Pollen

by Jeff Noon

  The two of us out on the balcony of Fortress One, floor twenty-nine. The world of Manchester dropping away from the barrier; a falling into zero. The yowling of the dog-people from far below and long away; a rising tide of frustrated barking. A scent of flowers on the breeze.

  ‘You know what this case is, don’t you, Sibyl?’

  ‘No, I don’t. It’s all beyond me.’

  ‘It’s a Vurt case, Smokey.’

  ‘What’s Vurt got to do with it?’

  ‘It’s the key, Sibyl. Those that cannot dream…they are free from the suffering.’

  ‘Zero!’

  ‘Okay. Keep cool…’

  ‘Zero, all the time I’m getting lies on this case. What’s going on? You didn’t feel fit to tell me this until now?’

  ‘It was classified.’

  ‘Classified? Jesus!’

  ‘Kracker didn’t want us to know about it. It was Tom Dove that let me into the Dodo clue.’

  ‘Tom Dove, Jesus! He’s a Vurtcop, isn’t he?’

  ‘One of the best. The cop-banks have made an analysis. They had enough data. Shoved it all into the cop-brain; came up with this message—Dodos don’t sneeze. You came up in the analysis.’

  ‘What does this mean?’

  ‘It means the fever’s coming through from the Vurt. You never realised?’

  ‘No…I…’

  ‘I mean…not dreaming…not sneezing…you must have thought about it?’

  I was closer to Zero than I wanted to admit, especially now that his breath was coming in slow wheezes and his eyes were streaming with mucus. And the fact that he had pointed a gun at me and my daughter. And failed in the attempt, slowed down. On purpose? Whatever, this is the kind of act that can force people apart, or else bring them together. Maybe he was going through pain I would never know. I was immune to things he could possibly die from. I was really feeling for the big dogcop, and that came as a shock to me.

  Zero’s pollen mask was turned to the sky. He moved off some way, stroked at his wounded arm, and then turned his face back to me. ‘This info has already reached the street. The sufferers are turning against the immune. They’re calling them the Mooners. I fear recriminations.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Tom Dove reckons he’s found out where the fever is coming from. He’s tracked it down to a particular region in the Vurt. The pollen is coming through to Manchester from a hole in the dream. This is why you’re not sneezing. You can’t take the Vurt. Because of this, I need your help. You Dodos may be our only chance.’

  ‘This is crazy, Zero.’

  ‘There’s more. There was a vanishing, Jones. A swap.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Name of Brian Swallow. He disappeared some few minutes before Coyote died.’ Zero placed a photograph on the balcony’s wall in front of me. He gave me a few seconds to study it before continuing. ‘Nice looking kid. Nine years old. Heavily Vurt. He had the feathers inside him. A reckoning of 9.98 on Hobart’s Scale. That’s some weight of a dream. Tom Dove investigated. He’s found out that this kid, this Brian Swallow…he’s been swapped, you know…exchange rates?’

  ‘Sure. Everything taken from Vurt…’

  ‘Right…It has to be swapped for something of equal value from the real world. Tom Dove has found out this kid was swapped with something out of Juniper Suction. You know what that is? It’s Heaven Feather.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘The hayfever is infecting the Vurt as well, Sibyl. It’s getting through from there. From Juniper Suction. This is the world governed by John Barleycorn. You know him? He’s one of the most powerful Vurt creatures. A real demon. Tom Dove has told me the story. Juniper Suction is some kind of afterlife feather for the well-to-do. A dark story. All about Barleycorn, who was the son of Cronus, the god of time. This is an old Greek myth, right, transported into the Vurt? Juniper Suction is all about how Barleycorn kidnapped some young girl called Persephone, okay? Persephone? Shit, what do I know, but this is all fitting in, right? You found that name, didn’t you, down at Belle Vue Zoo?’

  ‘You’re saying this Persephone has come through to Manchester from the Vurt?’

  ‘I’m saying that this Persephone…apparently she’s a goddess of flowers and fertility. All that dung. What I’m saying is that the Vurt is maybe getting angry.’

  ‘What does that mean, angry?’

  ‘The Vurt world is maybe wanting a way in, a way back. You know, just like the Zombies want a way back into the city? It makes a kind of sense to me. I reckon things are changing, the wall is collapsing. The dream and the real. Manchester is the focus of that wall. If Manchester goes…well, then…the whole world follows. I want to bring the Vurtcop in. I want you to work with Tom Dove—’

  ‘No.’

  Zero reached his hands up to his face, and when they came away, the pollen mask was dangling from his fingers. He threw it over the balcony.

  He breathed deeply of the golden air. ‘Sibyl…if I keep breathing this air…I’m going to die. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

  ‘No way. Absolutely. I hate the Vurt.’

  ‘Dove is willing to go against Kracker. So am I. It means that much to us.’

  ‘I’m not working with a Vurtcop. That’s my nightmare.’ My voice was full of a genetic weight. I stepped back into the room, heading for the front door.

  ‘Sibyl?’ Zero’s voice from behind me. ‘It’s too late to be fearful, Sibyl.’

  I opened the door.

  A man was standing on the threshold. An orange wedge of hair. Fit and lean.

  My Shadow jumped like the devil was caressing me.

  We now know that the inability to dream is a genetic thing; a certain lost linkage in the double helix. And the fear of those that are the dream is inborn and inescapable. The reaction of an Unbeknownst to a Vurt creature is the same as that of a mouse to a cat. It operates at the same level of reality, down deep in the body’s origins.

  Zero’s voice: ‘Sibyl, meet Tom Dove.’

  I was reacting to the intrusion. My smoke running in lines of fear. Tom Dove said hello to me, but my Shadow was screaming. It wanted me out of there.

  ‘Sibyl, sit down please.’ I caught Zero’s words through a tremble of heat. ‘I really do believe it is the solution. Imagine, Smokey: a cop who can’t dream…paired with a cop who is the dream…’

  That would be a nightmare. And I told Zero so.

  ‘Sibyl, I am going to die soon,’ he said. ‘This fever will take me out. It’s a fact.’ This from the dogcop who had stood alone against the dog-mobs of Bottletown during the Dripfeed riots. But his voice was thick with need. ‘You want to make an effort, Smokey? Look around this room. How many cops do you see? It’s just us against the fever. Me, you and Tom. We lost another fifty citizens this morning. Maybe I’m the next to go.’

  ‘No…I…Please, take him away from me.’ I was waving my hands at Tom Dove, like I could fend off his Vurthood that way. Tom Dove was just standing there, his sculptured face like stone. I could almost see his Vurt wings fluttering in the apartment. Tom Dove never said a word. I tried to make a wide trip around him, towards the door.

  ‘What the fuck do you think I am?’ Zero was snarling. ‘You think I like sneezing my guts out? You think I want to die of this snot? Like fuck I do! I want to die in battle, like any good dog does. Tom reckons he can send your Shadow into the dream. Don’t ask me how it works. I’m just a poor, sneezing-to-death dog from nowhere. Now just make an effort, will you?’

  ‘Zero! It’s too much for me. I…’

  ‘Do it!’ He made an almighty sneeze then, maskless…

  A​a​a​a​a​a​c​c​c​c​c​c​h​h​h​h​h​o​o​o​o​o​s​s​s​s​s​h​h​h​h​h​h!!!!!!!

  ‘You’ve got to help me, Sibyl,’ he spluttered. ‘You’re all I’ve got left…’

  I walked out into the corridor. ‘Get a new mask, Zero.’ I slammed the door shut behind me, running from the flat.
<
br />   That night we found the first victim of the Big Sneeze. She was a Dodo. Therefore, immune. A Mooner.

  Her real name was Christina Dewberry.

  She was a young woman, almost out of college, studying Bio-plastics and Hardwere, those twin foundations of robotic-canine life. Christina was genetically perfect, with a crystal-clear intelligence and her tutors at the University of Manchester had praised the ‘objective’ eye she had brought to her studies of metadogology. One of the big Metadog companies had already promised her a position upon finishing her course. During my investigations I was shown some of her final dog designs. They were indeed very powerful: cold and distant in their intentions, but all the more startling for that.

  Christina’s body was found in the bushes behind St Ann’s Church. The bushes had completely covered her body by the time we got there. But this was not a death by flowers. This was a human death.

  At 10.34 p.m. she had left Corbiere’s Winebar, too drunk to negotiate a fast-track, and had therefore decided to waste some precious grant money on an Xcab fare. She only lived in Rusholme, it wouldn’t cost that much, and anyway wasn’t she about to land herself a well paid job? It was the birthday of one her friends from college. Witnesses from the winebar said that Christina had felt threatened during the evening by the fact that she wasn’t sneezing. The whole bar was suffering from the fever, and she had felt cold eyes all over her. A gang of rowdy robolads had started to make fun of her, calling her a Mooner. Her friends had tried to protect her, but even they, despite all their efforts, could not help feeling separate from Christina. They called her ‘The Virgin.’ By 10.30—the ugliness of the place, the snot flying through the air towards her, the rain of abuses—it became too much to bear. Christina had fled, towards home, towards a taxi at the St Ann’s rank.

  They caught up with her immediately, dragging her into the bushes behind the church. I imagine that she saw a clutch of masks descending on her as she struggled, and then one by one the masks lifting up, to reveal all the colours of the hybrids: dog and human, Shadow and robo. She had screamed out at them to stop but her open mouth was only an invite to them; the sufferers had sneezed upon her, celebrating their disease. Their leader was a big-snouted dogboy, and he had rammed his snout into her mouth and then sneezed out his anger and all his jealousy at her. Then his pack of followers had taken her in turn, each of them adding their snot-poison to his.

  I had gathered all this knowledge from the Xcab drivers who had clustered around the killing zone, laughing and joking amongst themselves. Only one had tried to intervene and he was soon pushed aside. This was Roberman. Of course I had no ‘official coding’ for police work that day, but some of the cops were more than helpful; I think Kracker must have been stepping on tails.

  I had interviewed Roberman that night, and he had told me of the distaste he had felt at the Big Sneeze. Of course I couldn’t understand a growling word to begin with, even with the Shadow turned up to the maximum. There was no trace of the human in Roberman, just dog and robo, and the Shadow of a robodog is hard to catch. Reading his mind was like looking into a cellar with the lights out. Various dogcops had tried for a read-out, each of whom reported failure. Eventually Zero Clegg had appeared on the scene, called by some linkage in the dog-world. Zero had jumped on the new job with glee, easily translating Roberman’s gruff howling into Pureness for me. The robodog was feeling bad, my human eyes could see that, as he gave witness to what he had seen. The Big Sneeze. This is what the sufferers called the act of murder by sneezing. Roberman described it all but could not put names to the perpetrators, no more than the other drivers could. They were lying, but this robodog was faithful to the truth. And now I saw where Roberman’s grief was really coming from; where this fever-driven inhuman mutant with a plastic snout rimmed with wet snot had learned to feel for those who could not sneeze. He was close to Boda. There was a crossbreed loneliness in his Shadow that only my daughter had managed to ride through. Zero told him that I was Boda’s ‘mother-bitch.’ After that it was quite easy. He told us about how Boda had been talking to him in the St Ann’s rank, the time of the murder. Columbus had been lying about the cab-records. Boda was innocent of Coyote’s murder.

  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

  6 May

  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…