Atom
Page 7
‘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.
12 WHATEVER YOU ARE IS STARTING TO SHOW
‘I found the gent’s beetle book on the dredge,’ said Maddy as Atom ducked into the car. Turow was sat in back looking beleaguered. Maddy brought up a screen in the rainblurred windshield. ‘It’s called Stag Mother, Look at Me.’
Atom scrolled, reading as they peeled out.
‘An alert child could tell you that life shrinks like a low island. Organised religion added Jesus to the food groups. The past is killed off by American marksmen. The obligation to possess money, the forced flowers of convention, replicated controversy, canned gunfire, the ordeal venom of litigation, the dwindling comb-over of western culture - here, written in blood and English, is the hobbling of humanity. Mankind arms the threshold of inspiration lest it be taken by wit.’
‘We’ve got a tail,’ said Atom.
‘Ambition shows on my watch. It is absurd to believe that nature attacks morality - likewise we are unfit to judge the scurrying creatures within our walls. They are alien to us, and so what is the measure of their greatness or their folly? Insects are not costumed. Trends neglect to illuminate them and their souls are not copied. They squirm and quiver for apparently excellent reasons. Their defences grow from within. As our own time passes, guilt is identical to progress. The heat death approaches and my dreams clatter with the ratcheting limbs of an arthropod.’
‘Getting dark. This the general tone?’
‘Later it’s devotional and supplicatory - there’s a whole chapter on antennae. He calls them lovely whips.’
Maddy gave him a withering look and pulled in.
‘Bring the denials?’ asked Atom as they entered the station.
‘Thought you had them.’
‘How we both escape without allow cloaks?’
‘I’m not in the mood anyway,’ said Maddy. ‘Here’s the box.’
Atom popped the door with a one-use squidkey - inside was a regulated cryo cooler. Maddy slid it out and studied the console. ‘Lotta system in here.’
Atom hit the release and steam burst out all over. He flipped the lid to glimpse a white mushroom of compact convolutions, and immediately slammed it. ‘Here’s not the place,’ he decided. He closed the deposit box and broke off the hardgum key in the lock.
They strode across the concourse, Atom carrying the cooler by the handle.
After what he’d seen of Atom in that ventilation shaft, he couldn’t risk concluding him with the Eschaton. So Neck had hit off the restraining pin on the Persuader semi, converting it to full-ego. His intent was cranked to the max.
Parked in the alley behind Beerlight Grand, he checked his gun by the light of the headlamps. A tin door banged and opened - he advanced upon it, rain dripping from the Persuader muzzle. Atom emerged with a cooler case. A wedge of dark matter was leaking across his other hand.
‘Last time I saw that, it looked like a glass gun. What’s it made of.’
Staring down the barrel of Neck’s flaw, Atom recovered fast. ‘Carbon,’ he said.
‘Gimme the skull tackle, Atom.’
‘In exchange for?’
‘If you weren’t so smart I’d give you some advice. But it’s raining. And whatever you are is starting to show. Sorry this has to end inconveniently for you.’
When Nada Neck let rip, he was sucked into the rifle grip like a shrivelling balloon, bones powdering, and spurted from the muzzle as a volley of blood, pulp and water. The guzzler emptied and fibrillated. A pink cloud swirled before Atom. Then the gun fell from the air and clattered to earth.
Atom pulled Neck’s car into Waits Street as Madison arrived from the opposite direction. Atom jumped cars and they screeched off. ‘Still got that tail,’ said Maddy.
‘Who is it?’ strained Turow.
‘The Candyman. Eddie Thermidor. Someone who looks really ill.’
A sideparked patrol car sparked up and swerved after.
‘And the dead.’
Madison had left Beerlight Grand with her coat bunched out and the waiting crew had taken it for the squasher. Now Atom popped the hamper and took a swatch. Soft clay sheened with cold sweat. Maddy glanced over. ‘It looks strange, doesn’t it.’
‘We are followed by four automobiles and you are discussing -’ Turow leaned forward and saw the brain, his rant cut short. His voice became hushed. ‘Is that it?’
‘That’s the crap axis alright,’ Atom muttered. He felt yellow waves wolfing out of the squasher and staining the air. ‘Funeral sends us to the attic and we’re forgotten, but not him. I’ll bet this beauty weighs five pounds. You could use it for a sparring pad. Doesn’t feel like I thought he would though. The kirlian’s like shit.’
They swerved into Singh with a harsh tearing of tyres. The headlights swept across brawls and graffiti.
‘Wouldn’t it be? He saw pretty clear. Just screaming on the wrong side of his face.’
‘Depends on his defences, I guess.’
‘Weren’t the books his defence?’ Madison asked as they entered the Portis Thruway.
‘Art’s an exploding sandwich.’
‘Doesn’t fail, then. But what if it’s fake?’
‘For a fake to be identified, a difference has to be detected, right? But if it’s a different work, why’s it classed a fake? Because some morons can’t distinguish between one work and another?’
‘Oh, you kid.’
The lights of the thruway streaking behind her, she blew him a kiss that unravelled his stitches.
‘Why are we chasin’ Dumpy, Mr Candyman? Why’s he in the wiseguy’s car?’
‘You know, when I look at you, Joanna, I realise how far we’ve come as a species after all.’
Joanna turned back and gave him a sloppy grin.
‘Fools will assure you they take no sides - wise men that they do. Both lie. Names are captive to record. Don’t be captive to your name, my boy.’
‘You want I should bean the car, Mr Candyman?’
‘Use the Ingram - the snub’s as useless as posthumous vindication. And a tad more speed, if you please.’
Joanna thought so slow he saw everything around him in timelapse - to his mind they were travelling at four hundred miles an hour. He raised the M11 as slow as an hour hand and started blazing without opening a window - the windshield exploded outward.
‘Hang onto your hat, Joanna,’ shouted the Candyman above the scream of the thruway. ‘To be shot, whoever does the shooting, is disagreeable.’
‘Can’t my life move any faster?’ barked Thermidor from the back seat. At the wheel, Sam ‘Sam’ Bleaker didn’t reply, but on Brute Parker’s advice he regularly practiced a technique to cut down negative inner dialogue and keep his attention present - he did this by stating to himself ‘I am the one who is walking down the beach shooting the President punching a nun’ or whatever circumstance prevailed.
‘Looka that,’ muttered Thermidor, settling back again and gazing out the window. ‘Every face flat as an owl from a lifetime collidin’ with dead-end walls. All done out in their neighbour’s image. That’s a meekness of which I’m disposed to take a tolerant view, you understand. I tell ya the breakup o’ states couldn’ta come at a better time. You know sometimes a deal goes bad faster’n bananas but here entropy’s an ally for guys who lead my kinda life.’ He leaned forward again. ‘Hey Sam, that’s a fag car - instead of an airbag it deploys a giant turkish delight. Gate the Eurocar so we got a clear shot, okay?’
Sam gunned the armoured limo. I am the one who is ramming the Renault Megane, he thought.
‘That’ll sow cress in their carpet eh, Sam?’
They were both thrown forward as the cars rear-ended.
‘Eh Sam? Hey, Bleaker, throw me a bone here.’
‘I’m concentrating, boss.’
‘I don’t care about the state o’ your bowels, Sam. This demonic wiseacres just picked up the groceries - when I’m through with him he’ll be nuthin’ short o’ dead and buried in a hill o’ beans.’
‘Maybe you can’t do that, boss.’
‘I can too shoot him. What’s not to shoot? Whattya mean?’
‘Promise you won’t get mad.’
‘I promise nuthin. I promise to kick your ass.’
‘Just I heard Atom got shot one time in Fall Street and all hell broke loose.’
‘Use your noodle, Sam. I tell ya no man governs his every breath. Not you, not even me. I’m gonna give ya the same advice somebody gave me many years ago. You can see somethin’ in a man’s eyes, okay? - hatred, envy, delusions o’ power - but it aint no problem so long as there it stays. Him it messes with. Yeah it’s a crutch for salvation when you budget your vices like that. Me I got only one eye - and I keep it real clean.’
‘Who gave yuh that kinda advice, boss - Coco the Clown?’
‘Never you mind,’ the boss snapped, thinking of his mother. ‘Just bang the wheels out, hotrod.’
Sam ‘Sam’ Bleaker drew a pumped Mitsubishi, leaned it out the window and emptied both nostrils. The Eurocar sparked and swerved. I am the one who is wasting ammo, he told himself as he let rip, cranking between each blast.
‘More uses for bones than burial,’ said Doctor DeCrow. Streetlight flashed across a face full of menace. ‘Grind slowly the children - defeat is a fine holiday.’
‘Whatever you say, mister,’ said the cabby. As captain of an armoured Beerlight cab with a streetplo
ugh beak, he knew the delicate balance of power inherent in the enterprise. ‘You want I should put on some music?’
‘Authority takes everything. It nails the puddle of wine to the table.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘There was once a bad divinity of shell and faith, which stacked heads in human view. The Bible never calms the urge to enforce purity. It falls far short.’
‘I know what yuh mean.’
‘But there’s an out.’
‘Yeah?’
‘The Hypostasis tells us Samael is mistaken.’
‘We all make mistakes.’
‘Hell is a land of harmony in its own style. But without force the hierarchy is unsustainable. Take this gun.’ DeCrow passed forward a small, oily Beretta 92F automatic pistol - the cab driver took it, glanced in the mirror and sighed deep with resignation, shaking his head. ‘Fire upon the car in front, cabby. I’ll retrieve that organ if you and me have to die trying.’
‘You and me?’
‘Pardon - you and I.’
The cabby rung up the gat meter, rolling his eyes and the window simultaneously. ‘Alright, mister - but you just wrecked deniability.’ The first round romped home at 1,280 feet per second, licking the limo like a lover’s ear.
‘Scare up a couple or ten hotdogs, Benny,’ mumbled Blince, biting into a burger.
‘We’re in a car, Chief. We’re in pursuit.’
‘Think I don’t know that?’ shouted Blince, thermals roaring off his face. ‘I was escortin’ speeders when you were soupin’ your first tricycle. Christ, this one o’ them burgers you bite down on if you’re caught behind enemy lines?’
‘We got gunfire, Chief,’ said Benny, peering forward. ‘Shells rocketin’ round like Mexico City saucers.’
‘Know what I like about a good old-fashioned patrol stake, Benny? It’s like entrapment but without the planning. Those rounds are flyin’ in direct violation o’ controlled airspace. See the limo? Twist the ignite in that mother you hear the choked-off laughter that greeted the first guy suggested puttin’ fins on a vehicle. Money in the goddamn bank.’
‘Givin’ it some speed, Chief.’
‘Bet your sweet life.’ Blince lit a Hindenburg, drawing deep. He blew smog thoughtfully. ‘I’ll tell ya Benny, sponges are the lowest o’ the low. Who else’s skeleton would you put in your bath and refuse to acknowledge except to scrape off your own dead skin.’ He took another draw. ‘And by god, when we can’t get one whatta we do? Rustle up a replica.’