Vurt

by Jeff Noon

  ‘Blue Lullaby. You know that’s only for babies.’

  I breathed.

  I breathed again.

  GAME CAT

  BLUE LULLABY is for when life gets bad. When life deals a stupid hand. If you should ever find your give-a-fuck factor has gone down to zero, this is the feather for you. Blue Lullaby will wrap you up in blankets and cuddles, making the bad things seem, well you know, kind of good all of a sudden. It’s sweet. But a little warning from the Cat. It works up to a point, and it’s not much of a point. It can cure the tiny troubles; it fucks out on the big troubles, just makes them worse. For those who need something stronger may I recommend TAPEWORMER. Except that the Cat doesn’t like these let’s-make-everything-sweet feathers. Life is to be lived, not to be dreamt about. But when life needs a gentle hand, Lullaby could be the one. It’s a cradlesong. The Cat says—use the Lullaby, don’t abuse the Lullaby. It could turn nasty on you.

  Status: a lovely sky-blue legal, with warnings.

  IT FELT SO GOOD

  I was shaking from the journey, rivered with sweat, tears just adding to the body’s liquid content. I didn’t know which was sweat, which was tears. That bad. The Beetle was holding my hand. It felt so good. It felt so good, that soft hand, amidst all the wanderings. Karli the robodog was lying at my feet.

  ‘You okay, Scribb?’ the Beetle asked, voice all quiet and yearning, like spring flowers, that kind of thing. Most unusual. ‘You shouldn’t go in alone, Scribb. How many times have I told you? You need the Beetle in there. Isn’t that the truth?’

  ‘I was just trying…’

  ‘What’s that, Scribb?’

  ‘I was just trying…’ I said, exhuming the words. ‘I was just trying…I was just trying to find some comfort…’

  Beetle holding me tight against his frock-coat, and I could feel his collection of biker badges biting into my wet cheek. ‘You poor fucker!’ he said to me. ‘Brid’s gone. Van’s gone. Des has gone.’ He was waving the now creamed-up feather in front of my face. ‘And you think this is gonna bring them back? Huh?’

  His voice was hard again, but still with that trace of sadness. Never heard that before. Rain was falling, Manchester rain; we listened to its soft drumbeats against the window. Beetle’s eyes were full of the rain, and some drops of it fell down his cheeks, like tears. Except that all the windows were closed, so how could the rain get in? Even the window that never closed was stuffed with an old T-shirt, so how come the rain was rolling down his cheeks like that? Maybe it was tears? Maybe it was tears! Maybe the Beetle had found tears? And that felt good. It felt so good.

  Bring me my van of burning desire. How I missed that chariot. And all who ride in her. The Beetle had stolen a cheap car, just to get us home, but it was a pale substitute. The van was a good friend. Now gone. The robodog was licking at my trainers. ‘What’s the dog doing here?’ I asked.

  ‘Suze gave the dog to you. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Where’s Mandy?’ I asked, suddenly missing her.

  ‘She went out. I think we had an argument.’

  I reached into my shirt pocket for a Napalm fag. And pulled out a pasteboard card. This is your card, said Suze. How did it get there? Suze must have done a sly pass, whilst I was herb-sleeping. I took a long look at the picture. A young man heading for a drop, hounded by a dog. Real-life model. Collector’s item. ‘Do you forgive me, Beetle?’ I asked, quiet-like, whilst looking at the card.

  The flower clock shed a petal; it floated in a zigzag pattern, driven by sighs, down to the carpet.

  ‘I do.’

  That voice.

  That voice of the Beetle.

  Saying that.

  Saying I do. I do forgive you. That meant so much. That meant everything. I forgive you for the weakness. I forgive you for the transgression. For doing Blue Lullaby. For going in alone. For trying to find the things that we’ve lost.

  Never heard such words before, not from the Beetle.

  ‘Where are the Thing and Brid?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s getting bad.’

  The Beetle, saying that, with such an ache to his voice. I was getting a new picture of the main guy. He was a man without dreams. He dreamt other people’s dreams, through the feathers. That was the Beetle’s obsession; he had nothing else.

  I realised that my eyes had closed.

  When I opened them, Beetle was close. He took my body in his hands, wrapping me in his black frock-coat. It felt so good. Like a family, I guess.

  I brought the card up close to my face. The young man was walking towards an abyss, a rucksack on his shoulder, the yapping dog pestering his heels. Along the top edge the number zero. Along the bottom the words The Fool. What did Suze mean by this? Karli Dog snuffling around at my feet.

  ‘What now, Beetle?’ I asked, not knowing where to go.

  ‘I don’t know, Scribble. I just don’t know.’

  The flat door opened with a soft breath, and Mandy stepped into the room. Her face was flushed with pleasure.

  ‘Where have you been?’ asked the Beetle.

  ‘I’ve found Icarus Wing,’ she said.

  SNAKE SCISSORS

  I was coming in the lips of Venus. She had green hair all around her milky white face, eyes so bright I was nearly blinded, and it was like shooting stars into the mouth of a goddess. And where the semen landed, against the cloth of night, the planets and the stars were formed there. I was making planets with my cock, coming on like God on heat. Took six nights to come the whole universe. On the seventh night I rested. With a giant spliff, some wine, and a Screaming Headache album. And a packet of biscuits. Arrowroot biscuits.

  Felt like sitting inside somebody’s head.

  Which it was.

  The final credits rolled. YOU HAVE BEEN DREAMING GODHEAD. STARRING CINDERS O’JUNIPER AND TOM JASMINE.

  Over this they were playing the national anthem. This is the land that I love, and here I’ll stay.

  BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE CHIMERA CORPORATION. DIRECTED BY MAEVE BLUNT. PRODUCED BY HERCULES SMITH.

  Me and the Beetle, Mandy between us, were sitting on the back row, surrounded by snogging couples, triples, multiples. A splattering of loners, in love with fingers. Karli the robobitch was lying on the floor between my legs.

  SCRIPT BY BYRON SHANKS. LIGHTING BY JULES BULB.

  People were getting up to leave the shimmy, pulling the pink feathers out of their mouths, dropping them on the parquet. Some were furtive in the leaving, others were full of boisterous laughter. Some were kissing.

  SOUND BY CHER PHONER. EDITED BY ICARUS WING.

  ‘Mandy, I love you!’ shouted the Beetle. He was hugging her to his chest. Her hands were playing over his lap. I loved her too.

  Felt like my cock was on fire.

  Mandy had found Icarus. She’d gone back to Seb’s flat. Found him in. Forced the knowledge out of him. Don’t ask how. The use of hands and mouth. Something like that. No matter. The game was on.

  THANK YOU FOR DREAMING WITH CHIMERA. SPONSORED BY VAZINTERNATIONAL THE UNIVERSAL LUBRICANT. FOR LIFE’S STICKY MOMENTS. NOT TO BE USED FOR ILLEGAL PURPOSES.

  Try telling that to the Beetle.

  This intense desire for love was in me, fired by the shimmy. I pulled the feather from my lips, watching it go cream in my fingers.

  I too wanted to fuck the universe. If not that, then a woman would do. Any woman. Christ! Even a dog would do. That’s a good shimmy for you. Makes you into a god. A god of love. Even me.

  ‘Oh Christ!’ breathed Mandy, full of want. ‘I’m soaking.’

  ‘And I’ve got a snake in my dick!’ said the Beetle. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  THE CHIMERA CORPORATION. SHARING THE DREAM.

  Icarus didn’t talk much. Hardly any. He was fat like a pig and he could hardly squeeze into that darkroom with the rest of us tight-packed in there as well. He poured shimmy mist through a viewer, eyes open for good bits.

  ‘You got some good stuff for us?’ the Be
etle said to him. I could feel the Beetle’s arousal, through the talk, and my own, matching him. And Mandy’s.

  The small room was dripping, lit by a red light. Sex was everywhere.

  No response from the shimmyographer. He just kept blowing that spool. His studio was right back of the auditorium, and through the projection ducts I could see the last stragglers leaving their seats. Karli was whining from behind the door, where I’d tied her up to a Grecian pillar. ‘That was a hot shimmy, Icarus. It sure got me going.’ We left Beetle to do the talking. Mandy was glued to the way that Icarus was mixing the rushes. Speed-driven thrills, yards of dream flesh blurring into orgasm. Ribbons of sex. Wet dreams. Visions of loveliness. Ultra-come.

  Like sitting inside somebody’s head. Whilst they were masturbating.

  Me, I had my eye on the glass tank above the mixing desk. A violet and green shape lay curling there, rolling out its tongue like an offering.

  Keep that tongue to yourself, snakebreath.

  The Beetle was speaking; ‘Seb told us you’d got some English Voodoo. That right?’

  Icarus pushed the feather further into the deck.

  My left ankle started to ache and throb, like it had a hard-on, remembering the twin bite of the fangs.

  ‘Don’t know any Seb,’ Icarus said.

  ‘That’s funny, because he knows you.’

  ‘Must have been mistaken.’

  ‘That’s a nice specimen you got there,’ said the Beetle, nodding towards the tank. ‘You see this?’ He was stroking the snakehead pinned in his lapel. Icarus didn’t even look up from the smoke. ‘Caught that fucker myself,’ Beetle continued. ‘Trapped him in a door. Cut his head off.’ He paused for effect, but the editor was busy with the roller; looked like he’d found something. The Beetle turned to me. ‘You see that snake in the tank, Scribb?’ he asked.

  I nodded, not taking my eyes off the slithering bitch.

  ‘That’s one big fucker, yeah, Scribb?’

  Just watching the tank, my eyes caught on the violet and the green, and the slow undulating body. Must have been all of twelve foot long.

  Beetle turned back to Icarus. ‘You wouldn’t want that big fucker to get loose.’

  Icarus looked up at him, just for a second. ‘That’s my best snake,’ he said, and then lowered his face back to the dream mist.

  ‘What you got?’ asked Mandy.

  Icarus looked over at Mandy. ‘Come see,’ he said.

  Mandy bent low, putting her eyes to the viewer. She looked in there, close up, for maybe a full minute. During that time the dreamsnake did a complete reef-knot of movement. Each slither brought another bead of sweat to my flesh. My left leg was stinging.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Mandy, finally. ‘Can’t see nothing.’

  ‘You need to look close, real close,’ Icarus said.

  ‘It’s just smoke.’

  ‘You ain’t got the juice, girl. Not like me.’

  And something real bad came to me then. Icarus was telling us that he had some Vurt in him. Christ knows, must have been a tiny amount; you wouldn’t guess it to look at him, but maybe that’s how he did this job. But the bad thing was this—maybe I could steal this fat guy and force him into a swapback. Maybe I didn’t need the Thing after all, but then he waddled over to the snake cage and I saw just how useless that guy was. He was worthless. No use. Way below Desdemona. Way below Hobart’s Constant.

  ‘It’s just smoke!’ Mandy was saying. ‘There’s nothing there.’

  ‘I’m turning mist into Vurt. That’s my job. Not even that, this time. I’m just cutting bits out. Chopping out the bad bits, making it suitable. I’m making it legal. That’s my job. It’s not much of a job is it?’

  No answer to that. None at all. We all just waited, in the silence, whilst the shimmyographer focused in on the errant scene.

  ‘That is one big snake,’ announced the Beetle. ‘You really wouldn’t want that snake to get loose. Would you?’ He made it sound like a threat. A bad threat. The Beetle was good at that.

  Icarus wasn’t fazed. He reached up and clicked one catch on the tank, then the other. The lid raised up slow and sexy, like a breath exhaling. The dreamsnake unwrapped itself eagerly. I stepped back slightly, just slightly, trying to control myself. My leg hurt was stinging.

  ‘Is there something wrong with the boy?’ asked Icarus.

  ‘Ignore him,’ said Mandy. ‘Tell us what you see.’

  The shimmyographer jerked the mist to a frozen standstill. ‘There she is!’ he announced. ‘Offending article. You see, Chimera send these Vurts out to the provinces, but we’re just getting the bad cuts. There’s stuff still in there. Non legal. I gotta check every second. It’s a fucker’s job, and I’m doing it. This looks like mist to you. To me it’s a dream, somebody’s dream, and you can’t show everything. It spoils it. People want love. This bit here, the hero’s stabbing his father with a kebab skewer. Through the eye. You just can’t show that. Not in a Pornovurt. It’s a passion killer. Cut that fucker!’

  Icarus reached inside of the tank and grabbed the dreamsnake by the neck. It writhed around like a whiplash crack, but he had it between his fingers, and with the other hand he reached for a small ball hammer. He pushed it into a jar of paste, coating the hammer head with sap.

  This was the squeezed-out flowers of the snakeweed, the only known cure for dreamsnake bite. It grew on the plains of Utanka, an obscure high-level Vurt, available only to the cognoscenti. Icarus gently tapped the ball of the hammer on the top of the snake’s head. The head proceeded to droop, as the slit eyes glazed over.

  We watched as that snake took a vicious bite out of the dream. He lifted it away from the mist, and the two streams of smoke coalesced into a new state, a clean state. ‘That’s better,’ Icarus said. ‘Feels clean now.’ He stepped closer to me. There were tiny yellow flecks in his eyes, which seemed to glow brighter as he held the snake up to my face. I stumbled back, knocking against a feather bank. Streams of mist were pouring out of it, choking the room.

  ‘What’s wrong, young man?’ Icarus asked. ‘Don’t you like snakes?’

  ‘Get it off me!’ I screamed.

  Icarus waved the snake in front of my nose. ‘I’m in control,’ he said. ‘I’m the boss of snakes.’

  ‘Scribble had an unfortunate incident,’ the Beetle told Icarus. ‘Some years ago now. Just can’t get over it.’

  ‘He was bit by one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I knew it. You’ve got the Vurt inside you, boy.’

  ‘Not me—’

  ‘They always deny it at first.’

  ‘I’m pure! Tell him I’m pure, Bee!’

  ‘Better had be,’ answered the Beetle. ‘Can’t stand hybrids.’

  Icarus was holding me with a bright stare. ‘Pure is poor, featherboy,’ he said, and I swear that I saw the glints of flights in his eyes. ‘You’ve got some juice inside, kid.’

  Icarus said that, and I was drawn back. Back through the years, the months, like time was streaked with Vaz.

  Something was stirring…

  I was seventeen years old. There was a red sun that day, I remember, and the trees were full of starlings. I was lying in the grass of Platt Fields, with a girl named Desdemona. She was my sister, fifteen years old, but I loved her a lot. Too much. More than is good. More than is legal. She was stretched out and hot, and my right hand was stroking her leg, way up, and she was smiling. She moved her head slightly and her lips were touching mine. I had a hard-on. Hard-on for a sister. Five seconds later she was touching the hard-on through my pants, then was up on top of me, her hair a blonde halo against the scarlet sun, and I was caressing the dragon tattoo on her upper arm.

  ‘If father should find us…’ she said.

  Imagine, she said that. She actually said that. Not Vurt or robo; real words from a real mouth. Her twin lips like the two halves of a dream, slightly parted.

  Her cunt was pressed against my cock and the world was pretty.

 
; ‘Don’t let’s talk about dad,’ I answered.

  ‘He scares me, Scribble.’

  ‘I will always look out for you.’

  The two of us laughing then, I remember that, before those lips descended to mine, and we were sealed.

  Some things you just can’t destroy, and this memory is one of them.

  She kissed me. A raging full-on contact. The sun was blocked out. My eyes were shut. Her hair fell against my cheeks and lights danced in my eyes. I was in honey. ‘I’ll love you forever,’ the voice whispered, and I can’t remember if it was mine, or hers. I felt the pleasure build all the way through me, even down to the ankles, my left ankle especially, for some reason. The pleasure just there was intense, like I’d never felt before. Next thing, Desdemona was screaming, and the pleasure turned into pain. She jumped off me, turning to see the colours flashing. I jerked up, pulled by the fire in my leg, and saw the dreamsnake feeding there, twin fangs clamped shut, around my ankle, and the sun was a blister in my vision.

  I opened my eyes to the barking of a robodog. Mandy had Karli by a taut lead, the bitch’s muzzle inches from the dreamsnake in Icarus’s hand.

  ‘You deliver the goods, Icarus…’ the Beetle was saying. ‘English Voodoo. Or the snake gets it…’

  GAME CAT

  Every morning the Game Cat opens his big sack. Oh my kittlings! All those letters! It’s lucky the Cat has such a large brain, good drugs, and all the time in the universe to spend on helpful hints. Oh all your problems! How on earth do you live down there? Real life seems so physical these days; so very meaty. And the one subject that transfixes you, more than any other? How can I get higher? How can I get out of this hole? How can I get to live like the Cat? In other words; let me get my hands on some KNOWLEDGE FEATHERS. Where can I buy some English Voodoo, some Talking Bush, some MegaHead? Or any of the other Knowledge Feathers that may, or may not exist? The Cat has said it a thousand times; you don’t buy knowledge, you earn knowledge. Still the letters flood in. So let it be said, once and for all: Knowledge Vurt is for the few, not the herd. They are multicoloured steps on a ladder of dreams. They are made by the heavenly for their own enjoyment. They are dangerous to the innocent. That’s you, little kittling. Comprendez? They can’t be bought. If someone offers to sell you one, believe me, it’s a fake, it’s a pirate copy. Pirates don’t give knowledge, they just steal your money. And bring you grief. Because invariably these cheapo mixes are infested with Vipers. And if you don’t know what Vipers are, you shouldn’t be within a thousand miles of Knowledge Vurt.