Atom (6 page)

 

Madison's windshield TV superimposed the spectacle over the traffic. ‘News on the hour. The President, whose assassination is said to be at a delicate stage, has described his hourly, bare-knuckle efforts to “stay clean” after being discovered in flagrante with a four foot squid. The squid is a carnivorous marine mollusc with a streamlined body and shell reduced to an internal cartilaginous rod. “My enemies would love to use this regrettable impulse against me. I believe this says more about their sickness than mine.” Tomorrow's Presidential visit to Beerlight City amid the continuing breakup of states is widely viewed as a carnage opportunity.

‘Mobster Harry Fiasco has been convicted of psychological damage and condemned to the chair on the three strikes longcon after destroying the City Brain Facility. “I'd like to thank my mom, my dad, my girlfriend Kitty, my parole officer and all the victims who made this possible. This execution's for you.” But the execution has been postponed for the purpose of publicity. On the steps of the court Attorney Harpoon Specter commented “You'll notice I'm grimacing. All the muscles in my face have contracted due to the terrific velocity of these proceedings. Indeed the trial was so swift I had very little airtime. I aim to stay this execution for at least sixteen hours. Beauty surrounds me. Outta my way.” When asked why he turned Fiasco in, mob boss Eddie Thermidor was evasive. “Didn't seem significant at the time.”

‘And in response to the production of Dead Barbie, a grey doll with no eyes, parents have complained that the product is otherwise indistinguishable from other Barbies. Manufacturers were adamant. “The notion that we're simply saving paint is nonsense. We want to instruct kids about mortality. The new Barbie has a casket, cadaver make-up, bugs. Alive she is not.” That was the news and bother - this is the number one video - “What's With the Knife” by Septal Erosion.'

Madison drew up at the state pen. Fiasco had been sentenced in a court resembling a third world bazaar. As the jury entered they were garrotted by the rigging. ‘Correct the offender forever,' the judge told them, ‘or the impulse to imitate will overwhelm.' It was hard to tell which side Harpoon Specter was on. ‘Nothing could be said about Harry Fiasco which has not been said before,' he declared. ‘Feisty in every department of life, he has stamped his personality on my face and those of many gathered here. He's so brave his balls are a threat to us all.' Auto-Rhino's explosive termination a few years back had put an end to the killing jar - Harry was headed for the Rosenberg rocker.

Beyond the glass of the gawper's room was a chamber side-slapped with migraine bars. Fiasco was brought over all decked out in electrolock manacles and dropped opposite. Despite the pen gear, the flip-up contacts and bulletproof tan made him an easy mark for a fashion prefab. He frowned at the visitor - there were raindrops on her coatcollar, on the brim of her hat. ‘Told me I had a visit I thought it was Kitty. Where'd I see you before?'

‘You know Taffy Atom to say hell to, Harry? You saw us at the Fort. I'm his partner.'

‘Atom. P.I. modality, right? And there was some story 'bout his daddy.'

‘Head clown at the circus. Killed in a miniature car pile-up. Went right over the hood. All four wheels came off. Taff never got over it.'

‘Tough break. So you're Drowner. Say, how do I look?'

‘Underdone. But you're gonna look like a dorito, honey.'

‘Dead-on balls accurate.'

‘So the end won't be tepid.'

‘My style. You know me and Kitty used to have taser sex.'

‘She doesn't say much for you.'

‘She's a reserved lady.'

‘So much so,' Madison put a shock absorber between her lips and lit it, ‘she aint there.'

‘No recoil on a remote - she's the perfect crime.'

‘Nobody's perfect, Harry. You shoulda left town when you had the chance.'

‘My ethics were in development hell. I never done nuthin' like that before.'

‘Like what.'

‘Goin' freelance. I figured someday me and Kitty'd be livin' in a twenty mile house havin' foodfights with beluga, you know? What, I meant to stay at that job till I put my fist through it? Easy as fallin' in line, sure. But when I took a swatch at that squasher ...'

‘You knew it had to be valuable, right? The gent went to that much trouble.'

‘Not right off.' Fiasco looked abashed. ‘Guess I consider alertness a sorta insecurity. Delivered the brain to the Candyman, but after, I started gettin' like an intuition. Some feel a twinge in the leg with a change o' weather - I feel it in my shirt. Get a real anchor in my pants. So I go back the next day and boost the brain, take a good blink at that baby. Looks like a tree disease and feels like a softboiled egg. Then I realise, I don't know where to sell a squasher. Don't even know why it's such a big deal. By now I got a head o' steam worked up. I can't fence it, can't go back to the gent, so I figure maybe I pitch it to Thermidor, tell him I happen to see a good thing and pursue it like on his behalf, nobody's any the wiser as usual. But by now a little time's passed, I don't know what reception I'll get, if I'll have to run for it, so ofcourse I don't swan into the Fort with the goods up front. The easiest way to lose your mind's to mail it.'

‘Deposit box?'

‘Beerlight Grand. Five-eight-nine. Mailed the key to Santa Claus.'

‘Funny.'

‘What?'

‘Why you spilling this, Harry? Me and Taff haven't exactly helped you.'

‘Something's turned around, Miss Drowner. That death sentence was like a declaration of love, you know? A few words and the whole world changed. Life kicked me hello.'

‘You get free, the mob'll take you to pieces and lose the manual.'

‘I aint gettin' out, miss - Blince stores resentment in his cheeks like a hamster. Guess I'll pop like a bug on a hotplate, yeah.'

Madison stubbed the shock. ‘Well, it's been good, Harry.' She stood to go.

‘Hey miss, you see Kitty you tell her I love her. Tell her I'll be waitin' on the dry side.'

‘Sure, Harry.'

Madison started down the passage away from the gawping room.

‘Life shoots first, lady,' Fiasco shouted after her.

As she neared the end of the passage, Henry Blince turned the corner coming the other way. ‘Well looky here. How long you known Scatterbrains, Miss Drowner?'

‘How long you been walking erect?'

‘Aw come on Maddy, you're breakin' my heart here.'

‘Break your own heart - I'm busy.'

She strode on, leaving him stunned with respect.

 

Nada Neck dropped by the hospital acting breezy. ‘Lookin' good, Flea. Love the ears. Wanted to apologise for shootin' you in the bar.'

‘Ah forget it.' Flea kept eating a melon as Neck strolled past the bed to the window. ‘In fact you did me a favour. Seems I committed a crime that day - a new one. Caere Twins are in here to make a bleak assessment.'

‘Heard this place is goin' down for some three strikes landfill. Yeah postage stamps'll have skulls on 'em in this town. Which reminds me.' Walking over, he dug from his pocket a drift of confetti bearing Atom's likeness, and snowed them onto Flea's bed. ‘I don't know if this is gold dust or a swatted moth. Want to fill me in?'

‘I filled you in,' said Flea, up and voluble. ‘Damn straight.'

‘Flea on the wall eh. How's your chest.'

‘I'm on top of the weather.' Flea put down a melon segment and wiped his hands on the sheet. ‘Okay. I once seen Atom dead-lift the front end of a '69 Volkswagon Bug. He pulled his right shoulder and broke his back in three places. Quite a guy. Said he thought a chicken was a dove on stilts.'

‘We only got wit in this city to fool our mothers, Flea. You called Atom a shadowman.'

‘Yeah. Low key. Got a dog that's inside-out. Uses its windpipe as a leash. Tells people he's a house painter.

‘So he's untrustworthy.'

‘I didn't say that.'

‘Flea.' Neck lit a shock. ‘I'm a busy guy.'

‘Well okay. Okay, how can I put this. Let's say he's the sort who'd mail his appendix to a starving man.'

‘So what. Nobody cares about that part.'

‘He does. He loves it.'

‘He loves his appendix.'

‘That's what I said. He kisses it all the time.'

Neck took an irritable pull at the gasper. ‘How can a man kiss his own appendix.'

‘He'll do all kinds of things if you let him.'

‘Well, don't. Don't, if he's taking those sorta chances. God almighty.'

‘Atom's wounds run deep, Neck. You know that experiment where they give different drugs to spiders and see what kind of webs they weave? Speed makes a wreck, burgers make the ancient smiley and so on? Atom's old man was an architect. Got bit by a tarantula. Started creating arthropodal buildings - octopolar, eight points to 'em, right? Tarantula venom's a cerebro-spinal stimulant, alters the mind, used in gypsy brews to release what they call the “dark burning soul”. Permanently imprints the nervous system, so it's not just a quest drug. These buildings were extradimensional - deep wings, open corners, corridors in impossible directions. The old man called the blueprints treasure maps. One day when Taff was a kid his Pa disappeared in one of them structures. Taff went into the study to get the blueprint - it was stuck flat on the wall, and floating in the air in the middle of the room was one of them crosses that mark the spot, already fading. By the time he'd called someone to look, it was gone. And he never saw his Pa again.'

In silence a while, Neck gave unfazed by scrutinising his cigarette, then appeared to remember Flea. ‘Flea, I hate to be one o' those people, but ...'

‘I know how it sounds, Nada, believe me. You know the weird strip off Scanner, used to be Fall Street? Now there's just a squirly dark, sorta makes you dizzy to go near? Atom discharged a gun there, gun to conjure with called a Glory Hand.'

‘Some kinda smart flaw?'

‘Suck gun. I hear it really wails.'

‘An etheric?'

‘Ethigraph gridpulse and all, what I heard, samples the victim's deal and flips it, like them martial arts that dodge your thrust and carry you down with your own weight, you know? Enough venom in a scorpion to kill a scorpion.'

‘So he uses the enemy.'

‘This is Beerlight, Neck - situationism's just a front.'

Neck had sucked the gasper to a stub. ‘First shock o' the day's the most intense.' He flicked it away.

‘Hello blabber,' called the Caere Twins brightly, sticking their heads round the door. They came in different as twilight and twilight and beamed at Nada Neck. ‘Hello straight-up.'

‘I was just leaving.' Neck swayed to the door. ‘Swat you later, Roach.'

When Neck was gone, the Twins sat on either edge of Flea's bed. Their silence made him apprehensive. ‘It's bad, isn't it?'

‘We don't know how to tell you, Flea.'

‘What you drivin' at?'

‘When beaker let rip with that M61 Persuader,' said a Twin gently, ‘it forced an etheric sample of his intent to kill you, into the charm filter's etheric bromide shield.'

‘We thought,' the other Twin continued, ‘that the overlap of the two may have synthesised something new.'

‘Like what?'

‘A residue from the neutralised intent. Created between you at the raw level. It wasn't a mere deflection because it affected base particles of Nada's etheric.'

‘So break it to me, what's the charge?'

‘Oh, poor Flea. It could have been “the infringement of another's will at the soul source”. This would go beyond the known taxonomy of offence.'

‘But?'

‘Only the etheric fired at you was negated. Nada retained plenty within him.'

‘So? I went with intent to commit.'

‘No, Flea. You didn't really know what the bib was - your manoeuvre was inadvertent. I'm so sorry.'

‘This can't be right. I ... I drew the gunfire by being the target - metaphysical provocation, right? Inciting violence.'

‘Take care of yourself, Mr Lonza,' said the Twins, standing.

‘Wait there's laws on incitement, nuthin' on this soul bullshit.' Flea was frantic. ‘Don't legislation qualify somethin' for a crime?'

‘Oh no, Mr Lonza,' they said. ‘Everyone knows what's a real crime.'

‘I even commit an offence on paper?'

The Twins stopped at the door, looking back at Flea with profoundest pity. ‘Goodbye, flyboy.'

Alone, Flea gibbered. ‘I didn't do anythin' wrong?'

Walking down the corridor, the Twins stopped short, turning to one another big-eyed.

‘The infringement of another's will at the soul source,' whispered one.

‘Legislation,' gasped the other.

With the advent of polymer flesh lacing a few years later the Twins would start souping up geneware to develop perplex, simple organic matter which could be programmed directly from whichever personality profile the cops favoured for a particular offence. Nearly a thousand red herringbone diversion puppets were set loose across the eastern seaboard to attract arrest. Only nineteen perps fulfilled their destiny, going to the chair without a thought in their fungal heads - the rest sat moulding in rented rooms or became tenured professors.

 

 

The Fort was pure Hatland but Neck needed more than patter and dumbguns to be a good right arm. He opened his walk-in arsenal and took a swatch. The chamber glinted black like a nest of spiders. It had the parliamentary vibe of dead energy. Armbone's connected to the handbone, handbone's connected to the triage Starflare Street Sweeper semi-auto 12-round with 18-inch barrel and 3 second void. Guns for all occasions - mood guns, metabolics, vogues, voyeurs, fuzzies, carnatics, geodesics, diagnostics. A Lusa Palmtop. A Tantrum gun. A Penrose rifle, automatic as mother nature. A roid rod - bad gun, he'd hallucinated behind it. A squidgrenade resembling a sea urchin. A tetanus missile. A Liberty Bell. Calico seeds. Murex ammo. A gun of blown glass which evaporated when fired once. Cryo ice bullets. A patented eyelash hammer. Steak throwknives. And here, an Eschaton rifle with a gull-wing chamber and fruitwood inlay grip. Draw a bead and speed the victim to his cosmic conclusion, be it ashes or glory. Metaphysical roulette, loaded to the ashes. Its designer, Johnny Pilot Fish, had theorized that the weight of the soul was the difference between a person's weight before death and after. To determine this he had to know when certain deaths were going to occur and got on the grapevine with the city shooters - it got so that when Johnny turned up to weigh someone, they knew they were about to get hit. Johnny was baffled when he found that the victims weighed the same before and after. It was Rex Camp the Coroner who pointed out that the victim's body now included a bullet. Johnny PF's Equaliser Theory - how the soul weighs the same as the bullet that evicts it - was born to please its parents. But as everyone's favourite gun guru Brute Parker said, a theory's only as good as the speed it can leave a Weatherby Mark V.

‘Well,' said Neck, ‘these bullets aint gonna fire theirselves.' It would be six years before the first gun became fully sentient. He hefted the Eschaton, breathing hard in the dumb air.

 

‘There's no such thing as a normal angel,' Atom whispered, looking down at the city. ‘It's never done that way.'

Madison stuck her head out the window, smoking a cigarette. ‘Don't do this to me Taff. We need to talk.'

Atom crawled along the ledge and climbed into the office. ‘How was Fiasco - boastful and disappointing as a hacker?'

‘Don't be such a heel. Fiasco's kinda honest. Confused and outside the dollars, he just grabbed like a monkey.'

‘Sounds dumb.'

‘Great things can sound dumb. Anything sound dumber than the hammering of a nail?'

‘Nail in his own coffin.'

‘Simmer down, Taff. Come to that you and me are two sides of the same lid.'

Atom looked on with chuffed awe as she related the brain deal. Maddy was so deep he needed a U-boat to visit her.

‘There's something strange about the gent, Taff,' she was saying. The desk light flashed an intruder. ‘He's been ... modified.'

‘Jackfitted?'

‘No but he's been worked on, I can feel it. Like he's out by remote control.'

‘So who's at the switch - Harpo Marx?'

Turow slammed in looking all squeezed out. ‘Atom! I've had more than I could ever hope to take!'

‘I took you for an all-terrain toady, Turow. Capable o' drinkin' milk if you had to. Now you're claimin' to be small pyjamas?'

Turow appeared to be losing ground in his fight against insanity. He fiddled with a string of translucent plastic flakes.

‘It'll be orange walls and shuffleboard, Turow. What you got there?'

‘They used to be worry beads.' Turow shot a nervous glance at Madison, then shuffled up to Atom. ‘I need to talk to you.'

‘Go ahead.'

‘Is there some other place?'

‘Millions. That all you wanted to know?'

‘What game is it you are playing?'

‘You see my game every time you visit my office, Turow. Siddown.'

Turow sat in the client seat, and looked aside at the towering Madison.

‘You're eighty percent sebum, honey,' she said.

‘Where is your sea monster?'

‘Body shop,' said Atom, sitting opposite the desk.

‘Thank goodness,' muttered Turow, wiping his brow with a silk kerchief. ‘I must say it is most difficult to conduct one's affairs with that antisocial moray chewing the scenery.'

‘Less distracting than a windchime.'

‘What is that on the desk.'

‘Just a raisin.'

‘I thought it was a spider.'

‘In your dreams.' Atom flicked the raisin into space.

‘You despise me, don't you?'

‘Lemme put it smartly, Mr Turow - I can't tell the difference between beef and your leg. You've been jerking like a puppet since day one.'

‘You are a deeply disturbed individual,' Turow rasped strenuously, leaning forward.

‘There's the cops, there's the mob, there's me - you gotta find your echelon.'

‘Is that like a turtle?'

‘Forget it Taff,' said Maddy. ‘You couldn't trust this guy to sit the right way on the john.'

‘How dare you! I came here in good faith!'

‘Packin' what?'

‘Information, Mr Atom.' Turow's voice dropped to a hushed whisper. ‘About the Candyman. He is a learned gentleman - has written a book proving this. But he is not interested in the man Kafka for scholarly purposes.'

‘Funny-bone of the Gogol-Schulz arm.'

‘Perhaps - I bow to your knowledge, Mr Atom. But I must tell you the Candyman is fired with the unfashionable fear that we will all yet peel and split in a nuclear oven.'

‘He's probably right,' said Atom, lighting a shock and leaning back.

‘He says that only the sliding insects of the ground will survive the firestorm. And he has been positively growing tusks trying to create a breed of human insect which will continue to live on this accursed planet.'

‘Everyone needs a goal.'

‘You do not understand,' whined Turow, agitated. ‘He has before placed the brain of a bug into a person, and the brain of a person into a bug. These horrors he has already accomplished.'

Atom had heard of this sort of thing. A guy called Kiddy Dasouza had felt he was a trout trapped in a man's body and saved for a trans-species operation. He blew the money on a greyhound and in desperation tried to download his head into Jed's body. But his mind was rejected for harbouring optimism. It seemed fish were machines, manmade or not.

‘Guess the results were staple-eyed and rigid.'

‘Quite rigid Mr Atom. But now the Candyman intends to develop brains which are, shall we say, half and half.'

‘You drop a little acid this morning Turow?' asked Madison mildly.

‘She's got a point there, Turow. Or shellfish. Hey wait a minute - you're saying the gent's some kinda brain surgeon?'

‘No, Mr Atom - he employed a man, Doctor DeCrow - I despise him. He carries with him strange devices, like a door-to-door dentist. He is the kind to keep his ancestors as ornaments. Even the Candyman began not to trust him - switched hotels in fear of betrayal.'

‘So the gent reckons the old roach brother's brain'll be a model for some bugman he wants to create.'

‘It sounds farfetched Mr Atom but you have my assurance that this is the Candyman's fervent belief.'

‘Well for what it's worth, Turow, we just found out where the squasher is.'

Turow goggled like a king prawn. ‘You mean you never ... You never had the brain in the first place!' He spluttered, gasping. ‘I'll break off your arms and use them to paint the town, you ... you ...'

‘You really have an attitude, you know that?' said Maddy, smiling at Atom with her whole body.

‘Your body's a temple, babe, but your head's a cathedral.' Atom put on a pair of blacklight shades. ‘I'll draw the gun out the core, then we go fork the noodle.'

 

Under Atom's brownstone was a catacomb maze based on a CAT scan of his cranium. Seeing the elevator descending, Neck had dashed down endless echoing stairs, then into passageways thrumming with hidden machinery, and was now worming down the crawlspace between two banks of piping. Hauling the Eschaton gun, he reached a metal grill - beyond was a sheer airshaft roaring with burnt dust.

Looking like a raven, Atom strode along a causeway projecting out across the well and ending in empty space. Here was a chrome display stand holding a firearm. It looked like a .38 slimline armani made of black diamond. Peering, Neck could believe it had no internal works atall, a fetish statuette. Its vented flank was like that of a stealth craft.

But when Atom touched it - just before everything blew to hell - the gun went clear as glass. Neck's dread really picked up. Then he was watching a trapdoor heaven of dislocating walls, monstrous laughter and bursting glare. Birth voices, faint blobs of landscape and blood butterflies tornadoed the air. Atom was a shadowed spectre under raining wounds and draining descent. Yellow spinelight poured down the wellshaft, flaring his shades and beating his coat. Starstreaks fell into deeps. Neck's senses began strobing. Glimpses of teeth throwing sparks. Red fingers embracing the gun grip. A city of glaring needles. Then he couldn't see anything, the orbits of his skull shocked cold.

Ghostburnt, he staggered into a street oiling with rain.