Authors: Jeff Noon
Let them try and take Jewel away from me. Cops or flowers, they would feel my hands of smoke upon their necks.
Thursday
The sun was heating up the pitch as the crowd waited for kick off. An evening match with no need for floodlights. The brass band was playing homage to the King. This is the land that I love, and here I’ll stay… until my dying day. Golden music shimmering over the manicured grass, which was so finely genetically controlled, it was the green of ripe apples, so tangy you could taste the pitch on the roof of your mouth. Even so, flowers were growing through the grass, and the whine of the pitch-cutting machines was another song on that day, their blades clogged up with thick stems.
Supporters all around me, plying their blue-and-white feathers with Vaz, hoping for a good game. The feathers had numbers on them, each corresponding to a player.
Interactive Vurtball.
Where you can play the game inside your chosen player. The left back defender is the cheapest feather; the centre forward the dearest. But I was just Sibyl Jones, only a spectator. Not of the match but the crowd. Just a watcher. And anyway, with the hayfever growing wild, the playing feathers kept getting sneezed into the air.
The semi-final of the Vaz International Golden Feather Cup. Thursday. Second leg. Derby match, grudge match. Manchester United were the opponents, and they had won the first leg 2–1. All around the Manchester City stadium adverts for Vaz, that universal lubricator, were sliding greasily from the hoardings. Giant, inflatable red and white feathers were floating above the opposite stand. The howling of supporter-dogs coming from the Kennel Lane seats.
I was staked out at pitch level, watching the people make their way to their seats. I had with me a pair of binoculars and a walkie-talkie. Zero Clegg was in place at the entrance gate that Belinda would have to use if she came to the match. Each ticket stated upon it the entrance to be used. Clegg had protested at having to be seen with a walkie-talkie. He was used to the feathers, and anything outmoded embarrassed him. I called him up now, asked how it was looking? “No sign as yet, Smokey Jones. I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“Keep looking.” I closed off the communication and trained my binoculars on the four vacant seats I had identified. Earlier I had spoken to the stadium’s box office and they had told me that a certain Coyote Dog had purchased four adjacent seats for the match, some ten days previously. Okay, we know one was for himself—I had found it in his diary—another was for Boda/Belinda. Who were the other two for? Well, I would soon find out. But it was Belinda’s ticket, of course, that I was interested in. Would she turn up? I had tried to place myself into her feelings. If she really loved the Coyote, maybe she would turn up. But I had been wrong already about the funeral. After all, what was I looking for? Imagine, my own daughter, and I didn’t know what I was looking for.
A young woman makes her way into one of the seats. My fingers work the focus until I have the woman’s face in my sights. Is that her? That face beneath a fringe of red hair? No, the woman passes along all four seats to sit down next to a young dogboy.
I was getting nervous. I let the binoculars range over the adjacent seats and aisles. Every young woman I see leaps into focus. I’m seeing parts of my daughter in all of them. One in particular gets my attention. The right age and bone structure. A crimson peaked cap on long brown hair. The wrong seat, of course, but who knows what Belinda has planned? I touch the zoom button. The face floating in front of my eyes now, an expression of pain upon its fragile beauty. No. The Shadow is empty in that woman. I’m moving the sight back to Coyote’s seats. A woman is sitting in the one on the end right.
Zoom…
It’s her. It’s my daughter. Her Shadow. She’s wearing a wig. She looks like some kind of cowgirl, but it’s her. The image shaking as my hands tremble around the cool ceramic of the binoculars.
Boda’s sitting tight to the seat that Coyote had bought for her, not knowing why, and a fine spray of snot falling on her blond Country Joe wig. Her head-map is getting sweaty under the covering, but Boda feels at home in the new outfit. A woman’s clothes. What started out as a disguise ends up like a uniform. This is her first partaking of femininity. She’s a new being, a new road back to her childhood. The sun is torturing. Flowers are struggling through tiny cracks in the concrete stand, brushing against her shoes. Blue-and-white feathers floating down. Clouds of pollen in the air. Boda can hardly see the pitch through it all: the feathers and the golden dust and the fanfare of snot. She has spent the night hidden in a cheap bed-and-breakfast on the Wilmslow Road, Fallowfield. What is she doing here?
Somebody I want you to meet
.
Coyote’s lost words coming back to her. The crowd pushing in strong from all sides, songs of joy in the face of imminent defeat, but the neighbouring seat still empty. And the one next to that as well. And the one next to that. Three empty seats. A vacuum in the panting. Why on earth have I come here, she is thinking. Because Coyote bought me the ticket, of course. I want to find out everything about him. Only then will I get a handle on why he was killed. But don’t I hate him for not telling me the story of his wife and puppygirl? Don’t I just? And anyway… haven’t I lost that liar for good? And Roberman and my job and the squeezing map of Manchester, along with him? I’ve maybe totally blown my road to comfort.
Good. Let comfort rot.
Boda is pleased with her new-found image of cowgirl strength, but still, despite all that, here Boda is. She’s waiting. Waiting for the players. Here they come. Pollen masks pulled tight over their faces. Their shirts sparkling with Vazverts. The sun just dripping on to the pitch. The grass is thickened with flowers. A whistle blows…
Kick off.
Vurtball.
The supporters screaming through their feathers, working their players towards a goal. Sneezing tactics.
Two people pushing through the crowd towards Boda. A human girl and a dog-girl.
Two people push through the crowd towards Belinda. I make an adjustment to the focus. They look like a young human girl and an even younger dog-girl. I’ve seen that puppygirl before. Where? Of course. Coyote’s funeral. This was Coyote’s daughter. Karletta was her name. The child of Twinkle and Coyote. She looks as sweet as before to my motherly eyes. And again, the stupid thought… Why couldn’t I have had a daughter like that? So I move the viewing field back on to Belinda. She looks scared. Why is that?
The human girl has corkscrew hair that is braided here and there with brilliant feathers of blue, yellow and scarlet. Each of these feathers gives Boda a bad feeling; feathery waves coming into her Shadow. She wants to vacate her seat, the fear is so bad. But no, the decision has been made. Let us sweat this out. The two newcomers sit themselves down next to Belinda.
Somebody I want you to meet
.
Is this whom Coyote meant? Is one of these girls Coyote’s daughter?
Jesus!
Too much to take.
United score in the ninth minute. A collective groan from the followers. Now City need three goals to qualify. Some kind of impossible task. The human girl and the bitch-child are hypnotised by the play. She’s not really a bitch, that child, just some fine whiskers sprouting from her cheeks, that’s all. I’m watching all this through the sights from the touchline, thinking about when I should make my move, when I should call in Zero. To make an arrest now, in the middle of that sneezing crowd, would be a real riot-maker. So then, let them play for a while. I push my Shadow into my daughter, listening over the distance…
Boda thinks back to what she had drawn from Roberman’s mind at the canal side. Was this puppy really Coyote’s kid? So who’s the girl sitting next to the puppy? Maybe Coyote had another child? Christ knows what he had; Boda can’t trust him any more. Even when he’s dead.
City pull one back.
The crowd going wild. Feathers flying from their mouths.
The girldog has a feather lodged in her lips. The pure girl has no feather at all, but still her eyes are glazed over, like she’s living inside of someone else, some smart player on the field. And then Boda’s soul is shrivelling at the nearness of this girl. She wants to curl up at the very idea. Boda gets the message; this seemingly human girl is really a Vurt-girl. A juiced-up human with direct plugs to the Vurt world. This girl doesn’t need feathers; she can just access the dream, no need for payment. And this is your enemy, Boda; this is your curse. The Unbeknownst cannot abide the Dreamers. Your genes are fighting a loser’s battle, just like the blue-and-white team down there on the cluttered pitch. Your fear is strong, Boda, but nothing like your mother’s, simply because your mother is more deeply into the clutch of death.
Believe me on this, my daughter.
Boda is shrinking back from the girl’s featherness.
United score another. 4–2. No hope for the final. The bluest feathers falling into despair, and the half-time whistle blowing. Brass band playing.
Where to go from here? Boda’s mind is turning.
Maybe talk to this Vurt-girl?
“You know Coyote?” Boda asks. It takes a half-time lifetime to say.
The girl just looks at her, eyes still sprinkled with passes and fouls from the first half just gone. “Yeah, I knew him,” she answers.
“Like how?”
What do you expect from this talk, Boda? Some kind of relief?
“Crazy dogboy, Coyote,” the girl says.
“Wasn’t he just?” Boda says, hoping for a come-back. Nothing does come back, so she asks of the girl, “Are you related?”
“No, just a friend,” the reply. “Karletta’s related.” The girl is stroking the bitchgirl. “Karletta’s his daughter.”
“Really?” Boda’s Shadow is a dried-up husk, from being that close to Vurtness. Is this all she has travelled into town for? A meeting with two kids, one made from feathers, the other from dog-flesh? She had expected some of Coyote’s underground friends to be here, some rebel warriors who could possibly lead her towards Columbus.
“You’re a Dodo, aren’t you?” the girl says. “I can feel the missing parts where the feathers should go.”
“What’s your name?” Boda says, pushing down the feelings.
“Blush is my name,” the girl replies. “I’m twelve years old. What’s yours?”
“My age?”
“Name, stupid.”
“Belinda.” Boda says the first name that comes into her mind, protecting her identity.
“Belinda? Oh…”
“What’s wrong?”
“I was expecting Boda to be here.”
Boda looks at the brass band playing upon the emerald pitch for a few seconds. “Why did you expect that?”
“I’m going to be famous one day,” Blush says. “Do you know that?”
“Really?”
“I’m going to be a famous Vurtress. I’ve got the Vurt inside me, you see? I’m in Comatose Road next week. Maybe you’ll catch me? Just an itsy part, but I’m out to make an impression, you know? Anyway, soaps are all right, but I’ve got my feathers set on some bigger dreams. Like crazy dreams, you know? Well, perhaps not. Perhaps you don’t know. And, maybe, after all, you won’t be catching me next week.”
“Well, I could watch on television.”
“That’s sad. Crazy! Who does television any more? Only a Dodo, right? Coyote talked about Boda a lot.”
“Did he?”
“Oh for sure. Like crazy, he was, for that Xcabber. He told me about how he had bought her a ticket for this match. He called her his new choice.”
His new choice
. This is what Coyote called you, Boda. Isn’t that strange? Strange and good?
“Why did he call her that?” she asks.
“You have to ask?” the girl says. “Crazy Dodo.”
Well, yes. Crazy Dodo. For having to ask. For feeling your powerful Shadow shrivelling to darkness. And for having a crazy doubt in your mind.
“How come you’re here, Blush?”
“Coyote bought me a ticket as well. And one for Karletta. He said I should meet this Boda girl. He said she was important. I guess that’s his seat, right there…”
Blush is looking at the empty seat beside her, her eyes glittering with juice.
“I didn’t think this Boda would turn up, not really,” Blush says, sneezing. “Not after the death of Coyote. And not after hearing that Gumbo YaYa was after her traces. I was right, wasn’t I?”
Silence, except for the crowd panting. Blasts of snot speeding through the air.
Finally… “I used to be Boda.”
“Oh. What are you now?”
“I don’t know. Boda was my Xcab name. I don’t know my real name.”
“It’s you? Crazy!”
“You said Coyote talked about me?”
“For sure. Coyote said that I’d like Boda. He said that I could tell you stuff. He said that I could explain everything. I don’t know where to start.”
“Tell me about yourself.”
“I’m Blush. I’m out of Desdemona and Scribble. You’ve heard of Scribble?”
“No.”
“Crazy. Well anyway, Scribble was my father. I’ve never met him. He’s lost in the Vurt just now. But, you know, I reckon he’s going to be famous one day, just like me. He’s going to come back to us. And Desdemona is my mum. She used to go visit Scribble in the Vurt, but lately he’s not been accessible. Maybe he’s working on some big scene. Like how to get back to us, you know? Well anyway, Des is only one of my mothers.”
“You’ve got more than one?”
“Sure. I’ve got two mums. Scribble made me out of two mothers. The other one’s called Cinders. Cinders O’Juniper. You’ve heard of her?”
“No.”
“Crazy. She’s a world famous Porno-Vurtress. That’s where I got the feathery blood from, from Cinders. Anyway, Des is my real mum. She lives with us. We all live in Bottletown. Des and myself, and Twinkle and Karletta. It’s a man-free zone. Maybe you’d like to come visit? Here, let me give you our number. And don’t worry about Twinkle’s reaction. She’s sound. Oh, but maybe you’re jealous yourself? Don’t be, I beg you. Life is too short.”
How the hell would you know, young girl? This is what Boda thinks, but she doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t send that message over the Shadow. Boda keeps herself to herself.