Novahead (17 page)

Pivot
'
s face was blank. But he was grinning just beyond the edge of what I could see. I braced too late for the blast, a cobalt flare leaving a fuzzy blot in mid-air, haloed pink with blood particulates. I had something painful in my eye. The shelves were burning. I was laying back on my tied hands and pieces of chair. Everything was jumbled up. The scorch was quickly overcome with the sick sweetness of black blood and offal.

Murphy the Fed leaned in very close, her yellow corona of hair zinging my skin as she cooed,
‘
Oh, baby, you lost an eye.
'

She was trying to stand me up, cutting the bindings. Poisonous pain flashed up and down the left side of my done-for body. At the moment of eruption Pivot had reflexively squeezed the trigger, smacking a traditional round into my left shoulder. I had almost zero articulation in the left arm and a swollen half-hand on the end of it. Presumably I had taken a bit of desk in my left eye. With the right I saw some of Pivot behind the charred desk. He was burst like a popped corn. A portion of him was dashed up the wall. His ribs were blown open in a way that made him resemble a stamped centipede.

Murphy was wagging her chibi gun at the door.
‘
Why?
'
I asked.

‘
Because I
'
m worth it.
'

I was walking busted and hunched.
‘
You called Pivot in.
'

‘
So? And everyone else followed, but we got him.
'

‘
Everyone else is Betty.
'

‘
Eh? Why?
'

‘
The DD goggles, as standard. The rally attack was one group, apart from Pivot
'
s Mexican. The cops couldn
'
t draw the factions together - Betty
'
s my bet.
'

She thought about that.
‘
Alright. Probably right. So what.
'

I was done. She brought the kid up and led us out the sculpted door and the rotten one and then into the morning rain. My last Jade shot was fading and I was throttling either down or up - probably up. The day was working me over with white skies.

Out of the vanishing point a skimming chevron was shadowing the road. I thought it was something stuck on my remaining eye, but it grew to become Strobe the security swan. Murphy saw it a second after me and fired two shots with the purse pistol. I was about to push the kid behind the Mantarosa, invisible to the Fed. But before I could flinch in that direction, the swan swooped over, dropping a gold holographic bomb through the car
'
s torn roof. The windows clouded and the car disappeared. This wasn
'
t a fractal evaporation - it had switched off like a light. I realised it was a cloaking effect, but denial had never worked in me.

‘
Oh wow,
'
said the Fed, standing beside me. It was obvious she could see the car clearly.

What was the true thing I would not want to believe? I approached the area hesitantly as if blindfolded, until my hand touched hot metal. The new perception poured down with the rain, filtering gradually into place. The car lay visible in front of me, warped open like a seashell. Its innards were ash.

My way home was obliterated. It would be easier to unlock a door closed in a photograph.

‘
What
'
ll I do now, Gamete? What do I do?
'

The Fed was unimpressed.
‘
So you lost your car, so what?
'

‘
It wasn
'
t a car. It was a door.
'

‘
A door.
'

‘
I
'
m stuck with you people. I can
'
t believe it.
'

‘
Calm down.
'

So I was fated to die on stage among actors who couldn
'
t shake off their roles.

 

 

Standing in molten rain, my heart springing leaks. My skin felt like ground glass. I wanted out, to be redeemed from the abyss of disguise.

Murphy loaded the kid in the front passenger seat of her car and me in the back, where I started to push off a thick layer of myself that I had worn like an invisible rubber suit. With every push the car
'
s engine threatened to stall out. The private detective analog had always been strange in a town where a living body was more incongruous than a dead one. Now the whole accretion was sloughing off in one go. The Fed frowned back at me.

‘
Don
'
t worry,
'
I said,
‘
it
'
s worse than it looks.
'
There was another clamp of pain and the ambience guttered. The longest night of the mind.
‘
It doesn
'
t count if it
'
s easy.
'

Razors of light across the brain. It was visceral bloody detox.

By the time we pulled up at Betty
'
s Fort everything felt brighter, but it still hurt. It wasn
'
t meant to be a cure. Parked outside Betty
'
s was a stretch limo apparently made entirely of bone. I was thirsty. I went into the Fort like a whipped hunchback.

A profitless pat-down in the carbine corridor - the gunsels seemed nervous, glancing at the chamber entrance beyond which voices were nattering:
‘
The end won
'
t occur because an innocent mind desires it. If there
'
s no-one home and no lights on, we
turn
them on.
'

The Fed led me and the kid into Betty
'
s throne room. The gunsels stayed behind, big steel doors meeting to complete the raised design of a trilobite. This creature revolved once, clanking as the door locked.

It was a little confab of the city fathers. Betty, Blince, Ract, Darkwards.

Betty leaned forward from her beetle-black throne.
‘
So you
'
re defecting, Murphy. Where
'
s Pivot?
'

‘
Undertakers
'
arrest.
'

‘
Dead? Time to act thunderstruck, everyone.
'

‘
And this one had some sort of phantom miscarriage in the car.
'

Betty squinted.
‘
Atom, is it?
'

‘
I
'
m nobody,
'
I said.
‘
You
'
ll be dealing with me now.
'

‘
No name so death can
'
t find you I suppose? We
'
ll call you Atom, dear.
'

The giant and the dwarf were sat on the kevlar couch. Ract was paging around in a lifestyle magazine for the upper classes called
Immune
, but he glanced up when I was mentioned.
‘
This one-eared bravo - he
'
s really the shamus? Looks a bit queasy.
'

Blince was at the drinks cabinet behind them. He seemed completely at ease, even half amused.
‘
He used to be one tough customer,
'
he remarked, building an October Surprise with his left hand. He had some kind of bandage arrangement at his shoulder and his right arm in a sling.
‘
Seems kinda ragged and emotional today.
'

‘
You
'
re rather more manlike than the galoot described you,
'
said the giant in a mild tone, tilting his big log-like face at me.

‘
He was socked in the eye by a bit of Pivot, I think,
'
said the Fed, with a smirk.

‘
Nasty bump on the old noggin, eh?
'
said the giant in a louder tone, as if to a child. His apparently upholstered forehead shone in the artificial light.
‘
My name
'
s Darkwards. Like it?
'

‘
Not much.
'

‘
Yes, well yours isn
'
t up to much either.
'

‘
Get rid of it.
'

‘
Enough of this nonsense,
'
Betty said pleasantly, and stroked her pet ganglion.

Without looking up from his magazine the dwarf muttered
‘
Pivot and his intrepid cheats have nearly damned us all, as usual.
'

‘
Oh, come,
'
said the giant mildly.
‘
We recognised him as one whose ethical dexterity allowed him almost anything at any time. Why condemn that quality now?
'

‘
Generally speaking I regarded him as an equal, so long as his face was obscured and he didn
'
t interfere. But he never hid his indifference to my attempts to manipulate him. Just sat there eating a fruit and staring at me as I went on. Incredibly annoying.
'

Darkwards gave a sick and quiet chuckle.

‘
What about the Mexican?
'
Blince asked.

‘
Who cares?
'
Betty declared.
‘
A man who sees intelligence as ugly paunch and denies that his body is anything more than a combat chassis. His mind embodies a human mind in miniature. Good luck to him.
'

Blince agreed without enthusiasm.

The kid was wandering, looking at the curios and bookshelves.

‘
We
'
re in lockdown,
'
announced Betty.
‘
And if a new personality signature does show its face, these sentinels will activate.
'
She looked to the Mission-style gun emplacements on either side of her throne.
‘
It
'
s good, gentlemen, that we all joined forces at last - formally. So much noise and waste at the Gate. Our core values entwine. See the structure of material power, Mr Atom? It
'
s guns all the way up.
'

‘
The blonde kid,
'
said Blince.
‘
He
'
s Partenheimer?
'

‘
Yes, the Head Perilous. Come here, Heber.
'

The kid put aside a Gamete book and walked over to the front of Betty
'
s throne-stage, looking up at her.

‘
See all this?
'
Betty said to him.
‘
These days entitlement can be manufactured - after all, who
'
s keeping track? You
'
ll stay here with me a little while.
'

The expected gratitude was unforthcoming. Heber looked up at her like a hollow saint. The mercy of Betty
'
s leopardskin philosophy seemed to stretch a little this way and that, then relax.

‘
Well,
'
she said with a control that sounded prim.
‘
I
'
m good at a certain kind of negotiation. You understand that word? I
'
ve been doing this my whole life. Just this. The market and its monarchy of confidence. You would have found it an excellent consolation. Remunerative dissonance once enhanced the flow of life, but it became so lopsided it broke. Trade became a labour of mourning. The pattern persists without content. How simple it all is.
'

Betty stopped, looking at him.

‘
Little Prince Myshkin is blank. I
'
m speaking to myself.
'

‘
He
'
s definitely Partenheimer,
'
said the Fed. Stood next to a big plant vase near the door, she looked a little wide-eyed and out of her depth.

‘
What do you want, a medal?
'

‘
Or the value I
'
d trade it for.
'

‘
He
'
s a dud,
'
I said,
‘
the balloon standard in stupidity. Even more than Blince over there.
'

‘
This phoney gumshoe
'
s playing you!
'
shouted the Fed.

‘
Your glittering conjecture tells me nothing.
'

‘
Who does he work for?
'
asked Ract, looking up to scowl.
‘
Eh, you? Who do you work for?
'

‘
I don
'
t understand the question,
'
I said. Ract had seemed to be damn near frothing with disinterest but he and Darkwards were basically of a piece. I detected some acoustic difference between their positions but that was all. In fact the chamber gave me the feel of an intertidal zone of motives, all together in avarice.
‘
Love isn
'
t friendly. And I
'
m full of love.
'

Betty
'
s pet ganglion let out a scionic squeal.

‘
My spine wants to know how an alibi so frequently disproved is still exalted.
'

‘
Cos he
'
s a goddamn throwback, why it is,
'
said Blince.
‘
Headcrime, artcrime, installation capers. The currency
'
s spent.
'

Murphy the Fed piped up, frowning.
‘
Listen, old timer. I missed alot of that and I like to think there
'
s still some wine in the bottle.
'

Betty was stood forward with a Jericho out of nowhere and I heard a crack. A beauty spot on Murphy
'
s forehead started spurting and she sat down sadly in a corner. I felt bad for her last words, for what she
'
d missed and wouldn
'
t realise. Some unfairness is a hole, pure and simple. After firing, Betty stepped back appraisingly like an artist. She hadn
'
t shot anyone in years. This whole setup was some sort of special occasion.

Blince had reflexively pulled an AMT pistol at the shot, and stood with it aimed left-handed and awkward at Betty Criterion.

‘
Chief Blince,
'
said Betty, sitting back in her throne.
‘
For whatever reason, the fates saw fit to put you and your immense interior at the disposal of the state. You could have refused.
'

‘
I could.
'

‘
Some people have that wisdom. Very few. Not you.
'

‘
So what if I am? - Which I doubt!
'
he exclaimed confusedly.
‘
And what
'
s the gun for?
'

‘
Emphasis. I
'
ve put mine up. Do the same, please.
'

Obedient as a match on the third strike, Blince put the gun up.

Blood began to lake outward around Murphy.

‘
I might declare it the slaying of the season,
'
remarked Ract without inflection.

The kid had wandered back to the book shelves. I stood like an idiot. It was the most lateral standoff I
'
d ever been a part of. I wondered if they were waiting for her to give a signal.