Authors: Jeff Noon
Zero sneezed though his mask, a mighty blast that Jewel echoed from his bedroom. “What the fuck have you got in that room, Smokey?” Zero’s voice. “Sounds like the whole fucking world is sneezing.”
Later that day, around my dining table. Zero drunk on cheap wine, head slumped. Tom Dove playing with the food I had given him. Myself thinking over and over upon the details of my Vurt journey.
“It’s a bad story,” Tom said. “I’m fearful. I don’t think we stand a chance.”
Earlier I had shown them my secret. My secret son. My Zombie. Zero had raised some half-hearted indignation, but really they were okay with it. All three of us were so far from the cop-law now, what did one more illegal Zombie count for?
“It’s a serious Vurt case, Sibyl,” Tom Dove was now saying. “This fever…” He placed a morsel of meat into his mouth, chewed on it for a while. “This fever comes from John Barleycorn. He’s one mean demon.”
“Tell me about this John Barleycorn,” I asked. I had already told Zero and Dove everything I could recall from my journey. Zero had retreated into a passive, alcohol-fuelled stupor, Dove into a snot-filled gloom.
“He’s the snake that bit you in the garden,” Dove answered. “He can show himself in many forms. All of them are evil.”
“Let me get this straight. He’s just a Vurt creature, right? A character in a story. A story that we, us humans, made up. How can a story harm us?”
“I don’t think you understand the true nature of Vurt. The stories are alive now, thanks to Miss Hobart.”
“The inventor of Vurt?”
“The discoverer of Vurt. Get this right. Vurt was just lying around waiting for us to find it. John Barleycorn is one of the oldest stories, and one of the most popular. One of the best. Because of this he has many names. The green man. Fertility. Swamp Thing. The horned god. Because of his pagan image he was stolen by the Christians, turned into the horned devil, Satan, the serpent, Lucifer. In the old Greek myths, he was called Hades. They banished him to the underworld. Because of this John Barleycorn is angry with us, still.”
“But he’s just a Vurt figure, right? He’s not real. I can’t take this.”
“The Vurt wants to become real. It is a living system. It carries on even when we are not dreaming about it. Miss Hobart made it so. John Barleycorn lives in the feather called Juniper Suction. This is a Heaven Feather. An underworld. A place to store our memories when we die. So we can live beyond death, in the Vurt. Only the dead can visit there.”
“I managed it.”
“Yes. For a few moments. The Shadow is the trace of death in life. Also, you’re immune to the flowers. They couldn’t harm you in there, Sibyl, and I think they know that now.”
“The pollen is Persephone? Barleycorn’s wife? She’s the fever?”
“That’s right. A goddess called Demeter is Persephone’s mother. She’s a half-and-half creature: spends her life halfway between the real and the dream. My guess is that she wants Persephone to be allowed to play in the real world, Manchester. She wants her daughter to have a world for herself.”
“Don’t we all?”
“Demeter wants an empire for her daughter, and the real world is up for grabs, especially since the world has become so fluid. I believe that John Barleycorn has agreed to this exchange, and now he’s using his wife to get through to the real world. He wants a life beyond the story. The new map that Columbus is bringing in, this may be Barleycorn’s entry point.”
“This is crazy.”
“Of course it is. But it’s happening. The Vurt is breaking through. If they succeed…”
“Yes?”
“The dream will take us over.”
“This is the vision that Columbus showed to my daughter?”
“Columbus is also a half-and-half creature. He lives partly in the Vurt, partly in the real world. He’s an edge-walker. The nephew of Barleycorn. Columbus is playing the part of Hermes in the old myth. He’s the messenger, the god of travel. From what you’ve told me, I believe him to be the door through which the fever travels.”
“The hayfever is a new map?”
“Each pollen grain is a new road. If this new map succeeds, there will be no freedom in the city. The city will change to suit the map. Reality following the dream, rather than vice versa. We won’t know where we are any more. One moment your best friend will live two minutes away. The next moment, twenty miles away. A map of chaos. The dream will come though this new map. The dream will take us over. We will be like lost children.”
“I don’t know… the new world looked very beautiful.”
“Of course.”
“Belinda shot Columbus. She wounded him. The pollen cloud dispersed a little.”
“Without Columbus the grains would not know where to travel.”
“So if we kill Columbus…”
“Yes, that’s possible. But he will now be on his mettle. He’ll put some mighty defences in place. He’ll cream the Black Mercury feather that your daughter used to find him, and then hide himself in the remotest part of the map. Columbus is very elusive; he who makes the map knows best where to hide.”
“Kracker?”
“He’s the weak link. I suspect he’s made some kind of deal with Columbus. Kracker is power-mad, remember, and sex-mad. He’s got too much Casanova inside of him. I think the chief has overshot his mark and he knows it. His job was to guide Persephone into the city, keep her safe. And to take out all witnesses. This is why he wanted you and Belinda taken out. You knew too much. This is why he’s now desperate to blame you and Clegg for misconduct. Kracker has failed, and he’s fearful of Persephone getting back at him.”
“Where do you think Persephone is?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere safe. Kracker would make sure of that.”
“I can’t follow this, Tom. It’s all too much. The myth is breaking through? What sense does it make?”
“Vurt people don’t talk about sense. They’re dream creatures, remember? They talk about movement. It’s action over words.”
“They want to kill my daughter… oh God!”
“She’s become the main threat to them. Especially now she’s broken through to the new map.”
“We have to find her, Dove… Clegg… you listening? We have to find Belinda before the Vurt creatures do. We have to find out where Gumbo YaYa’s keeping her.”
Clegg raised his head at last and looked at me with bleary eyes. “I don’t think I can carry on with this, Smokey. I’m getting mighty sick.”
“Zero, you can do anything now. Kracker’s no longer in control.” Clegg fell silent as I said this. His eyes dropped to the wine glass in front of him.
In those moments I saw all the failure of his last few days come home to him. He had spent his life following the master, even to the point of almost killing innocent people. His subsequent attempt to go against Kracker’s back, only to result in one more failure, had really taken away his spirit. And now that he was alone, Zero no longer knew how to act.
“What about your investigations into Gumbo?” I asked him. “Didn’t you get anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh come on! Aren’t you a cop any more?”
“Was I ever?”
“Zero?”
“Okay; okay. I applied for special dispensation.”
“To do what?”
“To go into Strangeways.”
“Who’s there?”
“You remember Benny Veil?”
“Remind me.”
“He was floated into Strangeways two years ago, on a charge of murder. Four life sentences, to run consecutively. We always knew that Benny was a former associate of the Gumbo YaYa, but he had this heavy condom-veil in place all through the trial. We put on all the legal pressure we could muster for a truth-feather trip, but you know what the Authorities are like about that torture?”
“Nothing, huh?”
“Absolutely.”
“But now you’re hoping to go back in?”
“Not any more. I talked to the Authorities.”
“No response?”
“Less than that.”
Once a person was feathered into a Strangeways dream, there was no access allowed to the imprisoned mind. It was a big civil liberties case from a few years before; given that Vurt prisons were only set up to relieve overcrowding and violence, which was stated to be a direct result of Government underfunding, it was decreed that all prisoners were to be allowed a peaceful, even pleasant stay in His Majesty’s Vurt. “No dream cruel or unusual,” ran the statute, “shall be allowed to roam a prisoner’s imagination during his sentence of sleep.” It was further decreed that no access was to be allowed into a prisoner’s mind during this sentence, “even for the purposes of law-enforcement or national security.”
“There’s no way through,” Zero said. “We’d have to break into Strangeways.”
Moments passed, none of us speaking.
Zero came up from his wine. “What chance do we have, Tom?” he drawled. “How can we stop this fever? This new map?”
“I don’t think we can. We would have to visit John Barleycorn.”
“How would we do that?” I asked.
“We can’t. He’s got strong locks on Juniper Suction. You have to die to go into a Heaven Feather, fully. It’s like the old Mummer plays, Sibyl. Like Saint George of England. You have to die, and then be reborn inside the Vurt.”
“You’re telling us we’ve failed?” Zero asked.
“More than that. I fear for Manchester, for the world. For reality. I fear that reality is doomed.”
“What?” Zero’s voice.
“I can’t see a way in. The door is closed.”
At 4.00 p.m. we got a call from Jay Ligule over at Manchester University. He had something that we might like to see. I was up for it, so was Tom Dove. Zero, however, said he had more important matters to settle.
So it was Tom and I who drove over to meet Ligule at the University. Vurt and Shadow. The journey was easy; the people had now left the streets once again, after the failure of Gumbo and Belinda to destroy the source of the fever. Ligule was agitated. He paced back and forth in the botany department, totally masked-up. Strangely twisted blooms sprouted all around his feet.
“What have you found?” I asked.
“Let me take you on a journey.”
My second flight that day, this time in a helicopter that belonged to the department. Its cockpit was filled with electrical equipment. Ligule was the pilot. Tom and I were pressed tight in the passenger seat. His Vurt-presence no longer bothered me as we rose above the city. Maybe I’d been cured of something.
“The best way to study global plant change is to get above the jungle,” Ligule was saying. “We use this equipment to monitor the progress of species. Take a look down there. What do you see?”
I looked over the copter’s lip. The city of Manchester was laid out below me in patchwork. The clouds of pollen were now clearly visible as they raced through moments of change. “It looks like chaos,” I said.
Ligule laughed. “So it should. Pollen is dispersed by the wind, and the wind, of course, is a chaotic system. Take a closer look.” He handed Tom and me pairs of goggles, which were plugged into the copter’s analysis banks. Through these glasses the pollen solidified into strict patterns of movement.
“Jesus-Vurt!” Tom breathed.
“Exactly,” Ligule said. “This new pollen isn’t governed by the wind.”
Through the goggles I could plainly see that the clouds of golden pollen were following very precise lines, each line corresponding to a Mancunian road.
Here was the new map unfolding itself.
At 4.37 that same afternoon, Zero Clegg reported back at the cop station. He walked into Kracker’s office without knocking, handed in his resignation, without saying a single word to his former master. By 4.40 he was back outside, walking across the car-park to his vehicle. The duty-officer would later recall how slowly the famous dogcop was moving, compared to his usual swagger. He put it down to the effects of the fever.
Just before Clegg got into his car, the duty-officer saw him take off his mask.
5.30 p.m. I was back in my flat, alone. Ligule had brought us back down to earth, and Tom had gone home from there. There wasn’t much we could say to each other. This case was well beyond our means.
Another ten Dodos had been killed by vigilantes in the last day or so.
I attended to Jewel as best I could, drank some more wine, and then collapsed into a deep sleep on the lounger. I had dreams then, filled with green. No, not dreams as such, because how can I do them? It was the last vestiges of my flight into Vurt wearing off. I could not stop my Shadow from revisiting those hot, wet, dark climes. My daughter was trapped in the forest; thick, snake-like tendrils wrapping themselves around her. I could do nothing to save her. Patterns of pollen grains moved over the dream, images I had captured from Ligule’s specimens and from the flight over the city. A bell was clanging Belinda’s death knell in the darkness. It was my phone ringing, calling me from slumber. The clock moved into and out of my focus. Jewel was calling from his room. The clock also was calling, a blurry-eyed 7.42. Was this still the same Saturday? What else could happen during one day? I picked up the telephone. It was Dove’s voice…
“Clegg is down.”
Jesus!
Over to Manchester Royal Infirmary. Fiery Comet burning the roads into smoke, not even wanting to think about it.
Zero was lying in a neat bed, his mouth covered by an oxygen mask. He looked so beautiful, just sleeping, his eyes totally gone from this world. A doctor and a vet were in attendance.
“What are you doing for him?” I demanded of them both.
They could only remain silent.
“Sibyl…”
Dove was trying to talk to me. He looked like cop-shit.
“What went wrong?” I asked.
“He took his mask off.”
“And…”
“The street-dogs got him.”
Oh shit. Total shit. Why did he have to go out like that? This was Zero Clegg. He was the best dogcop ever. Okay, so the street-dogs hated him for the treachery. Did they have to take it this far?
“He reported into the station at 4.37,” Dove said.
“And?”
“He said he was going home to his kennel.”
“Zero wouldn’t call his home a kennel.”
“Sibyl, Clegg handed in his resignation.”
“What?”
“Just before he left, he ripped his mask off.”