Vurt by Jeff Noon Page A

palace, sharp and painful to the touch.
    On one of the nearby walls someone had scrawled the words, pure is poor, but I was watching Beetle and Mandy rise above all that, walking the stairwells one by one, heading for the fourth floor. They would vanish from sight, and then come back into view, as they reached each landing. It was a rhythmic picture, and I was lulled by it. I saw them for a moment, just before they entered the fourth staircase, then they were gone, and my eyes jerked up to the next landing, waiting for them.
    Waiting. Waiting.
    Waiting for them to reappear.
    Minutes passed with no sign. And then Mandy was running along the fourth corridor, some stranger chasing her.
    I was out of the van in seconds. Glass cutting into my feet, through my trainers, as I raced towards the ground floor entrance. Lift wasn't working, so what's new? I took the stairs three at a time. I could already hear Mandy's cries, even from down there, that low, and I didn't have a weapon, no gun, no knife, just these two weak arms, these legs, pounding the stairs.
    Second landing. Racing upwards. Towards the noise.
    Falling onto the third landing, out of breath, sweat pouring off me. Get up! Get up, dumbfuck! Keep going!
    Next stairs. I could hear the Beetle's voice now, calling out in defiance, and all the light draining from the day, as my eyes filled with sweat and the blood made a fast
    pulse all through my veins. I was running through the feelings, struggling to find courage, and my left ankle was throbbing with a piercing ache. Don't start on me now, old wound.
    There was a fight going on, just beyond the stairwell, and I managed to pull myself back, holding onto fear.
    Crack! My body hitting the liftshaft, pressing itself into the shadows there.
    I glanced around the corner, taking it all in. The Beetle was down. He was down on the floor, his arms clutched around his head. Three men were laying into him with kicks to the head, the chest, and the back. The men had that death warmed-up look so popular with the younger robogoth; all plastic bones shining proudly through tight, pale skins. A woman was overseeing the attack. She had the smoke coming off her, dark swirls of mist rising from her skin, just like Bridget when she was roused. Shadowgoth! Mandy's voice was echoing down the walkway, all the curses of the young and strong. Then she came into my field of vision, being dragged along by another two robogoths. She was digging her nails into their flesh. Did no good; that roboflesh was long dead to feeling. One too many live bootleg Vurts of the Shadow Cure, I guess. The woman had black webs over her eyes and she was chanting a black litany -- Pure is poor! Kill the pure! Mandy screamed in pain as the goths flung her against a wall, and held her tight there. The shadowgoth came up close to Mandy's face. I guess Mandy was cruising for another shadow-fuck because the first thing she did was spit a big glob of sputum straight into the shadowgoth's face.
    The Beetle and Mandy were out there, still fighting, and all I could do was cling to the shadows of a dead liftshaft, holding back the urge to run, to jerk out, except that this wasn't theatre, this wasn't a feather trip. Real life, like Yellow feathers, has no jerk- out facility. This is why the two are so alike.
    Even in shodows, no place to hide.
    A slithering noise at my feet.
    Shadowgoth wasn't reacting to the spit that clung to her cheeks. "I'm getting a tingle," she said. For one second I thought she was referring to herself, to her feelings of power, but then I got the story.
    Shadowgoth had heard me thinking!
    Christ! Girl must have a heavy shadow, to think around corners, into the darkness.
    That slithering at my feet again, and my ankle calling to me, from the years gone by, with a hard knot of pain.
    "I'm getting the tingle of another pure one, my brothers," Shadowgoth said. "Pure is coming!"
    I watched them from my depths, turning towards the darkness where I buried myself.