Mappalujo by Jeff Noon & Steve Beard

Author:Jeff Noon & Steve Beard [Noon, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: rEvolution (Tickety Boo Press)
Published: 2016-05-19T04:00:00+00:00

Pleased to See Me, Obviously

The vision still trembled in the agent’s mind as they moved on deeper into the forest, Cage and herself. She was starting to put things together, to see her place in the Operator’s scheme. Also, she was scared. She had killed, and she felt the guilt of that keenly now. She felt that her own life had been forsaken, along with those she had murdered.

The old man at the Theatre of Creatures had been the first. It was his job to bring the six scorpions through to the real world. Cage had hoped for the special agent to intervene before the merchandise was passed on, but they had acted too slowly. Death followed death. It was too much to bear. ‘Cage!’ Her sudden cry echoed through the trees. The Operator stopped at the sound of his name. He turned slowly and laughed at the sight of the gun in her hand. ‘You can’t shoot me, Jessica,’ he said. ‘I’m not real. And neither are you. Not here.’

The gun held to its target. ‘This old woman, this…’

‘Mama Lujo.’

‘Is she the virus?’

Cage nodded. ‘She’s been working for years in the garden, slowly annihilating, or trying to annihilate, all that I’ve worked for. The six people bitten by the scorpions were to be her agents in the real world. I believe their given task was to open the dream to the public consciousness, to drain the magic from the root. That’s all I know.’

‘And for this, you made me into a killer?’

‘She’s destroying my father.’

It was a simple truth.

They had stopped in a dark enclosure, where the branches overhead blocked out all the sky. A few fireflies glimmered here and there. The agent felt uncomfortable, shivery, faint. There was something in the air around here, a prickly heat. She let the gun lower slightly, and Cage came forward to grab her before she fell.

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