CHAPTER FOUR
...above 'Crystal Eyes'...
Back in Glastonbury they find a house in which to chill out, a flat above a New Age shop called 'Crystal Eyes'. Come quiet nights, as they lie huddled on the floor wrapped in a mass of blankets and polyduvets, wrapped around each other too, they hear below them the spectral murmur of crystal voices, as piezoelectric matrices grasp tiny electric currents which are amplified by the crystal speakers into a soft, bubbling music. A music of the hexagons in the case of quartz.
Relaxing, they find solace in hours of headphone-wearing sex, mellochips in their earpieces transforming their stretching-relaxing bodies into sensual riffs. This is the true meaning of the groove.
Much later, Kappa invites a few staff from the Faculty of Avalon around, ambient heads and green clubbers, four in all, who bring with them sachets of psychoactive tea and oat biscuits decorated in the baroque style. Nulight is pleased to notice that, although she is Dean, the staff are relaxed in her presence, and this is not an uptight authority situation. It is her experience that has brought her the Deanship, not some artificial hierarchical theory.
Nulight is asked about his uforic past. He says, "I was born and raised in Tibet, at the height of the red hat revolution against the Chinese. All my childhood I was stuck with these weird parents. They never left Tibet. Never did anything normal. Man, I was glued to 'em. They span their prayer wheels, chanted their mantras and saw their gurus, and they gave me lots of imported chemicals to taste. What can I say? It was like that. One day, about when my bush was unfurling, I was out in the fields kinda expanding into the sky, crows and vultures everywhere like there'd been an aerial burial. This huge blue bowl came outa the sky at me, like a lens disconnecting itself from the heavens, and it shimmered down at me and the world seemed to fold up to meet it. I was pushed to run away, but it was like paddling against a current. Then these bitty little saucers came at me from the centre of the clouds, lots of them, or maybe they were spherical... I can't remember exactly because of the fantastically heavy virtualsmooth riff that was pounding out of the bass bins at the bottom of each craft, which was weird 'cos virtualsmooth had only just hit Europe. Man, I was just drawn into the music, which was very intense and blocked off some of my sight. Like the notes were rippling in front of everything, yeah? So obviously I think there's gonna be an abduction, and tiny... well, my name's not important... tiny me was gonna be the victim. Screaming, I ran away, but some of the craft floated in front of me, and one opened itself out like a lotus, and there's this creature sitting there. Umbilical cord leading from lotus to saucer. The creature... well, alien, had two eyes but four ears. Pale blue skin. I just freaked. It's difficult to remember because the music was making my vision blur—and the smell, amazingly strong incense, like it had been crushed and compressed for decades then released into the air. Like, these crafts' exhaust fumes were pure incense. So the alien says to me, somthing like, we are watching you. Don't forget us. No way can I remember what else it said. I was a kid, you gotta remember that. So... well, that's almost everything. The craft folds into itself like origami, and they all drift into the sky and everything's whole again. And that is what happened to me in Tibet."
After this story, one of the guests puts on some faze music from '05, all indie guitar trance, and it is slightly bizarre nostalgia time since none of them were alive in that year. Then Kappa begins to consider her ideas for attracting the aliens, gaining some useful tips from her friends. Much later, when the scattered effluvia of teabags, wine glasses and back-issues of Festival Eye are signalling that the party is at an end, and the four guests have departed, Nulight and Kappa return to their physical obsession, and much more music is created.
At dawn, watching dust skitter around the town centre obelisk from their little, diamond-paned window, they wonder how they will achieve their goal.
"We need two things," Kappa says. "A good guitarist and a good guitar."
"It'd need to be specially made," Nulight says.
Kappa nods. She searches for lutinists on the internet, finding a likely man in Luton. Three e-mails and a webchat later they have arranged a meet.
"And the guitarist?" Nulight asks.
Kappa has already considered this. "Sperm out of Hanging Gardens Of Fungus would do it. He's got the imagination... he doesn't so much play the guitar as fly with it."
"Sperm? He's a nutter. Only fit for talking to mushrooms and six string foolery."
"You've never actually met him, have you?"
Nulight scrunches up his shoulders and shuts his eyes. "We've vidded over the net. He didn't turn up when the band signed to Voiceoftibet."
"Exactly. I knew Sperm when he was Roger de Waverley and he was a student at the Faculty."
"Roger de Waverley's his real name?"
"No. That was what he changed it to from Simon Bailey."
"Man, too confusing..."
...meet lophophoria...
To reach the grey urban splat that is Luton they have to pass through Buckinghamshire, and to make that tricksy trip they need a guide. The obvious candidate is Richard Allen. They meet this dude, an old man with a walking stick in one hand, in the town of Gerrards Cross.
Gerrards Cross. Population: bankers, stockbrokers, the idle rich.
"Hey," Nulight remarks, glancing at this road sign, "you live here?"
Richard Allen shakes his head. "I'm from Chalfont St Peter," he grunts, "just down the road. Population, the salt of the earth."
Nulight nods once, sensing a local rivalry. "Uh-huh."
They move on. Arriving in Chalfont St Peters, Richard shows them his cross-country vehicle, which sits quiescent like a giant insect. "The M25 is dead and gone," he explains, "so I'll drive you up to Bedfordshire in this. I'm afraid you'll be on your own in Luton. If you get out alive, I'd recommend you take the train from St Albans—I'll drive you there if you like."
"Okay," Nulight says. "You're the man around here."
Kappa opens the front passenger door of the vehicle, but Richard issues a warning. "Mind my friend in the front seat. You two sit in the back."
Nulight looks. Nobody there.
"He's invisible," Richard explains.
Nulight and Kappa climb into the back of the car while Richard gets in on the driver's side. He glances left, nods once at an invisible presence and says, "You ready?"
Silence.
Richard presses the alky engine switch. "Off we go then," he says.
The cross-country vehicle is more of a chrome spider than a car—it's a Lycosidae 250 GLS. It has no wheels; no point, given the state of so many roads in the south-east of England. The body of the car rises as the eight metal-and-plastic legs are activated, and then it is a lolloping journey along lanes and across fields, guided by Richard and...
"You haven't introduced us to your friend," Kappa observes.
"Sorry," Richard apologises. He flutters a hand at the passenger seat and says, "This is my friend Lophophoria Williams. Lophophoria, this is Kappa Smythe, Dean of the Faculty of Avalon, and Nulight, the guy behind Voiceoftibet Records—a great label."
"Hey, that's cool coming from the man behind Delerium," Nulight observes.
Richard burbles on. "I've programmed alot of the roads and land around here into the car computer, but further north it could get dangerous. You never know what you might meet these days. That's why I prefer to travel with Lophophoria."
"I understand," Nulight says. "I'm familiar with the Williams family."
For twenty miles or so there are no problems, as the 250 GLS rocks and rolls over the landscape, but as they approach Hemel Hempstead something baaaaaaaaad appears from the debris surrounding the town.
"This is what I was worried about," Richard remarks, winding up his window and turning off the headlamps.
Nulight fidgets in his seat. All he can see is tiny forms as yet too distant to worry about. Kappa grabs his hand, and asks Richard, "What is it?"
"Octobusses, dozens of them. Tarquin makes them down at the seaweed farm."
"Octopi," Kappa corrects. "Are they bad?"
In reply Richard puts the vehicle in neutral and allows it to stumble to a halt. He turns to Lophophoria and says, "We're going to need all your skills here, my friend."
Silence.
Richard shudders. "Really? Well, if we have to, we have to." He turns to Nulight and adds, "Everybody out."
Nulight is getting scared, the more so because this situation is deteriorating into surreality, an art movement of which he is no fan. "Who's this Tarquin dude?"
"A rogue bio-engineer. Octobusses are half mollusc, half multi-person vehicle."
Nulight shrugs, trying to deaden his paranoia. "Hey, they don't sound so bad. Can't we just ask for a ticket?"
Suddenly Richard is angry. "Are you joking? This is just the foot patrol. If we don't stop their advance, or escape, Tarquin will release the seaguns."
"Why can't we just drive off?" Kappa asks.
"They'd catch us. No... we'll have to hold out here and rely on Lophophoria."
Nulight looks around. They are alone in the middle of a damp field, Hemel Hempstead on the horizon, a wood behind them, the 250 GLS on the ground with its legs curled around its body. Now he feels vulnerable, frightened. What, is Richard saying they have to rely on themselves, just the three of them?
"Hey, like, you have weapons?" he asks Richard.
"Don't worry, Lophophoria will help us," Richard replies. He is kneeling behind the body of the 8x8, like some redcoat soldier on a bluff awaiting the arrival of tribal warriors.
Nulight can detect no fourth person, but then he sees the octobusses and his attention is drawn to the edge of the field. They are many and they move with a dreadful sound, a squelching, sucking noise that is underpinned by the screeching of driveshafts and the crashing of gears. The slimy grey bodies of octopi have been grafted on to red London buses; huge octopi and mini buses, the whole being as large as a horse. They smash their way through the hedges. Their tentacles quest out, and Nulight is filled with an urge to retch as he watches them squirm. There are indeed dozens of these beasts. The three of them are trapped and they're going to be strangled.
"Richard, fucking do something!" Nulight cries as he too conceals himself behind the 8x8.
"Keep calm," Richard counsels. "If we broadcast panic, Lophophoria will pick up on it and his defence will suffer. Our duty is to remain calm."
Nulight and Kappa hug one another. The octobusses are close now, thirty of them at least, hungry for prey, clashing and squelching, promising an appalling death. Their huge tyres have no difficulty gripping the muddy ground. They groan and screech as they approach. Their stench is of seafood—fishy, overpowering—and of burning oil which chokes them.
Nulight's sight is failing. Something's happening. Fading sunlight.
He clings to Kappa. Richard is muttering to himself and clacking his walking stick against the body of the 250 GLS.
The day is becoming dusk dark. A black mist is falling out of nowhere to lay a nocturnal blanket across the field. The octobusses are slowing, in second gear now, some in first, some even stalling. It is like ink seeping out of the pores between air molecules. This ink moves like fog blown from all sides, ever darkening, until all Nulight can see is the macabre and twisted forms of the octobusses, their stalled engines useless, their extended tentacles like the spiky hair of the electrocuted, their eyes open, circular, but staring lifeless at nothing.
Silence falls across the field. The air smells of damp earth and inkwells.
"Now we creep away," says Richard.
They climb into the vehicle and Richard starts the engine. The octobusses do not stir. Across the tenebrous field the vehicle moves, leaving the twilight scene, emerging into the sun and heading north, where Richard picks up the A4146 for Leighton Buzzard. It is a trail of pits and debris, but it is faster than wooded farmland.
...more nutters...
At Barton they leave Richard inside his vehicle, then as directed enter Luton through the smashed and smoking suburbs to the north of the town centre, alongside the remains of the M1. Lutinist David Lefebvre lives in a ghetto somewhere central, apparently tied by love of his skinhead wife, who will not move out. There can't be any other reason for him living in Luton.
The town looks as though it has fallen from a cloud. The roads are scattered with bricks, cement dust and flaking leaves whirlwinded by mini-weathers, and there is glass everywhere. The few remaining plastic trees have been pulled down and daubed with graffiti. Creeping on into the afternoon haze, they hear a fight, which they avoid: it is a pitched battle between two of the town's baseball teams. More central now, they tip-toe through a lane of Irish pubs, some so rough they lack roofs, doors, even signs, consisting of just four walls and McCaffrey's on tap. It is horrifyingly quiet. Doors swing open, windows swing shut. Cats and dogs and coypus are on the prowl. Muto-frogs emerge from the mud of the River Lea. A few people survive here, but they scurry by on their own business. Urban hell liveable by socially bludgeoned people. Sensitive Kappa is upset, but Nulight has seen worse as he once went to a reefer party in Staines.
At length they discover Midland Road, near the train station. Armed guards patrol inside the railway haven's razorwire fences. Lefebvre's house is up High Town Road.
His place is a rambling assortment of rooms. He lives with his extended family, his wife a local doctor and libertarian politician. He—goofy looking blonde guy with buck teeth and big hands—seems to be somewhat under her wing, but he flowers when he shows them his studios and the many guitars, or gee-tars as he pronounces the word, that he has made. Already he has completed the instrument required by Nulight and Kappa, receiving his instructions as soft packages, over the net. It is a maple top electric twelve-string with a hyper-solid nut. This nut is essential, as the tuning must not change from Einstein3's frequencies when Sperm strums. From a code-locked address on the Californian coast they retrieve the exact frequencies of the auton analysis, and then David Lefebvre tunes the guitar, using a half-metre spanner so the precise microtones can be set. The most unusual feature of the guitar is a digital thermometer. It has been pointed out that the tuning will change with temperature. When Sperm plays, the readout must be the same as it is now.
"Weather'll beat us, you wait," Nulight mutters to Kappa.
"Trust the Earth," Kappa cosmically replies.
"Has the guitar got a case?" asks Nulight.
"Of course," Lefebvre replies.
And what a case. It is air cushioned, soft and furry inside, an aluminium skeleton the middle of the sandwich; airbags outside. The whole looks like a porpoise.
So all that is left to do is pay up. Nulight asks what the final damage is.
"Twenty six thou," comes the reply.
Nulight transfers thirteen thousand digitally; he has already coughed up the other half. Then they leave. Evening has come, so the walk back is more scary, as there are no town lights, just a few sodium lamps set up by local co-operatives. Cars thrum on distant B-roads and they hear the honk-honk of a passing train. Outside the town they pull off the branches, leaves and camouflage plastic that covers Richard's car, which is driven to the St Albans RailTerminus. Then they are safe on the 19:05 to Bath, waving goodbye to Richard, hoping to be back above the crystal shop at the latest by midnight.
There is a surreal discussion concerning where Sperm should call down the aliens. Kappa says, "I reckon somewhere around Avebury, maybe inside the smallest circle, or maybe at the top of Silbury Hill."
Nulight considers. The amp wattage will be huge, but they intend doing a simultaneous radio and internet broadcast. Certainly no villager can be near. He says, "Stonehenge for preference, it's way out in the open. Man, now the Army have been kicked out we'll have the place to ourselves. All the tourists will've long gone."
Kappa agrees after some persuasion, though she points out that they may attract a human audience of travellers as well as aliens. Nulight clicks open his mobile and tags in a security unlocker. Then he dials an Exeter number. "Yo, Sperm, that you? Nulight. Got a bit of a weird one for you..."
...the 'Henge gig...
They time the calling event so that the guitar will be at the correct temperature during the hours of dark. Luckily southern England comes under a hot greenhouser, and two hours before dawn on August 20 the conditions are perfect.
Nulight and Kappa stand hand in hand outside the trilithon ring, a regular Glasto couple, he in rainbow kecks and a GUILFIN unbleached cotton T, she in tie-dye dungarees and lace-up DMs. Nearby stand the roadies, on this occasion the rest of Hanging Gardens Of Fungus who have declared they will not allow Sperm to perform the solo gig unless they are present. Calmer is the engineer, Rich is in charge of vid and the internet links, while Djo is recording the whole thing direct to CD.
Sperm stands alone inside the megalith circle, a three metre stack of Marshalls behind him, alongside one multiwave radio transceiver and one satellite dish pointing to the heavens. The generator is a Cornish Superslick windmill doing its nut in the south-westerly. Sperm is naked. He has a phobia about hair. Not a single one on his body. His skin is oiled and he looks ready to rock. The guitar is strapped on, a fake leather belt studded with gold pyramids over his right shoulder.
Nulight is trembling, as this is a cosmic moment. Everybody here understands that they could be signing their death warrants, since they are asking to be abducted.
It is time.
The five thousand year old monument vibrates to Sperm's first tentative strums on the auton tuned guitar, an attack of off-key harmonics and low frequency distortion. This is the first time the auton key has consciously been played by a human being. Logged on netfreaks are already having orgasms as the now multiplying notes trigger their crudely wired limbic systems. Sperm is really going for it. Having found some chords he is hunched over his instrument, wringing the neck for all it is worth and generating a flux of Hillagesque arpeggios.
Nulight looks into the sky. Soon their elaborate screening system will collapse and local authorities will notice them. He glances back at the two MegaVans, their rear ramps down, waiting to convey them and their gear down the A303. Rich is bobbing his head as a rhythm becomes apparent, manipulating the internet links so there is enough bandwidth for full transmission. The vidcams move on little wheels as the computers controlling their shots make changes. Sperm looks good, glistening in the moonlight.
Again Nulight looks up at the sky. Have the aliens received their radio transmissions? Come down to us! Buzz us! He takes a mindpill so he will be able to see more clearly, as through his mind run riffs from that classic first Shpongle album; the gorgeous acid-squelch of Vapour Rumours.
There is a gust of wind at his back, and his hair flutters, as if something whizzed by him. He is not sure if it was just a gust or something flying. He saw nothing.
Kappa is gripping his hand, then she shouts, "Look!" as she points upward.
"What, what?" Nulight asks.
Something dark shoots toward him, pinpoint lamps of red to either side of a compact grey object. Something, now gone...
He spins around, receives the briefest impression of a dark blue flower with a tall creature on top.
They are here!
Now the whole area is galvanised into action. Sperm, though he is staring at his fretboard, is aware that something is happening since he is manically spurting hammered-on trills and spinning arpeggios from the guitar. Kappa is running. Rich is running. Djo has left the mixer and has primed her autofocus digi-cam. There is a series of flashes as she takes pictures.
But of what? Nulight is panting by the Heel Stone, waiting for something. Waiting.
From between two upright stones another craft comes, then another from his left, then two from his right, and suddenly Stonehenge is alive with craft that whizz, but silently, as if buzzing them with non-sound. It is like an invasion of lotus flowers, for the craft smell of blossom and they have leaves at their edges that point upwards. On top of each rides a creature, too dark to see clearly or masked by alien technology, yet staring down with glittering eyes.
And it is them: seen before.
He staggers away, sure he is about to be abducted.
"Ohmybuddah, I'm hallucinating, I'm hallucinating," he gasps. "Leave us alone!" He manages to duck as a flower craft comes close, hovers above him for a second, drops perfume, then shoots away at the speed of sound: and there is a crack, a sonic boom. There are ten, twenty of the craft now, each piloted by an alien. They can travel at immense speed but they can stop at will, as if they have anti-inertia.
But they are difficult to spot. They only have small lamps. You feel their rumour first. They can appear out of thin air, or so it seems.
Sperm's calling music has now ceased, and he is running out of the henge to the vidcams, three of which have been knocked over. Nulight makes to join him, but then Sperm, touching one of the devices, screams and reels backwards, clasping then shaking his hands. He has been burned. The vidcams are smoking, and then one bursts open with a shower of sparks.
The mixer explodes. It is all going crazy.
No sign of the lotus flowers, now.
But, yeah, these were blue aliens with sparkling eyes—and four prominent ears. This is proof beyond doubt that the aliens exist. More than that, they have come down to the surface of the Earth before—they have been planning contact for ages.
Rich—white-faced, eyes staring—rushes up to Nulight and shouts, "The pigs! They're on their way!"
"What?"
"Our e-spy caught their net trail. It's the Plains Police plc. They'll be here in minutes."
Kappa shouts, "Chuck everything into the vans."
The aliens have gone. Could they have tipped off the pigs?
"Retreat!" Nulight yells at the top of his voice.
At least they have planned for this moment. In goes the remains of the mixer, in go the smoking vidcams, now only warm, in goes all the radio gear and the satellite dish. Sperm puts the precious guitar into its case and straps it into the other van. They have to leave the Marshall stack.
Nulight does a headcount. He, Kappa and Rich go into one van while the two band members take the other, with Calmer at the wheel. In his van Nulight leaves Rich to drive. The polydiesel engines wheeze, then scream as they race away from Stonehenge, sending mud and grass flying, and then they are bouncing across the tourist car park and screeching onto the road, jolting Nulight enough for him to crack his head on the unpadded roof. He knows that if the pigs catch them everything is over.
"Go, go, go!" he yells at Rich.
"I am going," Rich yells back.
Twin lights appear atop the hill behind them. Nulight and Kappa see them. Both swear. But they have rehearsed this moment too, though they never imagined it would happen. Nulight straps himself into the roofmesh, waits until Kappa has done the same, then flings open the back door. Warm alky air rushes in at him. The pig cars are closing. Luckily the road is narrow and the verges have been built up over time. Nulight grabs a pack of expando wadding, positions the zip away from him, then pulls the cord. A glittering bundle of fibreglass blades explode out, sticking to the road like glue then expanding into a barrier that cannot be passed. The pig cars screech to a halt, but one does not make it and crashes into the barrier, its roof opened like a tin can by the hideous blades.
Rich accelerates so that their van draws up to the one driven by Calmer. Through the window glass Nulight signals what to do next. They look for a suitable spot. After five minutes they come to a hedgebound layby, and there they stop. Nulight jumps out and looks into the sky.
Chopper!
They have minutes only. He and Kappa pull out their roll of thermoneutral clingfilm; the others are doing the same. This pig chopper will be scanning the ground with thermal imaging equipment. They have to get cool, they have to get to the same temperature as the ground. Soon the MegaVans are covered with clingfilm and they all roll underneath. A pig car screams past. And another. Choking from residual fumes, aware that this will be their stiffest test, they wait. Nulight and Kappa are hugging one another. Nulight says, "Man, if we're caught now the aliens will just stroll on in. Earth'll be as good as lost."
"Don't," Kappa chides.
"But—"
"Don't!" She puts her hand over his mouth. "I don't want to hear it."
The chopper is nearing, following the road. When it is overhead Nulight closes his eyes and, though he does not follow the religion, prays to all the Bön deities he can remember from his childhood.
The thrumming becomes quieter. The chopper has missed them.
After another minute they get out and stand up, dusting off their clothes. Nulight flicks a V to the departing pigs. But now it is time to reverse their direction. Using electronic maps they plan a route along C roads and lanes back east, hoping this will confuse the chase. But dawn is very near. They will have to hurry. More than one chopper will be searching once the sun is up.
Nulight hopes the Plains Police plc have messed up this year's budget. After all, they have their shareholders to think about.
"Almost the Second Battle of the Beanfield," he mutters. "C'mon, time to go."
Sitting uncomfortably with Kappa in the back of the van, bouncing when the vehicle bounces, Nulight begins to wonder what will become of them. Shock has turned to fear and he feels cold and unhappy. Kappa is holding him, but that is not much help.
After some moments of misery he becomes calm again. "I'll tell you what we're gonna do," he says. "We're gonna blow up that Berlin club."
Kappa grips one of his hands. "But the risk?"
"We've got the money," Nulight counters. "Obviously auton is the crux of the matter. The aliens can't stand it if we play around with it. If we blow up that club, we'll set them back twenty years."
"Maybe they'd come down, guns blazing."
"Maybe, maybe not. Something tells me they're more subtle than that. They want secret control, manipulation, they wanna do it on the quiet—they enjoy buzzing a few people, but I don't think they wanna be exposed to the world. And guns ain't their style, I know that 'cos of what I saw in Tibet. They wanna drop their net over the world in one swoop."
Kappa hesitates, then murmurs, "When you say blow up the club...?"
"I mean blow up the computers."
Kappa nods. "Then the Gesang Der Junglinge has to go. Of course, it can't be a job for me. I'm still Dean. I need that position."
"Agreed," Nulight says. "This is a job for me and a hit squad. But I think I know a man who can provide the kind of squad I need."
"Who?"
"A certain canine friend of mine."
...MSSG SECURE? CODE...
*to N******
*from *********
Nulight tells the computer, "Please decode."
*Sure.
"Now give us the message."
*Re: the hack of major astro corps and sky watchers.
*All the big observatories have nothing, not even stuff buried under ordinary data. I know the feel of people hiding stuff, and there's nothing there except a crowd of ufo nuts, anti-skeptic groups, and ongoing Fortrean Times type people.
*The global corp hack turned up a few people doing side projects, but no major results. I could have missed something, but I doubt it. Global government hack produced nothing except the usual array of mathematically coded files, and even I can't undo their laces unless I'm given a few months.
*So there you are. 99% probable that nothing BIG has been spotted—except by us, of course.
*Remember you're an initiate. See you soon. Continue the good work.