Atom (4 page)

 

‘The gent's a real high-wire talker,' Atom told Madison as they strolled the hospital. ‘Icy pedigree. Anglo. Big guy but a falling blossom'd gash his cheek. Tried selling me on some transcendence deal but there were more holes in his story than a sex doll. It's taking a weird course.'

‘Don't worry about Jed, Taff. He's the one that got away.'

‘You got a portable circuit-cooler? Mob aint likely to provide the necessary maintenance and we don't want him overheating. Remember when he got in the tropical tank behind the bar at the Cerys Club?'

‘Sure. Those Japanese fighting fish never stood a chance. But red suited the decor.'

They entered Flea's room to find him in audience with the Caere Twins. ‘Hello shadowboy, hello datagirl,' the two said in unison. These bottle-bald cuties weren't natural twins but accidental clones. The original Caere girl had left a blood trace at a crime scene and the cops set up a polymerase chain reaction to increase exponentially the quantity of testable DNA. The technician was kidnapped and the reaction left to run for a month, resulting in a whole new girl who fought her way out of the precinct.

‘Beware this grinner and her doppelganger Flea, they'll tear off a ball each, stuff them up your nostrils and punch you in the nose.'

‘Really?' Flea asked, brightening and sitting up.

‘Flea's a candidate, Mr Taffy,' said the Twins, pushing Atom and Madison out. ‘In quarantine.'

The Twins were crime stylists who got off on the coining of new offences. They'd gone to the hospital suspecting the intersect of Nada Neck's etheric and Flea's bib generated a fresh violation. They weren't after some benign act fallen foul of a legislation twitch or an old trespass enhanced to the fashion, but a wholly new and original template outside the seven sins.

‘Between breaking a window and paving a nation,' the Twins chanted, ‘harsh is the story.'

The door slammed behind Atom and Drowner. Invulnerable as smoke, Madison drew a shock as they started away. ‘That how they dismissed you when you were an item?'

‘I don't choose to recall.'

‘You can't hide from me, Taff. I hear they had you out like a worker bee.'

Atom matched her. ‘I was young, I needed the honey.'

‘I'll admit they're sweet. Geared up?'

‘Hand's recharging in the core,' said Atom, slightly abashed. ‘You wouldn't be holding would you baby?'

Madison pulled something from her coat - it looked like an old powder compact. Time bomb.

 

Eyes so close together they merged like a double yolk, Shiv followed Kitty Stickler through the rain. At one point he'd lost her in front of a mannequin display, but the blade of his knife quivered her way like a compass needle. He ached to gentle the shaft in her silken heart. ‘I'm not like the others,' he whispered. ‘I can see you - all the time.' She was a real doll - knock her down and her eyes would close. ‘Will you cry real tears, Kitty?' he hissed, and crossed the road toward her.

 

Jed Helms was slapping discordantly along the keyboard of a black piano. ‘Hey Thermidor what am I doin'?' He kept right on. ‘What's this, eh? What am I doin'?'

Thermidor stared back.

‘Practisin' my scales,' shouted Helms. ‘Eh? Practisin' my scales!' And he splashed into laughter.

‘Why do I need this,' said Thermidor, turning to Nada Neck. ‘Why do I need fish playin' piano in my life?'

‘You mean “piano-playin' fish”, boss.'

‘Neck, I respect you as a man but as a hitman you elude me. What happened to gun karma? I'll be a clean skeleton before I hang my life on a fire-by-wire. What is it with you and softshooters uh? Slugs with little minds inside? What else they got - go-faster stripes? Special bullets for victims with flyaway hair? Why don't you buy from Gat Shack like Carl Banoffi?'

‘Banoffi's a grunt.'

‘Ask a grunt about cause and effect, Neck, he'll surprise you. I'm sendin' Carl after the guy with the PI modality. Call it a weakness. I'm walkin' away now.'

 

Banoffi shadowed Atom down String Street toward Valentine. Today he favoured a Harry Magnum to the right and a Bulldog Special to the left - these were woo cannons in .44 without even a recognition grip, though he'd toned the recoil on the Harry so he wouldn't spin clockwise when he fired both. The knuckles of Banoffi's right hand were tattooed with the word KNUC and those of the left were inscribed KLES. His mother had believed the way to teach little Carl to read was to tag the name to the object. His forehead said FOREHEAD and his chin said CHIN and so on. Even his eyelids were inscribed, though how he was expected to see this was a mystery to many. Banoffi told people he could neither read nor appreciate their laughter, ever.

He put his rage at the service of the mob but secretly feared that this misplacement would one day overbalance him into a pit of inescapable regret. Without inspiration he raised the Magnum and Charter at Atom's back, and noticed that Atom had dropped something - looked like a powder compact. The sidewalk went up like a bullet through a cracker.

The compact was a two-hour loop mine, which cycled the victim through the same few hours repeatedly until a pre-set release point. Before time manipulation went underground these had been developed by the cops as a means of entrapment - finding that the weight of their actions were erased with the actions themselves, even the mildest citizen would soon explode into a reckless frenzy of rampaging mayhem. Mines set for a mere dozen cycles would do the trick and then time would be allowed to proceed, the arrested suspect laughing wildly in the belief that time would skip back again in a moment.

Carl Banoffi, however, had made a lively career of such mayhem, firing his own body weight in bullets every day. When he found himself back at the Fort being told to oblong the gumshoe, and when two hours later he found himself there again, and again, he began to implode. ‘Boss, I am growing tusks trying to off him,' he sobbed.

‘I have only just told you to do so,' Thermidor frowned. ‘Are you the full dime, Carl Banoffi?'

Carl went for a walk in O'Hara Park and was sat on a bench watching the birdies when he found himself back at the Fort being told to ventilate Atom. This went on and on. Sometimes Carl never bothered with Atom and ate lunch at the Nimble Maniac. Sometimes he cracked wise to Thermidor or said his words along with him. Once he shot Thermidor. Once he even shot Atom. Another time he did a walkabout, slaying everyone in the Fort. It bored hell out of him. One time he got shot by Nada Neck, and after a blank little while found himself being ordered by Thermidor to off Atom.

He started going to the Muse Street movie house to see the end and beginning of The Yawn - Bane of the Vampire, knowing not only what was going to happen in the movie but in the theatre and most of the surrounding area. After three hundred cycles he knew the assigned two hours pretty well and was no longer irritated by the regular recall to the moment of Thermidor's order - he would just wander out in the midst of it and return to what he was doing. He never saw the middle of Bane.

But he could pick up a book at any point and right near the Fort was the Chain Street Library. During the next two hundred cycles he devoured three books, leaving the Fort every two hours and strolling down to pick up exactly where he'd left off. One was Eddie Gamete's Punching the Sarge, in which Gamete speaks of ‘the carefree invulnerability they assure us we felt as children, contrary to our accurate memory of the time'. The next was The Ultimate Diet, a study of cadaver decomposition rates. And thirdly there was Leon Wardial's Freeload Velocity, in which the protagonist is mere anatomy moved by terror - ‘Give me any general statement,' Wardial concluded, ‘and I'll refine it to disgrace.' This stuff had squirly parameters - it hogged his imagination. He was laughing and didn't know why.

‘I want you to ventilate Atom,' said Thermidor for the thousandth time.

‘You're not a happy man, boss - I see that. Did you ever just sit with your lady and watch a tree?'

‘You're tellin' me what - what?'

‘Universal fear flakes away like the enamel off a spudgun, you know? Immensity is less reproach than dismissal.'

‘Nada Neck - gimme a gun. Now.'

Banoffi was down at the harbour handling intertidal sea jellies when the bomb ended. It had been set for two thousand cycles. He had spent half a year in loop time.

He laughed, marvelling at his ability to leave town. He wrote a book. The work was rejected, his rage was redirected and he became his own man. A year after his release from the timeloop, twenty publishing houses across America were blown to smithereens.

 

Atom arrived at the Fort with flowers and a sack of ants. He was shown into the marble hall, where Thermidor was dining at the far, far end of the table. Disposable flunkeys stood at the walls.

‘Mr Atom. Welcome to my life. Nada Neck - put the flowers in water. In the furnace dump the ants. Minuteman - take and sell Mr Atom's coat. And check him for flaws.'

Minuteman removed Atom's coat and patted him down. ‘He's flawless Mr Thermidor.'

‘I been askin' round about you, gumshoe,' said Thermidor as Minuteman left. ‘Hear you got some kinda pun gun'll charm the cats outta their pyjamas. You're a smart one Atom, I could tell right away.' The clanking of cutlery echoed in the otherwise silent chamber. Thermidor had not looked up since Atom entered. Now he stopped. ‘What is this, a tomato? Comedians. What is this? Why do I need tomatoes in my life?' Thermidor picked up the tomato and brandished it. ‘Who put this goddamn tomato in my life? Silencer - get the chef in here.'

The plate scraped like chalk as Thermidor pushed it away. He regarded the tomato thoughtfully. ‘Ever peeled your pants off over slicked blood, Atom?'

‘Not in this lifetime.'

‘Hold that thought.' He looked at Atom. ‘You know kids are spoilt these days - there's an infinite number of opinions to ignore. Loyalty - real, read-all-about-it loyalty - that's rare as white gold. Harry Fiasco - well. But Carl Banoffi, Carl I know is a good boy - I'd barely begun stating my requirement to off you when he left without a word, as if he knew my heart. I could use more like him in my life. What did you do to him.'

‘Guess I threw him for a loop.'

‘That's kinda elliptical.'

‘I saw him down at the docks, boss,' said Nada Neck, re-entering, ‘holdin' a jellyfish up to the light.'

‘Those ants good and burnt? I don't want ants in my life. Little invaders. See what I found in the food, Neck?'

‘Tomato.'

‘Good boy. We havin' fun yet, Atom?'

‘Can't say.'

‘Well, you damn well better say. Eh?' He stared at Atom awhile, then looked to the ceiling. ‘Boy, this is gonna be tough.'

The chef was led in by the blunt-faced Silencer. ‘Well look who it aint,' said Thermidor as the guy was pushed down into a chair. ‘Servin' me tomatoes. Cute as a dog on a paddle steamer. Where'd you learn to do that, fryboy?'

Ashen-faced, the chef was silent.

Thermidor sauntered over. ‘You know Korova used to fire employees like blanks, but not me. I know how it is. Your hat says one thing, your head says another. I don't need explanations or apologies. Just refresh my ailing memory. Why would anyone in their right head eat a tomato?'

When the chef spoke it was like something whispered in the bowl of a radar dish. ‘Grief?' he ventured.

‘Eh? I hear you say “grief”? The sky was the limit for a minute there and that's what you pull down? What now, you want I should roll over like a Corvair? Let me guess - you like tomatoes?'

Thermidor took the tomato from the table, cupped his face to remove his glass eye, and squashed the tomato into the empty socket. Squatting down before the chef, he smiled. ‘Look into my eye.' The chef raised his head to view the glistening pulp. ‘Be my guest. Tuck in. It's smart food, right? Got real brains behind it.' He pushed his face close to the twitching chef's. ‘Come on - take a bite from my life. How hard can it be?'

His smile faded and he stood. ‘Silo - gimme a dumb gun.' Silencer handed him a Combat Magnum and Thermidor shot the chef in the eye. As he went over backwards Thermidor handed the gun back. ‘Cause and effect, Neck. How great is that? Aluminum, lead shot, wads, some smoke. Keep your spirit levellers, you and your gumshoe. Yeah Neck's got a gun with side impact bars Atom, you and him got stuff in common. You want fries with that?' he shouted at the body, and sat down heavily at the table. ‘Put him in the fire with the ants. Guess there's a lesson there for all of us. Sorry for the interruption Atom. My life is complicated since my predecessor - whose memory I respect - died of bullet inhalation.' He drew the plate toward him and began eating again. ‘Used to be Dino Korova's driver, way back. I'm tellin' ya hell's a roadmap with the lower half staining scarlet. My Ma had to bust me out three times - people think Billy Panacea invented that scam, it was me.' He jabbed at his own chest with a fork. ‘Now even my bodyguards got bodyguards, know what I mean? But still I have to deal with folk who run nuthin' but a temperature in this town. Folk like splatterpunk there. And folk like you.'

‘Nobody's holdin' a gun to your beak.'

‘Who else is gonna head this berg? Blince? Betty Criterion? One o' them three-day mayors? Who commands the fear round here but me? My own hairline's backdown scared, gumshoe.'

‘I can tell your boy Fiasco's real respectful.'

‘Fiasco.' Thermidor dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. ‘He sleepwalked through a few bankjobs. An okay pelter, you know? Peach of a hairstyle. But young enough to think you need to go purchase trouble - don't know it's a charity. You know when Roni Loveless took the fight that time? Slap in the face for Korova but the boss was a patient man. Loveless was a hero in clench, until Korova seeded a rumour that the boxer had a fondness for mini veggies. That fall down the stairs was no accident. My point is, guilt's a debt in the head. I'll get my due from Harry Fiasco. And that's where you sweep in, Atom - but wasn't it yesterday I invited you into my life? What kept you?'

‘Woke up thinking there was a bat in my room - something flapping round. Turned out to be the flying logo off a TV network - lost its bearings on the way to the station. Opened the window and tried to belt the thing out with a broom. But it was dumb, didn't understand I was trying to help. Kept on zooming and flapping, zooming and flapping. Finally slapped onto my ass and stuck.' He twisted around to show the logo on the cheek of his pants. ‘Channel 10,000. Never watch it.'

‘Just a regular guy eh. Not what I heard. Eh, Neck? Our guest here's a real hard mark, right?'

Since Thermidor's talk of Atom's gun stance, Nada Neck had been taking the measure of the man. ‘Seems kinda simple,' he muttered suspiciously.

‘Kill-simple,' Thermidor smiled. ‘Sure. Guy who ducks the story, aint involved, punished by nuthin' but the lash of his own baby blues - that what we meant to think, wiseguy?'

‘Almost that simple, Mr Thermidor. You know my father always told me “If not for the light, how could we appreciate the darkness?”. Yeah in a town like this, recidivists and all, I guess he was an oddity - instead of committing the same badly-thought-out offence over and over, he repeated the same crime a million times in his mind and only once in the flesh, a heist ending in his mournful death. His ghost continued to perform the raid every night, that unnatural forbearance in life having left his soul a million urges to vent. Some sour evenings, if you listen close, you can still hear father trying to open that solid vault with transparent hands.'

In the storeroom, Minuteman was trying on Atom's coat. It fit like a glove and made him feel fizzy inside. He realised it was closing up like a venus flytrap. His vision started to spot and blur. He wasn't what you'd call satisfied, but couldn't breathe or complain. Bones bust with a dull thump. Pretty soon the coat went like a tube of toothpaste squeezed in a fist - pulped mobster erupted from both ends.

‘Where's the squasher,' Thermidor was saying in the main hall.

Radiant with indifference, Atom gapped a yawn.

‘Hey, mystery guest - I keepin' you up?'

‘Barely.'

Thermidor picked up the phone and slammed it forward on the table. ‘You get on the tumbler and bring it in or weird-and-gilly gets a headful of air.'

Atom strolled over and picked up the receiver, dialling.

‘I figured you for a squirtgun,' smiled Thermidor in satisfaction.

‘Do you believe in the transmigration of souls, Mr Thermidor?'

‘Eh? No.'

‘Then I'll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself. Maddy?' His attention turned to the phone. ‘It's Taff. I need that item brought over to the mob's sandbox. Uh? Yeah, like we thought. Uh? Just pants, shirt, boots, leather waistcoat. No, they took the coat. The pants? Black. The logo, yeah. No, no underwear. I know it's cold. Right now? Cover you with jam. Okay. See you soon.' He replaced the phone. ‘All set, Mr Thermidor.'

‘Neck - bring the fish.'

‘It's in the hot tub with Cherry and Linda, boss.'

‘So interrupt it.'

As Nada Neck left, Atom sat down and swung his legs onto the table. ‘Jed can entertain us while we're waiting for my associate.'

‘Entertain us? How?'

‘By pursing his lips like a fish.'

‘He is a fish.'

‘So why'd you seem surprised?'

Jed Helms' tank was rolled in on a drinks trolley. ‘Hey Atom,' he burbled, ‘I've had a taste o' Thermidor's life and I like it.'

‘I'm here to rescue you Jed.'

‘Rescue me? You gotta be kiddin'.'

‘You're suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, Jed. Transference - these people aint your friends. Did they once tell you to shout a little louder?'

‘Never had to.'

‘I can believe it. Look at you, you're overheated.'

‘I love it.'

Atom had meant for Jed to whistle ‘Mack the Knife' during the interlude but the argument lasted the full eight minutes it took for Madison to arrive and time passed pleasantly enough. Calm as the dead, Madison entered with a tin soccer ball and placed it on the table.

‘Well, well - smoke and class. That one o' them cryo buckets? Hope the folds iron out, missy.' Thermidor laughed until his flunkeys caught on and added their contribution.

‘He doesn't look like much,' said Madison to Atom, and the room fell abruptly silent.

‘We'll just take the barracuda and be on our way Mr Thermidor.'

But standing behind Atom and Drowner was a new arrival in a Luger suit.

Thermidor smiled, without astonishment. ‘The prodigal stooge,' he said as Harry Fiasco approached the table. ‘Here you walk right back into my life. Just in time for brunch and its bloody aftermath. Harry Harry Harry, you been busier than a fly tryin' to cover its eyes. Silo.' Silencer handed Thermidor the .357 and Thermidor raised it at Fiasco. As he clicked back the hammer it sounded like a skeleton's step in a cathedral. A ketchup tear trailed from his vegetable retina. ‘Tell me it aint so, Harry, that you boosted some valuable squasher and let it fall into the hands o' this shamus.'

‘That's a sixpack o' lies, Mr Thermidor,' shouted Fiasco. ‘Sure I boosted a brain but I did it for you, it's safe Mr Thermidor I swear.'

‘I happen to have different information,' rumbled Thermidor, gunning his ego. Murky motivations clashed in the air like stormfronts.

‘Like the hair, Harry,' Atom remarked. ‘Got its own passport?'

‘The gumshoe says the brain's in here.' Thermidor flicked the gun toward the metal orb.

‘Sure and there's bees in the TV,' Fiasco scoffed. ‘Take a look, you don't believe me.'

‘A man with a gun is in no need of advice, boy,' stated Thermidor. He was trembling. ‘I'll make you bleed till you can't stand the colour clash no more.'

‘The hick's right, Mr Thermidor,' said Jed Helms.

‘Lemme speak I'm in the eye of an emotional hurricane here!' roared Thermidor, blasting the fishtank, which shattered down around Jed as he hunched like a kraken on a medieval map. ‘Outta my way!' Thermidor fired the deafening Combat again as he approached the orb. ‘I'm upset. Real upset. The goddamn squasher's in here you'll be ploughed up in twenty years, Fiasco. If it aint, you Atom, and maybe you too Fiasco, and maybe every goddamn timewastin' sonofabitch here, are gonna wind up in a sluiceroom!' He grasped the orb and twisted its halves - the seam clicked. Everything went low res.

Like most flux technology, the Syndication bomb hinged on a cheap but ingenious trick. Rather than actually stripping the subtext from the blast site it converted the wave range into a living Updike novel, the subtext containing information everyone already knew - the end result was a shallow reality in which every move was a statement of the obvious. A bullet dopplered past Atom's ear but it didn't tell him anything fresh. Thermidor was going berserk, scaring his boys into drab chaos. All etheric firearms were neutralised by the flat bomb. Atom grabbed Jed and followed Madison out of the chamber. His coat burst from a storeroom like a bat out of hell and attached itself to him as though magnetised. In the car they slammed Jed into a portable circuit cooler and drove off a minute before the cops arrived, cherry lights whirling. No-one was any the wiser.

 

Shiv waited on the corner of Amp as Kitty walked down Sunday. She'd been to the cop den so he'd had to hold off, but his blade already sang with anticipation.

As Kitty neared the alley mouth Shiv felt heat in his throat, and as she passed he was pulled back into the gloom. An angular, origami figure covered in coat had looped his neck with a wire. ‘You're choking me.'

‘Is it that obvious?'

Doctor DeCrow, eyes distant as a fishgutter's, pulled at the snare. Shiv bent sideways like an awkward drunk, supporting himself awhile as though unaware he was dead.

‘The young are too intent to be truly sinister.'

 

‘Here's to plain speaking,' said the Candyman, raising a .38 snub in his chubby hand. ‘And I'll have you know better than I sir, wherever this bullet goes, the Geneva Convention is void. Come in and shut the door.'

Atom and Drowner closed the office door behind them.

Joanna was stood next to the Candyman with a chicaned H&K Terraform Cannon. The flared chrome barrel looked like the silencer off a race hog. Turow was stood against the blinds toying with a silver-handled cane.