Atom (3 page)

 

There was only one venue worse than the Creosote Palace and that was the Delayed Reaction Bar on Valentine Street, a dim pit of cawing rooks, glass dust and layered distortion. Those who asked for a shot and a beer rarely lived to examine the beer. Don Toto the barman sold anarchy symbols made of baked corn - pretzels, he called them. The clientele guzzled drugs laced with gin, world ales, soda and even milk. Some cocktails would cause their heads to swell up so they looked like Newt Gingrich. These unfortunate ones would have to be rounded up and slaughtered like hogs. Behind the bar hung a framed photo of Roni Loveless, the boxer who, ordered to throw a fight, burst through an inner struggle to beat not only his opponent but everyone in the arena and its locality in an outward-blooming explosion of violence against suppressive mediocrity.

Flea Lonza sat under the wind turbine nursing a Sniper's Delight. An oily corpse in a casual jacket, he shored up his withered senses by smuggling facts and tobacco into America. His ears were just big enough to laugh at. In his capacity as a double edge only one client paid him to give the word to other people - and that client had just sat opposite.

‘You inform on me lately Flea?'

‘When don't I.'

‘You aint holdin' out on me are you?'

‘Ever get confused, Atom?'

‘No.' Atom lit a shock absorber. ‘Smoke?'

Flea flashed his jacket to show a hundred shock boxes like the back room of an old cigar store. ‘Devil need a match?'

‘I'm asking the questions - you recommend my services the last few days?'

‘Yeah. Big guy. Dumb. Took a half hour to select his name. But the little slimeback with him - he did the real talkin'. Asked about Fiasco too - I coulda sent 'em straight to Harry but I put 'em onto you.'

‘Thanks.' Atom handed over five hundred smackers.

‘This kinda money could get me into trouble Atom.'

Atom drew on his gasper. ‘Don't knock it. Trouble'll never leave you, never consider you unworthy of attention. Trouble's a saint. Your saint, Flea.'

Right away Atom regretted it - what a terrible thing to say to a friend. Why did he have to be smart always? ‘I'm sorry Flea. Here.' He gave him a pearl-finish photograph of himself sobbing amid a huddle of Emperor penguins. ‘And this.' He reached into his coat and retrieved something, unfolding it. ‘It's a clip-on charm filter.' He fitted the tin bib onto Flea. ‘Now tell me you love me.'

‘I hate you, Atom - I only tolerate you because you pay me and buy me presents.'

‘See? It's working already. Catch you later, Flea.' Atom got up and left.

A half minute later a posse of Thermidor's wrecking crew boomed in, headed by Nada Neck. ‘We don't want no trouble,' said Toto the barman, and that cracked everyone up. Toto gave a little bow, grinning as he cleaned a glass.

Nada Neck drew a mufflered M61 Persuader sub and breezed it onto Flea's forehead as he sat down casual and surveyed the bar. Flea reacted like he'd found a bug in his apple.

‘You gentlemen need a muscle relaxant?'

‘You the local dataroach, right? I think you can help me. Yes, I think so.'

‘Look me in the eye and select a topic, if you can.'

‘Taffy Atom - you've met him.'

‘Sure I know Atom but he's kinda busy. He's a shadowman.'

‘That this week's tag for a gumshoe? What's makin' him so busy? Remember the gun.'

‘Some guys want him to find Harry Fiasco.'

‘Which guys.'

‘Big dumbster and a lavender seed, don't know the names.'

‘You don't know a whole lot of anything do you Roach. That a bib?'

‘You can have it - it's a charm filter.'

‘Wiseguy, eh?'

‘All I know is Fiasco's doin' a job on the side. The galoot said somethin' about a squasher.'

‘A squasher.'

‘A brain, to you.'

‘A brain 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.

 

 

‘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.'

 

 

 

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 over TV news. ‘The President, due to visit Our Fair State in three days as part of his campaign on the Victory Without Peace ticket, was seen licking a lizard this morning in what has been described as a public relations disaster.'

Saints Street, Valentine, Prod, Size, Broadcast, Devant ...

‘Technohead Leon Wardial claims to have stolen the mayor's aura. “It's safe in an orgone box but if I don't get five hundred large by midnight it's dispersal time. Oh and by the way, it smells bad.” The mayor was too tired to comment.'

Manic, right on Smith, left on String, right on Cam, past the falling road ...

‘Scientists have found that the gene for low IQ is biologically paired with that of a fondness for pasta.'

Scanner, Plug, Peejay, Kayelef ...

‘And the Beerlight Justice Ring has decided on the site of the planned zero tolerance landfill. The authority, which claims there is no danger of overflow, has selected the hospital south of downtown's Beretta Triangle.'

Through the Portis Thruway to Gerald, right on Brett, left on Bird. The car drew to a halt, the door opened. ‘Bird Street Hotel,' announced Joanna, whipping off the blindfold.

When they entered the hotel room, Turow walked ahead. He bent down to someone in an armchair, whispered something, then stepped aside. The Candyman seemed part of the armchair's design, all polished monochrome and formality. He bulged from the background like something viewed through a convex lens. When he spoke it was with a volley of blubbery bonhomie. ‘We begin well sir. You have on your trousers. Welcome, and sit you down. A regrettable use of muscle in conveying you here - I apologise on all fours.' But he didn't move, any more than Atom. ‘Rough-housing is an inexact science. Why Turow here is convinced you've had some shall we say rowdy visitors, who have left your office the worse.'

‘Maybe.'

‘Maybe. Hmm. Another interested party?'

‘Thermidor.'

‘Thermidor.' The Candyman frowned, quiet awhile. ‘A pity.' Then he was all smiles again. ‘Well, sit you down sir. Come one come all, and I commend you sir - you succeeded in giving Mr Turow the world-class heebie-jeebies. You must tell me anon how you did it. Though I'll wager it would take more than two jaws to speak that species of truth.'

Joanna hung back as subtle as a henge stone and Turow perched in a corner seat. Atom sat on the couch opposite the Candyman, and accepted a drink. ‘I'm reluctant to respond to a remark with so many possible implications.'

The Candyman barked with laughter. ‘Ah, you're the man for me sir. It takes one of your caliber to suspect my meaning of a byzantine geneology hitherto traceable only by myself and a select few others. I wonder if you know how right you are. How close you've come to the shocking facts. A question sir: when your office was sacked, was an object taken. An object of not a little bargaining value.'

‘Not a little.'

‘Something semi-sentient, technologically sustained.'

‘After a fashion.'

‘You'll get it for me sir, at the nearest and dearest opportunity.'

‘Since when?'

‘Perhaps you doubt my sincerity.'

‘Never gave it a thought. But imagine my surprise when Scooter here turned up at the office wearing all his ties at once and trailed by a waterhead with next to no nervous system. That'll put salt in anyone's coffee.'

‘Hand on heart sir, and big as life, I regret the unpleasant necessity. That notwithstanding, here we are, and now is good a time as any to pierce the soft crown of the affair. Are you familiar sir, with the author Franz Kafka.'

‘Sure. Greatest black author ever lived.'

‘He wasn't black, sir.'

‘He probably is by now.'

‘No matter - as I need scarcely remind you, Kafka was of a most singular personality. Why, he'd think nothing of riding on a hound, or sticking wax lips on his eyeglasses. Seeing the world for what it was, he passed the time by whining with artful care, and an attention to detail which could oxidise completely the face of a lying optimist. He would moan, sir, to a standard unimagined by the canker poets. No amount of fashion and falsehood could conceal man's futility from his eyes. Even before the nearest war, mankind was an experiment repeated long past its demonstrable validity. It was without comfort, use or protection; mean, tarnished and afraid. Like all who have sung such facts, he died denied and bleeding from the lungs. Are you with me so far?'

‘I can bite on it.'

‘Better and better. Now sir - to look at me, what would you say was my abiding concern? What fires my horizon?'

‘At a guess I'd say slobbing.'

‘Ha - I can enjoy a joke at my expense sir - don't we all? But there's method to the question. Would you believe me sir, if I told you my fascination in life is with the scurrying ones, those low pests the average man wouldn't think twice about stamping on with a satisfying crunch.'

‘Lawyers.'

‘You take me literally sir - I admire a man who takes me literally, his word is likely to be worth something. But no - I meant merely that I have an abiding fascination with insects. Hardy handfuls. Were you aware, sir, that the brothers McKenna, after whom the square in this fair city is named, guided their hallucinogenic explorations with a humming, buzzing vocal harmonic by which they reckoned to merge with the infospace of giant, alien insects, and thus be transformed. And that one of the fifty or so gospels omitted from the New Testament is Allogenes - meaning literally, ‘from another race' - where an initiate discovers the power within by intoning and merging with its signatory sound, “zza zza zza”.'

‘You should get out more, Candyman.'

‘You filthy swine!' gasped Turow, darting up from his chair.

‘Easy does it, Turow,' said the Candyman mildly. ‘Allow our honoured guest to hear me out. Franz Kafka, Mr Atom, was another soul attuned to the universal bandwidth. Just as poor Gregor Samsa found himself thrumming and chirping in a manner unintelligible to human beings, so Kafka was a real tyre-kicking alien.'

‘Sure, a true child of the universe.'

‘If you consider, as many do, that the universe is a drear drift of superdead ashes.' The Candyman paused, pouring himself a drink. ‘Several years ago, I began to hear vague rumours. It was said that the great author's brain had been preserved and, through a provenance I could neither chart nor dismiss from my imagination, was a prized item among collectors. Do you have any conception of its value among those vultures sir? It fetched more money than war with every change of ownership. As much as JFK's among the miming profession. And I made it my aim to acquire that organ. Wild horses couldn't drag me through a hedge backwards sir, and I traced the brain finally to the cryogenic facility here in Beerlight, where it resided under a bland alias. Turow and Joanna were already in my employ, but for the work at hand I needed a strong arm capable of more than the pulling of a trigger - though Joanna does so with wit and grace, don't you my boy?'

‘Presumably he's let off his leash to vote.'

‘Oh I have every confidence in him. Which is why I sent him with Turow to find a premises man - in a town of Beerlight's reputation it seemed sure they'd be hanging off the fire escapes like grapes from the vine. Harry Fiasco appeared an enterprising youth, a little homicidal round the edges perhaps, keen to exert himself outside the usual family chores. He was not in the habit of doing good. A degree of latitude was allowed him and he took heroic advantage. Not only did his break-in cause a mess to match the Celebration riots but he made off with the prize. The boy has taste and an eye for opportunity. Hats off to Harry Fiasco, sir, that's what I say.'

‘Uh-huh,' drawled Atom, pulling a shocker and sparking up. ‘So it's a pincer movement, with real pincers.'

The Candyman chortled. ‘Exactly sir.'

Atom shook his head solemnly. ‘Not me. Not for a squasher. You'll have to do better than that.'

The Candyman's smile burst like a balloon. He glanced aside at Joanna, then fixed Atom's eye and held up an airstopper between stubby thumb and forefinger. ‘Look at this bullet sir - the lifespan of an aphid, but by gad the changes it can wring. And Joanna here knows how to send it on its way, don't you my boy?'

Hearing his name, Joanna sniggered low.

‘Excuse the interruption,' Atom remarked, ‘I need to know if I'm meant to be gettin' scared soon.'

‘Why are we wasting time with this imbecile?' Turow snapped, agitated. ‘Tell Joanna to knife him carefully and we can deal with Thermidor face to face.'

‘You must excuse Mr Turow sir - an impulsive fellow whose happiest moment was finding a garter snake in the mail.'

‘Shall I ventilate him Mr Candyman?' asked Joanna, his tongue lolling.

‘Really Joanna, calm yourself. Watch Joanna as he thinks thoughts as vast and slow as empires, Mr Atom. That foam about his mouth is the cream of worldly wisdom. Now where were we?'

‘We were discussing a bullet. It seems I was gonna have the pleasure of its presence in my heart.'

The Candyman gave a blubbery laugh. ‘By gad you are a fellow sir, that you are. I can barely keep my eyes off you. An extraordinary character.'

‘You don't get it do you?' squeaked Turow in exasperation.

‘Turow!' barked his master.

Turow stood seething with weakness.

The Candyman turned to Atom. ‘Now sir, about the brain - I've hunted it from Prague to Tangiers to the antique avenues of New Orleans. And now that I'm this close I'll have it by every means at my disposal.'

‘Disposal being the operative word.'

‘Crime is an evolving definition sir,' the Candyman stated, his face slack. ‘And one must evolve with the times.'