to me, to me a brain. Aint that dandy. Okay Roach, where we find Atom?’
On the way out, Nada Neck stopped at the door. ‘There’s a time for singing,’ he muttered thoughtfully, ‘and a time for fighting. Here, time stands still.’ And he turned back to the bar’s darkness, raised the automatic and let rip at Flea. A thousand Lucky Strikes lit at once.
5 THERE GOES MY GUN
‘Some people keep their faces on the inside,’ said Taffy. He and Maddy were in the privacy hole she had expanded to contain a gun lab. Resembling an alien’s bathroom, this was where Maddy had brought ballistics to a culinary art. The brotherhood were right in their claim that if you kept a weapon you’d soon find an excuse to use it, a theory proven by global atomic danger and their own gunplay. Madison had moved on, alchemising the old practice into liquid gold. Instant-acting psychoactives in a softnose dart put victims seamlessly into a religiously dazzling landscape from which they’d emerge brighter than before. Sleepers froze people where they stood, wiping out three minutes of perception the loss of which were noticed only when bank tellers began shrieking at a sudden and massive financial discrepancy. Treasury members were hit with hemisync inducers while speaking in public, causing them to snigger the truth. Arch rivals could be shot and slung into a cab, awaking with no identity atall.
Geared to place more value on property than human life, the law could forgive the lack of death but not the lack of destruction and bent over backwards to promote metabolics from their status of mild assault. Even this rarely stuck as victims awoke feeling better than they had in years. When metabolics hit the streets the users’ names became a prized resource and people travelled miles to fling themselves into the firing line. The brotherhood, who regarded ignorance as something close to a moral duty, stuck with simple alloys. Maddy holstered her achievement behind her heart.
‘Wanna hear the rest?’
‘Don’t smoke in here, Taff,’ said Maddy. ‘Bad for the ammo.’
‘What you workin’ on?’
Maddy lifted a tin football out of the circuit forge.
‘Syndication bomb. Strips the subtext from whatever situation it’s tripped in. Leaves everything meaningless for up to three hours.’
‘Have to trip it on remote.’
‘Not if you carry this.’ She held out her hand, fist closed.
‘What is it?’
She opened her hand, palm up - there was nothing there.
‘Nothing there, babe.’
‘Just so long as you know that.’
They went out to the front room, where Taffy fixed them both a freeze. Maddy was at the open window, her hair blowing like smoke. Taffy gave her the glass and watched her awhile, her aura pulsing like the borealis. ‘Flex and I’m agog, babe. A word and I’m medicated.’
She hadn’t heard him. She was looking out over the night. Little shots like firecrackers echoed from the other side of the Triangle. ‘I love this city. So many bullets between the people - like a join-the-dot puzzle, you know? All linked together with lead.’
‘Just remind me why that’s a virtue.’
‘Because when so many people have a thing in common, you can yank it like a toilet flush and get back to what really matters.’
‘Like what.’
‘Come here.’
Nada Neck’s Persuader semi-egotistic was an early gridpulse modified from a Czech M61. It sampled his intent through the grip and placed it at the heart of each shot pellet in the form of a concentrated etheric molecule. In the early enthusiasm for fire-by-wires this was seen as a more direct way of expressing oneself. ‘May I come in,’ he thought, pulling the trigger, and the door to Atom’s office flew to pieces.
The only sound in the darkness was the bubbling of water. The four hoods entered in a flurry of sloped hats and slowed a moment, cautious. ‘Room’s in negative, Neck,’ warned Minuteman. ‘It aint right.’
‘Don’t like the sounda them bubbles,’ said Beefheart and the room exploded into screams and flying glass. Minuteman was firing indiscriminately in the dark, backflash illuminating his panic and the whirling, indistinct figure of Beefheart, something locked to his face. The figures danced in the gunstrobe like ravers in hell. Everything was distorted, voices expressing views their owners didn’t recognise.
Then the smash of a window and reality seemed to stream in, sorting out the air. Nada Neck went over and gazed down at the sidewalk. There was Beefheart, his skull tackle weeded out on the concrete, and next to that flexed an oily fish the size of a steroid arm.
An hour later Atom’s phone lit up. ‘This is Taffy Atom’s answering machine - after the tone, put down the phone. Don’t leave a message and don’t ever call me again.’
• ‘Hey Atom. We got your fish. Hear me Atom? We got Jed Helms. Say a few words, Jed.’
‘Hey Atom, it’s great here! They got a swimmin’ pool and everythin’! These guys really know how to live!’
‘Eddie Thermidor wants to exchange, Atom. We give you the fish, you give us the brain. Or your little mutant friend gets it.’
• ‘Mr Atom, this is Candyman - you’ve met my associates. I’d like to discuss candidly a matter which will be to our mutual advantage. My tumbled number is under six. I’ll be waiting sir. Good evening.’
• ‘Now don’t be silly. Aint you a team player? Use your noodle before it’s stripped of membrane, Atom. Have I made up your mind yet?’
• ‘Come come sir. It takes patience to appreciate the wrong reply. Though I possess such a virtue I regret I’ve not the time to exercise it. I would put Mr Turow on the line but when exasperated his voice matches the 2600 tone and plays merry hell with the connection. Let us look for one quality we both observe. I await your call.’
• ‘What is it with you? Don’t you know Thermidor’ll put you under the bridge? Don’t you care if you end up coughing pink lungblood into the grass? You sonofabitch you’re gonna go dead with a full set in your back. You’re on your last goddamn knees.’
• ‘You disappoint me sir. This affair advances without us, and your unresponsivity resembles too closely a wad of cardboard to present itself with any pride to history. Regret is the broadest frontier. Make your move, sir, or your dental records will have their day.’
• ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself. Mr Thermidor invites you into his life and you’re the wiseacres. The one-man band. Well a guy like you can make a choice but you aint tough enough to take it. Tense up - you’re headed for hell in a dodgem.’
• ‘Atom, it’s Toto. Flea’s in the hospital, a few burns, be okay. Says thanks for the bib.’
• ‘Taff. It’s Maddy. Just wanted to hear your voice.’
‘You will please to put your hands over your head,’ stated Turow two hours later, standing in the office doorway with a girly gun and the bulk of Joanna. ‘Put a hurt on him Joanna.’
‘Been expectin’ you fellas,’ remarked Atom, savouring a shock absorber.
‘Expecting us!’ Turow gasped. ‘I’ll tear your face off and use it to blow my nose before you know what’s hit you!’
‘Naughty naughty, Mister Atom,’ said Joanna, grabbing him by the shoulder. ‘We takin’ you to the Candyman. And then we’ll see who’s clever, and who’s smart.’
6 THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED
The car reeled off. A window was open. The night smelt of gun metal and old lightning. Atom was blindfold in the back seat with Turow pushing the little flaw into his side. Atom followed their progress