LITMIR.BIZ

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I presented myself to this world as if by chance, the same as everyone else. Why such suspicion? I stood frowning in the smell of melted and rain-solidified rubber as the sad city went on losing its flavour like gum. Well, it didn’t matter at this late stage. Something was leaping in me like old times.

      Water murky as potion. A meeting of skulls behind a sizzling window. The gunsel hung back like a doughy robot, his eyes opaque and eager. I’d got a swatch on his aura. His mind was strange, thinking one thing at a time.

      ‘He’s getting near the city,’ said the small man Ract, taking what looked like an elaborate jungle compass from a pocket and propping it on the table. ‘According to the atomic clock. Where’s our Mr Pivot? And has he selected an alternative conjecture or is he adamant?’

      ‘The choreography of failure is infinitely varied,’ drawled the giant.

      ‘Does he understand the moral component of the exercise?’

      ‘Is there one?’

      ‘The hole where it should be is the right shape. It’ll do.’

      ‘Relax, Mr Ract. I’m told if you listen to one of his excuses while watching The Wizard of Oz it matches up in profound and hilarious ways. Anyway, since our willy-nilly friend here has failed by an order of magnitude we hadn’t thought possible, we’ll have to put Atom out of the game from another direction. Discrediting him with a bullet’s all very well but -’

      I ducked out and leopard-crawled unnecessarily back to the car, setting off through streets gummed with melted cellphones like cowchips.

      Why was I rattling around Beerlight again? Its most precocious souls had escaped. Its colour had desaturated. It was mouthing old lines. Banal, undirected explosions were going off here and there. The city was crying out for the specific-rich carnage so beloved of the old-time accelerati. The days when crimes were written across the city like formulae, answering each other in a seemingly endless, dendritic conversation. But it would never see that inventiveness again, I thought.

      I’ll try to describe the beautiful ways I was wrong.

      2 VALENTINE STREET

      Buildings the colour of dried blood under a formaldehyde sky. The city and its sundered justifications moved by like a dream. Rain hammering the chassis. Here and there were crushed cars apparently sucked into the asphalt. What doesn’t kill you leaves you exhausted.

      I used the Mantarosa’s denial-allow cloak for camouflage, detecting and projecting whatever onlookers were not willing to acknowledge - but these days people were disbelieving enough at the sight of a functioning vehicle. The propulsion system was spun by state-differential energy. It depended on geographical time zones, taking advantage of the nano-difference in time between the vehicle’s hood and trunk. The contradictional friction was small but absolutely constant, even while the car was stationary - some houses had been powered the same way.

      I parked up outside the Delayed Reaction Bar and sunk a pneumatic anchor spike to a depth of eight feet. The little gyroscopic context engine whirred to a stop and the Mantarosa clammed shut behind me as I made the sign of the Errorverse and entered the bar.

      The atmosphere was one of lethal chemistry and vaporized intent. The ceiling was haemorrhaging; the floor magnifying submerged tiles like the poison scales of a dragon. It was raining in my kidneys. The walls were dark brown like burnt sugar and on one hung a pug clock giving only the vaguest suggestion of time. When I drew near to anyone I could hear the muted death of braincells like popping candy.

      The barman Don Toto was a bald fellow with all the usual eyes and noses assigned where they might do the least harm. But Toto was smart, a researcher. He had discovered a crime between assault and grievous injury and taken out a copyright. Today most of his body was taped over with bandages. He could barely walk and perhaps didn’t want to.

      He was playing the bar like a keyboard.

      ‘Antifreeze, with everything.’

      ‘Taffy Atom, my hypergora friend. You look like a million dollars that rightfully belong to someone else.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘No. You look like a wishbone in a coat.’

      ‘Thanks, Toto. You fill a bastard-shaped hole in my life. I see your clientele are still those whose philosophy arrives by chute and leaves by trashcan.’

      Behind me I heard the strop of a gun being unsheathed and Toto perked up: ‘Ignore him, gentlemen, his heart has a rat’s tail, it’s horrible. His body makes powerful appeals to the earthworm and other crawlites, with no help from you.’

      I looked cautiously behind me to see the offended drinker give it the thousand yard sneer and sheath his flaw. He returned to reading Modern Hernia magazine.

      Toto leaned and spoke more quietly. ‘Where you been the last ten years, Atom?’

      ‘A part of the world you can still see the face of the planet, Toto.’

      ‘Whatcha been up to?’

      ‘Evolving. It’s the latest thing - and always is. What’s been happening over here?’

      He told me. Kids were using old memory sticks for ammo. For a while there was a fashion for specially-made throwing stars in the shape of letters. The name of Allah was favoured by beginners, having the compensatory four blades of a good razor. Sanskrit was intermediary and Kabalic figures were blunt enough to demand the strength and skill of a master, some favouring whole word symbols such as Yud Yud Lamed (Letting Go). Betty had been the mob since Cortez the Killer went mad and ate his own ass. His death and illegal conversion to rotten meat had been the talk of the town. All Cortez’s boys went over to Betty. ‘Her fort’s charm central. Waited long enough.’

      ‘Betty’s steady. Repair this drink, it’s broken.’ Toto repaired the freeze. ‘Your answers are partly obscured by bandages, I notice. Brotherhood again?’

      ‘Galoot,’ Toto replied. ‘Asked after you, strangely enough.’

      ‘Fella with a doughy head and a show pistol?’

      ‘Yeah, fronted-up. But he used the muscles of his upper body for the attack. It was a game of pure opposition. He broke my arm, and my other arm - and my other arm. That third arm might have been my leg.’

      ‘Both arms and a leg.’

      ‘And my other leg.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘And my other leg.’

      ‘Now I’m confused, Don Toto.’

      ‘Not half as confused as I was. I told him where your old office was but I was sure you was still outta town.’

      ‘No-one could know I was coming in.’

      Don Toto began to speak about self-similarity in regard to time when regarded as a single item, but my mind was wandering, trying to correlate. Everything has been deemed illegal - so, which crime to select? Pick any point along an infinite series. None can be ‘wrong’. Beerlight was like most cities in that fear was the master builder. For the average person there was no way to die here that was not dangerous, inconvenient, or both.

      A fly was ticking against a tube light.

      ‘My gun’s missing, Toto.’

      ‘Damn silly thing to say aloud.’

      ‘It should have been behind my office.’

      ‘You could hotwire a guzzler.’

      ‘Nah. Parker still in business?’

      The gunsmith and hitman Brute Parker was renowned for having such control over his ammo he could shoot people in a ‘beguiling’ way. Classically-trained in grudgecraft.

      ‘More a religion with him now. Find him in the Square pretty often, at prayer. Keeps his gun in a cage

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