Fifth Episode - Meet The Jackpot Twins

There's a psychological condition called Delusional Parasitosis where the sufferer believes himself to be infested with insects. Repeated scrubbing with abrasive cleaning agents turns his flesh to blotched putty, heaping spurious physical evidence upon his conviction that creatures are scoffing him from the inside. The behaviour amplifies in self-stoking cycles and maybe ends with the victim dousing himself in kerosene and burning like some incredible flower. Infernos are sources of fierce rejoicing.

The best heist I ever heard of hinged on the well-known principle that if a disease finds fame on the BabbleNet then half of Maranaloka's sure to come down with it within the week. Ping-ponging DP's symptoms round hypochondriac JabberBoards usually devoted to skull-weevils, Heseltine Syndrome or the latest strain of Twatshock, the plotters got it lodged like a hatchet in the watermelon of public consciousness.

A few days later the Hokum Museum's head security guard went to work as usual, resisting the urge to scratch his itchy skin and telling himself that the constantly shifting bumps that had broken out all over his body were a figment of his fevered imagination. When, checking his reflection in a glass display case housing the famous Disappointment Tusks, he spotted a black and shining beetle silently preening itself on his tongue, he closed his mouth, swallowed, and returned to dusting the exhibits. Of course the thieves'd spiked his food with SemtexScarab pupae and when he went to adjust the security mainframe he expanded and tore in a white hot fire-bloom as they tripped the remote detonator. The crims bust in while the grid was offline and snatched troll rings, several priceless spaniels sculpted from pewter and the museum's most popular exhibit, 'Dave's Mannequin' ' a clearly distressed matador trapped in a block of amber, cape frozen mid-flourish like a miniature flight of red-carpeted stairs.

Back in the Garbage District, the midgets explored each other's contours with questing gloved hands, masks aimed squarely at me and Teeb, gusseted respirators dangling like squashed trunks. Like mechanical clouds Junkbots squeaked and hissed overhead as I waited, indignant, to be addressed. After minutes spent in dumb standoff, Two Blade nuked the silence with a primal larynx-ripping scream, tipping back at the waist, arms splayed, and caterwauling at the cabled canopy above. He straightened up, panting, wiped the spit from his mouth and grinned.

'Heesh heesh.' The masked oddballs spoke in queasy unison, voices strained to tinny facsimiles through their ventilation grilles. A slight mismatch in tone leant their aggregate words an uncanny warble. 'Sees the skull under the skin, so he does. Ain't it so? Ain't it so?' Their fingers flexed and clenched. 'A butcher's eyes, pie-eyed and mouldering under the crust ' very stupid, all of us. Dull as rocks.'

'My bowels dislike you,' I stated, buttocks clenched, 'and the sentiment's starting to spread. Your store-bought riddling's way past its sell-by date, buckos. I've been more bamboozled by shoelaces than this cheap street theatre you no doubt think of as life.' I jerked a thumb at the sewage outlet pipe's slobbering gob. 'Now, me and my associate here are marching heads down into that joy-forsaken effluent tunnel and if you so much as heckle us on the way I'll slit your abdomens and yank out the greasy meat-ropes like a handkerchief trick, capiche? Don't make me get my mitts dirty.'

'Heesh heesh heesh.' The grey midgets exhaled rapidly in a wheezy parody of laughter then drew apart. Fingers interlocked they conducted a faltering asymmetrical jig, respirators jouncing to the clonk of rubber-soled boots on pipe metal. They stopped and took a bow. Two Blade applauded politely. 'So¦ the rumours are correct. Your reputation precedes you, so it does.'

'Who the Jenkins are-'

'The Jackpot Twins,' and they bowed again, more deeply this time. 'We're dual princes of the Garbage District ' Maranaloka in its most honest form. Truth's like the sun ' regard it directly and it'll burn your eyeballs out, so it will.'

'And what are the masks in aid of?' I asked. 'Hygiene?'

'Aesthetics,' the Jackpots simpered. 'Heesh heesh. It's all, all pointless aesthetics ' of no consequence whatsoever! Disguised? Subterfuge is irrelevant as a spaniel cannon, so it is.'

'You're the rascally architects behind all this haunted trash, I take it?' said Two Blade, pointing a quivering index finger upward at a nest of articulated hooks that gangled and jerked from the cable-mesh, drooling fuel from crimped pipework.

The Twins turned to face one another then began nodding vigorously, heads knocking together with the dull percussive slap of connecting mask-rims.

'Quite a network of surveillance chimps you've got pootling around this rangy dump,' I observed, tossing my head back insouciantly. 'Can't be much gets past you, huh?'

They stopped butting heads, slithered together like mercury. 'Surveillance? Heesh heesh.' Their clenched bodies trembled with throat-rattle smans. 'And what would we be looking for? The likes of you? Ain't it so? Ain't it so? What would we see and what good would it do us? These¦ daft sculptures,' and both unpeeled an arm to gesture disparagingly at the clanking bestiary overhead, 'what they see and hear and smell and detect remains trapped in the grim circuits and flywheels of their own inscrutable junk-brains, spooling out in slow entropic languor. Granted, they may act on it, but to what end? A ruptured valve, a warped piston¦ juice leaking like a picnic disaster. Doesn't take much to unseat the vapid semblance of order, the illusion of life.'

'So what do they do?' I needled.

'Do? Do?'

Two Blade bridled and rose. 'Hey! Talking doodoo is my forte, you charmless peckerheads!' He saw my disapproving frown, backed down like some wheelchaired gran wimping out of a river jump.

I sighed so hard I felt my ribcage strain against the skin. 'What's their function?'

'They burn up fuel ' coal, kerosene, sunlight, gasoline, geistblood. Convert it to pongy smoke and a festival of spastic kinetics. Sometimes two collide and make a noise like a dropped gong.'

'So they're pointless?'

''Zactly!' the Twins cheered, thrilling with shakes. 'Scholars might dub it order but more than a cursory glance reveals that absolutely zilch of interest's going on! Ain't it so? Ain't it so?' They began to waltz in tight loops, like an ugly grey carousel. 'Can you boast better, o sweat-soaked meatbots? Scoffing plants and animals, turning them to farts and belches? Info pings through your synapses, signifying the thin end of fuck all! Worth? Worth? How much air must we suck in and blast out at speed before that soggy data lavatory you have the temerity to call a mind recognises its own sweet redundancy? People paint missiles, so they do. Humanity affixes reason to the world like a flimsy loincloth but in a high wind you'll catch a glimpse of reality's gaping anus, all tufted and hollow.' Their dance gained pace, leaning out on linked arms till they whirled like coptered gits and the big pipe echoed with their nonsense. Somewhere up and to the left, a little junkbot swiped at the air with a welding torch, dribbling sparks.

'An unexploded bomb's the height of tautology,' I said, showing them my best side. 'Try selling a crater and scorched casing fragments to an arms dealer and see how short a shrift you get.'

'I glimpsed infinity once,' added T-Blade. 'Dull as a circle.'

The Jackpot Twins' capering wound down to a nauseous rotary plod. 'We feel a queer and yucky affinity with you twisted pair, you warped and deathbound twain.' The hornet drone of their doubled voice dropped from gay hi-jinks to a tone of far weightier portent and I felt all my little hairs rise up like a pianist's fingers before the first dark chord. 'Nothing¦ nothing¦ Not even the froth of relative value to shore against our ruins. Ain't it so? Ain't it so? Thus hope is as crappy and as perfect as anything in this crumbling city. A blind sentinel pitched against mischance, so it is. If logic is a ruse, there's no obstacle to our sheer force of will guiding you to the Sargasso Palladium and the Phase Vault entrance beneath.'

My shoulders sank. 'Jenkins wept.'

'I am openly pissed off,' zapped Two Blade, flicking back his cowl so his hair fluffed out like some horribly matted pom-pom. He looked at me, pupils crackling with chagrin. 'Is there anyone who doesn't know about our secret heist? How did the word break loose?'

'Heesh heesh.' The Jackpots scuttered to a standstill. 'There are no secrets in Maranaloka, just indifference. Amputate your rage and leave it in a cupboard somewhere. You're a man divided, Solicitor. Your loss sucks you from inside like a stomach limpet.'

'Cut it out!' I was very vexed. 'Who told you that? How d'you know all this?'

'Moo.'

'That's a less than satisfactory response.'

'You're searching ' you find, you don't find, who gives a monkey's? They're just two flavours of the same turd lolly, so they are. Other things bubble up while you wend your inconsequential ways. Your purpose has leaked but there's shedloads of alternate jiggery-pokery to distract your detractors.'

Two Blade squinted. 'You mean we're not high on the Peace's priority list, tonight?'

'We mean nothing.'

I massaged my temples, the caustic bite of the HexNet sending me more than a little buggy. 'You two morons want to do anything to help us out, then?' I unhooked a saucepan from my belt and held it up to them like a grail. 'We're clunking with scrap. You can use it for automata fodder in exchange for a friendly nudge in the right direction.'

The midgets' reedy breathing quickened. Like feral cats they shifted to pounce-poises.

'Mmm¦ mmm¦' The Jackpots luxuriated in the presence of new junk. I flipped the pan to reveal its scuffed underside and they spasmed with symbiotic pleasure.

'Am I making sense here?' I huffed. 'Or am I playing violin to a cow?'

'No¦ yes¦ no¦ no¦' Holding hands, the Twins straightened and faced us in a stance aping respectability. 'Listen¦ Outside the HexNet we don't doubt your powers will be more than adequate for any tussles you stumble into, Solicitor. But we've access to the sluice-gate valves. We can open hidden ways and flood others with watery shite, so we can. Plot you a course almost all the way to Sargasso, perhaps drown a few of the Governor's goons lying in wait. You'll have to take on whoever's left. Just get to walking and we'll do the rest. Find your sought thing, burst like harpooned colostomy bags ' it's of no concern to us.'

I turned to T-Blade. 'Come on, kiddo. Shed your tat. In fact, scratch the whole beggar get-up. It's the worst idea I've had since that night we binged on egg whites and dryer lint.'

Two Blade slipped his rags in a single impossible flourish, the tan ensemble floating momentarily above him like a spook then bonk-thunking to earth. He was immediately leaner, younger; he'd had the wherewithal to wear a natty black tailored suit beneath his disguise, tapered trousers, navy tie ' the works. Shame it was destined to get all shit-smooched.

For my part, stripping the vagrant gear was a ponderous Neanderthal affair, laden with grunting and confusion. When I finally stood apart from the heavy brown skin of my old life, my brow was bump-mapped with sweat beads and I looked grouchy as hell. I won't go into my attire ' suffice to say, my body bore an atlas of sartorial blunders grave enough to reduce once joy-stuffed children to cascading geysers of tears. Clothes freak me the fuck out. I get dressed as if wrestling an invisible bear.

'There,' I snuffed, stepping aside to showcase the kitchenware lain amongst our rags. 'Enough scrap to cook up at least one more of your metal cretins.'

The Twins leant forward, eager as starved hounds. 'We can take it?'

Two Blade shrugged. 'Knock yourselves out.'

At that, the Jackpot Twins leapt forward, tripped on the rim of the pipe and fell at least ten feet headfirst into ankle-deep crapwater. They ended up side by side on their backs, arms linked and a kind of serenity on their covered visages as sewage purled round the landscape of their grey, motionless bodies.

I shook my head. 'Aw, they'll be up in a few minutes. Let's get moving Teeb.'

Two Blade nodded. 'Into the great unknown.'

'Unknown, maybe. Great? Meh.'

'You need a nostril-clamp, Chief?' Two Blade held out a handful of wooden clothes pegs.

'Don't mind if I do. Ah¦ fits like a nose-glove.'

'Hey¦ know what?'

'Hit me.'

'Your voice sounds much better with that on. Kind of regal.'

'You should hear me when I've got a cold,' I muttered, my hand on the rim of the pipe. 'Diction of a fucking emperor and no mistake. Damn this robust immune system of mine.' My words turned to wet echoes as I stepped inside. Slurry soaked into the ankles of my trousers, cool and thick like spilt milkshake. 'Let's hope the light holds out, eh?'

A few steps later and everything was black.