Pollen

by Jeff Noon

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

  ‘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.

  ‘I know this man,’ Belinda says. ‘He was a passenger, called himself Deville. This is Kracker?’

  ‘Yes. The Chief of Cops.’

  ‘Kracker tried to kill me.’

  Gumbo removes the bong pipe from his lips just long enough to shout, ‘Raving piglet!’

  Belinda ignores him. ‘Why do they want to kill me, Wanita?’

  ‘You must know too much, Belinda.’

  ‘I don’t know anything. I’m alone.’

  ‘Not any more. Gumbo needs you.’

  ‘Do you always answer for the Hippy King?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I came here in good grace, Wanita. I expected more than this…this stoned-up hippy shit.’

  Wanita falls silent. Gumbo gurgles from behind his bong, his face stretched and curved by the glass, and then sneezes.

  ‘Bless you—’

  ‘Wanita, fuck off!’ This from Belinda, surprising herself. She steps over the tangle of wires to where the good Gumbo is sitting. She wrenches the pipe out of his mouth, grabs the Cherry Stoner feather from the air, her fingers crackling with fire and pain as the flights tickle her skin. No matter. ‘Belinda, stop—’ Wanita’s voice in the colours. No matter. This feather is going somewhere. Belinda rams it into Gumbo’s mouth. He starts to spit and gag, but she makes him suck.

  Deep.

  ‘Somebody told me the fever is coming through from a Vurt world called Juniper Suction. Is that right? Gumbo? Is that right?’

  ‘My feelings exactly.’ Gumbo’s eyes are flooded with tears at the sudden hit of reality.

  ‘Tell me about Juniper Suction.’

  ‘It’s a green Heaven Feather. Very rare. Gumbo hasn’t seen one for years.’

  ‘What’s a Heaven Feather? Come on!’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Gumbo…’

  ‘Stay out of this, Wanita.’ Back to Gumbo. ‘We helping each other, or what? Maybe I should use the Shadow on you? Hey? You want that? A Shadow-fuck?’

  ‘No, no…please…Juniper is a place to put your mind when you die. You can live forever there, in your dreams. It’s an Underworld ruled by one John Barleycorn. He lives there with his young wife, Persephone.’

  ‘Persephone was Coyote’s last passenger.’

  ‘Bingo! That’s it.’

  Belinda lets go of the Gumbo. Wanita moves in to comfort him.

  ‘It’s okay, Wanita. Superfine.’ The faraway look vanishes from his eyes as he turns back to Belinda. ‘This is why they want you killed, driver. You knew too much about the dream-seed. The Vurt is making an invasion into our space and Persephone is the source of the fever. Columbus is the road on which the seed travels.’

  ‘So Columbus had Coyote killed after the passenger was brought in?’

  ‘Maybe, but what’s important now is to stop the Vurt world coming through. It’s deadly, like every time we sneeze another sentence is written against us.’

  ‘Can we do anything?’

  ‘A​a​a​a​a​c​c​c​h​h​h​h​h​o​o​o​o​o​s​s​s​h​h​h​h​h!!!!! Pardon me.’ Gumbo shoved the Cherry Stoner feather back into his mouth for another charge of reality juice before continuing, ‘We need to get you and Columbus together.’

  ‘Can you do that, Gumbo?’ asked Belinda.

  ‘It’s possible, but it’s dangerous. You willing to risk it?’

  ‘I’m willing.’

  ‘The first step is to get you onto the Hive-map again.’

  ‘I’ll do anything.’

  Gumbo’s mouth breaks into a weed-blackened grin that not even his curtains of hair can conceal. Then he looks over to a large nautical clock on the cellar wall. It reads 11.42 a.m. Gumbo works a control so that the Pink Floyd’s musical patterns transform into a network of yellow and black insects that pulsate over the walls. ‘This is the Xcab map,’ he says.

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘But first…the broadcast…’

  Zero Clegg called me at 11.55 a.m., Saturday morning, asking if I’d been listening to the Gumbo lately? ‘No, no, don’t answer,’ he said, before I could say anything. ‘It’s obvious you haven’t, Sib, from your reaction.’

  ‘What’s he broadcasting now?’ I asked. ‘A list of all known Mooners?’ Another half-a-dozen Mooner corpses had been uncovered during the night.

  ‘It’s worse than that.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Zero went quiet for a moment, which was unusual. Something was wrong. I have lived one hundred and fifty-two years, and have lived through many, many strange and surprising times, but the words I heard that day over the telephone will forever be part of my deepest Shadow. Zero played me a tape recording of Gumbo YaYa’s show broadcast that same morning, from 11.42 to 11.45. It started with a piece of music fading away, and then a voice coming in over the top of the last moments. Except that it wasn’t Gumbo’s voice, it was a woman’s voice…

  ‘This is Boda the maverick cabber calling the people of Manchester from the Gumbo wave. (FOUR SECONDS OF SILENCE) My name is now Belinda Jones. That’s my pre-cabian name. I never killed Coyote, and I never would have done. Xcabs are lying about my cab-whereabouts; I was never at Alex Park at that time. Columbus tried to blame me. Maybe I knew too much about his secret schemes, or maybe I just loved Coyote too much. I never got the proper chance to express it. He was taken from me early, too early. (TWO SECONDS’ SILENCE) I’m determined to find out who did murder him. Coyote picked up a passenger named Persephone on his last-ever trip. Columbus set Coyote up for this ride. The Cops are helping the King Cab. Chief Kracker himself…Kracker tried to kill me. Keep trying, dumb-fucker cop. Persephone is a young girl, age of ten or eleven. She may be the source of the fever. Anyone with information can ring the YaYa number. He’ll pass it on to me. (TWO SECONDS) Pollen Count is at 1607 and rising. (FIVE SECONDS) Gumbo is going to play Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby (Standing in the Shadow) by The Rolling Stones. Which is a special request going out to Sibyl Jones of the Manchester Cops. You seen any good Vurtball matches lately, Sibyl? (TWO SECONDS) I’ll be back at one o’clock with an update. Take it away, Mick and the boys. (THREE SECONDS) Erm…was that okay, Gumbo?’

  And then another voice, the Gumbo’s: ‘That was just fine, kid. A​a​a​a​c​c​c​h​h​h​h​h​o​o​o​o​o​o​s​s​s​h​h​h​h​h​h​h!!! Pardon me. And more from the maverick cabber later on today. 1.00 p.m. Stay turned on now, you hear?’

  And then the music started, and Zero turned off the recording and came back on line. But he didn’t say anything. I could hear his wheezing, feverish breath in the darkness of my Shadow, which was trembling with closure. He sneezed over the line and then said, ‘You know what this means? Gumbo has claimed your daughter.’

  ‘What can I do, Zero? I want her back.’

  ‘I think the fever is more important.’

  ‘You would.’

  ‘Stay cool, Mooner.’

  ‘I’m her mother, Zero. I’ve been searching for years.’

  Clegg went quiet again. I could hear him sneeze away from the mouthpiece and then his voice coming back to me: ‘This is the deal, Officer Jones. I bring Tom Dove round to your flat, and then we—’

  I put the phone down on his words. Give a dog a bone, and all that. Maybe one of Zero’s distant relations had been a pure-bred Retriever.

  I was nervous and edgy, visi
ons of feathers floating through my mind. My son was crying from the bedroom. I went in to tend to Jewel’s needs. It was more for my benefit than his. Every crack in that bedroom had been sealed, but the seed was already within him. But pretending to help my firstborn put my mind at ease, a little. His breath was softly exploding from a frail body that was covered in a hard crust of snot that I tried my best to clean away, but more just took its place, wet and slimy. I feared that he had only a few days left now. I should explain that death to a Non-Viable Lifeform was in no way similar to that of a fully living being. A mortal treats death as an enemy, fighting until the last breath. To an NVL, however, once the moment is ripe, death is more of a love affair; the long struggle between their opposing ancestors is over. Life and death in the kiss of lovers. All that matters then is to let the darker side of their nature take them to bed. The bed is the grave, the bed from which they were born. Into which they will die. How far was Jewel from that moment of acceptance? A mere breath? One more sneeze? Another jump in the pollen count? My only choice was to find a cure for him. And all this sealing was really for myself, of course, after hearing my daughter play that song for me. Have you seen your mother, baby, standing in the Shadow? A shiver ran through me, ripples of smoke. I tuned into Gumbo’s wave, only to hear him boast that Belinda was staying at his secret house from now on, ‘Where the cops will never find her. She’ll be talking on the hour, telling Manchester the story of her extraordinary life. Exclusive to Radio YaYa, giving good tongue to the North.’ And he laughed then, heartily, and it got to me, that laughter, it maddened me.

  I sat down on the lounger and reached for a half bottle of red wine left over from the other night. It took me only twenty minutes to finish it off, and another fifteen to make a good start on a new bottle. During that time I must have smoked at least thirty Napalms. Tasting all of the nasty fruits, I was drifting sweetly through the caresses of Dionysus. It felt like all of my blood sugar had been changed into alcohol. My Shadow was bogged down in deep claret. The Napalm pack-message read SMOKING IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL—HIS MAJESTY’S PERSONAL JESUS.