Novahead by Steve Aylett

big of you. ’
    I left him in the lonely lighthouse of his head. It was only later that I felt the respect due him. He had seen the car.
 

4 THE BATTLE OF SOKO INTERSTATE
     
    Morning light went about switching on parts of the room. I went out to find the others gathering at the parking gap. The Fed was acting shifty. Here ’ s where I noticed her nose at last. It was nothing special.
    A halo outlined Heber ’ s moving figure like a victim chalkline. This celestial conduct unnerved one and all, but Edna still smiled at everything. ‘ As the rhyme goes: “ We ’ re all still here, no-one has gone away, waiting. ’” He got into the back of the car, then poked his head out. ‘“ Acting much too well and procrastinating. ”’ Then he added, more quietly, ‘ We eat hours and vomit hours, ’ and dodged his head back in again. The last part was Gamete. The kid got in beside him as Professor Traven emerged from the house, his failures trailing behind him like a dead parachute.
    ‘ I want to give you something, ’ Traven said, then looked vaguely about him. Spotting a snail on the bleached picket fence, he detached this with an audible pop and handed it to me. ‘ Use it wisely. ’
    I made to go but he grasped my arm and leant in confidentially, breathing hard.
    ‘ In studying cortexotics I have detected a straight line from personal differentiation to life power. Meanwhile the military have disengaged the axis of reason, like so many others, but stowed it so far beyond use or memory that they can annex pacifism in support of their chosen carnage. Only the angel of detachment protects me, dolled up as a spaniel. ’
    ‘ Break it down, people, we ’ re outta here! ’
    I had managed to sneak the snail back onto the fence but Traven noticed and gave it to me again. ‘ You forgot this. ’
    ‘ Thanks. I ’ d forget my head if it weren ’ t attached by a system of tendons and ligaments. ’
    I decided I would fling the snail directly upward at the sky and quickly run away before it returned. It was not impossible that it would land before we were out of sight, but I would deal with that when the time arrived.
    Murphy climbed into the passenger seat like she was trying to hide.
    I hurled the snail upward and bolted for the car, slamming in and tearing away in a screech of rubber. Traven was running after us, pointing at the car and mouthing something with startled and sudden urgency. It seemed out of proportion to the snail affair, but I considered that a scientist might have a different set of priorities from the common herd.
    Highway heat distortion under exaggerated skies. The speeding road unravelled toward the eye. We were all pretty quiet during the drive. Edna was thoughtful, the kid was cherubically blank and the Fed was clammed-up and wary. I don ’ t know what I was - pugnacious I suppose.
    The timing for that pugnacity couldn ’ t have been worse. Out of the vapourized horizon a delegation of feral cars was approaching, along with several more nearing from behind and both flanks. I suppose it couldn ’ t be called a pincer movement as there were at least four opposing digits involved. On our left a desert flycar was amazingly close already. A flycar was basically a roll cage with wheels and a V8 converted to run on grain alcohol. It zipped up to us like a bug, scarily untroubled. At the helm was a paid stranger in a watermelon helmet, grinning as he kept dead level and raised a Glock 23 at my face. That should have rung alarm bells. His own face caved and he spun out, all teeth and chrome tubing. My window was gone and the Fed had the slimline Armani raised and smoking. The Armani resembled a slat of ebony shelving with a trigger but was okay for close use. She ’ d fired right past me, very close.
    The oncomers had one-eightied and now shoaled with the rest, parading their exhilarations like returning heroes.
    ‘ Gas bandits? ’
    But included were a handful of military franchises including the