Michael Moorcock
‘Aylett is one of the great eccentrics of British genre fiction.’
The Guardian
‘Aylett’s prose is like poetry.’
The Independent
‘Utterly original’
SFX
‘The most original and most consciousness-altering living writer in the English language, not to mention one of the funniest.’
Alan Moore
Steve Aylett was born in London in 1967. He is the author of The Crime Studio, Atom, Bigot Hall, Fain the Sorcerer, Slaughtermatic, Rebel at the End of Time, Toxicology, Shamanspace, Smithereens and Novahead – all of which are available via the Serif Books website. His work has been translated into Spanish, German, French, Greek, Finnish, Czech, Russian and Japanese. He is a bitter man.
NOVAHEAD
The final Beerlight novel
by Steve Aylett
Serif
London
This e-book first published 2015 by
Serif
47 Strahan Road
London E3 5DA
First published in print by Scar Garden Press 2011
Copyright © Steve Aylett 2011, 2015
Cover copyright © Steve Aylett 2011, 2015
e-book edition copyright © Serif 2015
Steve Aylett has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
ISBN: 978 1 909150 42 3
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publishers
e-book produced by Will Dady
“Fortune presents gifts not according to the book.”
- Luis De Gongora
“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist –”
-General John Sedgwick, American Civil War
1 BEERLIGHT STRANGER
I’d just flicked a spider off the desk, sighed and prepared to rise when the shadow of someone’s head and shoulders appeared on the floor like the edge of a jigsaw piece. A galoot entered. His vibe was blank - I could see aura waste falling away from him like dead seeds. He even went with ‘Prepare to die, Mister Atom.’
‘Right this minute?’ I asked, dubiously. ‘It’s not particularly convenient.’
His smile was incoherent, a dent in a sandbag. Maybe this was his favourite thing to do.
‘Being bored by you better be worth it,’ I told him. Probably my face bore the sort of amused and scornful look that people never like.
‘You don’t get to meet the Heber kid,’ he said, then drew a sender like a riveted slab of tar. It was actually a Birch gun, the muzzle shored about with functionless flanges and baffles. He started firing the kind of bullets I preferred to see going the other way. Spent shells were flying like air quotes as I pulled the emergency cord and descended, the floor closing again above me. I’ll open the ground when I choose.
I was surprised though. It had been ten years and I’d almost forgotten that stories still happened here, as if this world hadn’t ended.
I’d known the town was finished when I put a phone to my ear and found it was a cockroach. I used to think rain sounded the same everywhere, falling on dead and undead. Before I got away and heard it on palms, reef ocean and blue air. And I should have stayed on the island. Now only a few hours back in town and I felt again it didn’t matter where I was.
The one thing I hadn’t considered was the risk of getting curious.
By the time I slanted the Mantarosa out of the parking lot the gun ape was ducking into a car consisting mainly of ribbed armour and roller bars. He headed portside and I followed with deadlights and a nightvision windshield. On the way out of Saints Street I sent the cleanup signal, at which my office jumped and settled into the ground, leaving only the sculpture of a construction site which a friend had fashioned on the roof. I’d miss the old place maybe.
Suddenly I was feeling cheerful. Neon was arcing down my spine and the scenery was springing out of my way. In a car like a straight razor, my rearview reflection backed by a pouring firewall that used to be my workplace. Trouble-bound under clenched heavens. Night windows like aquariums as I followed the cage car through the beginnings of rain toward the dead waterfront, centre of fish nostalgia and water canneries. I saw blue sparks kindling between my teeth.
He parked by the harbour wall and walked down a wooden ramp to a small shack which half-hung out over the sea. I stopped a way back and sat a while listening to the motor pinging as it settled. Cars with portholes are cool.
Rain was pouring into the sea and slashing off the vinyl roof of the hut. Under moonlight the walls were leaking silver. I walked over and took a look in the window. A fly-strip encrusted with bullets and a glass-fronted box on the wall with a sign saying FOR BROKEN GLASS BREAK GLASS. A little flaking wreck of a table. The only thing on it was one of those plastic plants that dance to gunfire, looking creepy in the weird light. But three fellas were propped around the table like carved dolls in a murky tank of turpentine. The gunsel was one. Sat on either side were a bucket-jawed giant with club bones and a little compacted guy with a round head and side-impact ears. And I thought, What is it now?
The button man was getting a dressing-down so elaborately phrased he probably thought he’d done good. The little guy was precise and petulant. ‘We asked you to put him around a bullet, understand? To shoot him. And it wouldn’t be unusual for him to die thereafter. If you haven’t tried that experiment before you’ll find there is something almost uncanny about the result.’
‘That old detective front probably had a zero approach alarm, Mr Ract,’ said the giant thoughtfully. ‘He knew something was up the moment our verb-free associate entered the place.’
‘What did you use, show me. What’s that, a Birchy? Loud charm but slow on the uptake - it damn near fires by osmosis. If it had to be an ammo-guzzler why not a Barisal? Doesn’t anyone use room-brooms anymore? Give it the once-over?’
The galoot looked sad. ‘I can’t have a big frenzy just like that Mr Ract.’
‘My god, that’s exactly the sort of frenzy you’ve got to have, man! I think this hitman of yours is some sort of manatee, Mr Darkwards. He’s certainly never been proven otherwise. And I haven’t the patience for the gang talk.’
‘It’s how they get by,’ said the giant calmly, nodding a head like a foundation stone. ‘Mobster psychosis. It gives them a social structure, of sorts. Better than the wasteland outside, maybe.’
‘Well we needn’t really do it Beerlight style. Camouflage be damned, this is too important to leave to a - what do they call it here ... cleaner? Need I remind you