Jeff Noon - Vurt

"Nice pad," said the boss. "I'd like to look around."

"Any time. You got a warrant?"

"Do I need one? Mr…?"

"Beetle. And I have this thing about privacy."

"We have reason to believe that you are harbouring an alien presence."

"A what?"

"A Vurt being. A live drug."

"Really?"

"You know that's totally illicit?"

"Is it?" Beetle was playing it cool.

"Just checking," said the cop woman, eyes all over the unused Blues and the played-out Creams that littered the floor.

"Nothing but the best," the Beetle told her. "Strictly legal."

"Of course," she said. "Nothing but."

"What's your name?" asked Mandy, from nowhere.

The cop woman looked directly into Mandy's eyes. "I don't need to tell you that."

Mandy gave her the bad eye, the best Bloodvurt kind. I'd seen that look before; it made you fearful. The cop took it like a feather's glance. No sweat. Cop was cool.

"Well, it has been pleasant," said Beetle.

The shecop was looking all around the room, searching for clues. "I'm just warning you. Don't go upsetting the neighbours."

There you go. Nosey bitch from the next floor down.

"We'll do our best," the Beetle told the cop.

"Listen good, kid. I'm not easily satisfied."

"Well I can see that."

"You got a job?"

"Not as such."

"I have this thing about dripfeeders; they really get on my case."

"We can't all be in sugar."

There were some intense moments passing by, as Beetle tried his best sex charms on the woman. She was having none of it. She just stared right back, her eyes full up of hard metal. Beetle meets his match!

It was the dumbo partner that broke the spell; "Let's split, Murdoch. Just a bunch of wasted kids."

Murdoch didn't look back at him. She just jabbed a long finger at Beetle, like a weapon. "I'm coming back for you. You got that?"

"I've got it," replied the Bee, cool as fuck. The door went shuck behind them, closing with a comfort fix. Beetle was out of the cool in an instant; he popped two Jammers and went straight for me and Mandy.

"What's this about the neighbour shit?" he demanded. His face was full up of anger. One long streak of hair had escaped from the grip of Vaz, and was swinging around against his powdered face like a black plant creeper. "Well what the fuck's going on?" he shouted, and Mandy and I couldn't even look at each other any more.

"It was my fault," Mandy said.

"Tell me about it," said Beetle.

"We got caught on the landing, carrying the Thing," I added.

"Oh, brilliant."

"Some woman on the second floor," said Mandy.

"Didn't you cover it?"

Mandy looked nervous. Her eyes turned to mine.

"You know that we didn't, Bee," I offered, praying to the God of Vurt to take me right out of that room and up to the theatre of heaven, where the angels play.

No such luck.

The Beetle hit me. Across the face. Felt like a hammer. The real kind, mind. Hardened steel, with a hard wood handle.

I took my hand away from my nose, and there was blood on the fingers and the palm.

That guy is gonna suffer one day.

And he would. But not at my hand.

We were in Jam mode, screaming down the back roads, all rattling around in the van. Me, the Thing, Brid and Mandy. Beetle at the wheel, jammed up to the nines. The scenes of south Manchester sped past the black windows like a bad foreign movie. The Beetle had popped so many Jammers, fear was just a bad memory. The man was on a demon trip, and he was taking us with him.

Brid was wide awake for once. It had been my job to wake her. Which was like waking up a stone, some dead lump of inanimate matter. Man, she had screamed at me, and then, whilst the half-dead world came rushing back, she had called for Beetle's blood, promising slow tortures.

I'd had to slap her.

She slapped me back.

Which hurt.

Which hurt the both of us.

Then I'd half-kicked her down the stairs, into the van. And then back for the Thing-from-Outer-Space. He was just coming round from the night of feathers. I'd give him about an hour or so, and then he'd be screaming out for more memories of the homeland. Christ! Who'd want to live there? It was Mandy and I, of course, left with the task of carrying the Thing. This time we covered him in a blanket, and the journey down the stairs went like a dream, until Twinkle showed up.

"Is that you, Mister Scribble?" her tinkling voice asked.

"Get lost, kid!" was my response.

"Mister Scribble, that's not fair," she answered back.

Twinkle was a blue-eyed sweet kid of ten, with a patchwork bob of hair, as blonde as the day was doomed. I loved her dearly except that she was a total pain, and a bit of a nutflake.

"What's under the blanket, Mister Scribble?"

"Kid, fuck off," said Mandy.

But the kid was hot: "It's that alien from space, isn't it?" she asked.

Twinkle lived on the first floor, the child of a three parent family; man, woman, hermaphrodite.

"It's just Bridget under here," I offered. "We can't wake her up."

"No way. I saw you kicking Brid down just before. You've got an illegal alien."

"No we haven't," said Mandy.

"I've seen him before. I've seen you carrying him around. The whole place knows."

"Listen, Twinkle…"

"Leave her, Scribb," said Mandy. "Let's get it loaded up."

"I wouldn't mind an alien of my own," Twinkle continued. And then, the dreaded question; "Can I be in your gang? Can I, Mister Scribble? Can I be a junior Stash Rider?"

She was always after this. "No you bloody can't!" I answered. "Now get out of here!"

Twinkle looked at me for a couple of seconds, and then took a slow, toe-scuffing walk back down the corridor, towards the door of her flat.

First off the Beetle drove us over to Chorlton, where we checked out the Vurt-U-Want for signs of Seb. The manager, a paper-thin young wisp of a girl, told us that Sebastian hadn't turned up for work that morning, and that, as of now, he was off the payroll anyway, for bringing the cops down on them, and that Vurt-U-Want was a peace-loving company, and that kind of employee just didn't fit in with their current business vision. She gave us his address from the employee file, and we drove the van out there, West Didsbury, only to find that Seb wasn't in, and that he hadn't be home since last night. The pale and spotted youth that answered the door told us that he didn't have a clue where Seb was.

Now we were heading down the Princess Road, towards Bottletown and Tristan, away from the bad dream of Murdoch and the cops. It wasn't that bad, maybe, not to my mind; just a dumb cop out on a limb, looking for the easy pickings. Beetle thought otherwise. "That Murdoch bitch will be back, no kidding," he called from the front seat. "She's got that look, that hunger. Believe me. You ever been down the Bottle, Mandy?"

"No."

"You'll love it. It's real scary -"

"Beetle, you're a twat," Bridget announced.

"That's life," he answered.

"I heard you last night."

"And here's me trying to keep it quiet. It would have been worse, otherwise."

Brid threw Mandy a bullet stare.

"That girl can sing. Real good," said Beetle.

I thought Brid was going to tear Mandy's eyes out then, except that the van was snaking like a rocket in a bad patch of space, and the Bee was driving like a maniac. He made a deliberate swerve towards some old pedhead with a walking frame. That old woman screamed. Beetle missed her by a Jammy whisker and then made an ultra-left onto Princess Road.

"Jesus Christ, Bee!" snarled Brid, from the floor.

We all got back in place and Mandy hid her face behind the latest copy of Game Cat. She was on some kind of crash course in home study, no doubt trying to get within loving distance of Beetle. No chance, baby. He's a closed up shop. Find that out, and soon. Some things you just can't say in the back of a crowded-up box of rust on wheels, speeding down towards Bottletown.