In 1998, this ramshackle band of eco-warriors had gutted the building with a devastating methane bomb explosion. The Yawndale Corporation cut the funding, the monster breathed its last, sad, special, once-only offer.
A year later a new sign had appeared above the main entrance on Market Street: ‘OPENING SOON! THE DOMIDOME EXPERIENCE! SHOPPING BY NUMBERS!’ Brought to us courtesy of the AnnoDoms, of course, but they’d need the extra lovelies from going national to start extensive work on the jittery substructure.
All was dark and quiet on Shudehill that early Monday morning, past one o’clock, but only just. Shudehill was the street behind the slumbering behemoth; no sign here, no special announcements, no blurbs to proclaim the future delights. A car pulls up outside the building. Benny’s at the wheel, Joe’s in the passenger seat. Behind them Daisy and the beggar woman, whose name we now learn is Mama Mole. On the journey here she had told the three Dark Fractals that Little Celia had been found wandering the streets looking for Eddie Irwell. Saturday evening, this would have been. She had told of her fears for Eddie’s safety. The beggars had immediately offered their help to find him, coming together in the face of bad bones. Finding nothing, no traces, no winnings…
Leaving Benny with the engine running, Joe and Daisy followed the Mole woman through a loose ventilation grid. This was once the arse of the place, pumping out a constant stream of bad air, where a tramp could sleep snug and warm in the old days. Now only the faint, lingering smells of methane hung in the dark tunnel.
Mama Mole, as befits the name, fairly ran along the cramped passage, leaving Daisy and Joe to suffer knocks and bruises from protrusive pipes and jagged panels. One of these was pushed aside, the Mole stepped through, beckoning the pair to keep up. The next tunnel was even tighter, but a faint light could be seen at the end of it, and the noise of distant voices heard.
The tunnel opened out, at last, to a final vent grid. This was hinged and greased for access, and Daisy and Joe fell 4 feet to the hard floor, moaning for air.
Spotlamps spluttering for a stolen light, music, a breath of fire from a furnace, the purring hum of a generator, and a wailing, human sound. Daisy and Joe h
elped each other to their feet. Eyes burning purple and yellow from the sudden lights, weird shapes surrounded them, moving slowly through the chambers of the heart of the dying beast. A bus station, underground, closed down for twelve months. Two buses still stood alongside ruined shelters, wheels on jacks, windows caked with dust, or else cracked into spidery webs, destination nowhere. Graffiti fingered in the thick dust of a forever-cooling engine casing. DREAM TO WIN. A crowd of people approached from their various fires and encampments. A guitar played a slow, plaintive tune from behind a shelter. Clusters of beggars looked at the new arrivals for a few seconds and then returned to their slow, broken lives.
‘What’s wrong with them?’ Daisy asked Joe. ‘Where’s Celia?’
Joe shook his head, unable to take it all in. ‘Keep close to me.’
They moved through the tribe of beggars. Above their heads lay the vast overarching roof of the former station. Blurb cries could be heard from the gulf space, as though even the adverts were in pain. Something black and fat-spitting turned over a fire. A low moaning was heard from all around, amplified into a ghost of wanting desire by the far-off walls. The crowd parted to let Mama Mole through. Occasionally she would stop to talk to one of the brethren. A hard knot of people was circling one of the broken-down buses, keeping the moaning going, higher and lower with each line of dull melody.
Mama Mole eventually reached the bus. She went through the doors and returned a few minutes later, her face lined with pain.
‘What’s wrong, Mama?’ asked Joe.
‘Is it Celia?’ asked Daisy.
