Pollen by Jeff Noon

Author:Jeff Noon
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Published: 2014-08-22T16:00:00+00:00

Sunday

7 May

Shivers of dark light floating over water, shining from a cellar’s pavement-level window, and then reflected from pillars of marble that are rooted in the pale water. Shadows shimmer around the floating shapes of a young woman whose naked, street-lined body takes on the glimmers of light and turns them into a movement of glittering feathers. As though from underground wings.

The underground swimming pool at Slavery House, the Gumbo’s Palace, cleaned up and renovated by the illegal residents. Early, early morning, Sunday, all the house still sleeping except for one lonely drifter.

Shadows shimmer, and Belinda floating there.

The birthday girl.

3.50 a.m. Sunday morning. I’m woken up from fitful slumber by the telephone. Dove’s voice on the other end…

‘Come to the cop station, Sibyl.’

‘You know I’m not allowed there. What’s happening?’

‘Kracker’s vanished. Just get over here.’

I see to Jewel’s needs and then head on down to the Comet.

Kracker is parked outside Sibyl Jones’ house, drinking down some small measures of Boomer just to get his edge running. He needs all that he can get, having failed in his previous attempts to please Persephone.

How far have I got to go? he asks himself. All the way, Biscuit Boy, is the answer. He pulls his gun loose from the cop-holster.

The pollen drifting through the darkness, golden and global.

A light comes on in Sibyl’s house.

‘Uh huh.’

The front door opens, and Sibyl Jones walks down the drive towards her car. Kracker watches all of this from the other side of the street. ‘Shit. Where’s she going now?’ he murmurs. ‘This time of the morning?’ He raises his gun and listens to the gentle whirr it makes as the auto-aim focuses on the woman, the good cop. Kracker’s finger starts to squeeze at the trigger, and then relaxes.

‘Shit!’

He can’t do it. Not yet anyway. He can’t stop seeing her as a cop, and a woman he’s known for years.

It’s easier to kill strangers.

Kracker decides to take the other route first, the one that leads towards Belinda.

Tom Dove led me down into the cop morgue, where robo-Skinner was piled like a heap of dead trash.

‘What happened to him?’

‘Somebody took a blade to his circuits,’ Dove told me.

‘Kracker?’

‘That’s a good guess.’

‘Why?’

‘Maybe something that he saw. You following me?’

‘I’m trying to.’

‘Skinner kept his head going way past bedtime. That was one good robocop.’

‘It’s still in there?’

‘Let’s take a look.’

So we opened up Skinner’s head and found the film and the recording there. The video image came up negative but the soundtrack produced the goods. The quality was bad and only muffled fragments could be heard amidst the static of Skinner’s dying head. Kracker’s voice was in there but it was like he was talking to himself. Kracker called the other person Persephone at one point.

‘He met the flower girl in here?’

‘Maybe she came visiting,’ replied Dove. ‘Keep listening.’

It was obvious now that Skinner was reaching the end of his tape loops. Kracker’s voice was growing misty and distant as the robo-circuits spluttered into final sparks. The last thing we heard him say was this: ‘I must kill Sibyl and Belinda.

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