Free Atom by Steve Aylett

like a bug on a hotplate, yeah.’
    Madison stubbed the shock. ‘Well, it’s been good, Harry.’ She stood to go.
    ‘Hey miss, you see Kitty you tell her I love her. Tell her I’ll be waitin’ on the dry side.’
    ‘Sure, Harry.’
    Madison started down the passage away from the gawping room.
    ‘Life shoots first, lady,’ Fiasco shouted after her.
    As she neared the end of the passage, Henry Blince turned the corner coming the other way. ‘Well looky here. How long you known Scatterbrains, Miss Drowner?’
    ‘How long you been walking erect?’
    ‘Aw come on Maddy, you’re breakin’ my heart here.’
    ‘Break your own heart - I’m busy.’
    She strode on, leaving him stunned with respect.
     
    Nada Neck dropped by the hospital acting breezy. ‘Lookin’ good, Flea. Love the ears. Wanted to apologise for shootin’ you in the bar.’
    ‘Ah forget it.’ Flea kept eating a melon as Neck strolled past the bed to the window. ‘In fact you did me a favour. Seems I committed a crime that day - a new one. Caere Twins are in here to make a bleak assessment.’
    ‘Heard this place is goin’ down for some three strikes landfill. Yeah postage stamps’ll have skulls on ’em in this town. Which reminds me.’ Walking over, he dug from his pocket a drift of confetti bearing Atom’s likeness, and snowed them onto Flea’s bed. ‘I don’t know if this is gold dust or a swatted moth. Want to fill me in?’
    ‘I filled you in,’ said Flea, up and voluble. ‘Damn straight.’
    ‘Flea on the wall eh. How’s your chest.’
    ‘I’m on top of the weather.’ Flea put down a melon segment and wiped his hands on the sheet. ‘Okay. I once seen Atom dead-lift the front end of a ’69 Volkswagon Bug. He pulled his right shoulder and broke his back in three places. Quite a guy. Said he thought a chicken was a dove on stilts.’
    ‘We only got wit in this city to fool our mothers, Flea. You called Atom a shadowman.’
    ‘Yeah. Low key. Got a dog that’s inside-out. Uses its windpipe as a leash. Tells people he’s a house painter.
    ‘So he’s untrustworthy.’
    ‘I didn’t say that.’
    ‘Flea.’ Neck lit a shock. ‘I’m a busy guy.’
    ‘Well okay. Okay, how can I put this. Let’s say he’s the sort who’d mail his appendix to a starving man.’
    ‘So what. Nobody cares about that part.’
    ‘He does. He loves it.’
    ‘He loves his appendix.’
    ‘That’s what I said. He kisses it all the time.’
    Neck took an irritable pull at the gasper. ‘How can a man kiss his own appendix.’
    ‘He’ll do all kinds of things if you let him.’
    ‘Well, don’t. Don’t, if he’s taking those sorta chances. God almighty.’
    ‘Atom’s wounds run deep, Neck. You know that experiment where they give different drugs to spiders and see what kind of webs they weave? Speed makes a wreck, burgers make the ancient smiley and so on? Atom’s old man was an architect. Got bit by a tarantula. Started creating arthropodal buildings - octopolar, eight points to ’em, right? Tarantula venom’s a cerebro-spinal stimulant, alters the mind, used in gypsy brews to release what they call the “dark burning soul”. Permanently imprints the nervous system, so it’s not just a quest drug. These buildings were extradimensional - deep wings, open corners, corridors in impossible directions. The old man called the blueprints treasure maps. One day when Taff was a kid his Pa disappeared in one of them structures. Taff went into the study to get the blueprint - it was stuck flat on the wall, and floating in the air in the middle of the room was one of them crosses that mark the spot, already fading. By the time he’d called someone to look, it was gone. And he never saw his Pa again.’
    In silence a while, Neck gave unfazed by scrutinising his cigarette, then appeared to remember Flea. ‘Flea, I hate to be one o’ those people, but ...’
    ‘I know how it sounds, Nada, believe me. You know the weird strip off Scanner, used