M. Harrison - LIGHT

'There will be an interruption to service,' it said. 'As a valued customer- '

At that, Chinese Ed's consciousness was pulled apart and he was received into all the bleakness and pain of the universe. All the colours went out of his world, and all the beautiful simple ironies along with them, and then the world itself was folded away until through it, try as he might, he could see nothing but the cheesy fluorescent lights of Tig Vesicle's tank farm. He erupted out of the wreckage of Tank Seven, half drowned, throwing up with disorientation and horror. He stared round at the drifting smoke, the; dead kids and stunned-looking cultivars. Proteome poured sluggishly off him like the albumen of a bad egg. Poor, dead Rita was gone for good and he wasn't even Chinese Ed the detective anymore. He was Ed Chianese, twink.

'This is my home ,you guys,' he said. 'You know? You could have knocked.'

There was a laugh from the doorway.

'You owe us money, Ed Chianese,' said Bella Cray.

She looked meditatively across the room at the two remaining gun-kiddies. 'These punks aren't from me,' she said to Tig Vesicle, who had got himself up off the floor and sidled back behind his cheap plywood counter.

Evie Cray laughed.

'They aren't mine, either,' she said.

She shot them in the face, one after the other, with her Chambers pistol, then showed her teeth. 'That's what'll happen to you if you don't pay us, Ed,' she explained.

'Hey,' said Bella. 'I wanted to do that.'

'Those punks were some of Fedora Gash's punks,' Evie told Tig Vesicle. 'So why'd you let them in?'

Vesicle shrugged. He had no choice, the shrug indicated.

The cultivars were leaving the farm now, one-handedly dragging their dead and wounded behind them. The wounded looked down at themselves, dabbling their hands and saying things like, 'I could get shot like this all day. You know?' Ed Chianese watched them file past and shivered. He stepped out of the ruined tank, plucked the rubber cables out of his spine and tried to wipe the proteome off himself with his hands. He could already feel the black voice of withdrawal, like someone talking persuasively a long way back in his head.

'I don't know you,' he said. 'I don't owe you anything.'

Evie gave him her big lipstick smile.

'We bought your paper off Fedy Gash,' she explained. She studied the wreckage of the tank farm. 'Looks as if she didn't really want to sell.' She allowed herself another smile. 'Still. A twink like you owes everyone else in the universe, Ed. That's what a twink is, a speck of protoplasm in the ocean.' She shrugged. 'What can we do, Ed? We're all fish.'

Ed knew she was right. He wiped helplessly at himself again, then, seeing Vesicle behind his counter, approached him and said:

'You got anytissues back there, or like that?'

'Hey, Ed,' Vesicle said. 'I got this.'

He pulled out the Hi-Lite Autoloader he had taken from the dead girl and fired it into the ceiling. 'I'm so scared I could shit!' heyelled at the Cray sisters. They looked startled. 'So, you know: fuck you! 'He darted jerkily out from behind the counter, every nerve in his body firing off at random. He could barely control his limbs. 'Hey, fuck, Ed. How'm I doing?' he screamed. Ed, who was as surprised as the Cray sisters, stared at him. Any minute now, Bella and Evie would wake up from their trance of surprise. They would brush the plaster dust off their shoulders and something serious would start to happen.

'Jesus, Tig,' Ed said.

Naked, stinking of embalming fluid and punctured for the tank at 'neurotypical energy sites', a wasted Earthman with a partly grown-out Mohican and a couple of snake tattoos, he ran out into the street. Pierpoint was deserted. After a moment explosions and flashes of light lit up the windows of the tank farm. Then Tig Vesicle staggered out backwards, the arms of his coat on fire with blowback from the reaction pistol, shouting, 'Hey, the fuck ,'and, 'I'm so shit!' They stared at one another with expressions of terror and relief. Chianese beat out the fire with his hands. Arms around each other's shoulders they blundered off into the night, drunk for the moment with body-chemicals and camaraderie.

Three in the morning. Valentine Sprake was long gone. Michael Kearney stumbled along the north bank of the Thames, then hid among some trees until he thought he heard a voice. This frightened him again and he ran all the way to Twickenham in the dark and the wind before he got control of himself. There he tried to think, but all that came to him was the image of the Shrander. He decided to call Anna. Then he decided to call a cab. But his hands were trembling too hard to use the phone, so in the end he did neither but took the towpath back east instead. An hour later, Anna met him at her door, wearing a long cotton nightgown. She looked flushed and he could feel the heat of her body from two feet away.

'Tim's with me,' she said nervously.

Kearney stared at her.

'Who's Tim?' he said.

Anna looked back into the flat.

'It's all right, it's Michael,' she called. To Kearney she said, 'Couldn't you come back in the morning?'

'I just want some things,' Kearney said. 'It won't take long.'

'Michael -'

He pushed past her. The flat smelled strongly of incense and candle wax. To get to the room where he kept his stuff, he had to pass Anna's bedroom, the door of which was partly open. Tim, whoever he was, sat propped up against the wall at the head end of the bed, his face three-quarter profile in the yellow glow of two or three nightlight candles. He was in his mid thirties, with good skin and a build light but athletic, features which would help give him a boyish appearance well into his forties. He had a glass of red wine in one hand, and he was staring thoughtfully at it.

Kearney looked him up and down.

'Who the hell is this?' he said.

'Michael, this is Tim. Tim, this is Michael.'

'Hi,' said Tim. He held out his hand. 'I won't get up.'

'Jesus Christ, Anna,' Kearney said.

He went through to the back room, where a brief search turned up some clean Levis and an old black leather jacket he had once liked too much to throw away. He put them on. There was also a cycle-courier bag with the Marin logo on the flap, into which lie began emptying the contents of the little green chest of drawees. Looking up blankly from this task, he discovered that Anna had washed the chalked diagrams off the wall above it. He wondered why she would do that. He could hear her talking in the bedroom. Whenever she tried to explain anything, her voice took on childish, persuasive values. After a moment she seemed to give up and said sharply, 'Of course I don't! What do you mean?' Kearney remembered her trying to explain similar things to him. There was a noise outside the door and Tim poked his head round.

'Don't do that,' Kearney said. 'I'm nervous already.'

'I wondered if I could help?'

'No, thanks.'

'It's just that it's five o'clock in the morning, you see, and you come in here covered in mud.'

Kearney shrugged.

'I see that,' he said. 'I see that.'

Anna stood angrily by the door to watch him out. 'Take care,' he said to her, as warmly as he could. He was two nights down the stone stairs when he heard her footsteps behind him. 'Michael,' she called. 'Michael.' When he didn't answer, she followed him out into the street and stood there shouting at him in her bare feet and white nightdress. 'Did you come back for another fuck?' Her voice echoed up and down the empty suburban street. 'Is that what you wanted?'

'Anna,' he said, 'it's five o'clock in the morning.'

'I don't care. Please don't come here again, Michael. Tim's nice and he really loves me.'