Jeff Noon: Vurt

"Slow down some, Bee," I said.

"Fuck slowness!" he replied, burning the world with his wheels.

"We're like eggs back here, Beetle," said Mandy. And the guy slowed us down, some. Well there you go; some things will slow the Beetle down; the chance of a new woman, for instance. Bridget must have had the same feeling; she was looking daggers at the new girl, smoke rising from her skin, as she tried her best to tune into the Beetle's head. I guess she wasn't getting too far.

No matter.

We were in some kind of easy travelling by now, so I picked up the goody bag, emptying the contents out on to the tartan rug. Five blue Vurt feathers floated down. I caught a few as they drifted, reading the printed labels.

"Thermo Fish!" I said. "Done it."

"How was I to know?" said Mandy.

I read another. "Honey Suckers! Oh my shit! Where is it!?"

"Next time, Scribble," Mandy said, "you go shopping."

"Where's English Voodoo? You promised me. I thought you had contacts?"

"That's what he had."

I read the other three. "Done it. Done it. Not done it, but it sounds boring anyway." I'd let the feathers go in disgust. Now they were floating around inside the van.

Mandy's eyes were darting from feather to feather, as she spoke; "These are very beautiful."

"And the rest…" I said.

"What's that mean?"

"No messing. The whole bit. English Voodoo. Deliver."

A blue feather had landed on the stomach of the Thing-from-Outer-Space. One of his tentacles reached out for it His spiky fingers took a hold, and a hole opened up in his flesh, a greasy orifice. He turned the feather in his feelers and then stroked it in, direct, to the hole. He started to change. I wasn't sure which feather he'd loaded, but from the way he was moving his feelers I guess he was swimming with the Thermo Fish.

I sure know that wave.

The Beetle glanced back at the noise of the waves, shouting; "He's going in alone! No one goes in alone!"

The Beetle had this obsession about doing Vurt alone. That you'd need help in there, friends in there. What he really meant was - you need me in there.

"Cool it, Bee," I said. "Just drive." Just to spite me he put on a sudden spurt but I was holding tight to the straps. No problems.

I turned back to Mandy; "Give!"

"You want?" said Mandy.

"I want. You found the Voodoo?"

We turned right onto the Wilmslow Road, as Mandy pulled a stash from the inner reaches of her denim jacket. It was a black feather. Totally illegal. "No. But I found this…"

"What is it?"

"Seb called it Skull Shit You think he got away?"

"Who gives a fuck! This is all you got?"

"Said it was red-hot. You don't like?"

"Sure. I like. It's just not what I want."

"So make do."

"Mandy!" I was losing it. "I don't think you realise…"

Her red hair was catching fire from each passing streetlamp; I had to pull myself away from the flames.

That new girl was getting to me.

Behind the back of Vurt-U-Want, when the time was right, so Mandy said, you could buy a bootleg remix. The mainman was Seb. The supplier, so Mandy said. He worked the legit counter, with a nice little side-sweep in black market dreams. So Mandy said. So we'd sent the new girl after English Voodoo. Girl had come back with five cheap Blues and a vicious Black. Added all together - a thousand miles away from the Voodoo. Girl had failed.

The van took a sudden swerve and we were all thrown to the wall. The black feather slipped from Mandy's grip. The Thing made a swipe for it, but he was so wave-deep, pressed against the van side, his feelers were numb and he missed out.

I scooped the outlaw flight up into my palms. The van took another swing, no doubt dodging some dumbfuck pedheads. The Beetle was shouting through his window; "Fucking walkers! Get a car!" He was driving like an insect; not thinking, just reacting. The guy was high. Cortex Jammers. You know how a fly flies? At the top speed always, and yet dodging obstacles instantaneously?

That was how the Beetle drove. They say don't jam and drive, but we had total belief in the master. He was jammed right out of fear, and that was beautiful.

I twisted the black feather around to read the label. It was handwritten, which always meant a good time.

"Skull Shit…"

"It's good?" asked Mandy.

"Is it good!? Oh come on!"

"You don't want?" she said.

"I've done it already."

"No good?"

"Sure. It's fine. It's dandy."

"Seb told me it was sweet."

"Sure it's sweet," I said. "It's just not the Voodoo."

The Beetle jam-reacted to the title. "Did she get it, Scribble?"

"She did fuck."

"Well bully!" spat Mandy.

"Yeah. Well fucking bully!" I told her.

"Hey, you two. Keep it quiet," Bridget said, in that smoky voice of hers, the shadowgirl. "Some of us are trying to get some sleep." Bridget was Beetle's lover, and I guess she was just putting the new girl in her place.

"Sleep is for the dead," replied Mandy. One of her slogans.

"Almost home," announced the Beetle.

We were riding through Rusholme, straight down the curry chute. Mandy hand-cranked a window. She managed a half-inch gap before the mechanism failed, clogged up with rust. But through the tiny gap a rich complex of powder smells was making my tongue wet; coriander, cumin, cinnamon, cardamom - each of them genetically fine-tuned to perfection.

"Christ!" Mandy told the gang, "I could kill a curry! When did we last eat?"

The Beetle answered; "Thursday."

"What day is it now?" slurred Bridget, from the half-lit world of Shadow.

"It's the weekend, sometime," I said. "At least I think it is."

The Thing-from-Outer-Space was by now a blur of feelers and I could almost see the Thermo Fish swimming his veins. It was making me envious.

"Can anyone tell me why we're carrying this alien shit around?" asked Mandy. "Why don't we just sell him? Or eat him?" The van went silent. "I mean, why are we chasing around after feathers? We've got the Thing right here. We don't need feathers!"

"The Thing comes with us," I told her. "Nobody touches him!"

"You just want to make the swap," Mandy replied.

"You got a problem with that, Mandy?" I asked.

"Let's just get home." Her voice defiant. "Let's take some stuff."

"We will do." I felt for her all of a sudden. She was new to us, two days old in the gang and full of the will to please.

It's just that she had a hard act to follow.

"I know I did bad in the Vurt-U-Want. I didn't know what to look for."

"I told you, didn't I? Precisely?"

"Let's stay up all night playing Vurts," she said. "Let's make a meal from scraps in the fridge. Let's not go to bed."

"We'll do all that," I told her. Anything to hold back the pain.

We took a hard right turn into Platt Lane, and then another into the garage space behind the fiat. The van scalded to a sudden halt. "We're home," announced the Beetle. Didn't we know it? Only the Thing was coping, his body full of wave-knowledge, Vurt-knowledge. He just sort of flowed into the doors and then away, loving it.

And then the voice…

"Scribble… Scribble… Scribble…"

Words floating upwards, from nowhere, calling my name.

"Scribble…"

Desdemona's voice…

I looked around to see who was playing the fool.

Oh shit. Nobody should use that voice. And I got a sudden flash then, of Desdemona falling away from me, through into a yellow blaze…

"Who said that?" I demanded.

"Said what, Scribble?" asked Mandy.

"My name! Who the fuck said it?"

A silence fell over the van.

"It was in… it was in Desdemona's voice…"

"Do we have to keep thinking about her?" asked Mandy.

"Yes."

Yes we do. Keep thinking about Desdemona. Don't ever let her go. Not until I find her again. And then keep her forever.