Authors: Jeff Noon
“A Zombie. Excellent. Well done, Sibyl. A Zombie killed Coyote. Couldn’t be better. We’ve got a bona fide street-hero killed by a Non-Viable. The way Bottletown is at the moment, any other scenario, any king of Shadow-scenario, we could’ve had another dog-riot on our hands. Guess I just call up the Zombie squad, let those low-level cleaners deal with it.”
The flesh cops were sniggering and sneezing in turn. It was a joke to them now, this case. Zombies were high in the public’s mind, mainly because the half-dead were invariably ugly and brutish, and the whole image of some creature born from the desperate mating of a living person and a corpse was still reviled in those days. In fact, to the cops they were classed as a nuisance more than anything, something they had to clean up, like litter on the municipal road. Zombies were weaklings away from their Limbo, especially when the light shined upon them; that was the paradox of their hitching travels.
Zero shoved a Vurt cop-feather into his mouth, so that he could talk to Chief Inspector Kracker direct. And being made the way I am, Vurtless, it was all silence to me—just the happy grimacing of Zero’s face as he relayed the news to the boss, who was no doubt clinging to his wife’s hand at the moment of birth.
All I could do was watch and shiver from the sidelines. Coyote’s final message playing around and around in my mind, making patterns. Shadow patterns… that name he called out at the last… think about me, Boda… sing that song one last time…
Zero pulled the feather from his mouth, and then he was growling loud to the fleshcops, “Let’s clean up here, officers. It’s a wrap.” The cops were already going through the motions, telling the tribe of dogs to clear the area, game was over.
“Is this wise, Zero?” I said.
“What’s your problem, Smokey?”
“I think you’re being a bit premature.”
“Try me in bed one time, then we talk about premature.”
“What about the flowers?”
“Zombie put them there. Coyote picked up a Zombie. The Zombie killed him, stuffed the flowers into his mouth.”
“That deep?”
“Shit, I don’t know how these Zombies work. They learn some strange arts and crafts out there in Limbo, I guess. What else they got to do?” He was shouting at some voyeurs to get back home, ignoring me.
“What about this Boda reference?” I asked.
“Kracker’s well happy with the Zombie angle. I reckon I’m with the chief on that.” He snarled at the dog-tribe beyond the ribbons.
“How about an autopsy?” I asked.
“Sure. I’ll book robo-Skinner for tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“You think this is the most important death in town, Smokey? Listen, I’ve got a disappearance case on my hands already. The only son of the Inspector of Dripfeed got stolen by the Vurt this morning. Officer Dove’s on the case. You think maybe I should refuse him back-up? Also, I’ve got to organise a patrol of Bottletown. Kracker’s told me to clamp down on any sparks. No more riots. You hear me?” He turned to the squad. “Okay, you officers, keep moving that shit away.”
I was a lonely figure around which a cop circus performed. I was two feet away from the body of Coyote. The ripped-out bunch of flowers was lying on the pavement. A fleshcop scooped it haphazardly into a specimen bag. One of the blooms fell free, rain washing away the petals, grains of yellow merging with the water, and some wayward thoughts flickering through my Shadow.
Thirty-six years old I was.
Days of cop-work. Days of juice and smoke, mist and flesh. Days of wondering and wandering. Days of air.
All gone now, all gone…
Xcab driver Boda is travelling back towards Manchester, having made a good drop in the Bottletown zone. The time is 6.01 a.m., the same day. She had had some trouble some minutes before, whilst riding Claremont Road past Alexandra Park because a cop-van had pulled in from a side street, speeding like a dose of Boomer drug to the brain. The van was iridescent purple, with one-way windows, and the cop logo painted on the side—a glistening map of Manchester bound by handcuffs. It raced alongside Boda for a spell, forcing her into a bad kerb-jump, until the Xcab had sprouted long knives. Boda knew all about how the cops and cabs were supposed to be working together for the common good these days, so she had set the blades to caress level only. The cops didn’t feel a thing as the knives scratched five delicate lines in the purple paint job. Well, it would give the boys something to do when the shift was through. Boda had then asked Charrie for Boomer speed, which left the cop-van standing, and Boda was the queen of the road again.
“Nice work, Charrie,” Boda had said to her cab, and the words ALL PART OF THE SERVICE, DARLING had scrolled back across Boda’s taxi-vision. Boda is her Xcab name. Short for Boadicea. Just like Charrie is short for Chariot. Drivers were obliged to give up all their possessions, all of their hair, all their memories and treasures when they joined the cab-hive. Their pre-cabian lives vanished into a trail of road-dust, and one of the treasures given up was the original name, the parents’ name. Boda wasn’t the name she was born to, but it’s the only one she knows.
Boadicea’s chariot riding the waves of Manchester with customized blades sliding back into recesses.
The Wilmslow Road now, back into town.
The Oxford Road.
6.05 a.m.
Which is when she sees Coyote cruising by in his beautiful black vehicle. Imperial driving, dogboy she had sent out to him, not even knowing if that feeling would get through. But some hazy message had come back from the dogboy’s brain. Something about having a girl called Persephone on board, so Boda had sent back, Good Limbo tripping, Coy. The blackcabber brought out the best in Boda, he brought out the song of the road. Romantic shit, of course. But what the hell, isn’t she feeling good this morning?
Columbus comes onto the taxi-waves. STOP THAT SINGING, DRIVER BODA. And Boda did stop then, as she always did when Columbus came on line. YOU FEEL LIKE GETTING BACK TO THE ST ANN’S RANK SOMETIME TODAY, DRIVER? MAYBE PICK UP A FARE OR TWO?
“Will do, Columbus,” Boda answers.
It is 6.12 or so when Boda touches base at the St Ann’s rank, and she gets landed with another journey straight off: a clean run carrying a robocrusty back home to Chadderton, after an all-night Boomer session. The way he talks about it sure makes Boda hungry for some of that sweet stuff. Maybe later on… with Coyote in tow? Sure, worth a try. Boda makes that drop-off, gets flagged down on the way back, some loony hippy-dog wanting to make an early start at a Vurt Convention. She gets some crazy feelings about Coyote, just from the smell in the back; bad dog! Despite that, it was a simple journey, slick and smooth, no problems. Well, almost none. On the way back a small lump of something had lodged itself to the underside of her cab, some chancer hiker, hoping to parasite its way back into Manchester. That was the trouble with suburban fares; some of the smaller Zombies had managed to get that far. Now one of them was reckoning on an easy ride; it hadn’t reckoned on Xcab’s in-car monitoring system. A red warning light blinked on the dash, and the words SYSTEM VIOLATION flooded into Boda’s taxi-eyes. SCENE OF VIOLATION… THE MANIFOLD. CAUSE OF VIOLATION… UNIDENTIFIED HALF-DEAD BEING. DO YOU WANT TO TERMINATE, DRIVER? Boda thought that yes, yes she did want to terminate. “Do it good, Charrie, babe.” TERMINATION SEQUENCE COMMENCING. “Going through some turbulence, passenger,” Boda said aloud. Her voice was picked up by the in-car system, transmitted to the hermetically sealed executive suite in back. “No need to panic.” TERMINATION ACTIVATED. The Xcab shone fiery red for a moment, as the current flowed towards the manifold. One thousand volts of anger. Boda had tuned into the down-side camera. She saw something shit-coloured screaming, its pathetic claws burned to a crisp. Must have been some stray Ghost Cat clinging on for dear furry life. And then the lump of stuff falling off into suburban nothingness, bouncing like a sponge ball on the tarmac. “Chew on that, Zombie fucker!” SYSTEM CLEAN, DRIVER. “You bet! Let’s ride.”
So they ride the grey roads together, Boda and Charrie, rider and chariot, joined into one being. She’s keeping her eyes on the traffic, her ears on the radio, but really Charrie is driving alone; Boda is too busy thinking about Coyote. The blackcabber had come into her life three weeks ago at the Nightingales cafe, where all the cabbers hung out when off-duty. Coyote didn’t visit there that much, because the Xcabbers looked on him with suspicion, but this night he had, and he and Boda had got to talking. In fact they had got to beyond talking, but just sly looks from eye to eye, you know? Boda can’t be sure as yet, but she was certain that something good was developing between them. Something that Xcabs didn’t allow, especially not with a rogue black-cab driver. Xcabbers were supposed to marry only with other Xcabbers. This was their way of keeping the cab-genes pure. Columbus had come on super-strong, saying to Boda that she was a breath away from termination. Boda hadn’t listened. How could she listen? The road was getting too wild, especially when Coyote had told her he had actually visited Columbus a few times. None of the drivers had any clue as to where Columbus was, or even what he looked like so Boda was curious to know more. Coyote had only hinted at deeper secrets but the fact that he had more freedom than her had really heated Boda’s desire. She had met up with Coyote four more times, and on the second time she had felt her thoughts drifting away from her mind into his, like she had the Shadow, or something, Cab-Christ! What is happening to me? Boda’s thoughts in the presence of dogboy flesh. It really was too much to bear. Coyote had responded to her secret whisperings, as though her mind was being shared. And on their last meeting, two nights ago, she had given him the clue to a Limbo fare. Xcabs were banned from driving over the boundaries. The internal map stopped at the edges of the expanded city, and all the Knowledge faded away there, Frontier Town, so that no Xcabber could venture forth. And on that passing of a fare, they had kissed over two half-empty cups of Chrism juice, and it was very juicy that kiss, full of potential. Boda had not been able to sleep that night, just from thinking about it. Maybe this taxi-dog was going to take her somewhere beautiful.
Boda is eighteen years old, a few boyfriends here and there, nothing special as yet; she’s just about prepared for something good. She lights up a Napalm with the in-car lighter. The pack message reads SMOKING IS GREAT AFTER SEX—HIS MAJESTY’S OFFICIAL MISTRESS.
7.04 a.m.
Boda takes another fare, easy fodder, and on the way back towards Manchester she tunes in the pirate wave…
“Massive jump to the hippy-nostrils, unprecedented. Gumbo YaYa is sneezing already. I raise my flowers to the wind to smell the future… the future is a nose explosion. Grab your Good Gumbo fever masks, my children; this is going to be a harsh ride through the clouds of pollen. Not since the days of Fecundity 10 has such fieriness been felt, when the drifting seeds brought home a pollen count of 862, the highest ever for Manchester. Gumbo YaYa reckons this is going to beat that record. May John Barleycorn find you desireless. And remember, don’t believe the authorities; only the Gumbo has the true reckoning. Pollen count, 125 and rising…”
Now Boda’s waiting on a new job. 7.29 a.m., St Ann’s rank, tenth in the column, some fifteen minutes or so from the next ride. She gets out of the cab and walks up to the third in line.
Boda—the way you walk, long and loose-limbed, like an angel with wings of smoke. And the way you look: hair shorn to the skull, skull laser-tattooed with twisting streets in black and white. A walking A–Z of bliss you are, all dressed in denim and felt, lace and polyvinyl chloride. Vazboot trainers on your feet and a cummerbund of velvet around your waist. A corduroy bag slung easy over one shoulder, holding all of your world; your antique Manchester map and your woollen hat, and your money, your cab-licence and your smokes.
The third-in-line driver’s name is Roberman. Roberman is a sleek and shiny robodog, a Doberman Pinscher by birth, but all the guys in the rank call him Roberman, because that is what he is. Not a trace of human in him, just a mess of dog-flesh and info, all mixed up in a tight bundle of muscle and plastic. This mixture was called hardwere by the gene-mechanics. There was no human trace in Roberman, but sometimes dogs can be more human than humans. Xcab employs him because of his dog-knowledge of the dark streets. Most of the guys in the rank don’t talk to Boda, because they think her too much of a loner, too distant, too twisted to bother with. Roberman is different. He makes a long series of low growls, none of which Boda understands, but the tears in his eyes tell a tale. She places her left hand on the door of his cab; this is all it takes for you to be inside of the cab system. Each Xcab comes complete with an in-car sound system. Roberman’s voice comes over the speakers, his keening yowls changed by the translator into English, all for the benefit of nervous passengers. This option is necessary if the driver and the passenger are of different races. “You heard the bad news, Boda?” the voice-box announces.
“I just got back. What’s happening?”
“They killed a driver.”
“Oh shit. Which one?”
There is a real street-cool value in taking the life of an Xcab driver, just because they are so protected. And because possession of an Xcab is a prize worth killing for.
“Not one of ours, Boda,” Roberman says, choking on it.
“Not an Xcabber?”
“Runner-dog.”
“A dog driver?”
“The black-and-whiter.”
“Coyote?”
“Made a bad Alexandra Park drop.”
“Coyote… oh Jesus…” Now Boda is looking up and down the street, looking for comfort. Can’t find anything. Nothing good.
Only the wind and the rain…
“You okay, Boda?” Roberman asks.
“Yeah… yeah, sure… I’m… who did it, Rober?”
“Cops smell neg-shit.” Which means that the cops don’t know shit, but she’s not listening any more. Sure, one hand kept tight to the cab, but the other hand is rubbing at her face for some reason.
“You sure you’re okay, Boda?” Roberman is asking.
“Boda’s fine,” she replies, making her voice work somehow. But inside, all she can think about is that blackcabber dogman. Just the last of his kind. Just the beauty of his life gone to nothing. Just the next best thing to a good lover that she’s met in a long while. And she hadn’t even…