Free Novahead by Steve Aylett Page B

furniture, open tanks of iron-grey water and the churn of generators. Here and there I saw gun barrels and silencers, hidden in plain view as wind chimes. Some of the windows had glass.
    We parked up outside number 12 and walked across a little square yard of dead devil grass to the bleached and crumbling facade of Traven ’ s house. The doorknocker was a ring in the mouth of a German. ‘ Let me do the braying, ’ I whispered, and knocked. No reply. We stalked cautiously around back, past a mushroom hut made from the buried shell of a VW microbus. A glassless conservatory was fronted by decking, design of the damned. Skirting it, we found a rear door. ‘ Anyone home? ’
    The middle-aged man who appeared at the door had estranged hair, potato-coloured clothes and legs that met several times before reaching his waist. His right arm was made of white plastic and with his left he aimed at me a summer savings semi-automatic. ‘ What name are you using? ’ he demanded, and waved the gun at the others. ‘ And you. ’ Then he stopped, seeing the kid, and lowered the weapon.
    ‘ I ’ m called Atom, ’ I said. ‘ Do you use the name B. Traven? ’
    ‘ I don ’ t know anything, ’ he said, still staring dazedly at the kid.
    ‘ Be more specific. ’
    He considered a moment. ‘ For that you ’ ll have to come in. But leave that , ’ and he pointed at the kid, ‘ outside if you don ’ t mind. ’
    The old man elected to stay in the yard with Heber. Traven frowned at Edna as me and Murphy entered, then seemed to dismiss whatever was bothering him and closed the door.
    It was a dim room of tattooed curtains and undead armchairs. Stubborn old moments in frames intervened in the walls. There was a dead fakewood TV with a tweed jacket over its shoulders. The only sound was a single daytime cicada and a copper orrery in the form of an ammonite that ticked away the weight of ages. Murphy and I placed aside old copies of Tentative magazine and sat in a couple of chairs that seemed to have been sewn out of dust.
    ‘ I don ’ t get many visitors except a few book exorcists and the occasional dismal raiding party, ’ Traven said. He had an Irish accent and a nervous energy about him. He put the Daewoo on a coffee table and did not sit down. ‘ You know there ’ s alot of gas bandits belting around the local desert in feral cars with Jesus piranhas on their fenders. Who sent you? ’
    ‘ Nobody sends me anywhere. ’
    ‘ Not if you ’ re aware of it anyway. Who ’ s the girl? ’
    ‘ Murphy. Coke train. ’
    ‘ I haven ’ t had great experiences with Feds, ’ he said, gesturing to his right arm.
    ‘ I ’ m a free agent now, ’ said Murphy.
    ‘ Your course of exhaustion was science, is that right? ’ I asked him.
    ‘ If you ’ re here about the kid out there, you know that already. I could relate the story wittily, emotionally, even accurately if need be. ’
    ‘ We ’ ll take the accurate version. ’
    ‘ As you wish. But don ’ t tell this to a living soul. ’
    ‘ Can I tell Download Jones? ’
    ‘ Is he alive? ’
    ‘ No. ’
    ‘ That ’ s fine. I worked at the Armstrong Death Labs at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas. Top-secret crypto clearance. Psychological warfare and chemical grudgecraft. Slapping folk with campaign pins doped with sodium fluoride. Crazy savages ate that election. One day I thought I ’ d leapfrog an anxious meeting. I was reading Bleak House and burst out laughing as everyone does when that fella spontaneously combusts for no reason. ’
    ‘ Oh, I know what you mean. It ’ s like that thing at the end of Forster ’ s vampire novel Howards End . ’
    The Fed girl brightened, surprising me. ‘ When that guy gets flattened by the wardrobe? ’
    ‘ And nobody cares, that ’ s right! ’ Traven said. ‘ A comic masterstroke at the end of a dreary ordeal. ’
    ‘ I wonder if he planned towards it, ’ I said, ‘ or just gave up and threw caution to the wind, exploding with