Vurt 2 - Pollen (19 page)

Young girls drifting through loneliness; Boda and Christina, twins of the lost life, working on dreams they could never feel.

The cops dragged Christina Dewberry from her tight wrappings of church flowers, her eyes wide and staring, a dried-up river of blood on her lips. Back in the lab, robo-Skinner had pushed his sharp cameras into her mouth, and the analysis was phoned in to me at my house…

Report: victim’s lung burst by bullets of snot. Death by proxy sneezing.

This was when the people’s breath started to turn, from denial to acceptance. The fever taking hold. It was a fluid world and there was danger for everybody living there.

Even for those who could not dream. Myself, my daughter…

Boda cannot go home, so she has lodged herself into a down-and-dirty Fallowfield bed-and-breakfast flat for a few days. Now she’s watching Blush on the room’s antique television, watching that friend of Coyote’s working for a living through a cheap soap called Comatose Road. Boda has made a drink of a kind out of the hospitality sachets. The bottle of Boomer she had stolen from Country Joe is perched on the worm-ridden dressing table. A naked bulb hangs over the bed she is lying on. That light is a temptation to the moths of Manchester; they keep batting, again and again, against its glassy surface, until their wings are frazzled. Boda watches them die with a cold eye. Let the moths, and all other creatures, die in peace. Let them reach their rightful end.

Blush is playing a newcomer to Comatose Road, the youngest daughter of Len Dirtyclough. Len Dirtyclough was lately married to Betty Swine, who was now calling herself Betty Dirt-Swine. Blush was playing the long lost child of Len’s wild years, when he had shagged every single woman in Comatose Road, and quite gleefully, without a hint of remorse. Now he was going to pay for that stolen pleasure. Blush was a bad dream that Len Dirtyclough could not wake up from. She was his soap-nemesis.

Boda snaps out of the television world, her mind filled with Shadows. And the world that she comes back to is damp with sweat and love-juice. It’s a down-towner’s paradise, that room, a glistening collector of semen and despair.

Boda’s money is running out.

Boda’s hopes are running out.

This sad room has been her only world for the last two nights. She doesn’t want to go out any more. She doesn’t want to know about outside life any more. The outside life is filled with demons. Xcabs, Coyote, the cops, Gumbo, her mother, Columbus, the former Boda, the former Charrie. They all want a part of her. Meeting with her mother in that patch of park flowers had been too much. Was her mother really a cop? That would be the ultimate humiliation. Memories of her mother are crowding her mind until her mother’s face seems to float over Comatose Road. Her mother is sitting in the lounge bar of the Sleeping Queen, which was the public house where all the Comatose residents drank. Her mother is drinking herself into Boda’s Shadow, somehow or other.

She doesn’t even know what her mother is called.

Boda gets up from the bed and turns off the television. Comatose vanishes into dust. She’s alone again. Boda is waiting. For what? Flowers are growing over the room’s windows, even though it’s on the second floor. Dogs are barking from the street outside. Nature turning deadly. She reaches deep down into the Shadow, trying to find her memories. Trying to find her life before the Xcabs took it all away.

She comes up with nothing.

Darkness, darkness. Boda looks over to the bottle of Boomer on the dressing table. Maybe it’s time? Let’s shut this beauty down. She knows that Boomer can kill, if taken incorrectly.

There was a hole in your map, my daughter. You were on the edge of falling through.

Columbus had wanted her killed. Why would he want that? Because of something she knew? What the hell did Boda know? She knew nothing. Had the Cab King also killed Coyote? Was it all connected? So many questions. There’s only one way to find out, and that is to get back on the map. Boda needs to talk with the Switch. She needs a confrontation.

How can she do this?

Boda turns on the radio, works the dial until she finds the pirate’s station.

Gumbo talking direct to her…

“Boadicea, my beauty. The Gumbo has dived into the Xcab-records and come up with an anomaly. They’ve been changed. They’ve been tampered with. Yes! Listeners, listen up. Boda was nowhere near Alexandra Park at the time of Coyote’s death. Somebody’s setting her up, and it can only be Columbus himself. Who else would have access? Boda is innocent. The cabs are to blame, and maybe the cops also, because aren’t they all tied up together? I was offering five golden feathers for the presence of Coyote’s murderer. Now I’m offering six of the same for the whereabouts of his innocent lover. Pollen count is rising. 1257 grains per cubic metre. Boda, you out there? You listening? Come home to me. You know the Gumbo keeps a safe house. The cops and the cabs will never find you here. To speed your passage I’m going to play my theme tune now. That’s right. Hippy Gumbo from 1967, by one Marcus Bolan, pre-Tyrannosaurus Rex. May his car-crashed soul rest in pieces…”

Music. Decision time…

No one else to trust.

There’s a phone box just outside the Fallowfield flat. It takes coins. Boda waits for a few seconds to let her courage build up and then slips some of her last pennies into the slot.

Saturday

Belinda, our stories are creeping, closer and closer together, closer to the moment when they join.

Miles and miles and miles; waves of psychedelic light in a fogged-up cellar. Waves of music. Strawberry Fields is playing over the sound system as Boda falls into loving caresses. Wanita-Wanita, a funky black mistress complete with stacks and a two-foot afro, is dancing to the northern funkiness of it all. She takes hold of Boda by the waist, leads her down into the trip…

A dark room full of shining feathers that Boda has descended into. Colours shining from tufts that hang from the damp walls. Pieces of electrical equipment lying around here and there, their backs ripped off and wires from each to each, distending. All of the wires joining into a complex lover’s knot. Some of them plugged into an old car battery, some into the household circuits, the rest leading to a wire that dangles from the overhead bulb socket. Gumbo YaYa himself is sitting inside the tangle of wires, joining a red to a white and a blue. Making sparks. Boda can feel the fire in her Shadow; impulses of knowledge dripping into smoke. Four electric office fans blow soft cross-currents of air around the cellar on which feathers of many colours float like pieces of a dream. Belinda feels nervous amidst these flights. A radiant fire erupts from a circuit board. Gumbo YaYa spits at the flame. The Beatles are so loud, the room seems to be pulsing with the rhythm. Lights are flickering here and there, like a disco constellation. Sheets of random images play over the walls, shining from old-style movie-projectors. Wanita-Wanita has let go of Boda’s waist, finding no dance in her, and is now tripping out alone, her body swaying to the ragged beats, totally lost. Boda feels like a lonesome intruder. Boomer scent drifts in a purple haze.

Nothing seems real.

Gumbo YaYa is a middle-aged, creased-up wizard hiding behind a thick tangle of dirt-blond hair. He’s dressed in purple loon pants and a mirrored grandad shirt. No words have been spoken. His Vaz-smeared lips are fixed to the tubing of a global bong pipe that burbles with Boomer juice. Boda can smell the sweet liquid turning to smoke on her Shadow. It makes her want to suck deep, and when Gumbo takes the tube from his mouth and offers it to her, she accepts it without hesitation.

Peace and Love to the world, coming on.

“Oh man, oh man… that is…” Gumbo’s voice is trip-deep and out of here. “That is some juice. Take two and pass.”

It’s an illegal blend, a potent mixture of bliss and danger, and Boda’s mind is wandering through a maze of pleasure. Gumbo says something to her, but the music and the drugs make it a riddle. Something about her past?

Swirling world. Colours and sparks, merging into a meld of love. Boomer juice working strong. Boda can no longer make out where she is. The room is slippery with light and heat and feathers.

“I don’t know what I am,” she half-answers. “I’m a mystery.”

Gumbo moves his hands through the air, a slow dance like Tai Chi, and the music grows slightly quieter. Boda can hear him now. “Nice one… sure is… you not been downloaded, ya ya?” Gumbo’s voice without his radio filters is a wavering treble, fuelled by too many drugs, too much paradise.

“I don’t know what happened,” Boda replies, passing the bong pipe back to Gumbo. “I turned off when the cab went maverick. I’m all alone now. No memories.”

“Wow, must’ve been one head-fuck.”

“I don’t even know what my name is. Not even my second name.”

“Pre-cabian moniker? Super fine. I can tell you that.”

“Can you?”

“Sure thing, super-sugar. Hang on. Record’s finishing…” Gumbo clicks a switch on an old radio microphone and starts to speak over the fade-out, his voice transformed into bass honey by the handmade frequency enhancers, despite the blast of sneezing that seizes him. Also, he dips a blue-and-silver feather into his mouth before speaking: “Pardon me. That was The Beatles, and this is Gumbo YaYa with a special item. Got a mystery guest star with me today on the wave. Gonna play the Piper at the Gates of Dawn album by the Pink Floyd for you now, the whole of it, my people, whilst the good Doctor chitter-chats to the guest. Back on the bus just as soon as possible with the latest on the Xcabber rogue warrior. Ooops! Did I give the game away there? I’m an old hippy teaser, ain’t that the living truth!”

Wanita-Wanita puts the needle to the groove, vinyl version. It’s a genuine 1960s player, tiny and tremulous, boosted in the bass from a ragged box of tricks that perches on a pile of Popular Vurt Mechanic magazines. Wires from the exposed back of the record deck lead to amplifiers with Vurt feathers shoved into the various sockets. Across the walls, waves of treble and bass are played out in rainbows. Sitting on top of the music box is a homemade pollen counter constructed out of feathers and valves. Readout: 1594 and rising.

“You found your way?” Gumbo asks.

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“You should have some respect, madam,” Wanita says. “Not many get to visit the Palace of Gumbo.”

Boda doesn’t know what to say. The music is writhing around her in ever-tightening waves of bliss. She can’t believe that the Gumbo’s famous hi-tech sound comes from such low-fi equipment, and she tells him so. Gumbo makes no attempt to answer; his head is already floating away into newfoundlands. He’s swaying like a slow snake.

“Gumbo likes it primitive,” Wanita tells her, dancing to the new, looser rhythms.

“What’s the blue-and-silver feather do?”

“That’s Cherry Stoner. One’s of Gumbo’s own creations. He’s out of the picture, you see, twenty-four hours a day. Bless me, he’s been stoned since nineteen sixty-six and he wasn’t even alive then. Cherry Stoner allows him a moment of coolness.”

“Jesus.”

“Not what you expected, huh?”

“Can he really help me, Wanita?”

“Child, nobody comes close.”

Gumbo has been watching this exchange from his position on the floor, his eyes filled with another, gentler world. Now his fingers reach lazily for the Cherry Stoner feather. He licks it deep, and then says, “Everything you see here, Boda, is genuine Sixties gear. All charged-up to futuristic standards, of course, but I really believe that lost decade was the best ever. You know much about that time, Cabber?”

“Not a lot.”

“It was a time of happenings and flower power. A time of changes. That’s why this hayfever wave is exciting me so much, despite the danger. It’s got me in two minds, this fever. The flowers are making a come-back, and the world is getting messier. The barricades are coming down. This city’s so fucking juicy right now.”

“You can tell me about my past.”

“I can deliver. Ya Ya! Aaaaaccchhhhooooossshhhhh!!!!”

“Gesundheit,” says Wanita-Wanita.

“Pardon me, Beautiful.” Gumbo moves his hands and the projected images change to a long list of words that write the walls with a message. Boda’s history. “I stole this from the cab-records. Good, reading, sugar…” With that the YaYa switches off once again.

Boda reads her history off the walls. Her real name: Belinda Jones. Her attributes: Shadow and Dodo. Her date and place of birth. Her mother’s name: Sibyl Jones. Her mother’s occupation: Shadowcop.

“My mother’s a cop.”

Gumbo has gone all wobbly again. Wanita speaks for him. “Your mother really is a Shadowcop. And now the cop-child is on the programme. The Gumbo is loving this, believe me.”

“We used to live in Victoria Park?”

“The cab-records don’t tell no lies.”

Boda looks at Wanita.

“Well… not often, child.”

“Does my mother still live there?”

“Easy to find out, Boda. Or should we call you Belinda?”

It only takes a moment. “Call me Belinda.”

“Belinda, Belinda!” cries the stoned immaculate Gumbo. “Excellent! Welcome home.” Gumbo moves his hands back through space and the Xcab history vanishes into the music from the Pink Floyd.

“Don’t worry. To know him is to love him,” says Wanita. “How do you feel about it all?”

“That’s part of the trouble… I can’t work it out. I feel like my life has been squandered on memories of nothing. I want the map back. I can’t help feeling lost without it.”

“This is why you’ve come to us?”

“I want to find Coyote’s killer. That’s my job now. And I’ll need to be on the map to do it.”

“What have you learned?”

“So you really don’t believe that I killed him?”

“The Gumbo knows that you’re innocent, Belinda. He made a journey into the Xcab-records. It’s Gumbo-official. Columbus lied to the cops.”

“It’s tied up with the pollen, you know? Coyote’s death.”

“We know.”

“Also with Columbus.”

“Even better. Gumbo suspects that Kracker himself has a sticky finger in this apple pie.” A picture of Kracker appears then, on the flickering wall, projected from the Gumbo’s head.