Vurt 2 - Pollen (20 page)

“I know this man,” Belinda says. “He was a passenger, called himself Deville. This is Kracker?”

“Yes. The Chief of Cops.”

“Kracker tried to kill me.”

Gumbo removes the bong pipe from his lips just long enough to shout, “Raving piglet!”

Belinda ignores him. “Why do they want to kill me, Wanita?”

“You must know too much, Belinda.”

“I don’t know anything. I’m alone.”

“Not any more. Gumbo needs you.”

“Do you always answer for the Hippy King?”

“What do you think?”

“I came here in good grace, Wanita. I expected more than this… this stoned-up hippy shit.”

Wanita falls silent. Gumbo gurgles from behind his bong, his face stretched and curved by the glass, and then sneezes.

“Bless you—”

“Wanita, fuck off!” This from Belinda, surprising herself. She steps over the tangle of wires to where the good Gumbo is sitting. She wrenches the pipe out of his mouth, grabs the Cherry Stoner feather from the air, her fingers crackling with fire and pain as the flights tickle her skin. No matter. “Belinda, stop—” Wanita’s voice in the colours. No matter. This feather is going somewhere. Belinda rams it into Gumbo’s mouth. He starts to spit and gag, but she makes him suck.

Deep.

“Somebody told me the fever is coming through from a Vurt world called Juniper Suction. Is that right? Gumbo? Is that right?”

“My feelings exactly.” Gumbo’s eyes are flooded with tears at the sudden hit of reality.

“Tell me about Juniper Suction.”

“It’s a green Heaven Feather. Very rare. Gumbo hasn’t seen one for years.”

“What’s a Heaven Feather? Come on!”

“Fuck you.”

“Gumbo…”

“Stay out of this, Wanita.” Back to Gumbo. “We helping each other, or what? Maybe I should use the Shadow on you? Hey? You want that? A Shadow-fuck?”

“No, no… please… Juniper is a place to put your mind when you die. You can live forever there, in your dreams. It’s an Underworld ruled by one John Barleycorn. He lives there with his young wife, Persephone.”

“Persephone was Coyote’s last passenger.”

“Bingo! That’s it.”

Belinda lets go of the Gumbo. Wanita moves in to comfort him.

“It’s okay, Wanita. Superfine.” The faraway look vanishes from his eyes as he turns back to Belinda. “This is why they want you killed, driver. You knew too much about the dream-seed. The Vurt is making an invasion into our space and Persephone is the source of the fever. Columbus is the road on which the seed travels.”

“So Columbus had Coyote killed after the passenger was brought in?”

“Maybe, but what’s important now is to stop the Vurt world coming through. It’s deadly, like every time we sneeze another sentence is written against us.”

“Can we do anything?”

“Aaaaaccchhhhhooooossshhhhh!!!!! Pardon me.” Gumbo shoved the Cherry Stoner feather back into his mouth for another charge of reality juice before continuing, “We need to get you and Columbus together.”

“Can you do that, Gumbo?” asked Belinda.

“It’s possible, but it’s dangerous. You willing to risk it?”

“I’m willing.”

“The first step is to get you onto the Hive-map again.”

“I’ll do anything.”

Gumbo’s mouth breaks into a weed-blackened grin that not even his curtains of hair can conceal. Then he looks over to a large nautical clock on the cellar wall. It reads 11.42 a.m. Gumbo works a control so that the Pink Floyd’s musical patterns transform into a network of yellow and black insects that pulsate over the walls. “This is the Xcab map,” he says.

“Jesus!”

“But first… the broadcast…”

Zero Clegg called me at 11.55 a.m., Saturday morning, asking if I’d been listening to the Gumbo lately? “No, no, don’t answer,” he said, before I could say anything. “It’s obvious you haven’t, Sib, from your reaction.”

“What’s he broadcasting now?” I asked. “A list of all known Mooners?” Another half-a-dozen Mooner corpses had been uncovered during the night.

“It’s worse than that.”

“Tell me.”

Zero went quiet for a moment, which was unusual. Something was wrong. I have lived one hundred and fifty-two years, and have lived through many, many strange and surprising times, but the words I heard that day over the telephone will forever be part of my deepest Shadow. Zero played me a tape recording of Gumbo YaYa’s show broadcast that same morning, from 11.42 to 11.45. It started with a piece of music fading away, and then a voice coming in over the top of the last moments. Except that it wasn’t Gumbo’s voice, it was a woman’s voice…

“This is Boda the maverick cabber calling the people of Manchester from the Gumbo wave. (FOUR SECONDS OF SILENCE) My name is now Belinda Jones. That’s my pre-cabian name. I never killed Coyote, and I never would have done. Xcabs are lying about my cab-whereabouts; I was never at Alex Park at that time. Columbus tried to blame me. Maybe I knew too much about his secret schemes, or maybe I just loved Coyote too much. I never got the proper chance to express it. He was taken from me early, too early. (TWO SECONDS’ SILENCE) I’m determined to find out who did murder him. Coyote picked up a passenger named Persephone on his last-ever trip. Columbus set Coyote up for this ride. The Cops are helping the King Cab. Chief Kracker himself… Kracker tried to kill me. Keep trying, dumb-fucker cop. Persephone is a young girl, age of ten or eleven. She may be the source of the fever. Anyone with information can ring the YaYa number. He’ll pass it on to me. (TWO SECONDS) Pollen Count is at 1607 and rising. (FIVE SECONDS) Gumbo is going to play Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby (Standing in the Shadow) by The Rolling Stones. Which is a special request going out to Sibyl Jones of the Manchester Cops. You seen any good Vurtball matches lately, Sibyl? (TWO SECONDS) I’ll be back at one o’clock with an update. Take it away, Mick and the boys. (THREE SECONDS) Erm… was that okay, Gumbo?”

And then another voice, the Gumbo’s: “That was just fine, kid. Aaaaccchhhhhoooooossshhhhhhh!!! Pardon me. And more from the maverick cabber later on today. 1.00 p.m. Stay turned on now, you hear?”

And then the music started, and Zero turned off the recording and came back on line. But he didn’t say anything. I could hear his wheezing, feverish breath in the darkness of my Shadow, which was trembling with closure. He sneezed over the line and then said, “You know what this means? Gumbo has claimed your daughter.”

“What can I do, Zero? I want her back.”

“I think the fever is more important.”

“You would.”

“Stay cool, Mooner.”

“I’m her mother, Zero. I’ve been searching for years.”

Clegg went quiet again. I could hear him sneeze away from the mouthpiece and then his voice coming back to me: “This is the deal, Officer Jones. I bring Tom Dove round to your flat, and then we—”

I put the phone down on his words. Give a dog a bone, and all that. Maybe one of Zero’s distant relations had been a pure-bred Retriever.

I was nervous and edgy, visions of feathers floating through my mind. My son was crying from the bedroom. I went in to tend to Jewel’s needs. It was more for my benefit than his. Every crack in that bedroom had been sealed, but the seed was already within him. But pretending to help my firstborn put my mind at ease, a little. His breath was softly exploding from a frail body that was covered in a hard crust of snot that I tried my best to clean away, but more just took its place, wet and slimy. I feared that he had only a few days left now. I should explain that death to a Non-Viable Lifeform was in no way similar to that of a fully living being. A mortal treats death as an enemy, fighting until the last breath. To an NVL, however, once the moment is ripe, death is more of a love affair; the long struggle between their opposing ancestors is over. Life and death in the kiss of lovers. All that matters then is to let the darker side of their nature take them to bed. The bed is the grave, the bed from which they were born. Into which they will die. How far was Jewel from that moment of acceptance? A mere breath? One more sneeze? Another jump in the pollen count? My only choice was to find a cure for him. And all this sealing was really for myself, of course, after hearing my daughter play that song for me. Have you seen your mother, baby, standing in the Shadow? A shiver ran through me, ripples of smoke. I tuned into Gumbo’s wave, only to hear him boast that Belinda was staying at his secret house from now on, “Where the cops will never find her. She’ll be talking on the hour, telling Manchester the story of her extraordinary life. Exclusive to Radio YaYa, giving good tongue to the North.” And he laughed then, heartily, and it got to me, that laughter, it maddened me.

I sat down on the lounger and reached for a half bottle of red wine left over from the other night. It took me only twenty minutes to finish it off, and another fifteen to make a good start on a new bottle. During that time I must have smoked at least thirty Napalms. Tasting all of the nasty fruits, I was drifting sweetly through the caresses of Dionysus. It felt like all of my blood sugar had been changed into alcohol. My Shadow was bogged down in deep claret. The Napalm pack-message read SMOKING IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL—HIS MAJESTY’S PERSONAL JESUS.

For the first time, a Napalm failed me.

At 1.00 p.m. I tuned into Radio YaYa once again, expecting to hear Belinda telling the story of her life, my life. I must have been very desperate.

Gumbo YaYa is grinning through his layers of hair. “Excellent broadcast, Belinda. For a beginner. Now watch. Shit, I haven’t felt this good in ages.” We are travelling back to 11.46 a.m. on the morning of that same Saturday.

Gumbo and Belinda are alone now, Wanita has vanished into some deeper corridor. Gumbo is well-zonked on Cherry Stoner, and he looks almost normal as he points to the walls where the Xcab roads are flickering. “This is the Hive-map up and running. The yellow dots are the cabs, the black web is the roads.” Gumbo works the controls so that the whole map tilts through 180 degrees. “Isn’t that beautiful? We can view it from any angle, any position. Keep your eyes on the road, driver.”

Now Belinda is travelling down Oxford Road just like she used to do inside of Charrie. This time at a distance. “Where’s Columbus?” she asks.

“Columbus is the whole thing taken together. That’s his weakness, you see?”

“Why?” Belinda is intrigued.

“The Switch has become too powerful. He can no longer see the wood for the trees, the road for the cabs.”

“You know that he’s calling up some big changes to the map?”

“It really gets to me that Columbus is doing this, you know? It’s like we’re both messengers, the Gumbo and the Cab King. Communication is power. We’re both duty-bound to carry the message to the people and that bastard goes and abuses the power. So then, we work quickly, Belinda, yes?”

“What can you do?”

“Watch…” Gumbo works the switches again, so that the image focuses on one particular Xcab. “You see that cab there, Belinda?” he asks. Belinda nods. “That’s my cab. That’s the Gumbo YaYa Cab. The Magic Bus.”

“There’s no such thing,” Belinda says.

“Officially, no. But that old hippy-cab is there anyway. You saw the Magic Bus outside the house, yes?”

“I saw it.”

“That’s my version of the Xcab.”

“It’s impossible.”

“Well, it’s happening. Watch…” Gumbo works the controls and the hippy-cab makes a left on the map, from Oxford Street onto Whitworth.

“But who’s driving it?” Belinda asks.

Gumbo laughs. “I am. No one is. It’s an imaginary cab. This is where I get my map-knowledge from. Columbus doesn’t even know the magic taxi exists.”

Belinda feels like her head is exploding with this knowledge, this denial of everything she has known the map to be. “It’s unnatural,” she cries.

“Exactly. I can do the same for you and Charrie.” Gumbo looks at the clock again. 11.52 a.m. “We’ll have to move quickly,” he tells her. “You want it, Belinda? The map, once again?”

“Yes. Yes, do it. I want it.”

Gumbo is playing at the clacking keys of an antique typewriter, from whose broken back wires lead into the lover’s tangle. He reaches out to pluck a silver feather from the air, doesn’t even have to look for it, despite the sneeze that ripples from him. He pushes the feather into his mouth, sucks it deep and then removes it. He pushes the wet feather into the socket of a crooked transformer. A new message scrolls over the Xcab map on the wall: WELCOME TO SLITHERING SILVER. THIS IS SHAREVURT. PLEASE BE HONEST. PAY THE REGISTRATION FEE. “Fuck that shit,” the Gumbo announces. “Information should be free.” He makes some adjustments until the map is overlaid with a floating menu and then says to Belinda, “At 11.59 a.m., every morning, the Xcab map gets updated from the Council info. This is the moment of weakness. This is the door we go through.” Gumbo’s fingers are dancing over the keys. “Aaaaaaccchhhhoooooossshhhhh!!!!! Pardon me. Shit, this fever is killing me. Give me a new street name, please?”

“What?”

“Belinda, I’m not kidding. This window is tight. A new street please…”

“Shaky Path,” Belinda answers, dragging the name from darkness.

“Done.” Gumbo’s fingers bring up an inset window on the map screen. The time is reading 11.57. Fingers dancing. In the window a new street called Shaky Path is floating over the map. In another window Gumbo has called up the Authorities’ Info-bank. Their latest updates to the map are packed in tightly to that space. Gumbo moves the Shaky Path window over to the Council window. Then he merges the two together, with a smooth move on the keyboard. Shaky Path is then registered as a new road to be opened that day. “Don’t worry,” Gumbo says to Belinda. “All this info has a black scrambler on it. Tell me Charrie’s Xcab number, please.” Belinda tells him the number, and then Gumbo YaYa drags up an Xcab icon from the toolbar at the top of the screen. He merges the icon with the number and then places them both on the Shaky Path imaginary road. The time is now reading 11.59 a.m., and Gumbo and Belinda watch in silence as the Xcab map sucks down the Council’s update. “Okay, rogue driver,” Gumbo says. “You’re back on line.”

Belinda moves closer to the screen. Bright yellow icons are buzzing around the Hive-map. Over to the east of the city there’s a new street called Shaky Path, where no street ever existed before, and her very own cab icon, Charrie, is sitting on that street, dark and waiting for a driver. Gumbo tells her that the icon is dark because the real Charrie is off-map at the moment, but as soon as she drives him over the barrier, that marker will be as bright and as lively as all the others, only in secret colours. “I’ll be able to talk to you over the system,” he says. “Mister Big Switch won’t even be listening.” Gumbo starts to laugh then. Belinda asks him how it works. “It’s easy, really: a Trojan Horse. You build a new but imaginary street into the update, put your cab on it; Columbus thinks that street is up and running, but it doesn’t really exist. And your cab is riding that invisible street. It’s a viral street. My Magic Bus rides a road called Strawberry Fields. That’s where this house is living on the map… Strawberry Fields. That’s why the Authorities can’t find my address. The cops and the Xcabs and the Authorities, Gumbo is laughing at all of them. The map is yours again, Belinda.”