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‘Steve Aylett is without doubt one of the most ambitious and talented writers to emerge in England in recent years. While his work echoes the best of William Burroughs, it has the mark of real originality. It’s hip, cool and eloquent.’
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.
by Steve Aylett
Serif
London
This e-book first published 2015 by
Serif
47 Strahan Road
London E3 5DA
Copyright © Steve Aylett 1998, 2015
Cover copyright © Steve Aylett 1998, 2015
e-book edition copyright © Serif 2015
First published by 4 Walls 8 Windows 1998
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 39 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
“I think I’m hit.”
- Baby Face Nelson, hit seventeen times by a .45 calibre Tommy gun
BEERLIGHT
Beerlight was a blown circuit, where to kill a man was less a murder than a mannerism. Every major landmark was a pincushion of snipers. Cop tanks navigated a graffiti-rashed riot of needle bars, oil-scabbed neon and diced rubble. Fragile laws were shattered without effort or intent and the cops considered false arrest a moral duty. Integrity was no more than a fierce dream. Crime was the new and only artform. The authorities portrayed shock and outrage but never described what it was they had been expecting. Anyone trying to adapt was persecuted. One woman had given birth to a bulletproof child. Other denizens were bomb zombies, pocketing grenades and wandering gaunt and vacant for days before winding down and pulling the pin on themselves. There was no beach under the sidewalk.
Yet in dealing with this environment, the one strategy common to all was the assumption that it could be dealt with.
1 DANTE
Dante Cubit pushed into the bank, thinking about A. A. Milne. Why didn’t he ever write Now We Are Dead? No foresight, Dante decided. Always think ahead. Under Dante’s full-length coat was an old 10-gauge Winchester, an Uzi machine pistol and a Zero Approach handgun. Against his heart was a thesaurus bound in PVC. He smiled at the entrance guard.
The bank was huge. He’d never been here but knew every inch of the place from rehearsals in a computer simulation - the weirdest part was that it lacked the virtual glow which made everything come on like a precious gem.
At the rear wall he saw the Entropy Kid gnashing painkillers and messing with a euthanasia form. The Kid was almost amphibious with despair, in his orderly way. He’d once studied deterioration in order to have something definite to tell folk when they asked why he was sobbing. Then science discovered that the universe’s shape was a downward spiral and he took it to heart. Five minutes before Dante, he had swanned into the bank like an angel on stabilizers. Inside his jacket was a Kafkacell cannon gun. He gave Dante a covert nod and eyed a slabhead guard who was trying to appear as devoid of emotion as he’d soon become.
Dante approached the customer interface. He’d thought of modulating his voice but since meeting Rosa Control he’d engaged in so much oral sex his accent had changed.
He pulled the machine pistol, talking low. ‘Hands up Grandad, and no sudden moves - it’s a money-or-your-life paradigm.’
‘Eh?’ said the kind-faced gent behind the glass.
‘It’s a stick-up, old man.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Okay, gimme a minute here.’ Dante consulted the thesaurus. ‘Okay, we got heist, hold-up, robbery, raid and, er, “demanding money with menaces”.’
‘Right, got ya. Did you say no sudden moves?’
‘Correct.’
‘So you wouldn’t want me to do - this?’
‘Hey, I ain’t kiddin’ -’
‘Or puff my cheeks out abruptly - like this?’
‘Hey, now don’t be doin’ that -’
‘I guess we’re on the same wavelength, sir,’ the oldster relented cheerfully. ‘But hey, now when you use the quaint expression “your money or your life”, I reckon you mean my money, or my life and my money.’
‘What?’
‘Lemme get this straight, young man - you’re proposing to ventilate me and take the money if I don’t hand it over?’
‘That’s right, yeah.’
‘So you’ll either take the money, or both my life and the money?’
‘Sure, I guess that’s right. Your money, or your life and your money.’
‘But it ain’t my money.’
‘What
