Rayguns Over Texas Page 7

  She reassured him with her grasp. He was grateful for this small, deliberate kindness. When he first came to the island, he had so much wanted to find some kind of purpose. He felt certain he would come across a sign of Leadbelly or maybe one of the other Texas bluesmen here. But, leaving not so much as a playbill behind, they had gone north and east. They had no interest in time. From the brochures, quantum physics and m-theory seemed to fit well with the Moorish Gothic of the Bishops Palace. As a result, he had bought the great pile with its pointed roofs, minarets, and Persianate beaux-arts. There had even been a touch of early Tiffany art nouveaux. It once provided the most accurate understanding of the style, why so many modernists rejected it, confusing complexity for fussy pre-modernity. Sometimes he hated to see the look of disappointment disturb the firmness of some poor mod’s features. Twenty years earlier, all that had mattered was that you had a pocket full of purple hearts and a willingness to stay up all night at the Flamingo.

  “Is there something wrong with the music?” She looked out at the driving rain. “Why isn’t working any more?”

  “Rock and roll died the day Hair opened in New York,” he murmured, glancing around to see if he was overheard. Reactionary debased versions of Viennese Light classical with extra bass. Queen sang the dirge at the funeral of American black music. Then country wasn’t country any more. Looking up from his Big Triple, Shaky Mo Collier pushed at greasy hair with greasier fingers and gave Jerry a thumb’s up. His attention wandered.

  Catherine glared in his direction. Beside him, Miss Brunner watched Mo vaguely checking the action of his slick little Colt. “She was getting ready to settle down. I felt sorry for her.” He kissed the air and said something under his breath. He looked around for his grits.

  “Perfect.” Miss Brunner prepared herself for prayer. By increasing the population so successfully, religion again showed its relevance to modern times.

  This had turned into fun. A neat little running backwards race. He panted. “Religion has done a great job keeping pace with the times. Or was it always an arm of consumerism?”

  Mo looked up from his Colt. “Is that like water over there? What’s it? Tidal wave?”

  “Oh, bugger!” Jerry had left his guitars in his hotel.

  1985: The Dream Police

  Portobello Road was not the road it had been. It led north into the shabby limbo of the Harrow Road and Kilburn, where everything became grey and indistinct. To the south, the colours grew brighter and eventually less garish, the closer you got to Notting Hill tube station.

  Didi Dee, doctor to the stars, stood at the intersection of Blenheim Crescent and the market, looking up and down in the hope she would see the original Body Shop or Rough Trade records. She was disgusted by her own nostalgia for a past her customers had wiped out. She had very little choice, as she saw it, of maintaining so much sentimental romanticism balanced by so much actuality. “Too many pictures,” she murmured. “Too many voices. Too many voices.”

  The pleasure of the suburbs was that they presented a simplified narrative. The city had far too many narratives.

  She repeated this complaint, gathering the white cotton dress around her like a disappointed bride.

  “What could I have done about it?” Jerry was surly. After all, he had grown up on this very street. “Some of us enjoy complexity. Some of us can’t live without it. It’s meat and drink to me.”

  “Well, it drives me crazy.”

  “This was never designed for upper class, black professionals. You can’t blame me for that.”

  “I just said it drives me crazy, that’s all. Is this a good place to find a taxi?”

  Until the music studios, like Island, started establishing themselves in the area, Jerry couldn’t remember seeing a taxi anywhere in the neighbourhood. Even the whores had to get out at Westbourne Road and walk.

  “Do you feel your life has been wasted?” she asked.

  Jerry snorted.

  June 1959: The Pretenders, Live in London

  The riffs were familiar now.

  “Not dead yet?” His father’s tone was one of amusement, mixed with what Jerry could only take for resentment. Old Professor Cornelius was baffled by, what he called, the chaotic mathematics of the new popular music. For him, Mozart remained the great unifier.

  Jerry lowered the volume and sat down in the single pew provided for petitioners.

  “Is this the first time you’ve visited me here?” His father reached for a box at his side and picked out a long, brown Sherman’s. “You were all supposed to convene at my deathbed.”

  “It would have helped to have had an address.” Jerry had rather liked his father in life, but in death, he had become unstable and petty. Not to mention, in his choice of vestments, vulgar.

  “I’d imagine it’s a pretty well known location.”

  “Well, it didn’t occur to me. Didn’t they throw you out?”

  “They wanted to.” The old man drew for several seconds on his Sherman’s. “They wanted to. I didn’t leave you very much. I’m sorry about it, of course.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Jerry took a swift glance at the plump woman who entered through the curtain. Her long, bright white hair framed her ancient face so that in that light, it had the appearance of redeemed youth. She gave him the creeps.

  “You still don’t have to call me mother,” she said firmly.

  Jerry held his breath.

  “You can’t imagine how disappointed I am in this.” Professor Cornelius made a weak gesture. “You know.”

  Jerry pushed his hair back from his forehead. Then he grinned, holstering the needle gun, a present for his 19th birthday. “Grow up, you foolish old bastard. I’m not killing anyone for you. Not today.”

  He turned to point at the old woman. “And I don’t care how much you care. Stay in your crypt.”

  She was still trying to smile when he left. Sometimes she wished she’d never heard of Mars.

  1975: Rolling in the Ruins

  “Pulp leads innovation, not only in language and subject, but in social vision, too. The first multi-racial democracy I ever saw was in Dan Dare, in THE EAGLE.” Professor Hira spread bland hands, but made his point no less obscure. “You don’t remember the U.N. cavalry force landing on Venus in gliders, do you? That would have been about 1953.”

  “If it has wheels, it can roll backward, as well as forward.” Bishop Beesley used his most reassuring tone. “We have little to fear over the course of the centuries, Mr. Cornelius.”

  “You thought history only went one way, didn’t you?” Miss Brunner’s normally sharp tones were mellowed by a mild triumphalism. “Your way. Well, you knew all about radiant time, dark matter, string theory, all the latest crackpot stuff, didn’t you? Refraction, distraction, attraction, reflection, repulsion. Always desire with you, wasn’t it? The weaving, and the wearing. The weaving in, and the weaving out. Back and forth, those shuttles of the Norns, Mr. Cornelius. We knew that, didn’t we? Nothing stops. That’s not part of God’s grand design, old chum.”

  “I fear the Man Upstairs has different plans for us,” Bishop Beesley winked heavenward.

  “What?” Mo Collier looked up from his Remington. “The Lodger, was he? Even I’ve seen that.”

  “Let’s keep it clean, shall we?” Miss Brunner reached behind her neck, obsessively tightening her bun. Her lips were pursed, seemingly drawn back by the same force. She brought a faint smell of disinfectant, which reminded Jerry how ill he had been. Visions of Mary and memories of Pine. He was at the point of throwing up.

  Outside Island Studios, he found Major Nye smoking a Sullivan’s. Jerry ran down a silent Basing Street. The sound of his vomiting echoed around the abandoned houses. Ladbroke Grove had gone from middle-class suburb to shabby genteel to slum, and back to middle class enclave. Once, Notting Hill had
meant race riots and whores. Now, it meant TV presenters and politicians, making Bishop Beesley’s point. Religions rose and fell on economic tides.

  “The bees have all deserted their hives.” Didi Dee lowered herself to the opposite curb and put on her high heels. Without them, she had to be under four feet. Jerry looked carefully at the dark thigh she showed him. Was this some sort of mating ritual? Since he felt no response in his penis, he had to assume he was wrong or it wasn’t working. Would they send someone to marry him? They’d have to wake him first. Dream or delusion? Did it ever really matter?

  They looked up at a sound from Portobello Road. Of late, the phantom Fifteen bus had changed its route. Where was it carrying the damned these days? Once, it had turned at Elgin Crescent, frequently clipping his old Nash and leaving a smear of faintly glowing red paint behind. His old mum’s disembodied voice sounded from the phantom stop. “Full up? How can you be full up at five o’clock, on a Friday, when you don’t even fuckin’ exist?”

  With some pleasure, Jerry remembered his mum’s skepticism when confronted by the supernatural. Were they all dead at last? He had been dreaming of oblivion again. Something which could only be enjoyed while not experienced.

  “Good old Heidegger.” Miss Brunner left the Mangrove Cafe and headed up the street towards what, in those shoes, could only be Holland Park.

  “I think we’re losing her.” Major Nye enjoyed another drag on his gasper. “She’s breaking up.” He frowned, dropping the butt onto a cracking flagstone. “Or is it me?”

  2020: Late Morning Lullaby

  The great hydraulic towers of Storyville rose in the pink gold morning, sweet water streaming from their glorious steel curves and planes. The wheel chairs were lined in a precise row along the North Placomine Causeway, so their occupants could enjoy and applaud this daily ritual. This was only the fifth time the towers had risen. Soon, the whole city would be surrounded and protected.

  “From our ruins, came all this promise.” Monsieur Pardon bent to straighten Jerry’s plaid over his healing legs. “We have dodged the missile again, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Cornelius?”

  In the next chair, Miss Brunner yawned ostentatiously. “My dear bishop! My dear bishop!”

  Shaky Mo frowned. He had his feet tangled in the chair’s rests. “Is it me or has the quality of Colombian gone off since Valparaiso?” He had Skyped Karen von Krupp, the New Age dentist, who waved back at him from her favourite Starbucks table, looking out at the streets of Laredo.

  “I think you’ll find it’s Java, these days,” she said.

  2013: Pierrot on the Moon

  “Multitudes of universes bring us closer to an understanding of God’s complexity.”

  Catherine patted her poor brother’s hand. How bad could things have been, for them to go this far?

  “’Will you not do me the courtesy to let me die alone?’ That was what he said to me. As I left, I thought I saw him smile. ‘I have lived for this,’ he said. No more narratives! No more! I would never know now, if all the stories were true. How can you tell, Cathy?”

  “All stories are true, Jerry. Mum told us that…”

  “More stories? More pain? Who knew? Why would they be so desperate for escape? They don’t want narratives. They want lies. Lullabies. Fantasies. Fucking fantasies.”

  “This isn’t the Balkans, my love. The tears are already cold.”

  “Did you ever read Wheldrake’s The Willing Boy?”

  “No,” she said, “but I can play it.” She slipped a warm hand into his comfort zone.

  1981: Hit Me

  “I did my best to calm him down.” Didi Dee eased off her scarlet heels. They had rubbed a hole in her left stocking. She had been reluctant to visit Anuradhapura at this time in the evening. The shadows were making it all too grotesque. “Beast. I don’t think he was ever human and certainly not an archangel.” Of late, she had made a number of vague references to Milton.

  Jerry mourned. Was the age of the great puritan to come again? He loathed what would follow. Was the 18th century really making a come back? The reactionaries now called themselves conservatives. The conservatives were liberals, and the liberals were what? Libertarians? What did that make easier? Not another sodding revolution, surely?

  Professor Hira, sweating, came to sit down on his favourite fallen god. He got nostalgic on these occasions. “I don’t see how we’ve got all the way from Big Bang to M-theory without wondering, for a moment, if all our standard theories are delusional. The 20th century consisted of a series of escapist notions, transformed into gloriously impressive math. The fact is all the evidence has shown that--”

  Significantly, Mo Collier checked and rechecked the action of his massive Banning. “Bloody hell! With that triple clip, you can hardly lift the bugger!”

  “To be honest, it’s doing my head in.” Jerry looked for friendlier skies. He wanted the familiar sights of his childhood, but most of them were gone, replaced by chains and concessions. “I was thinking of getting a haircut.”

  Mo hadn’t really been listening. “Sorry I’m late. Was there another storm? I had to work an extra dodgem shift at the Scrubs fair.” He shivered and held up his hand to see if it was raining. “What’s new?”

  “Don’t ask me.” Jerry giggled into the sodden wind. “I just got up.”

  Novel Properties of Certain Complex Alkaloids

  Lawrence Person

  For centuries, man has searched for the God of All Psychedelics.

  In this hard science exploration, Lawrence Person ponders what happens

  after the ultimate pharmacological experience.

  It was a thing of terrible beauty.

  “What do you think?” asked Doug.

  Timothy Shackleford shook his head. “Complex” was all he had to say. He didn’t know what to think.

  The object of adoration was the molecule slowly rotating on the screen of his laptop, a small miracle featuring a central spindle and multiple branching arms, the latest and greatest synthetic psychoactive, thrown up by the kitchen sink wizards of the chemical underground. Tim was impressed despite himself, because most emanations of that underground were utter crap, beneath his contempt.

  There were people out there taking random walks through the alkaloids and hoping that whatever they brewed up in their shitty home labs wouldn’t kill them. They would get a recipe off the Internet, or a copy of PhIKAL, or (God help them) The Anarchist’s Cookbook and thought they had freaking clue. The vast majority didn’t and were a danger to themselves and others, assuming their poorly ventilated labs and makeshift equipment didn’t kill them first. There were twenty brain-dead cretins trying to cook meth for every one that had even a tiny inkling of skill or ability, and underground chemists who could do even slightly competent reductions for psychoactives were an order of magnitude rarer.

  Tim had two overriding passions: information theory and recreational . Naturally, he went into computational chemistry. It was easy enough to do information theory on his home computer, but where was he going to get access to an integrated gas chromatography/mass spectrometer on a regular basis?

  Which is how he ended up teaching and researching at the University of Texas chemistry department. Benefits included access to high quality college lab equipment, perfect establishment camouflage, and a steady income to fund his experiments. The latter allowed him to avoid the most common downfall of underground chemists: getting busted for making stupid, boring crap like meth to pay the bills.

  Tim hated meth. In addition to the central nervous system stimulation, it fooled you into thinkingit made you smarter while doing the opposite. He took careful, clinical notes of his psychonautic excursions and was able to track the obvious degeneration in his thinking on meth. Drugs that make you dumber? No thanks! Plus, the entire drug warrior apparatus had watches on dozens of meth precursors. T
oo much heat, not enough profit, and best left to the Mexican cartels and their industrial-scale production.

  Besides, once you figured out the chemistry and process controls, there was nothing interesting about cooking meth. It was a solved problem. No challenges.

  But phenethylamines and tryptamines offered vast topologies of chemical search spaces, and lay close enough to his regular, organic research chemistry topics so as not to rouse suspicion, as long as he was careful. And he was careful. He did all his psychoactive molecular modeling inside a virtual machine on his own laptop, did all his reading of the underground literature from a coffee house Wi-Fi, and encrypted all his notes.

  Which is why Doug, a fellow psychonaut from his college days, was his only conduit into the underground. Not only was Doug equally careful, he had an even better cover. The company he worked for did drug testing for police departments around the state.

  Tim was cautiously optimistic whenever Doug texted him for a meeting in a private little room of a funky coffee shop near campus, but most of the time he was disappointed. The most interesting thing he’d ferreted out heretofore was a novel reduction of hydrochloride salt in creating 2C-B.

  The beast on his screen was in a whole different league.

  It was a beautiful molecule. It was also completely insane. It shared characteristics with multiple alkaloid groups and each arm end seemed to act as an agonist for the 5-HT1A, 5-HT2A, and 5-HT6A receptors.

  Even more amazing, unless he was mistaken, the structure of the fourth arm end suggested it acted as an agonist for a previously unmapped receptor. That was off the charts.

  “Well?” asked Doug.

  Doug was a competent chemist in his own right, but he knew Tim was out of his league. And until he had seen the molecule, Tim would have said he was out of anyone’s league, now that Shulgin was retired.