Authors: Jeff Noon
I stood up, accepting the mission. Taking one firm, official step closer to the edge.
The evening of that day, Roberman is working the six-till-two night shift at the rank. At 9.07 he is directed to a pick-up at the Manchester Ship Canal, Old Trafford dock. The moon is making a low play at the water, breathing ripples and junk. Roberman gets out of the Xcab, disconnecting his system. Now he’s standing on the shore-yard, waiting for the shadows to lengthen. No passenger in sight, only the wind and the litter, until a far-off figure steps out from behind a rubbish dump and one of the fleeting shadows plumes itself from the jigsaw of darkness. Roberman receives the Shadow more easily this time, knowing of nowhere to run to. He’s growling in his thoughts at the sight of the faraway girl, turned on, confused and angry. “That you, Boda?” he thinks, letting the thoughts travel over the Shadow-paths, free from Columbus’s prying Hive-mind. “Really? You back, Boda? What do you want from me?”
Come closer
.
Roberman walks over to where the girl is loitering against the side of a busted skip.
Boda is waiting there for him. She has Country Joe’s blond wig pulled down tight over her features, and a look of desperation in her eyes. They have a conversation then, robodog and rogue driver, in perfect and human English; Boda shaping all of Roberman’s growls into clear pictures, via the Shadow.
“You’ve got the Shadow?” Roberman asks in this newly clean voice of his.
“I’m pre-cabian, Rober. I can hear you thinking.”
“Leaving the Hive like that. It was cruel of you.”
“I was forced into leaving.”
“You think I care? Well, fuck you, traitor.”
“Columbus is the traitor. He tried to have me killed.”
“Columbus wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“I need your help, Roberman.”
“Eat Shadow-shit.”
“I’m sorry for leaving you.”
“Are you? I guess you’re missing the map, Boda?”
“Some.”
“So how are you getting around?”
“By fast-track.”
“Dog-Jesus! Do those rattle-buses still run? Didn’t they tear the tracks up years ago?”
“I’m changing, Roberman. I liked the map, but I love the free roads more. I’m stronger now. I can’t come back to Xcabs. Columbus is a bad guy.”
“You’re asking for trouble, Calamity Jane.”
“That’s right. I’m a gun-toting, hell-for-leather bitch from the plains who’s heading for danger.” Boda pulls out the gun stolen from Country Joe. “I need to talk to the cab-boss, pronto.”
“Cab-Jesus! Put that away!”
“It’s a Colt .45, Rober. You like?”
“Put it away! Just… just stop pointing it at me!”
“Tell me how I can meet Columbus.”
“Nobody meets Columbus. He’s not real enough.”
“You were my cab-teacher, Rober. I need to see Columbus regarding the death of Coyote. I think the old boss is involved in some way. Coyote told me that Columbus could be visited, if the correct procedures were taken.” She empties the gun’s chamber of all but one bullet. “Maybe you know of a way?” She then spins the chamber.
“What are you doing?”
“Just practising.” Boda puts the gun against her temple and…
Roberman shouting, “Boda!”
… pulls the trigger.
Click.
“Cab-Jesus on a ride to hell!” Roberman breathes at last.
“What do you reckon, Rober?” Boda says, holding the gun out to the taxi-dog. “One bullet, six chambers.” She spins the chamber again. “You want to take a chance with me?”
The wind blows the moon’s reflection over the canal water until it covers Roberman with a silvery light. Flowers whisper against his hind legs. “You’re fucking crazy, woman!” he says.
“With Coyote dead,” Boda replies, “I have nothing to live for, and the only thing keeping me alive is finding out who killed him. You must tell me where Columbus is hiding. And if the gun won’t loosen you, then maybe this will…”
“Get out of my head!” Roberman screams, as a fierce pain stabs at his skull.
“You know, I’m really getting to like this Shadow power.”
“Please, Boda… you’re hurting me…”
“How about this then? There, isn’t that good?” A look of robobliss comes into the taxi-dog’s eyes. “You like having your Shadow stroked, don’t you, dog driver? Sexy as hell, I’ll bet. Feel me stroking. Oh, yes. Lovely. I wonder… if I stroked deep enough, maybe I could find some secrets. Your pre-cabian life, Rober? You’d like to find that, wouldn’t you?”
“No. Please, no. Boda!!! Get out of me! I don’t want to know that.”
“I loved Coyote,” Boda says, calmly, surfing the head-waves of Roberman for knowledge, finding none. “I must find out who killed him. Columbus is claiming I was at the scene of the crime. He’s claiming that I killed the loving dog. Can’t you see that the boss is making excuses for himself? Columbus is tied up with the killing. Can’t you help me find his hideout?”
“There’s no way I can do that, Boda, I’m just a driver. I doubt if even the Gumbo YaYa knows where he is. Columbus is too well hidden.”
“Why didn’t you tell the cops about my real whereabouts on the murder day?”
“Can I go against the map, Boda?”
“I thought we were friends?”
“Friends? How can I be friends with someone who’s left the map?”
“Is Columbus stronger than friendship?” Asking this, Boda puts the gun back against her temple.
Roberman’s plastic eyes close. He needs time to think about this; this is the plaguing question. He breathes in, an intaking of pollen. And then sneezes, dog-robo strong. Globs of sputum and snot speckle his Xcabber uniform. Moments of doubt, Boda against the Switch Columbus. The Switch comes out the stronger. “Coyote was married,” he says to Boda. “There. That’s knowledge for you. Didn’t you know that?”
“What?”
“Oh yes. And a kid. They had a kid. A puppygirl. She’s called Karletta. It’s all in the cab-wave. Columbus called it up for us.”
“He never…”
“They live in Bottletown. Columbus had us looking for you there. They were at the funeral. Didn’t you see them?”
“I couldn’t go too close. Coyote never said…”
“Of course he didn’t. Will you let me go now?”
Boda pulls on the trigger…
“Please, Boda!”
… Click.
“Who told you about the Limbo fare that Coyote picked up?” Boda asks.
“Columbus… Columbus gave it to me…”
“Can’t you see what’s happening, Roberman? Why would Columbus do that? A fare from Limbo? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know… I don’t know why.”
“How can I trust you?”
“You have a choice, Boda?”
Boda gives up on the Shadow, trusting more to friendship. Turnaround into softness, the Shadow dwindling. The soft realm beyond Xcabs.
“Something’s going wrong, Boda,” Roberman says. “Something’s going down with Columbus.”
“Tell me about it.”
“A new operating system. The map is getting fluid. Something… the map… he’s changing it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m scared, Boda. I’m picking up messages. Whispers in the ranks. Nobody knows. Columbus is getting power-hungry.”
“He’s going to change the map? Why should we be scared of that?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know,” Roberman answers. “But Columbus won’t give up on you. Whatever he’s planning, he needs all of the cabs for it.”
“Tell Columbus that I’m coming after him,” says Boda.
“I’ll do that,” replies Roberman. “Be careful…”
And Boda vanishes into the curve of a shadow that falls from the side of a rubbish skip that catches soft light from the moon that floats high and serene over the water that laps at the side of the canal that leads into the city of Manchester.
I don’t know what to call you any more, daughter. Should it be Belinda or should it be Boda? I was back home in the Victoria Park flat after receiving the new mission from Kracker. All the collected notes of the Flowers case were laid out on my desk. The child Jewel was calling from his room, but I was trying to concentrate on the story of it all, hoping to make a shape out of the case. Again and again I returned to the facial image of driver Boda taken from the Xcab-banks. Was, this really my daughter? I was doing my best to shed nine years of damage from the image. I was trying to add some hair to the shaved skull. I knew that Boda was eighteen now, and that she had joined Xcabs when she was nine. And how could I forget that my daughter, Belinda, had left me at the age of nine? And that she had subsequently vanished from the data-banks?
Why, oh why? What was your motivation, my daughter? Did you hate me so much for passing on the curse of the Unbeknownst? Or was it the constant struggle towards bad love, as witnessed in the arguments of your mother and father? And after your father left, were you then cast adrift yourself, feeling unloved? I could have loved you, my child. I could’ve managed it, somehow, despite the dust and the doubt.
My daughter would be eighteen now. What better way to vanish than to fold yourself into the secret Xcab map of the roads? I needed to work out my feelings on the case, because I couldn’t stop looking at the picture; the eyes of the cab driver were making me dizzy with half-remembered moments. I had been searching for your traces for years, daughter. Had my search for a case-clue called Boadicea set me on that same quest?
Jewel was still crying from his room, so I got up and went through to him. I cradled my son in my arms. My first child. Jewel Jones.
I never told you, Belinda, that you have a brother. You were both children of Fecundity 10, as was your mother. Fecundity 10 was the Authorities’ answer to the black air of Thanatos, a plague of sterility that had covered England years and years before I was born. Under the influence of Fecundity 10, ten thousand babies were conceived. Desire was overheated. The pure wanted more than purity, they wanted dogs, they wanted robos, they wanted Vurt-beings. And babies were made from this. Fecundity 10 had broken down the cellular barriers between species. The Authorities banned the use of Fecundity 10. Of course, nobody listened. Fecundity 10 became a bootleg drug, liquid or feather, and already it was firmly at home in the gene pool. The Casanova of drugs, there were no limits to what you could love. Even the dead were desirable.
Our story, Belinda…
Even the dead were desirable, but the recently dead were especially so. They were shimmering waves of decay. Pures and dogs, robos and Vurts; they were all up for the pleasures of necrophilia. The chemical hands of Casanova reached deep, into the darkest genes. Babies were made from these terrible couplings: half and half creatures, expelled from dead wombs. And they were born two ways, boy or girl, ugliness or beauty. The Authorities called the boy-children Non-Viable Lifeforms. Zombies, Ghosts, Half-alivers, these were their given names. This was my Jewel. Their ugliness was distasteful to the Authorities; NVLs were banned from the cities. They would have to make their desperate half-life out in the bleak places, the moors, which they named Limbo, after their plight. But if the child of the grave was a girl… well then, she would have only the shadow of death upon her. That child would be very beautiful, because of this dark presence, this body of smoke she carried within her own. And because all living things carry the shadow of death within them, albeit unknowingly, Shadowgirls could join their Shadow to the living. They could read the secret desires of the mind. The Authorities were fearful of the Shadow, but how could they dismiss something so nebulous? These beauties had veins of smoke. A trace of death, clinging on to life. Remember that, my sweet.
Belinda, your grandmother was a corpse when she gave birth to me.
I have never told this story to you, not completely. Its details were too gory for your beauty to take. And you never gave me the chance, leaving so soon. This is my answer.
Your grandmother was a recently deceased corpse, your grandfather was a Casanova-pumped lover of the dead. Their marriage bed was the up-turned earth of Southern Cemetery. Two months later I was born. It doesn’t take long with Fecundity 10. Born to a bed of soil and flowers, with the gift of the Shadow. My life of loneliness, leading to the moment of realizing that I could not take the Vurt. Dodo feelings. The curse. My lonely life of shadows and smoke. Sleep was harsh. I could not dream. I passed this inability on to you, Belinda, and for this curse you hated me.
The tricks that I learned to play, in recompense—answering back to teachers before they had even spoken, making a dead cat in the alley jump into new life as I poured my Shadow into it, forcing words into strangers’ mouths. Lonely, lonely. After the episode of Jewel’s conception, I suppose I must have just fallen into the arms of your father. He was a very pure man, and I thought that maybe he would dilute the curse a little; the curse of not dreaming, and the curse of the dead. I had so many things to nullify. That dream was not to be. These attributes of death are passed on from mother to child, from child to child. And I know that you hated me for passing on the inability to dream, but really, it could have been worse; you could have been a boy. You were blessed with the Shadow. Wasn’t that good enough for you? Of course it wasn’t, but please remember that your father was plagued by his failure to make you dream. He saw it as a direct result of his lack of manhood. You were very cruel to his lack, I seem to remember, but what else could he do but leave? Was that the reason? Was it?
Coming down from memories, Victoria Park, I hugged my dying son closer to me. Jewel Jones, Jewel Jones, Jewel Jones.
My two children. One lost and already found. The other still lost.
Belinda, I will find you yet.
Many years ago, after many attempts at renewal, it was decided that the Zoological Gardens at Belle Vue were no longer a viable proposition. Their closure had been imminent, as people moved on to electronic delights, and from there to feathery Vurt pursuits. The final touch of death. Money talked. The owners sold off, or put down, all of the sad animals there. Closed the funfair, then the speedway, then the concert hall, the ballroom, the dogtrack, the restaurant, the wrestling arena. Until only loneliness remained; the wind blowing through dry grasses, through the bars on the vacated animal pens. For many years Belle Vue was a desert, set in the run-down wastes of eastern Manchester, where the only change was metal oxidizing into rust, and hope melting into poverty. Only the prostitutes found a use for those broken vistas. Belle Vue became common ground.