Novahead (12 page)

‘
Fits?
'

‘
Goes all tense and shuddery and the light starts guttering around him like a stain. Gives me the heeby-jeebies I can tell you. It
'
s happened three times - never as a result of anything I said - and each time it felt like something terrible was going to happen, but he recovered in the nick of time. Ofcourse to teach without words, each incident need not be a success.
'

‘
You think he might only be triggered by a physical event?
'

‘
Maybe. Anyway, now you know as much about that as I do.
'

‘
He doesn
'
t seem intense. And ultimacy preys on the young.
'

‘
You mean the need for truth. Nothing wrong with that. Life
'
s one long melismatic truth, changing tone as long as it
'
s sustained. Enough to drive you mad, really. A rare gift of dotage - either bitter or sweet depending on how much external influence you accepted - is the suspicion that you were actually right all along.
'
He cackled toothily.

‘
Way to cackle, Eddie.
'

‘
D
'
you remember that play I wrote?
Johnny Trafalgar is Deeper Than a Pie
.
'

‘
Yes. It was trash.
'

‘
Several people have seen it and always to their disadvantage. But I wanted to write a story about someone as right as I had once been. It had that demonstration of whether an idea alone is any use:

“
cut a table in the air

and rest it there.
”

I thought it would catch on.
'

‘
And they used to call you the Undeluded Man.
'

‘
Well, I also wanted to explore whether criminality was spread evenly throughout humanity or whether there were greater temptations among the ruling classes. I can
'
t believe, now, that I had any doubt about it. Since the Legislative Completion they
'
ve just been mixing the elements of laws and reassembling them in new but equally irresponsible combinations. Now they seem to be stating laws just to hear what they sound like. It
'
s not hard to find a one-shot law created only for you. Dissolution is rarely officially declared by those undergoing it. Most people have yet to develop a methodology for studying laws, let alone to establish whether they
'
re valid - and it
'
s too late. A civilisation doesn
'
t end spectacularly, it implodes into stink. Time isn
'
t a propellant. Human beings are so short-lived they die before they
'
ve come to their senses, and I
'
ve come to think it
'
s the same for the species as a whole. Time passes. We
'
re all replacements. Generations of delusion collapse so that, forgotten, they can be built up again. It takes genius or impossible continuity to discern an accurate sequence of motive in civilisation. To read its structure. The guiding line of evil is interference. Screams of pain are dense with information when recorded and slowed down. Do you have the patience? Do you care enough? Kindness is beyond appeal; simple. Today it
'
s like an alien substance, too subtle and quiet to collide with anything.
'

‘
You really think it
'
s not at odds with the general violence?
'

‘
Their proofs of strength takes place in different arenas. And ofcourse kindness has become so rare, it
'
s basically forgotten. Not on the authorities
'
radar anymore. I can
'
t remember the last time anyone was prosecuted for it.
'

I was not sure I could accept that, like the snake that surprised Gamete and the kid in the Fadlands, such a small and simple thing could stand as a breathtakingly comprehensive reproach to a universe of both organised and chaotic evil.

Gamete was looking at me very intently. I didn
'
t say anything.

‘
Well, whatta you think of the idea?
'

‘
I think you should sink it lashed to a cannon.
'

‘
If you don
'
t know the truth,
'
he pronounced gravely,
‘
you
'
re not yet a man. What
'
s this?
'

I looked at the food.
‘
It appears to be some sort of caramelised hammer.
'

He raised eyebrows which seemed typeset.

It had started raining, the cafe window was out of focus. Car-crash bouquets that had taken root long ago were rippling in the drool of water on glass.

‘
So, what now? More of your conscience
'
s fiery exhalations?
'

‘
No, I see no point in hurrying against eternity,
'
he said, and seemed to grow older with every word.
‘
The chain of an epigram is armour preserving nothing.
'

‘
They might organise some crass laudation when you die for real.
'

‘
Famous in the flowers, so what? Human beings have no conception of timescale. Even the greatest art is immortal only temporarily. Beyond life language becomes transparent, dimensionless, and finally evaporates.
'
He exhibited an exhaustion I could neither question nor equal.
‘
Besides, is it necessary? The spring of renewal is less fertile each time, and less real, and more desperate.
'

‘
You
'
re not very bold, really.
'

‘
No, I
'
m not. And it
'
s not mystical when I say I can
'
t take it anymore. I can only resurrect so many times into this wasteland. I
'
m done.
'

‘
That
'
s ... very sad.
'

Gamete stood.
‘
You seem a bit over-resurrected, yourself. Take better care. Goodbye.
'
And slapping on the hat he
'
d just swiped from the cadaver, he walked out.

As he disappeared from view, my heart changed colour.

 

 

 

 

 

I flipped a drain hat on Swingle Street and climbed in, descending an iron ladder. The penlight clenched in my teeth flashed on a shapeless plastic coracle moored at the ladder
'
s base. Beerlight
'
s subway system had flooded long ago and bull sharks pulled into the ancient stations. A scabby oar took me slowly past dead miles of electrical cording that striped the tunnel. On the black water here and there floated a skull that more properly belonged on the street. The penlight smudged over twitching rats and black pipes. The giant beaver dam ahead proved to be a tangle of bones and connective tissue. A dog appeared on the crescent, looking at me and slopping its chops. I climbed on to the adjacent maintenance platform. The dog folded itself down like a deckchair and that was the last interesting thing I saw it do.

A dirty panel opened into a utility tunnel, at the end of which a black door bore one strip of police tape: POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS - the word
‘
BE
'
had been marked in between the last two words. I knocked. Nothing.

I entered to find gun dealer Brute Parker, his ghost-assed head massive and blank under a bare lightbulb, sitting on a workstool in total silence.

‘
What are you doing?
'

‘
Just thinking aloud. And then you show up seeming to be in more trouble than I had thought you able to achieve, Taffy Atom.
'

‘
My death
'
s backdated. Betty
'
s obviously going to withhold my respiration privileges. It
'
s all anyone
'
s talking about, behind their faces. I
'
m walking around disguised as myself.
'

The stained room was cluttered with munitions and ballistic baubles. Racks of banana clips, bleeding crates of exproprium, gun manuals swollen with damp, teen half-guns, economy rifles, mudra knives, clove knives, morton forks and what appeared to be a couple of nuclear fuel rods. The corners were silted up with propped carbines. A spanner lay in a canary cage.
‘
You need nostril insurance,
'
Parker said.

‘
Double-barrelled
'
s too bulky. What
'
s this?
'

Parker stood off the stool and looked at the piece I was lifting from the zinc display altar. It was a fifteen-year-old Mokusatsu Intol rifle - I hadn
'
t recognised it because it was a double-neck. After shunning smart guns for years Parker had finally become a believer, and how. He no longer considered the pulse grid a presumptuous meddling with the clean lines of gun karma and his armamentarium had become a keeping garden for transitional ammo.

‘
This
'
ll have an etheric backwash. I
'
ll ignore myself out of existence.
'

‘
No, Taffy Atom,
'
he said, reaching to flip a baffle on the stock. I glimpsed behind his mirrored aviator shades - his sighting eye looked to be clouded over.
‘
This generates a recoil screen. It
'
s a bit of a guzzler but as far as smarts go it
'
s a classic.
'

‘
I remember the days when a gun didn
'
t need feeding like a collie. But only just.
'

I replaced the Intol and continued browsing, always aware of the proximity of Parker
'
s iron muscularity and racist eyebrows. His body was a LaBrae Tar Pit of slugs and shrapnel, battle wounds from a career in grudgecraft.

Everyone had a general idea of Brute Parker and his difficulties, his stages of struggle and spiritual progress. It was followed with interest because he had gone so far, so steadily and absolutely in one direction. Revenge carried him a long way and then a little further by the sort of hollow momentum that carried others a lifetime. He had practised on synchronised swimmers and could fire the alphabet. The apparently reckless accuracy of his aim derived from his total willingness to accept the consequences. And having hitched his fortunes to the trigger it had led him here at last, hulking about in the foundations of the city as a respected dealer in bespoke firearms and tutor in Full Catastrophe Self Defence. It was good to have friends in deep places.

Tilling my good hand through a box of Parker
'
s signed, hand-cast slugs, I spotted an axe and picked it up, hefting the weight a little.
‘
I suppose I could settle the matter from behind, with this.
'

‘
You a comedian?
'

The notion was not a new one. I put the axe down and wandered around some more. The walls were pasted with thousands of rotten pictures. I examined a monotone still of an old-time city. Buildings like crosswords. Here and there were more recent pictures of gun girls like Rosa Control and Bleach Pastiche. Behind them the wall looked and felt like an eraser. I tapped a numb powerline. The air smelled of decay and the violent staleness of burnt water.

‘
Trouble with a Fibonacci pistol is once it starts firing it never stops,
'
Parker was saying, pointing to the nickel-plated Corona piece in
‘
Guest Gun Corner
'
. He showcased a teal-green knife designed for three kinds of pain, a crate of bellbottom Volliox grenades, slow-release ammo and other fab new agonies. Parker
'
s reputation for stellar mayhem had always drawn a crowd. The populace and its ever-expanding capacity for assent had to have a back end. Subjected to every sort of check and exhaustion, humiliation and indulgence, they sought alternative injustices, at least. Parker
'
s series of gun shops served a bottomless craving. Depending on the client a firearm was a way to man-up artificially or merely the last indulgence of a weary sensualist. Surrounded by extrapolation ordnance their predicaments and grievances became as volatile and golden as gasoline. Gone were the days when society
'
s dupes would approach a mercenary gingerly, all hell money and apprehension. This was now a city where to bomb a street before walking it was an elementary precaution.

Though no longer hung up on vanilla ordnance he still had plenty on offer. He showed me an outrageous raw mortar built from a hinged sinkpipe and a coffee grinder with two silver coffin-handles for a grip. By flanging varied-bore pipes into the barrel it could fire everything from tiki mugs to tin crucifix crossbars. It reminded me of the old Frost popper that fired shot glasses.

‘
How many targets?
'
Parker asked.

‘
Six to ten, maybe more depending on bodyguards.
'

‘
My carnage teacher used to say,
“
When the victim is ready, the bastard appears.
”'
Parker referred to galoots as
‘
slug absorbers
'
.
‘
Will you be up close?
'

‘
Might be. Everyone seems to want to talk. You heard of
El Mozote
?
'

‘
Yes. Back in the day he took a gun through customs disguised as a bomb. The only way he
'
ll enter heaven is climbing over the wall with a knife clenched between his teeth.
'
Parker
'
s ongoing description matched the man of action and bloodshot charisma I
'
d encountered. He was ostensibly hiding out from twenty-seven consecutive death sentences the skeletized government had surely forgotten about. In short, any attempt to capture Junco in words was impossible - the best that could be done was to alert the neighbourhood to his presence by the simple expedient of a
‘
sonic ostrich
'
which could detect malice in the thickest night.

‘
Have you such an ostrich?
'

‘
No.
'

Parker concluded his description by opining that a thick mustache caused frown ricochet, bouncing emotion back into the body in a conservation cycle like a capped battery. This way a man
'
s roots become embittered.

‘
What in the rosy hell is this?
'
I asked. I had found a purple mock-plastic hoop gun, tegular and precision-fitted. It was all grip and looked like a toy.
‘
Where
'
s the payload?
'

‘
This is a Chapelle whisper gun,
'
he said, explaining that it delivered a single cenotaphic charge that reduced the target to a small de-aquefied block of supercompressed ash with embossed monicker. Personality was abbreviated to a token remembrance that dispensed with the need to remember it the rest of the time - and ofcourse the memorial was ignored too. The gun was known as a
‘
charm bracelet
'
.

‘
Isn
'
t that basically an Intol the long way around?
'

‘
If you think that
'
s a long way around, Taffy Atom, take a swatch at this.
'

From a rack he reached down a drum gun in a smoked-steel shell like a marlin flank.

‘
HyperBohron Cold Cannon firing special triage. Leaves an infinitely regressive corpse - in other words you
'
ll be dead in every possible universe. Big, eh? And tidy.
'

‘
How does it do that?
'

‘
By having some common sense.
'
He stripped the housing to reveal a mundane Valentine M-1 carbine, forty years old with an aftermarket exhaust.

‘
Oh, I see.
'

‘
But it does what it says, and people love the idea,
'
he said, with the slightest twitch of a smile.
‘
And pay for it. 850 rounds per minute. Like spitting acorns out a ship cannon and it
'
s got a lot of low-end. But it
'
ll clear a room.
'

Gun-lust was a horrific happiness too well documented to be denied and this was a pharmacy of the heart. My palms were sweating and I could hardly breathe all of a sudden. I was shaking. Parker obviously knew exactly what was happening and stood back a little, but without undue concern.

‘
You
'
re in bad shape, Atom.
'

‘
But alive.
'

‘
Yes. But pretty soon you
'
ll be sitting in a buried chair maybe.
'

‘
Maybe.
'

He reached out a piece from behind a dangling drape of Bohr inhibitor belts.
‘
The Steyr MMP is your man, Taffy Atom. Pseudo-smart Mannlicher micro machine pistol. Thousand round sidespace-compression clip. Don
'
t joey the clips or the gun with the clip in place. Takes hornet rounds too if you want.
'

‘
Fire rate?
'

‘
Scots bar: thousand rounds a minute.
'

He handed it off. It was a little smaller than a Micro-Uzi. It had a patina of enamel thin as the armour of a bluebottle and a grip in black rubber dead as a shark
'
s eye. The thingness of a gun, its weight, the disastrous potential in the stillness of its moving parts. Pound for pound it was tragic as charred pollen.

The number had been filed off the stock, the patch of file marks glistening like fool
'
s gold. This was so redundant I got a hit of a past flavour, unexpected - I was almost crying suddenly. I felt the absence of old characters. I didn
'
t put the gun up.

‘
Firearms aren
'
t remedial,
'
Parker said stiffly and seemingly apropos of nothing.

‘
What do you know about nitrophage nerve mines, defusing them.
'

‘
It would take a brain surgeon to trifle with such a device, Taffy Atom. The aim is to create a novadose that puts the carrier
'
s head over the horizon. They used to call it a subgigantic hit but they don
'
t think it will be so little now, because of a chain reaction. Run and run and run a long way and you
'
re in business, Taffy Atom, laughing aloud.
'