BOLD AS LOVE
Gwyneth Jones PROLOGUE
THE sun was setting in a flood of scarlet and gold, as a small white van
cruised to a halt on the Caversham Road. Heraldic colour arced majestically
over the Thames valley, glowing in the edging windscreens and blanking
out the visors of the traffic cops. The van, Anansi's Jamaica Kitchen, was
driven by a calm, amiable Rasta who seemed to have been training himself
from birth for trials like this: the impatience of a tailback, the heavy hand of
site security, the uncertainties of arrival. 'Rare pretty sunset,' he remarked,
smiling like a gentle god at the motorcyle cop who had come snarling up
beside them. 'You interested in politics, Fio?'
His passenger was a young white woman —a very young woman, no
more than fifteen or sixteen, he guessed— dressed in green, with a stubborn
face and a mass of dark red hair knotted back under her scarf. She wore a
yellow ribbon tied round one sleeve, indicating that she was not up for sex,
and a broken chain —it looked like a few silver links from an identity
bracelet— pinned to her breast, saying that she approved of the Dissolution
of the Act of Union. She'd slung her bedroll into the back, with the kitchen
and cooking supplies; she held an acoustic guitar in a battered case in her
arms. She wasn't talkative. He'd learned very little about her, except for those two signs and the name Fiorinda. He seemed to remember that name
on the programme, but he wasn't going to ask her was she a performer.
That's never a cool question. Maybe she was, maybe she was one of
thousands, roadworn rags—and—feathers kind of white girl.
'Not in the least,' she said.
He smiled at her cut—glass vowels. 'Nor me. I'm here to cook my food
and sell my food, meet my friends, avoid my enemies.' The van eased along
another car—length, and stopped again. There certainly were a shocking
number of private transport hypocrites, turning up for this organic—holistic
poltically—engaged countercultural rock fest. White Van Man slid a glance
at the young woman's breast. 'But you' wearin' the broken chain?'
'You can approve of something without being interested in it,' said
Fiorinda. 'I do that all the time.' She lifted her chin, roused from the
forbidding abstraction into which she'd retreated almost as soon as she
climbed into the cab.
'You may as well drop me off now.'
It had dawned on her that it was ridiculous to stay in the traffic line.
'Sure thing.'
White Van Man reached across and opened the door; which was old and
cranky and answered only its master's touch. The van was moving slower
than walking pace, no need to apply the brakes. Fiorinda tumbled out, and
he tipped the bedroll after her. 'Thanks for the lift.' She joined the moving crowd on the pavement, and walked away quickly.
The main gates to the site appeared: the taste—free Leisure Centre buildings,
a green bank covered with hawkers and their litter; smiling but determined
stewards in dayglo bibs. Fiorinda slowed and came to a stand, the crowd
parting around her as she gazed over their heads, stony—eyed, at the vast
beauty of the sky. She eased the bedroll on her back and swerved away.
A short time later she was sitting under a poplar tree beside the river
Thames, her back to the water, face towards the fence that separated normal
life from the Festival campground. The soundtrack of that other world
drifted out to her: a thumping dance beat, the wail of an electric guitar, a
didgeridoo, a crying child, a dog barking, a growling engine; all multiplied
and sampled down into anonymous aural mulch. She took off her boots and
retrieved the backstage pass that had been hidden in the toe of the left one.
In her other boot she had money. Her sleeping bag was wrapped in a heavy
polythene sheet that served as rooBOLD AS LOVE
Gwyneth Jones PROLOGUE
THE sun was setting in a flood of scarlet and gold, as a small white van
cruised to a halt on the Caversham Road. Heraldic colour arced majestically
over the Thames valley, glowing in the edging windscreens and blanking
out the visors of the traffic cops. The van, Anansi's Jamaica Kitchen, was
driven by a calm, amiable Rasta who seemed to have been training himself
from birth for trials like this: the impatience of a tailback, the heavy hand of
site security, the uncertainties of arrival. 'Rare pretty sunset,' he remarked,
smiling like a gentle god at the motorcyle cop who had come snarling up
beside them. 'You interested in politics, Fio?'
His passenger was a young white woman —a very young woman, no
more than fifteen or sixteen, he guessed— dressed in green, with a stubborn
face and a mass of dark red hair knotted back under her scarf. She wore a
yellow ribbon tied round one sleeve, indicating that she was not up for sex,
and a broken chain —it looked like a few silver links from an identity
bracelet— pinned to her breast, saying that she approved of the Dissolution
of the Act of Union. She'd slung her bedroll into the back, with the kitchen
and cooking supplies; she held an acoustic guitar in a battered case in her
arms. She wasn't talkative. He'd learned very little about her, except for those two signs and the name Fiorinda. He seemed to remember that name
on the programme, but he wasn't going to ask her was she a performer.
That's never a cool question. Maybe she was, maybe she was one of
thousands, roadworn rags—and—feathers kind of white girl.
'Not in the least,' she said.
He smiled at her cut—glass vowels. 'Nor me. I'm here to cook my food
and sell my food, meet my friends, avoid my enemies.' The van eased along
another car—length, and stopped again. There certainly were a shocking
number of private transport hypocrites, turning up for this organic—holistic
poltically—engaged countercultural rock fest. White Van Man slid a glance
at the young woman's breast. 'But you' wearin' the broken chain?'
'You can approve of something without being interested in it,' said
Fiorinda. 'I do that all the time.' She lifted her chin, roused from the
forbidding abstraction into which she'd retreated almost as soon as she
climbed into the cab.
'You may as well drop me off now.'
It had dawned on her that it was ridiculous to stay in the traffic line.
'Sure thing.'
White Van Man reached across and opened the door; which was old and
cranky and answered only its master's touch. The van was moving slower
than walking pace, no need to apply the brakes. Fiorinda tumbled out, and
he tipped the bedroll after her. 'Thanks for the lift.' She joined the moving crowd on the pavement, and walked away quickly.
The main gates to the site appeared: the taste—free Leisure Centre buildings,
a green bank covered with hawkers and their litter; smiling but determined
stewards in dayglo bibs. Fiorinda slowed and came to a stand, the crowd
parting around her as she gazed over their heads, stony—eyed, at the vast
beauty of the sky. She eased the bedroll on her back and swerved away.
A short time later she was sitting under a poplar tree beside the river
Thames, her back to the water, face towards the fence that separated normal
life from the Festival campground. The soundtrack of that other world
drifted out to her: a thumping dance beat, the wail of an electric guitar, a
didgeridoo, a crying child, a dog barking, a growling engine; all multiplied
and sampled down into anonymous aural mulch. She took off her boots and
retrieved the backstage pass that had been hidden in the toe of the left one.
In her other boot she had money. Her sleeping bag was wrapped in a heavy
polythene sheet that served as roof and floor, house and shelter and
defensible territory. She had everything she needed. . . except, it seemed, the
mere will to cross the boundary and join that fair field full of folk. She stowed
the pass away and sat with her chin on her knees, rubbing at her toes.
Her feet were sore. The silver—sequined filigree of her outer skirts
needed mending, and her longest underskirt was sticky with mud. The
weather was clear now but it had been filthy earlier, and farther north. She wanted a real bed, a proper bathroom with a flush toilet and a room with
walls: none of which she was going to find down by this riverside. The light
of that extravagent sunset flowed over her, so low and strong that it
confused every outline: but shortly she became aware that there were three
people right in front of her, crouching in the trees and bushes that blocked
her view. She heard the snap of a struck match.
"Watch out sisters,' said a woman's harsh voice. 'Think Iran, in the days
when the Shah fell.You'll submit to his charm, slave for his cause, die on his
barricades. Then after the revolution you'll end up chained to the stove in
peekaboo panties, all over again.'
'Barefoot and not even pregnant,' added someone else. 'He's into
population control, I heard.' There was a general chuckle.
'Is he setting this up himself, or is someone pushing him ?' asked a third.
'He's acting innocent,' said the first voice. 'You know what a low profile
he's been playing. But it's all scripted, every bite and shite. Think Julius
Caesar. Offer me the crown a few times. I'll refuse, I'll deny every rumour, then I'll
reluctantly accept. . . She grunted, and went on. 'Of course he's been targeted.
Headhunted by the secret rulers. He has backers, groomers, bankrollers, all
of that. But it wouldn't happen if he didn't want it.'
Fiorinda crept closer, listening intently; trying to see the speakers
without being seen. There were three women, sitting in a row, passing a
blackened old pipe between them. One of them had a shock of silver—white hair tied up on top of her head, another had a broad back and was dressed in
dark red. More than that she couldn't tell. A rich, fecal smell arose. She drew
back from the impromptu latrine, and walked quickly to the path that gave
campers access to the riverside. When the three had finished their pipe and
their business, she was waiting for them.
At the end of this year three hundred years of history would be undone.
The United Kingdom would be dissolved. Ulster had already joined Federal
Ireland: now the three nations of Mainland Britain would become, finally,
officially, separate states. In London the Westminster parliament was being
kept from its summer recess by the law and order crisis; and by the struggle
to make the process of dissolution look organised. Meanwhile the
Counterculturals had gathered in Hyde Park, at Glastonbury, at all the
traditional sites around the country; and notably here at Reading. It was
supposed to be a peaceful two week rock festival. The media folk were
hoping for trouble, and doing their best to whip it up. Maybe their efforts
were unnecessary. The newstyle Countercultural Movement had exploded
in growth in the last few years. The Extreme Greens were out for some real
part in the new government of England, and they already knew that violence
didn't diminish their popular appeal. Grass roots activists (militant
travellers, eco—terrorists, animal rights extremists, road—wreckers,
aggression—hippies) would surely be eager to use this showcase. But
Fiorinda didn't care about any of that. She had come to Reading following a rumour, on a mission half of longing, half of vengeance. The conversation
she'd overheard had convinced her she was on a fresh trail. He was here. She would find him, she would face him. She wasn't interested in anything else. 1: The Salt Box
The Christmas that she was nine years old, Fiorinda's gran gave her a
strange present. It was a round box of plain, polished birch. It had a snug
fitting lid, which opened to show a space about as big as a turkish coffee cup,
lined in darker apple—wood and full of sparkling white grains. Gran
handed this over, unwrapped, when Fiorinda brought her breakfast tray to
the basement on Christmas morning. Gran was not bedridden, but she liked
to spend much of her time under the covers, tucked up like a nesting animal.
'Is it drugs?' asked the little girl.
'No! It's salt. Taste, go on, try some. And look here.' Gran turned the box
over, and twisted off the base to reveal another cavity, contain a soft mass
like yellowish cotton wool, and what looked to the child vaguely like the
dismantled workings of a mousetrap. 'That's so you can strike a light
without matches.'
'Is it magic?'
The old lady chuckled evasively. 'Why would I waste magic on you, you
little heathen?'
Gran was a witch, a Wiccan. Her damp rooms in the basement of
Fiorinda's mother's house were hung with magical things: glitter balls,
crystals, plastic dolls, sequinned scarves, bunches of herbs. People came to
her for spells or to have their fortunes told —discreetly using the garden
door, so they didn't have to meet Fiorinda's Mum. The child viewed her
grandmother's profession with indifference. Already, Fiorinda didn't believe in anything.
'Is it old?'
'No, it's new. I had someone make it for you, one of my associates. It's for
your future. You must take it with you, when you set out to seek your
fortune.' She closed the child's hands over the box, covering them with her
own. 'You are the salt of the earth, that's what you are. I've seen it. And the
world will love you as meat loves salt. Now put it away, Frances dear, and
don't let your mother know.'
The child was used to being told, by her gran, that she mustn't let her
mother know. Most of gran's secrets were pointless: either things Mum knew
already (like gin and sherry taken from Mum's sideboard, like probably—
stolen goods accepted in barter for magical services); or things she wouldn't
care about, like spells that didn't work, or scraps of highly flavoured gossip.
The salt box seemed different. She hid it carefully. In time she would come to
see it as a double symbol, a threat and a promise. The promise was that she
would escape: that winds of change would blow away the chill, hateful
tedium of her childhood. The threat was that she would never free herself
from an embarrassing set of old fashioned values. She would be in the new
age but not of it.
When she was eleven her periods began, and she decided to call herself
Fiorinda. This was the year in which her mother was operated on for breast
cancer. It was while Mum was in hospital that Fiorinda's aunt Carly turned up. Fiorinda had a step—father, her mother's ex—husband. She had two
grown—up half—sisters and a half—brother, and there was Gran of course.
But she'd never known that her mother had a sister until Carly appeared on
the doorstep, with a besotted taxi driver carrying her suitcases. She looked
young, incredibly much younger than Mum, and she was dressed in the
height of fashion. She moved in and switched on the central heating,
although it was only November. She brought with her a regime of hot
showers, scented foam, music videos and channel hopping, takeaway food
and glossy magazines. Gran stayed in the basement. She didn't seem to like
her younger daughter much. Probably she was thinking of how angry Mum
would be when she saw the bills for all this. But Fiorinda, who lived for the
moment, was thrilled.
Carly explained that there had been a big family quarrel, years ago, and
that was why she hadn't been in touch. She said she'd last visited this house
for Fiorinda's third birthday party. 'You don't remember, but I was here. You
were a very bossy, precocious little girl, do you remember that? I gave you a
pink wooden horse.'
Fiorinda wished she could remember, or that any sign of the pink horse
remained. The cancer was defeated, at least temporarily. Mum came home
from hospital. Once she came into the kitchen, (actually warm, under Carly's
regime) and found Fiorinda resplendent in her aunt's expensive cosmetics.
She stared for a moment, and Fio braced herself for the storm, but all Mum said was, 'I'm going to turn the heating down'. She left the room, without a
glance at her sister: head lowered, arms wrapped around her changed and
vulnerable body.
Carly was blushing, Fiorinda was surprised to see. 'She thinks I'm a child
stealer.'
'Is that why she hates you?'
'No... It's because of things that happened long, long ago. Why don't you
have lodgers, Fio? She can't maintain this place on her salary.'
Fio's Mum was a university lecturer. 'We did have. But they either didn't
pay the rent; or they were junkies and trashed their rooms; or they had dogs
that shitted everywhere; or they had babies that screamed. I don't think it
would work, whoever they were. My mother hates people, any people.'
'Poor Sue.'
'What was she like? I mean, years ago?'
'She was a journalist. She was chic and sexy, she was demanding, she
had tons of style—'
'I can't imagine it. What kind of journalist?'
'Mainly music... Rock music. Didn't you know? What does she teach,
now?'
'Contemporary Culture,' said Fio, with a grimace: contemporary meant
something for old people. 'What happened? Why did she give it all up?'
'She didn't, it gave her up. She fell from grace, it happens. Sue took it hard.'
'I can imagine that. Oh. I suppose that's why she hates me to play— '
'What— ?'
Fiorinda was forced to play the piano. In secret she had taught herself to
play acoustic guitar and to sing, a little (the secondhand guitar came from
Gran, and the basement black market). She wasn't ready to tell Carly about
this. 'Oh, you know: she hates any kind of music but Beethoven, that sort of
thing.' Until Carly came, Fiorinda's only access to non—Classical music had
been through her ancient radio alarm, on which she had listened to chart
shows, secretly, late at night.
Carly started putting the make—up away. The house had become
cheerfully untidy under her rule, but she was careful about her own
possessions: she left no hostages. 'You can play Beethoven, wow. What a
talented niece I have. But I'd have to introduce you as just a friend if you
came to see me, because you look so grown up. You'd put ten years on my
age.' She surveyed her handiwork. 'You're prettier than Sue. You don't have
ginger eyebrows. She made herself beautiful. You won't have to try.'
Life in the cold house became doubly miserable through that long
winter. Mum refused to accept Fiorinda's new name, which led to pointless
friction. Every evening she sat marking papers at one end of the 'dining
table' that stood in the back of their chill living room, her profile sour in the
lamplight. The idea of Fio having a telly of her own that she could use in another room was vetoed, no reason given. She listened to books on tape, at
the most muted volume because Mum hated headphone—leak. She never
read printed books in Mum's presence, because it would have pleased her.
Every time her mother called her 'Frances' it was another flick on the raw.
In the night she devoured her mother's library, relishing the sensual
privacy of the old relationship; and wrote songs, both words and music,
which she hid inside the split in her mattress.
When Carly invited Fio to visit her, Mum tried to stop that too. Fio
heard them arguing on the phone. (There was one, fixed phone in the cold
house. It lived in the front hall, at the foot of the stairs, by the living room
door, for maximum inconvenience and minimum privacy). 'She's a child,
Caz. She's a little girl. Leave her alone— '. But Fio pleaded and Carly
persisted and in the end Mum gave way. Fiorinda travelled on the
Underground by herself (she had to do this anyway, to get to secondary
school) into the centre of London. She ate in a restaurant for the first time in
her life, she stayed the night at Carly's tiny flat in Kensington Church Street.
Carly took her shopping, gave her clothes, makeup and a mobile phone.
(The phone didn't work after the first day, because Fiorinda didn?t have any
money: but it looked great). True to her word, she introduced Fio to the
people in Kensington as 'the daughter of a friend of mine'.
In the summer Carly invited Fiorinda to stay for a whole week. This
brought renewed resistance, but Carly wouldn't take no for an answer. 'And when you're tired of this game,' said Mum, 'You'll dump the poor kid and I'll
be left to pick up the pieces. That's what pisses me off.' Fio, eavesdropping
from the landing, heard the defeat in her mother's voice and exulted.
Mum would have been furious if she'd known that Carly let Fio smoke
dope. But nothing else remotely shocking happened: no stronger drugs, no
vice. People came around and chatted, Fio was mostly ignored. She spent
much of her time on her visits to the Kensington flat alone, in the cubbyhole
Carly called her study, drinking diet coke and playing computer games. She
didn't mind. It was paradise compared to life at home. But this time Carly
had been invited to a country house party, and she was taking Fiorinda with
her. They were going to stay with Rufus O'Niall, the rock star. Of course this
had to be kept secret from Fio's mother. Rufus O'Niall had been a megastar
before Fiorinda was born. He was practically retired. She'd have been more
excited if she'd been going to meet Glasswire, or Aoxomoxoa and the Heads.
'I wasn't invited,' she said, uneasily. 'Won't that be weird?'
'Rufus is a billionaire or something, darling. He doesn't count the spoons.
And he's a very, very private person, but he never goes anywhere without
this huge entourage— ' Carly laughed. 'Don't worry, you'll be lost in the
crowd. But you'll meet people. You want to be a singer, don't you?' Fio had
by this time confessed her secret ambition. 'You'll need contacts. You can't
start too soon.'
The journey and the arrival passed in a blur. Carly had been right, there was a crowd of people, the kind of people Fio had met in Kensington only
more so. She was shown to a room by a servant. The house must be five
hundred years old —half timbered, spartan, smelling of beeswax and
lavender and dried oranges. The portraits on the walls were not of Rufus
O'Niall's forebears, obviously not, since his skin was chestnut brown, and
the pictured faces were as white as Fiorinda's. But the sense of dynasty was
right. Rufus was old money in the world of rock and roll. He and his band
The Geese had reached that glorious plateau of truly unassailable fame, and
solid wealth. Fiorinda began to feel thrilled. Later, when he took some of his
guests on a tour of the manor grounds, she tagged along and tried to get
next to the master. What was most incredible was that Carly's friendship
with these celebrities seemed to prove that Fio's Mum had once been on
intimate terms with the famous. But she'd been warned not to mention her
mother. Whatever Mum had done, apparently it still rankled in the music
world.
She was trying to be cool, but feeling very uncomfortable. Used to the
modest habits of her North London, mainly Hindu, neighbourhood, she felt
terribly exposed in the clothes she was wearing. She was glad Carly had
warned her how to dress, but she kept wanting to put her hands over her
bum, to fold her arms over the outline of her breasts. And the men were no
better. She supposed that if you were rich, walking in your own private
grounds was the same as being out at a fancy club. As they climbed a flight of steps, from the fishponds to a rose terrace,
Rufus turned and glanced at Fio: who had managed to reach the centre of
the group. He at once resumed his conversation with the fat, florid woman
beside him (a movie producer). But a few moments later he turned again,
and handed her a sprig of rose leaves. 'Put that in your pocket, sweet—briar,'
he said, with a tender smile. 'Keep it for a souvenir.'
She hadn't known you could have rosebushes with scented leaves. She
didn't have a pocket. She held the sprig in her hand, awkwardly, all the way
back to the house. She was deeply flattered and excited. She started trying to
think of the names of some of The Geese's hit singles, so that she'd have
something to say if he noticed her again.
In the evening, after dinner, some guests disappeared. The rest sat
around with Rufus in the great hall. People had been drinking quite a lot,
and sniffing coke, but they were quiet about it. Fio had half expected them to
be naked except for jewels and make—up, after the way they dressed in
daytime, but they were wearing the same as in the afternoon. Carly was
there, but she seemed to have decided to leave Fiorinda to her own devices,
which was fine. Fio did not want to be shown off, or looked after like a baby.
She had changed into her best scarlet teeshirt and a shiny long pink skirt.
The teeshirt was printed over with little naked male figures, labelled jokily
things like "French Polish" and "Turkish Delight", though you couldn't see
much difference between the faces; or the sets of wedding—tackle. She had tried it on in the exclusive shop where Carly bought it for her, baring her
tiny budding breasts without shame: they could stand up for themselves.
'Well,' the attentive assistant had said, impressed. 'I thought that colour
wouldn't suit you, dear, but it certainly does.'
Scarlet gave Fiorinda's creamy skin the pure glow of a candleflame, it
made her strongly marked brows and lashes look made—up, which they
were not. For some reason, Carly had forbidden her to wear make—up on
this visit. There was talk, and silence; someone strummed a guitar. It was
oddly like an evening in the cold house, except that the setting was ancient
instead of merely old fashioned, and there were more people. Fio felt
ignored. She went over to the hearth, where there was a fire of cherry logs
because the June night was chill. She gazed into the flames and then sat
down, as if by chance, with her back against the couch where he was sitting,
the rock—lord in state surrounded by his courtiers. She hoped that she
would think of something intelligent to say: somehow contribute to the
conversation and get noticed. Instead, Rufus began to stroke her hair. She
felt his fingertips on the nape of her neck, and then circling her ear.
She was half stunned at the liberty he was taking. How did he know that
he could do this? How could he just stroke her, as if she was a cat or a dog? But
he could do what he liked. For Rufus O'Niall, everything was allowed.
'Can you do magic?' he murmured, so that only she could hear. 'You look
as if you could.' 'My gran's a witch. Not me. I think it's a recessive gene. You need two
copies.'
Rufus laughed very quietly, like a rumble of soft thunder.
'What about your parents?'
'Oh, they're dead. My gran looks after me.' Dead parents were simpler.
Someone challenged him to a game of chess, and he left the couch.
Fiorinda's room was next to Carly's. When Rufus came to find her in the
night she was sitting by the bed, still wearing her scarlet teeshirt and her
pink skirt. She hadn't wanted to take them off. She'd have felt stupid waiting
in her pyjamas, especially since she was half convinced that she was
imagining the whole thing. But here he was. Rufus said, 'I thought you'd be
tucked up under the covers by now, Sweetbriar.' He took her in his arms and
carried her off to his own room: which was sumptuous, but she didn't get a
chance to take much in.
In the morning she woke in her own bed with no clear idea of how she'd
got there. Carly was shaking her gently. 'I've got to go back to London,' she
announced. 'Right now. I'm sorry sweetheart. Something desperately
important's come up, it means lots of money.'
Fio was hazy about how her aunt made a living, but she nodded.
'You'll be all right, won't you darling? I'd hate to drag you away.You
know Joel, and Mittie.' These were Carey's neighbours, a guy couple who
lived in the flat upstairs. 'They'll look after you, and bring you home tomorrow, or Monday.'
Fiorinda had been told by her school friends that she would never get a
husband, because her Mum was a depressive and had had breast cancer. In
the comfortable bourgeois community that surrounded her mother's house,
it was taken for granted that people with bad genes would not reproduce
themselves. (It was easier for the community to accept this idea, since it was
equally taken for granted that bad genes were almost unknown in people of
Indian ancestry). The well—to—do Hindu girls weren't being cruel. They
meant that she should prepare herself for another kind of life, and they were
concerned that she showed no sign of doing so. Fiorinda didn't mind. She
liked the feeling of being one of a kind. She liked the feeling that she had
nothing to lose. She'd been very surprised at what had happened, but she'd
had no qualms about losing her virginity. It might be a big break, and
anyway it was worth a shot. In the entertainment business, most people have
to start out working for free.
She went back to London with Carly's friends, but she knew it wasn't
over. Sure enough, about two weeks later Rufus came to find her. He was
waiting in a taxi one afternoon, discreetly parked down the road from the
school gates. He took her to a flat, a luxurious but poky little place which he
used 'sometimes—' he explained vaguely. She knew he'd used it with other
girls: she didn't mind. It was the start of a regular affair. Sometimes he was waiting in the morning, waylaid her and carried her off, and she never
reached her classes: sometimes he only 'borrowed her' as he put it, for an
hour or so. He gave her presents, which had to stay in the flat as she couldn't
take them home, but there was never any suggestion that he would offer her
money. She felt that was a good sign. The rewards she'd get for this would
be of a different order. Weeks passed. In August, Mum thought Fiorinda was
going into school to the holiday—homework club; but she was meeting
Rufus. She found that he would talk to her, and plagued him with insatiable,
devouring curiosity. He said she asked more questions than a three—year—
old. The sexual part of the experience wasn't very sexy for Fio: but she didn't
mind that. The strange and important thing was that she was actually
getting to know him, getting to know this big, flamboyantly handsome
grown—up man as a person. Rufus was lagging behind her, but that would
change. He would come to recognise Fio as a person, instead of a forbidden
pleasure. He would like her, instead of feeling addicted and guilty the way
he felt now. She began to think with impatience of the years —at least three
years, to be reasonable— that must pass before they could be seen in public
together.
In September, without warning, he vanished.
She didn't know the address of their flat. When he stopped coming to
pick her up she took the Tube to the approximate location and walked
around trying to find it; but she couldn't. She realised, then, why she'd paid no attention to details like street names. She must have known, though her
daydreams had seemed so real, that this was how it would end. He would
simply be gone.
Since the country house party she?d hardly heard from her aunt Carly.
She guessed that Carly had found out about her going with Rufus, and
naturally didn't want to get involved. But she had nowhere else to turn so
she went to Kensington Church Street. She still had her card for the front
entrance, but when she got upstairs there was nobody in.When she'd been
knocking and ringing at her aunt's door for a while Joel came down from the
floor above.
'Hi, Fio. Long time no see. Carly's away for a few days. Can I help?'
'It's private.' But though she knew she could not chase Rufus, she was too
weak to resist this opportunity. 'I don't suppose you know how I can contact
Rufus O'Niall?'
Joel had a key to Carly's front door. He opened it and hustled her inside,
into Carly's tiny, smartly furnished living room. 'Rufus has left town,' he
said, folding his arms and glaring at her. 'He suddenly rushed back to the
Seychelles, which is where he more or less lives these days. With his lovely
wife and kids. You don't want to contact him. How old are you?'
She bristled. 'D'you think I'm too young to have sex?'
'With someone your own age, I don?t know, maybe that would be
different. Rufus O'Niall is a low down dirty dog. He's old enough to be your grandad, and you are well young enough to get him arrested, except that it
won't happen. Maybe he actually took pity on you, kid: he can't have fled the
country for fear of discovery. His sad taste for underage totty is something
everyone knows and nobody tells. . . Do you hear what I'm saying? You
have nothing on him. Go home, don't come here again.You do have a home?'
'Yes.'
'Thank God for that. How did you get involved with Carly Slater,
anyway?'
'She's actually my aunt,' quavered Fiorinda, frightened by his anger.
Joel frowned. 'Your aunt?'
'Yes!' Fiorinda had been forbidden to mention this, but she was stung by
the term 'under age totty'. 'She's my aunt. Her mother is my gran and lives
in our basement.'
He stared for a moment, in silence. 'Remind me, what's your name? Your
real name.'
She was so intimidated she confessed the hated truth. 'Frances. It's
Frances Day. But that's my mother's ex—husband's name: she uses it but he's
not my father. My real name is Frances Slater. Carly is my mother's sister.'
'So, that makes you. . . your mother must be. . . Sue Slater? The
journalist?'
'Yes.'
'Oh my God.' Joel came up close and peered into Fio's face intently. He backed away again, looking stunned. 'Wow. Your aunt is really something.'
Fiorinda wondered what was going on. Probably he'd guessed why she
was here. But though she knew she'd been stupid, her problem wasn't that
weird.
'Why did you want to see her? Did you think she'd give you Rufus's
private number? Because you can forget that— '
'No! I don't want him involved! Not really, not at all. But I need help. I
think I'm pregnant.'
'My God,' said Joel. 'What a mess.'
The sisters had a confrontation, in the kitchen where Carly had one day
painted Fio's face, and remarked, 'I'd have to introduce you as just a friend'.
Naturally, Carly denied everything. She insisted she'd been trying to help,
trying to give poor Fiorinda a life. She was as appalled as anyone at the way
Rufus had behaved, she'd had no idea he would do that, she was devastated,
it was awful, a really horrible coincidence, she felt terribly responsible. . . But
Fiorinda, who was present at this meeting, had seen the gleam of triumph in
her aunt's eyes. She wondered what her Mum had done to Carly, in the long
ago, to lay the fuse for such a savage, cold—blooded, long—planned
revenge. But she wasn't curious about the details. She decided, then and
there, never to see her half—siblings again: never to have anything more to
do with them. If this was family life, the hell with it.
She refused to have an abortion. Having an abortion would make it all
too real. Her gran provided cantrips and potions that didn't work, her
mother seemed too sunk in her own despair to take much notice. She
stopped going to school in the fifth month and completed the pregnancy in
deep denial, trying to stay thin and hoping to the last minute that it was all a
bad dream. The baby was born surprisingly strong and healthy. When it was
three months old it caught pneumonia and died, after which Fiorinda left
the cold house forever.
She followed the weird sisters into a low—rise tented township. New
arrivals were wandering, laden: seeking friends, eyeing—up pitches.
Families were cooking, tribes erecting totem poles and lofting big gaudy
marker—balloons. Dogs ambled, bare—arsed toddlers tottered, smoke
wreathes eddied. A band of dancers, pogoing in a trance that might keep
going for days, had blocked one of the vehicle access lanes. Fio's Three
Witches briefly joined the dance and passed on: the old one with the silver
topknot, the one whose broad back was robed in blood red; the third in
yellow and blue, with a bald head, a scalplock and an eagle's feather.
Fiorinda had moved from the cold house to a central London hostel,
answered an advertisment in a music paper and started singing with a band
called DARK. She'd been with them ever since. They'd had some success and brought out an album: but there were beginning to be rending and tearing
noises. She had started doing some gigs alone. She was moving on, with the
band or without them, on a trajectory that, in her mind, led only to one end.
There?d been rumours for the last year or so that Rufus O'Niall, semi—
retired superstar, was moving into Countercultural politics: that he was
coming back to the soon—to—be—history UK; that he was to take a major
role of some kind. Nothing had happened, yet. He hadn't even been
mentioned in the media coverage recently: but that was like Rufus, Fiorinda
knew. Backers, bankrollers, groomers? The old witch was wrong. He had no
need for any of that. He would arrive without fanfare here at Reading, which
everyone knew was the real Dissolution Festival. He would be elusive, he
would be relaxed; secretly drawing people around him—
Even now she could feel Carly's soft fingertips, the first blissful silky
touch of expensive cosmetics on her skin. She could see her own face in the
mirror, strange and lovely. I'll have to introduce you as a friend. . . She?d
understood, afterwards, that her aunt was what they used to call a
procuress. Fiorinda had been procured, prepared and delivered to her own
father, the client. Most probably (she'd denied this, too, but it was obvious)
Carly had also been the one who made sure Rufus found out. She had told
him, or had someone tell him, that the latest box—fresh girl child he'd been
enjoying was his own daughter.
But he must have had some idea, he must have suspected. I don't look like Carly but I do look like my Mum, I know I do. If he didn't know about me and mum and
gran, why did he ask me like that, can you do magic?
Lanterns began to be lit. She crossed a swathe of petrol—stink, and the
gut—thumping judder of a generator bit her bones. The masses were filing
through the cattle gates, exchanging tickets for wristbands. The witches
ducked through an unofficial doorway cut in the plastic coated mesh of the
perimeter fence: she followed them into the arena. Some band or other was
playing on main stage, far away: but the witches had joined a crowd outside
one of the covered venues, a big conical marquee called The Blue Lagoon. In
the middle of this crowd, there was a man. They'd found their Thane of
Cawdor. He was wearing a hat and a long brown leather coat. He had his
back to Fio but he was tall, he carried himself with a casual presence of
power, and he was obviously the centre of attention. It was Rufus. She
couldn't be absolutely sure until he turned his head, but—
What was she going to say to him? After four years. . . But the first year
she didn't count, she tried to cut that year out of her memory. After three
years of making something of herself, shaping her talent and using it. Don't
say anything, don't let him see you, not at first.
No. You will never be ready. Take your chance as it comes—
A ring of hawkers' vans, bright as a funfair, were the backdrop of her
great moment. A beer vendor with coolboxes swung two big greeny yellow
truncheons of chemical light. She wet her lips.
You knew I was someone's daughter before you touched me. If you cared. . . If it
made a difference when you knew I was your daughter, then how could you—?
How could you leave me to face them all alone— ?
And now stop crying
Slide the knife between
Razor into there
Always be there,
however small it goes,
between the bleeding
space between screaming
where it doesn't matter
Live within the pain,
Live in the pain,
Live. . . for. . . this moment. . .
'Oh, Hi Fio!'
Coming towards her —just emerged from the backstage entrance of a
smaller, emerald coloured tent across the way— was a vision of perfection,
in a slim black dress and a long grey padded jacket with gauze sleeves. Her
skin was misty gold, black curls caught up in a knot behind her head, brow
and eyes obscured by a glittery effect like insect wings. Her name was Allie
Marlowe, she was a sort of friend of Fio's. 'Shit,' muttered Fiorinda.
She remembered White Van Man's plan to meet his friends and avoid his
enemies. Allie was a music—biz socialite, one of those people you might
dismiss as a groupie or hanger—on until you realised (before she noticed
your dismissal, if you were lucky) what an important role she played. Right
now Fio didn't want to meet anyone she knew, but she absolutely definitely
desperately did not want Allie Marlowe to witness her first meeting with
Rufus O'Niall.
'Hi Allie.' It was too late to flee.
'Fancy meeting you here!' Allie smirked ironically.
'Fancy meeting you,' said Fiorinda, deadpan. 'I've just arrived. How's it
going? How's the boite?'
Their friendship had been founded when Fiorinda did a gig with DARK
at a club in Brussels that Allie was managing. Fio had ended up going home
with Allie, they'd talked all night. Since then, Allie had displayed flattering
interest and look—through—you indifference, roughly alternately,
whenever their paths crossed. She was an excellent barometer, if you were in
any doubt about how you were doing. This time she seemed actually
embarrassed, which Fio thought was a very bad sign, until she realised that
Allie —eyes flicking sidelong under her dainty futuristic veil— was
personally embarrassed, nothing to do with Fio, at being caught wandering
about by herself. Socialites, like rock-lords, should never be seen without an entourage.
'Oh, I've moved on,' she exclaimed, warmly. With Allie it was always
'Oh!', a round-mouthed big-eyed home-alone pause before any possible
statement, to give her time for second thoughts. 'I'm not running the club
anymore. Oh, Fio, I must give you one of these— '
Fio accepted the handout, which Allie had taken from a businesslike grey
attaché case: a surprising item for a style-monster, but Allie never made
mistakes so it must be right. She peered at it in the half dark, and discovered
a list of events called 'seminars' and 'workshops', with titles like 'The Death
Of State Education' and 'Human Rights: Who Needs Them?'
'What on earth's this? Is politics really the new rock and roll, then?'
'Paul Javert is going to be speaking.'
'Who he?'
Allie rolled her eyes. 'The Home Secretary, Fio. Where have you been?'
'Touring. That means he runs the police, doesn't it.'
'Look, don't you realise this is serious? If you don't know who Paul is and
what he stands for, I think you'd better come along and find out. Trust me,
Fio. Westminster is the place, nothing's going to happen out here in the
sticks. So. . . ' She glanced at Fiorinda's bedroll, her boots, her ragged skirts:
and winced, visibly. Allie didn't like Fiorinda's grunge-waif style, and had
tried to persuade her to smarten up, to no avail.
'Are you looking for someone, or —?' 'Looking for Aoxomoxoa,' Fio improvised. 'I was supposed to meet him
and the lads— '
'Oh! The Braindead Ones. Yeah, they're here. Unless they've been
chucked off the site. Apparently Sage arrived completely smashed and got
into a fist—fight with the security people within minutes. Look, I'm in a real
rush. See you tomorrow, and remember be there.'
Allie flitted away into the dusk, leaving Fiorinda airkissed, flustered,
humiliated, puzzled: and with a vague, wild idea that Allie Marlowe must
be having an affair with the Home Secretary. What other explanation could
there possibly be for her enthusiasm? Or the attaché case.
The crowd outside the Blue Lagoon had vanished. The canvas doors to
the marquee were roped shut, nothing was scheduled in there tonight. She
went and stood listening to the dark and silence inside for a few moments,
tasting her anticipation. He is here.
She wandered on, looking for skulls, wondering if this crowd really was
different, revolutionary, dangerous. Digital facemasks, bodymasks. Carnival
plumes and banners, the painted and the naked and the students and the
straights, all jostling together. Just the normal rockfest scene, far as Fiorinda
could see. It would be good if she could find the Heads. She didn't believe the
chucking-out story, that was just Allie's way of saying she hated
Aoxomoxoa.
Sage and his band had been wearing digital skulls for heads, for years, a mark of deference to their late, great, gurus, the Grateful Dead (an oblique
influence on the Heads actual music, which tended to vile noises and weird
multimedia tricks). It was no longer so easy to pick them out in a crowd,
now that masks were commonplace, but they were sure to be out here
among masses somewhere. They liked to see life.
She spread her sleeping bag that night in an ancient army-surplus mess-tent,
next to Sage's preposterous great van, and woke to the sound of birdsong,
leaf shadows dappling the canvas roof. She'd cleared the detritus and
arranged the overspill of Heads belongings neatly on her polythene (the
Heads' annexe had no groundsheet), when the chief Head himself appeared
at the entrance. He came into the tent: immensely tall, skull mask already in
place; and perched himself in one of his giant pixie poses on a stack of
hardware.
'I don't remember asking you to do that.'
Sage liked chaos. Fiorinda the grunge-waif was secretly, innately neat.
'Yes you did, Sage. You said, "please dear Fio tidy up this jumble sale, as
I know you hate mess, and then I will be able to find things, and I will be
eternally grateful."'
'Fuck. I did not.'
Aoxomoxoa's name in private life was a relic of the band's history.
They'd originally called themselves Purple Sage, but people had kept thinking it was 'Purple Haze': which had pissed them off, so they'd been
forced to change it. Fiorinda had met him when the Heads came backstage
after a DARK gig, in Amsterdam. They'd been best friends ever since.
'You wouldn't know any different if you did, you were drunk as a whole
stink of skunks. Sage, you didn't actually hit anyone, over where to put the
van, did you?'
The Heads' version of Allie's chucking-out story was that Sage had
decided he didn't have to park his rig in the scummy hospitality area if he
didn't feel like it. Site security had demured. There'd been 'a pointless
argument'; and the van was here in Travellers' Meadow —otherwise
reserved for well-connected hippie clans with live-in wheels. 'Nah. I never
hit the bib people no more, 'tisn't sporting. I reasoned with 'em. Honest.
Where've you been, brat? Why'n't you turn up with DARK? People have
been worried. I was too wrecked to think of asking you last night.'
'I had a fight with Charm,' said Fiorinda gloomily, picking up her
sleeping bag and shaking it. 'Worse than ever. Horrible. I said I'd meet them
here. . .but I think we're finished, after this. We'll hack it through the gig, and
then I will be fired, or I will quit.'
Charm Dudley was DARK's frontwoman.
'What kind of a fight? Didja hit her?'
Fiorinda ducked her head and retired behind a curtain of red curls. 'I
may have done.' 'Hahaha. So, I think you can fuck off telling me how to behave, young
lady.' The blank spaces that hid his eyes lit on a white, covered bucket
standing in a corner. 'What's that?'
Sage's van was a monster, there was always something wrong with it.
Last night she had learned to her despair that the composting toilet was not
functional. The Heads didn't care, indeed she suspected they'd have hated
the van if it ever managed the separation from squalor it so falsely promised.
Fiorinda had taken the law into her own hands.
'It is a bucket with a lid. I went out and bought it from White Van Man.
He's doing them as a sideline. I knew because he gave me a lift in yesterday.'
'Off of White Van Man, Fio. Not "from". Watch yourself.' He went over
for a closer inspection. 'I hope it's not a chemical toilet. I won't stand for that.
We will fix the composting thing, how could you doubt us.'
'No you won't. It has never worked properly, and the nearest portaloos
are ten hundred miles from here, and if the weather warms up they will get
maggots. I cannot cope with maggots squiggling around inches under my
bottom. It's only a bucket. It can be cleansed by organically sound methods.
But I insist on the lid. I can't help it, I'm addicted to civilisation. What are
you doing up so early, anyway? Diarrhoea? I'll go for a little stroll then, if
you don't mind— '
'Nah, we're off out,' said Sage, unhooking his one-shouldered dungarees
and lifting the infamous lid. 'Going to town, to the LSE. Some kinda Green Nazi party political conference. You ought to come, Fio. It's your kind of gig.
Lotta long words. I see you're still wearing the yellow ribbon. You're a wise
girl. But don't you ever think you might be missing something?'
'True intimacy is not to do with sex,' said Fiorinda.
Fio, Sage, Cack and George breakfasted on corn patties and coffee with a
heavy shot of cognac, from the White Van; and drove off to London, leaving
Bill and Luke to mind the shop (a sixth Head had quit after a severe health
scare. You needed a superb constitution to survive the Aoxomoxoa lifestyle).
The roads were quiet. Hyde Park, where they left the van, was heaving. So
was the LSE. Fiorinda was amazed to see such a crowd, on a Sunday
lunchtime, in a place that didn't even have a bar. There was no one on the
door at the main venue. They walked in and stood in the front hall, people—
watching: Sage and the lads waxing astonished to find themselves inside an
actual seat of learning, admiring the marble mugshots of whosits,
wondering if you had to pass some kind of exam to get into the gigs?
Fiorinda let them wax, though she considered this performance too stupid to
be funny. Tv crews, some of them from proper mainstream channels, were
pointing cameras and snatching soundbites. Immense numbers of people,
not all of them young, not all of them funky, were peering at handlettered
notices, clutching printed handouts, shouting at each other and into phones:
purposeful, inspired, throbbing with incomprehensible excitement. I mean, thought Fiorinda, suppose they actually took over the government? Would
that be fun? Sending out Income Tax forms, cooking the unemployment
figures. Is that thrilling?
'How important is this conference?' she asked Sage, casually. 'Do you
think any seriously political rockstars will be here?'
'Oh yeah.' His mask, which was something different from the simple fx
the other Heads wore, writhed into a boneyard sneer. 'I'm sure rock and
roll's own Great Pretender to the Countercultural throne is around
somewhere. Didn't know you were a fan.'
'I'm not. Not at all. Just. . . intrigued. Slightly.'
She didn't know who he was talking about. He wouldn't describe Rufus
O'Niall in those terms, would he? Not to Fiorinda. The Heads must know the
story about Fio?s baby, it had not been a well-kept secret, but they never
mentioned her father to her. They were a tactful bunch of drunken laddish
idiots. She couldn't bear to ask him to be more precise: but it was another
sign, oblique and paradoxical, as all real signs are. That made two messages
from fate, counting Allie last night. She would find him, he was here. It was
just strange that she had yet to hear his name, or see his picture.
The lads wanted to snag one of the big name speakers, because you
might as well. She ended up sitting with them in a heavily raked lecture
theatre listening to the President of China talking about the Environment.
The Heads were disgusted to find that they were watching a video, even if the video took the form of a free standing moving image. 'Might as well be
watching Michael Jackson jive,' growled Sage. 'If yer frontman's not going to
be physically there, it's okay. But you hafta say so on the tickets,' complained
Cack, shocked by the duplicity of the politicals.
Also, there was something wrong with the ST earbuttons. Whoever, or
whatever, was doing the ST, was comfortable with words like if, and but, and
and, not too happy with anything more strenuous.
The Heads left. Presumably the rest of the audience could understand
Mandarin because they stayed. So did Fiorinda, folding the President's
meaningless speech around her like a cloak, composing herself within its
shelter —almost like being wrapped in Sage's music, or whatever you called
that stuff of his. Funny that the second most powerful person in the world
should have the same appeal as an Aoxomoxoa and the Heads gig. At
Question Time, when heavy numbers started filing out, she joined them and
went hunting for a VIP lounge, a backstage, a track for insiders. Quite by
chance she became lodged in a human gridlock at the foot of a staircase, and
saw in the crush ahead of her a silver topknot, a bald knob with an eagle
feather scaplock, and those broad shoulders in dark blood red. She reached a
desk. Smiling but determined door police, supported by armed security
muscle, wanted her name, wanted to scan her. She had to sign something.
The smiling but determined ones were turning a lot of people away.
Fiorinda got through. She didn't see what happened to the witches. Reading her handout as she slowly climbed the stairs, she found that she'd signed up
for something called New Faces For The Upper Chamber? Enrollment Only; and
Paul Javert would be speaking. Explained the security. But what did the man
who runs the police have to do with the former House of Lords?
'Complete bastard waste of time,' said one passing delegate to another.
'Some kinda fuckin' fake-Green peerage fer fuck's sake,' agreed the
second. 'Total sham.'
'All they want is our names and numbers, for later attention.'
I'm sure you're right, thought Fiorinda, with a qualm of unease. Could
she have just done something dangerous? She didn't care. She was backstage
of this thing and she'd seen the witches again.
If anywhere, he would be here.
The workshop (or was this one a seminar?) was in an antique,
buttoned—leather armchairs sort of library. There were vistas of London
rooftops through the windows, there were hungry tv and webcast folk,
there were a lot of vociferous people. As Fiorinda arrived a small posse of
men in suits made their entrance, surrounded by a security escort (not
literally in suits, but you could tell what they were as easily as if they were
policemen). Allie Marlowe, wearing an even smarter black dress but the
same grey jacket, was with the party. She saw Fiorinda, and gave her a
complicated smile: the smile someone gives you when you have guessed a
puzzle that they thought you would not crack. 'Hey, Fio!'
Sage and Cack and George came up beside her, grinning (they couldn't
help it). 'We saw you'd signed up,' explained Cack happily. 'So we did too.
What's this one?'
'I have no idea,' said Fiorinda. 'It was an accident.'
'Better ask our beloved leader,' offered Sage, sourly. 'There he is, Fio, if
you want him.'
A lot of people had surged after the suits. Over by the windows, another
lot of people were pressing around a man in a long leather coat. Fio
immediately went over there, blood thundering in her ears.
It was the person she had glimpsed outside the Blue Lagoon marquee.
But it wasn't Rufus. At close range and without the hat she knew this
instantly, but she couldn't believe it. She circled around, trying to get a good
straight look, irrational conviction fighting with the evidence of her eyes. It
had to be the Three Witches' Thane of Cawdor, but it wasn't Rufus. This man
was much younger, much less heavily built and not so tall as he had seemed
in the dusk and he wasn't white but his skin was more milky—tea than
chestnut. She stared, unable to believe she could have made such a mistake.
She had been so certain. It was the coat that had fooled her. A long brown
leather coat such as Rufus used to wear, in the days when he came and
fetched her from school. The big, sleek, soft and expensive animal skin coat
had seemed uniquely glamorous, it had become inextricably linked in her childish mind with Rufus O'Niall—
The not-Rufus caught her eye, raised an eyebrow and smiled wryly. She
recognised him, though they'd never met. He was Ax Preston, lead guitar
and frontman of The Chosen Few, or more usually just The Chosen— a band
from the West Country, not very commercial, not Fio?s kind of music, but
adored by the critics. He was supposed to be an ace guitarist, bit old
fashioned, bit left wing. Did he really have pretensions? Not that she cared.
She turned away, glad she wasn't prone to blushing.
She saw it all now. Rufus O'Niall wasn't even in the country. The whole
rumour of his entry into post-UK politics was baseless, the idea that he was
bound to turn up at Reading a figment of Fiorinda's imagination. How could
she have built so much on so little? She'd have walked straight out, except
she?d have had to fight through the crush, and anyway the Heads were here.
She might as well stay, hide herself again in a shelter of meaningless noise.
Everyone milled around: immensely too many to be seated at the table
where the suits had arranged themselves. Organisers imposed some kind of
order. The suits' leader started to make a standard sort of speech, as far as he
could be heard above the hecklers.
'We're going to make England great again,' he shouted, (against a loud,
determined anti-car chant from back in the stacks). 'But we need your help,
your ideas, your input.'
'You mean you need to cut a deal with the Counterculture!' Whoever said that had a voice like a foghorn. All eyes, even Fiorinda's,
turned to the speaker, a colourful character with a shaggy bleached crest and
—going by what you could see— a full complement of heavy piercings and
tattoos. There was a murmur of non—political interest, because it was Pigsty
Liver, of Pig Liver and the Organs— a big name, in idiot-commercial terms.
The Organs were headlining at the Hyde Park festival. Rockstars all over the
shop, thought Fiorinda. But not the only one who counted. The anti-car
chanters were being removed. An ardent fan who had climbed the
Economics stacks to get a better look at the Home Secretary lost her footing
and fell with a crash. The suit who must be Paul Javert leaned forward over
his clasped hands, oblivious of all the row, and grinned.
'And are you in a position to offer us a "deal", Mr Pigsty?'
General laughter. Even in this context, the Big Pig was a crowd-pleaser.
He claimed he had undergone a personality change after having a pig's liver
transplant: a brazen fabrication, but the basis for videos where the Organs
rolled in mud, pretended to eat live piglets from a trough, appeared to fuck a
large white sow, and so on. Sort of thing the punters loved. Pig groped the
heavy steel loop he wore through the septum of his fleshy nose, picked a
lump of bogey and ate it. His fingers were thick with rings, his teeth small,
white and even.
'Yeah. I'll tell you about it later. First off I want an office at Westminster,
with my name on the door. And a seat on the Cabinet and a sexy secretary.' More laughter.
Fiorinda prepared to slip into no-time: into the place she had found, had
been forced to find, or invent, in the terrible year. Between the seconds,
between the microseconds, she could take aeons to deal with the fact that it
wasn't Rufus, and return refreshed, and no one would know she had been
gone. Unluckily, because she had co-operated with the organiser types she
was in the front row, elbows on the long table. Trapped by those old
fashioned reflexes again, she found it annoyingly hard to get her attention
away from what was going on. The chief suit had turned Pigsty's cheeky
response into a brainstorming exercise. Everyone in his line of sight was
being asked what they wanted, from the new England.
What a stupid question.
No need to let the suit have it all his own way, however.
'I'm sorry,' she said, when it was her turn, 'I don't see the point.
Government in this country happens in Committee Rooms, off line and off
the record. Not in public meetings. It's been that way forever. I don't expect
anything?s going to change because the flag gets easier to draw.'
'I see! Well, that puts me in my place!'
'I don't know what possible use you could have for our wish-lists. Unless
you're hoping we'll give you some free copy for your party's next
advertising campaign.'
He frowned. Fiorinda noticed that Allie, two places to his left with a laptop perched on her knee, was gazing at him soulfully. She wondered if
that confirmed she was bandying words with the actual Home Secretary; or
was Allie just practising.
'I think the old should die more,' said Ax Preston, though it was far from
his turn, (in the front row on purpose, presumably, to further his vaulting
ambition). 'If you're old, you ought to die. It's common sense. And end state
education. There's no reason why kids today should have to learn to read
and write and figure. We got computers to do that.'
'I think shit's going to be important,' announced Sage, not to be outdone.
The Heads, drawn there because they were with Fio, were in the front row
too. 'I think it's important that we have a policy for shit.'
'Shit, I see. You mean, the chaos of random events? As in "shit happens"?'
'Nah. As in the brown stuff that comes out of my bottom. It's gonna be
fuckin' crucial.'
'Could we,' said Allie, her familiar voice rising suddenly and sharply out
from among the suits, 'could we please try to take this seriously. Something
momentous is happening—'
'Oh, Allie, no it is not,' said Fio. 'Dissolution is a rubber stamp. The
legislatures have been moving apart for years. Nothing?s going to happen at
the end of December, bar changing the signs on the office doors.'
Ax Preston grinned at her.
The Home Secretary didn't seem to recognise the Chosen's celebrated guitarist, or skull-masked Aoxomoxoa, never mind Fiorinda, but he leaned
behind his neighbours to whisper to Allie, who whispered back. A guy
between them nodded, and made a note.Then one of the genuine Green
Nazis pitched in (a celebrity, by the way the camera people leapt to
attention) to haul the meeting back on topic. How is the government
planning to implement this idea of handing the Second Chamber over to the
forces for positive change? What powers would such a body have?
And so on. People shouted, people were shouted down. Pigsty kept
asking for his office space and his sexy babe, and raised a laugh every time.
The Home Secretary decided to show a video. The lesser suits shifted their
chairs around, looking eager and interested: perhaps, in their minds, this
was the whole object of the exercise. Organiser types unfurled a plastic
screen. It began to display a painfully colour-distorted sequence of Merrie
England images, lacking a sound track. Morris Dancers, Umbrellas, Fish and
Chips, Steak And Kidney Puddings, Cricket Teams, Cottages With Roses...
'Great,' said someone. 'But are their faces meant to be that colour?'
'It's yer blue emitters,' said Sage helpfully. 'Triggering the emission of
photons at blue wavelengths, yer need a nice clean current, for consistent
high energy electron transitions in yer semi—conductors. I think you'll find
central London's havin' one of them power dips.'
The mask Sage usually wore was a living skull, freshly stripped: the bone
rose-tinged, eye spaces blood-blank, tooth enamel preternatually bright. Today, for a change, it was the charnel version. Fiorinda noticed a suit
noticing, with a horrified start, Sage's hands, as skeletal as the mask but more
disturbing: dry brown bones with black shadows between them, clinging
rags of withered flesh—
The video struggled on. Some yelled their scorn and derision; and left.
Others stayed to catcall and slow handclap, but that was as far as it went. No
violence. By the time the screen was rolled up again, the crowd had thinned
out and quieted down, and the suits prepared to leave with some dignity.
The note-taker came sidling up to Fiorinda.
'Allie tells me you're a rising popstar, Fiorinda.'
'That's nice of her.'
He was youngish, plump, Asian, thick black wavy hair, taste-free
weekend-casuals.
'I wonder if you'd mind telling me, what exactly does muso mean? Would
that mean, a pop star who is a trained musician, in the er, the traditional
sense?'
'Not necessarily. I suppose it means someone who isn?t willing to be a
commodity. Who cares about the art and craft of it, rather than doing
anything that will make money.' She snagged a glance at the screen of his
lap-top, while he leaned across the corner of the table, corralling her in place.
There was a list of names, including her own. Next to Ax Preston, it said has
ideas. Next to Fiorinda it said light voice. Huh. I do not! Time to start smoking the heavy tars again.
'And that's good?' He gazed at her intently.
'Well, obviously,'
Over Mr Weekend?s strategic shoulder, Ax Preston was grinning again.
He had nice eyes. She wondered was he laughing at her, or at the suit.
The Home Secretary's party swept out in a wave of camera flashes.
Fiorinda walked around looking at the books, and then went to join the
Heads in the knot of music biz people around Ax Preston.
'Are you sure about standing for Parliament?' Sage was asking, affecting
friendly concern. 'I c'n understand you quitting the band. But why don't you
just get a decent job—?'
'I have not left the band,' snapped the guitarist. 'If you've started
believing all the bollocks you read in the music press, Sage, it's time you
booked yourself into rehab again.'
'You know, most people think the Chosen broke up years ago, so it's
gonna be a thrill, seeing you at Reading. I'm really planning to try and catch
that.'
The Heads and the Chosen Few represented opposing traditions. They
couldn't have been more different, but their star performers had a kind of
parallel standing in the Indie world: Sage the brillantly commercial techno
wizard, Ax Preston the pure musician with the critical and political cred.
There tended to be a natural hostility when their paths crossed. Put it another way, Sage liked to wind Ax Preston up.
The music-world group was possessed of certain facts, which they now
expected to be aired. Such as, a short while ago Milly Kettle, the Chosen's
drummer and Ax's long time girlfriend, had suddenly become vocalist and
rhythm guitarist Jordan Preston's girlfriend instead. Such as, Sage had
recently lost the final round in his messy and pricey attempts to recover the
rights to the Heads' first album, the legendary Morpho. Promising material
for invective; or with luck a more physical exchange.
'Oh! Could I talk to you guys?'
Allie Marlowe had left with the suits, but she'd come back. She stood
hugging her attaché case, nervous and self-important. 'Oh, Paul would like
to, um, put a proposal to some of you. I have a list of names here.'
She read out her list, and dispensed slips of fresh-pressed plastic.
„You?ll need those for ID. Must rush, I have to talk to Pigsty.?
The selected looked at each other in bemusement. 'Holy Fuck,' said a
style-victim black youth, with a crimson brush cut and the face of a
depraved cherub, 'What did we audition for? Does anyone know?'
His companion tossed back shining brown cavalier ringlets. 'Oh, Oh, Oh,
pass the plutonium, Darius. We've been sampled for destruction.'
Silly boys, thought Fiorinda.
'I know I had my particulars taken down,' said an older, booming voice.
That gave her a jolt. She remembered being scanned, at the enrollment table. Bravado aside, it was the first time to her knowledge that she'd been handled
by the law: and she didn't like it. Happily Sage seemed to have lost interest
in plaguing the guitar-man, so they could leave, and she didn't have to come
back.
After the LSE gig, Ax returned to the house on the Lambeth Road that
belonged to his good friend Rob Nelson, of the PoMo band Snake Eyes; who
shared it with his three fabulous girlfriends (aka The Eyes) and various other
members of the tribe. He was staying there, while the Chosen camped at
Reading, because he needed to be at the heart of this thing; and he didn't
want to be in the Park. Some time after midnight he left the house, stone cold
sober, and walked through the poorly-lit, humid night, up the long, straight
road to the river. He liked walking, it helped him think. When you walked
you saw things, felt things, smelt things that occupied the outer layers of the
mind, freeing-up the machinery. A stack of binbags big as a house, who did
that, and was it art? A scuttling rat with an immensely long tail; a pair of
barefoot, horrible-looking little children crouched asleep in a doorway.
The city was not sleeping. It crawled with light and movement, but on
Vauxhall Bridge there was nobody about. A full moon slipped between
broken clouds. Ax had talked to the band, his brothers Shane and Jordan,
and Milly. Made sure they were okay, warned them he was going to be
away a couple more days, doled out praise and customized attention for each of them. Attention keeps people sweet, one of those little mechanical
tricks he'd picked up. Obviously no substitute for real feeling, but you don't
always have time for real feeling, and you always need to keep people sweet.
He walked up and down, pondering the imponderables of life: like why was
his Dad such a shite, and what about that little red-haired girl?
A few years ago, when the Chosen had their rush of money, he'd done the
traditional thing and bought his parents a nice house outside Taunton, his
home town. Mum and Dad were still living there, along with Ax's youngest
brother and his sister, but Dad —without telling Ax— had raised two
mortgages on the property, spent the money and fallen behind on the
payments. The situation had just gone critical, which was why Ax knew
about it. It was amazing, the amount of fucking stupid behaviour his Dad
could pack into a life that should be problem free. Get out of bed, go down
the pub. What else had ever been asked of the bastard?
He wished he could sort that problem, once and for all. Since he knew he
could not he put it aside, and contemplated instead the things that had gone
down today: itemising faces, names, quirks of behaviour, facts and
inferences; storing them for future reference. The little red headed girl was
wearing the yellow ribbon, which meant the long stare she'd given him
couldn't have the straightforward meaning.
Ax liked yellow ribbon people. It was a good institution, he often wore it
himself. It meant you could cut a lot of crap. If someone didn't want the warning to be respected, if they were just trying to make themselves more
desirable, too bad. But why did she look at him like that? Fiorinda. He knew
the name. Rufus O'Niall's daughter, but the less said about that the better.
Very young, very angsty: and obviously, now he'd met her, not your average
baby-star. Pity about the accent.
Rob was excited about this development with Paul Javert. And yeah,
there was something in it. Pigsty the government stooge, recruited beforehand,
the rest of them picked up as filler. For what? Didn't matter really. Whatever was
supposed to be going on, it could be useful to be involved. Ax was wondering if
he could keep a low enough profile in a small working party, especially with that
mouthy fucker Sage around. He wasn't ready to make his move, not for a long
time yet. In that regard, Pigsty would be useful. A good attention—attractor,
nice and loud and ugly. The suits were in the mood to abase themselves before
ugly, and you could understand why.
The Pig was right. The government had to make a deal with the so—
called Counterculture. The current GM related crop failures, and home
wrecker floods in previously unaffected venues, hadn?t improved a situation
that was getting rapidly out of hand. The UK?s share of the world?s weather
and food disasters weren?t killers, (if you really want to be scared, look at the
multi-drug-resistant TB and viral pneumonia deaths!), but they?d brought
public morale to the tipping point. It was I told you so time, and the Extreme
Greens, the Hardline Counterculturals, whatever they called themselves, were making the most of it, reaping the whirlwind. There were outlaw
bands of eco-warriors roaming unchecked, 'releasing' farm animals, trashing
science parks, sabotaging consumerism any way that occurred to them —
and gaining more support, not less, from Middle England, as the violence
increased. And at the back of it all, the great economic meltdown,
inescapable anywhere in Europe.
Classic situation. Frightening situation.
Got to admire Paul Javert's nerve. He must have known he'd get
slaughtered. But it was pitiful. The fast-track government types thought they
were razor-sharp, keen political minds. It went right by them that they'd
been breathing the same shit atmosphere, feeding on the same poisons as
their idiot voters. That's how they ended up coming to the only people who
might handle the CCM for them, scouting for advertising copy.
He paused in his pacing. What if he could actually do it, one day? Take
control, turn the situation around? Then he could look forward to becoming
as deluded and full-of-shit as one of those suits this afternoon; and then later
there'd be the fun of watching everything he'd achieved trashed to fuck by
the next new wave.
Unless he saved them the trouble by ruining it all himself.
Still be worth it, he decided. I understand the deal, and I accept.
Footsteps, that had failed to penetrate his reverie, suddenly sounded
close and loud. A solitary armoured policeman was coming towards him. 'Evening, Sir.'
'Evening, officer.'
'Or morning, I should say. It's past two o'clock. Would you mind telling
me what you're doing down here, Sir?'
'Thinking.'
The upper part of the man's face was concealed: a chinguard reached
almost to his nose. The mask of armour studied Ax impassibly.
'It's not very safe, at this hour. Any ID on you, Sir?'
Ax felt a white light dawning in his brain: the certainty of destiny. He
produced the plastic card that identified him as one of the Home Secretary's
chosen. The policeman examined it thoroughly, running the biometrics and
God knows what other information through the datalink in his visor.
'Right you are, Sir. I suppose you know what you're doing.'
'I hope I do.'
They started to walk together, falling into step. 'Flag of St George,' said
the policeman, with a nod down the river to Westminster. 'It'll be funny to
see it on its own. Like a football match. But it's about time, in my opinion.
About time we got back to basics.'
'To the reality of the situation,' agreed the Ax. 'That's what we need. Some reality.' 2: Innocence and Experience
Pigsty didn't get his sexy secretary, not yet, but when Paul Javert explained
his proposal, two days later, it was in a Committee Room in Whitehall. The
Home Secretary wanted to set up a Counter Cultural Think Tank (he was
relying on them to suggest a catchier title), enlisting cultural icons
sympathetic to both sides of the debate to advise the government and
reassure the public. He'd decided that pop music was the key: universally
accessible as no other art form, non-elitist, fun, and yet longtime associated
by the punters with principled, non-violent protest against the
Establishment. . .
There were six suits. Paul Javert, Mr Weekend the notetaker (whose
name was Benny Preminder), another man from the LSE; and three women
who hadn't been at that gig. Paul Javert was in slinky black, like a fantasy
thriller hero. The others were in hopeless leisurewear, it must be giving Allie
serious pain to sit beside them. It was very clear this time that they had a
special relationship with Pigsty, who sat flanked by equally well—hard
Organs, putting his feet up, scratching, farting, and looking insufferably
smug. Fiorinda wondered if the suits genuinely believed that Pigsty Liver
was a leading social satirist. Maybe they did. The Pig, with his ageing raver
ironmongery, was regarded as a talent-free idiot by anyone Fio knew: but he
was a household name, and might look convincing to the unwary, sitting there bravely outlawed from suit-wearing, as one who has nailed his colours
to the mast.
Mr Javert's other recruits (most of whom had been at the LSE; a few who
hadn't) were something else again. Besides Aoxomoxoa and the Heads, and
Ax Preston (rest of the Chosen weren't here), he had Rob Nelson of Snake
Eyes, Ken Batty from Direct Action, Martina Rage from Krool, the heavy metal
feminists. DK the DJ (Dilip Krishnachandran), the Perfect Master of IMMix,
Roxane Smith the veteran critic; and that new techno boy-duo (reckoned
interesting by the Heads, though Fiorinda didn't get it) who called
themselves The Adjuvants. Plus an Islamic ghazal singer from Leicester, who
wore a burqa and was supposed to be the Next Big Thing. All in all, a well
filled shopping trolley. Realism prevented her from including herself
(probably thrown in to improve the girl quotient), but if you'd given
someone who knew the score free rein to collect the tastiest people on the
English Indie scene, this was what you might get. Everyone clocked
everyone else, covertly. Nobody explained to Mr Javert that he hadn't
enlisted any pop musicians, unless you counted Pigsty and the Organs.
Fiorinda had come back against her better judgement because the Heads
were coming. She amused herself pondering the fate of dead metaphors,
while the others played the wish-list game. What colours? 'Mast' could be a
word for penis, and 'nail' means a piercing, but what are these colours Pig's
nailed to his willy? Something to do with nail varnish? Pigsty has stuck his ampallang thingy to his willy with puce nail varnish, which shows he is
incredibly brave and determined. But what is this grist that the suits say we
must give to their mill?, and if we're talking about eco—warriors lying to the
media, what has that to do with pots calling kettles black? When do cows
come home, and what have roosting chickens to do with bad guys getting
their come-uppance? What does 'roost' mean, anyhow...?
We need a caring hospice for figures of speech, she decided. We should
treasure our cliches and use them tenderly because soon nobody will know.
Dead metaphors, dead words, words that are themselves layers of played
out metaphor: the shells of dead sea creatures, sinking down and losing their
shapes, getting embedded, turning into rock. Maybe cultural deracination is
when no one remembers deracination means pulling something up by the
roots. Or that if you do that, whatever it is will die—
Whenever Fiorinda spoke —which she did, occasionally, to break the
monotony— everybody stared. It was annoying. Martina the militant
feminist never shut up, and nobody stared at her. Fiorinda was unimpressed
by feminism. Experience told her that women who tried to buck the age old
system were either defeated and futile, such as her mother, or easily as nasty
as any man, such as Carly. Thanks, but no thanks. I?ll make my own terms.
When Ax spoke everyone laughed, including the suits, although they
looked a trifle shifty as they chuckled. Presumably because his 'provocative
suggestions' (the poor should eat shit, the unemployed should be sold as slaves) bore some passing resemblance to current government policy. It
lasted a couple of hours. Fereshteh the ghazal singer sat in her black bag, like
a running joke in an ironic tv cartoon, and never said a word. After the show
they were bussed (nice bus, no expense spared) to a tv studio near the river,
where they had a big joint interview for a current affairs programme. Sage's
loud insistence that Cornish Brythonic should be made the official language
of the new English Parliament earned him cheers from the studio audience,
and a good time was had by all. At the end, Allie handed out plastic per
diems and told them when to come back.
The Heads were taking Ken to Whipsnade, where the animal rights
people were running a feasibility study (read: another green riot) on the
freeing of wolves and other large mammals. Fiorinda didn't approve.
Wouldn't wolves decimate or starve out indigenous predators? Like minks
did? 'Nah,' said Sage. 'Ax is gonna organise a supply of small children, in
depots round the country: it'll help reduce the surplus population.'
'In little red cloaks,' said Fio. 'And pigs in straw houses. Releasing zoo
animals is as stupid as your jokes, Sage.'
'The helix of time has brought one change,' announced Verlaine, the
Adjuvant with the cavalier ringlets; striking a pose. 'If this was Paris 1789,
we'd all be either lawyers or journalists.'
Chip Desmond clutched his red crest and made retching noises—
'You're out of your brains,' Fiorinda told them. 'More like Paris 1968. A street—party, a few burned out cars, and back to business as usual.'
'That's what I like about you, Fiorinda,' said Ax. 'You're not easily
impressed.'
'What's there to be impressed about? This dumb PR stunt? Please.'
The van took off north. Fiorinda went down the pub with most of the
others. Eventually Rob Nelson's three girlfriends, Dora and Felice and
Cherry, came to pick him up in their battered pink Cadillac, and she went
back in the car with them and Ax Preston to the Snake Eyes house. It was
easier than deciding how to get back to Reading; and there was nowhere else
that she wanted to be. Rob's place was full of Dissolution Rocksters. The only
bed he could offer her was in a coffin-like closet on the top floor. It was
called the Mugs Room. Actual mugs crowded around the mattress on the
floor, ranked on shelves, dangling from the ceiling, stacked on the floor.
Mugs in all colours, mugs adorned with witty comments. Merchandizing
mugs, novelty mugs, pretty mugs, arty mugs, obscene mugs.
'No one ever wants to throw one out,' explained Rob, 'unless it breaks.
They're a hassle of modern life. Trouble is, I said that on the tv, on a rugrats'
programme? Tryin' to think of something non—horny to say about my
homelife? So, you can guess. They mount up.'
The closet had obviously had a long career as the doss of last resort. It
looked clean but it smelt of stale vomit. Fio declined, which turned out to
mean she was sharing the big living room in the basement with Ax Preston. She was surprised to find that this was where he was sleeping. She'd have
thought he'd be in the penthouse suite.
'It's not so bad,' said Ax, putting aside the guitar on which he'd been
doodling quietly, in the background, all through the political discussion.
(Like Jane Austen, Fiorinda had thought: scribbling a novel on the edge of
the drawing room table).'You can't sleep until everyone else has gone, but I
don't mind. I never sleep much.'
'Where do you usually live?'
'In Taunton, with the band.'
'Is that nice, living in the country?'
'Taunton isn't the country,' he said, frowning at the end of the spliff he
was lighting. 'it's much worse than that. But it's where we were born. That's
important. I want us to stay there.'
The way everybody laughed at Ax and everybody stared at Fiorinda
had created an alliance. In the Whitehall meeting and at the tv studio they'd
kept catching each other's eye, and smiling ironically.
'What d'you think they want from us?' she asked. 'The suits, I mean.'
'I don't much care. I'm wondering what use I can make of this.'
There he goes, she thought. Everybody's crazy about something.
'Ax. . . do you watch a lot of television?'
He looked blank. 'Never have time for it.'
'Do a lot of stuff on the internet?' 'Shane looks after all that. I can't be bothered.'
'Okay, do you like to eat in fancy restaurants?'
'Fuck, no.'
'Well, the normal people in this country do nothing else but watch tv and
click around in cyberspace, whereas the ruling classes spend their whole
time grovelling and scheming to get a table at this week's top restaurant.
Face it, you've got nothing in common with them. There's no way you are
going to get them to. . . to vote for you, or whatever it is you want.'
'Maybe I know what's good for them better than they do themselves.'
'That wouldn't be hard. But.' She was lost for words. Unlike the
Adjuvants, spouting radical ideas with one eye in the mirror, there was
something un-self-regarding in the Ax that made his obsession more
embarassing than funny. She wanted to save him from himself.
He looked at her, narrow-eyed: off on his own angle. 'What d'you make
of Pigsty?'
'He's genuine,' said Fiorinda, immediately. 'He's not putting it on for the
punters, which is what I assumed before I met him. He's just what he makes
himself out to be. The kind of crass, stupid, self-satisfied libertarian bastard
who would bugger a five year old in the name of free love.'
'Nothing wrong with buggering a five year old,' said Ax, in his eat the
unemployed voice. 'If the kid's having a good time, whose business is it.'
'Exactly. Yeah, you got it. That's Pigsty.' They laughed. 'But we'll keep our opinion to ourselves.'
The suits adored the Big Pig: so the rest of them were already drawn into
this complicity. Fiorinda nodded, wondering why she would keep her
opinion to herself. Why was she getting involved in this thing? Maybe it was
a good career move. Maybe it filled a horrible blank.
She had been lent a manky sleeping bag. There was a proper bed made
up for Ax on the couch, with a duvet and sheets. He gallantly offered it.
Fiorinda counter-offered that they could share.
'Yeah, okay,' said Ax. 'Thanks.'
She glanced at the yellow ribbon, which he was also wearing today, and
made a pragmatic decision, based on the irritating alternative of lying there
wondering if he was going to make a move. The ribbon worked fairly well,
but it was asking a lot to expect it to function when you were sharing a bed
with someone you hardly knew. 'If you like, we can do sex.'
'You sure that would be okay?'
'No problem. Ribbon just means you're not looking for it, far as I?m
concerned. I don't mind, honest.'
'Right. I'll see if I've got a condom.'
'If you want. I don't care. I'm clean, and I'm not going to get pregnant on
you. They gave me the injection in hospital when—' She stopped, but had
already gone too far. 'When I had the baby,' she finished, casually.
'You had a kid, oh, yeah, I heard that.' 'Not any more. It. . . he died.'
'Well,' said Ax, after a moment, 'that was a bad break.' He reached out,
touching her for the first time, and stroked back a lock of the red curls that
tumbled round her face. 'You've had hard times, I know. I very much admire
the way you have come through them.'
She stared at him, like: what weird language is this?
'Do you want that fuck?'
'I'll see about the condom,' said Ax, hoping he wasn't making a horrible
mistake. But what he was doing felt right. He would go with it.
For Fiorinda it was okay, except that he turned out to be the considerate
type, whereas she was not going to get aroused by him unless he broke into
her when she was dry, the way her father used to do it. She couldn't tell him
this, and didn't feel like faking. 'I'm going to have to masturbate. Do you
mind?' 'Why would I mind?' said Ax, (sounding taken aback at finding
himself in bed with a girl who said masturbate when she meant wank) 'You
do what feels good.' Then the sex was fine. They did it four more times
during the night: something neither of them had expected.
The Dissolution Festival at Reading unfolded its all-embracing programme.
Rock bands rocked, circus troupes trouped, folkies folked, poets droned,
stand-ups lacerated themselves and any fool else. Anything Celtic was
violently heckled, in newborn English patriotic feeling. Aoxomoxoa and the Heads headlined to the usual huge, adoring, laddish crowd. The plan for
bussing artists around the country to other sites did not happen, owing to
crisis conditions and economic meltdown. A secret gang of personal
transport wreckers haunted the parking fields, leaving every morning a
fresh swathe of terminally immobilised vehicles that were a real hassle to
deal with.
Fiorinda and DARK did a miserable set on Red Stage, which was
mainstage, in the rain at lunchtime. Everything went wrong, and such few
people as happened to be drifting around pretty well ignored them. The next
night they were indoors at the Green Room. Things were tense. They were
all severely drunk, and very shaken by their Red Stage failure. Fil Slattery
and Gauri Mostel were sullen, Cafren Free silently suicidal. Charm was in a
savage bad temper, and Tom Okopie the bassist was too smashed to be his
usual steadying influence. Added to this it turned out they had a real crowd,
not hardcore DARK fans but actual punters who had heard the buzz, and
maybe even bought the album. DARK were famous (relatively speaking) for
fucking-up royally whenever people looked like liking them. It could have
been a disaster. Instead they flipped into a state of high energy and played
like demons, Fiorinda's pure, ferocious vocals and wild guitar taking
everything by storm. She was radiating. So much so that, with the set two
thirds done, she looked around, caught everybody's eye, and launched them,
unilaterally, into „Stonecold? —her own teenage vagrant anthem, and a killer tune, which Charm had axed from the set. She couldn't stop herself.
„Stonecold? was huge, the crowd loved it. Charm went along with the
coup, face like thunder, until the end of the song. Then she came over,
glaring like a demented stoat, not quite steady on the feet, and said
something audible and sarcastic to her vocalist, to the effect, Fiorinda's
shitful Megastar Dad would be proud of her dirty tactics—
Charm never mentioned the fact that the Megastar Dad had allegedly got
his twelve year old daughter pregnant. Otherwise it was no holds barred,
ever since she'd found out who Fiorinda's father was.
Aoxomoxoa and the Heads were down in the mosh, breaking the
celebs/punters barrier with their usual aplomb. They had a grandstand view
of what happened next: the incandescent teenager in her sparkly blue party
dress, squaring up to the queen of Northern Radical Dyke Rock. Charm all
mean and nasty, no surprise. . . But though Fiorinda may dress like the
ballerina on the musical box, and may look fragile, she stands an easy five
foot five in her army boots, which gives her a couple of inches over Charm;
and she's not afraid to make herself useful. Doesn't let the height disparity
worry her: hauls off and lands the demented stoat a clip that sends Charm
flying, guitar howling, into a stack of amps—
'Wooeee!' yelled Sage, punching the air, 'That's my girl!'
They removed themselves from the scene, however, during the stage
invasion that followed. Shame to leave a good ruckus, but as George said, they'd be doing the kid no favours, giving their seal of approval to that sort
of unladylike behaviour.
DARK had an impromptu debriefing, when they'd been hustled off. They
hardly bothered with the latest incident, but cut straight to the chase, the real
problem, the power struggle. 'This is my fucking band,' yelled Charm. 'I say
what goes on the set list and that's—'
'Look,' said Fiorinda, biting back tears of rage and despair. 'Don't be such
a brainless shit. Okay, I wrote it, I'm sorry. It isn't relevant who wrote it.
“Stonecold” works for us.'
'Fuck that!' screamed Charm, eyes popping. 'Who's "us" princess? You
want the same crap megabucks stadium success as your dad, and DARK is
not going that way!'
'I want us to get somewhere,' shouted Fiorinda defiantly. 'Don't you?'
'FUCK YOU, daddy's girl—'
'You're scared, Charm. You can't stand the heat.'
'I can't stand this,' muttered Cafren Free, pale blonde head in her hands.
Tom stayed with Fiorinda when everyone else went off to the bus.
Plump, black, cuddly Tom had always been nice to Fio, far as rock and roll
feudalism allowed. Don't let Charm get to you, he told her earnestly. It's
right-on, constant fuck-ups, constan' revolution, freedom to flail, that's what
DARK's about, proves the band's integriry. . . But Tom was totally pissed and he was Cafren's boyfriend. He couldn't really be Fiorinda's ally. Tom
belonged to Cafren, DARK belonged to Charm Dudley, and Fiorinda had no
place to lay her head.
She returned to the van, where she found Sage alone, and incredibly
unsympathetic. He'd seen the whole thing, and hadn't even come backstage
to back her up. What d'you expect, he said. You were fantastic, but it's not
going to get you nowhere at this fucking rate. You're too big for Charm, she
knows it, but she's not going to hand you her band on a plate. Give her some
space, stupid brat. He told her she ought to pack in the public violence or
take up mud-wrestling, which was an absolute fucking cheek, coming from him.
Advised her she was going to have a shit of a hangover, and left on some
sexual prowl or other. She crawled into the annexe and lay there spinning,
hating everyone, too proud to cry herself to sleep.
Notoriety sometimes pays. Fiorinda snagged an invitation to do a solo gig at
the Best of the Fest club, a 'smoky late night cabaret': where she went down a
treat. She stayed away from DARK, but went to a couple more meetings in
Whitehall, and spent a couple more nights at the Snake Eyes house. One
chilly August morning, when the two weeks of the Festival were nearly over,
she met Ax in the arena. They were both queuing to buy breakfast from a
van. He was wearing that leather coat, and had a guitar case slung over his
shoulder: which made her smile. See Ax Preston, see guitar. 'Oh, hello,' said Fio. 'What are you doing here? I thought you were
staying in London.'
'I am, but the Chosen played the Blue Lagoon last night.'
'How was it?'
'Not bad.'
He had refused to play the Jerusalem solo for them. And the crowd went
crazy, but he still refused to play it. . . the howling cascades of notes singing
in his head, in his fingers, in his balls, in the muscles of his forearms: but he
knew it was right not to be persuaded. Better withhold, deny yourself the
quick hit. He'd been thinking well, they're not watching the telly now, (though
millions were watching, punters who were scared of the Fest of Dissolution?s
rep, but were still riding this wave): which had annoyed him. He didn't want
to fall into the trap of trying to impress this girl. It would be doubly stupid in
her case, because Fio did not want to be impressed. It wouldn't be like a
bunch of roses if he did something she admired, it would just piss her off. He
wondered where she'd been, last night. He was not going to ask.
Keep things cool and friendly.
'You next?' said the Korean noodle man, with a smile of contempt. As
usual at these things, all the catering people by now hated all their customers
indiscriminately.
'I'll have the flat kind, dunno what you call 'em.' He perused the list of
fillings. 'With the veg, ginger pickle, and seaweed.' Fio bought a bowl of miso soup. They walked off together.
Ax was looking at his food in deep dismay.
'What's the matter?'
'Fuck. I thought seaweed meant that nice dry shredded cabbage.'
His noodles had been buried under a mound of steaming kelp, actual
yards of slick, disgusting marine leather. 'The bastard, he knew I didn't
know what he was talking about—'
'So chuck it.'
'I can't do that. There's no bin. I can't chuck it on the ground. What d'you
think this place would look like, if people just chucked stuff on the ground?'
Like it does, thought Fiorinda. 'Don't panic. I'll have it.'
They did the transfer. Fiorinda burrowed in her underskirts and brought
out the saltbox: balancing her biodegradable soupbowl deftly on her wrist
while she opened it. 'Want some?'
He frowned at the twinkling white powder. 'Bit early for me, thanks.'
'It's salt.'
'You're going to put salt on seaweed and miso?'
'I like salt. Anyway, seaweed doesn't taste salty, it tastes of iodine.'
He'd been hoping for a chance to talk to her in a neutral context. He'd
talked to everybody else, except that fucker Sage: just making himself known
at this stage. But the times he'd been private with Fio he'd been sidetracked
by the sexual opportunity. She wasn't physically his type, and she was fucked up as hell, poor kid, but somehow he kept wanting more.
Maybe it was the challenge to his manhood. Getting Fiorinda to come
wasn't the problem, oh no. Getting Fiorinda to respond emotionally to sex:
that was a project.
'What about this Think Tank? I notice you're still up for it.'
Fiorinda was hungry. The Festival of Dissolution had given up providing
free food for its artists, and the government perdiems were useless. She was
trying not to waste her cash reserves on stupid bodyfuel. She chewed kelp
doggedly before she answered.
'I think it's obscurely addictive. Like watching a dull arthouse movie,
that is somehow quirky enough to hold your attention. I suppose the media
exposure has to be good.'
There had been a steady flow of attention. Pigsty was most in demand.
Ax and Sage and Fiorinda were also popular, but media people were wary
of Sage. He had no respect for them whatever, and could be murder to
interview.
'They like you, because of your accent.'
'Mmm. I know. It cracks people up. They like you because you give good
one-liners.'
'And the dresses. The mediafolk like your dresses. So do I. That's a good
look.'
'Thanks. It's my one idea. I buy evening gowns from charity shops, and wear them on top of each other. It's not original but it's flashy: and cheap, as
long as you're fairly little and thin.'
'The website's crap though.'
Fiorinda hadn't seen it. She shrugged, indifferently.
They ate and walked, catching the occasional nudge and glance from the
sparse morning crowd. 'A dull black and white movie. It's a point of view.
What're your plans after the end of the Festival? You going back north with
DARK?'
'No,' said Fiorinda, sorry he'd raised the subject. She'd been enjoying
talking to someone who didn't know about her plight. It made a nice change.
'You could move in at Snake Eyes. Should be more space there soon.'
'Thanks, but I think I'll stay here. The campground isn't going to break
up. A lot of people are planning on staying until Dissolution Day, that's the
idea. Our landlords are letting it happen, and the Thames Valley police
aren't going to interfere. They reckon we'll float away of our own accord
when the weather turns nasty. I expect they're right.'
HurdyGurdy, a hippie consortium that had bought the Rivermead site
when the previous owners went belly-up, had vowed that they intended
preserving it 'for the Countecultural nation'. The River had other ideas.
'Hmm.' Ax came to a stand, annoyed that he hadn't heard this news
himself. They'd reached a rubbish point, a hive of open mouthed black bin
bags in a wash of faultily aimed garbage. He took Fiorinda's bowl and chucked them both, making sure he did not miss. 'I hope you keep coming
to watch the movie, anyway. I've got plans for this Think Tank, Fiorinda. I
believe we could make a good team. You and me, and Sage. I'd value Sage's
input, though he might be surprised to hear it; and the others. We could
make a difference to this country's future.'
'You're out of your mind,' said Fio. 'You're a rock star, not a politician.'
'I don't want to be a politician. The time for politics is past.?
'Oh. Well, I go this way.'
Ax was heading for the Roving Presence Pavilion, in the opposite
direction. 'I'm meeting people in China. Can I persuade you to join me?'
'No thanks. See you later, then.'
'Yeah, later.'
Fiorinda didn't have anything special to do, she'd simply felt that the
conversation was getting awkward. There was also the problem of having
slept with someone a couple of times, and not being sure if it's going to
happen again. The moment she'd left him, standing there looking a little
forlorn, she wanted to turn back. She resisted the impulse, and decided to
investigate the Zen Self tent. According to Luke and Cack it had excellent
rides: good as the zorbsperience, which was the best thing in Violet Alley,
the arena's official playground.
The tent was bigger than it had seemed from the outside. She looked into the booths around the inner walls and was disappointed to find that most of
the things you could try involved getting hooked up to computers. Fiorinda
liked playing fantasy games, but on the whole information technology had
passed her by. Her childhood in the cold house had left her convinced that
she could never catch up. A few people were examining a coffin sized cigar
shaped cylinder on a giant swivel arrangement.
'What's this?' she asked the Zen Selfer who seemed to be in charge.
'It's a centrifuge,' said the young man briskly. 'You get in there. We
subject your body to stresses equivalent to several gravities. You lose
consciousness.'
'Is that fun?'
'Well, it's interesting, because on the way out you will have a Near Death
Experience. Anyone can have a Near Death Experience. There doesn't have
to be a pathological reason. As the blood leaves your brain you get the
tunnel vision, you see the bright light, you feel you're floating, you seem to
be outside your body. You reach a beautiful place, you may feel you are
being judged, you'll meet the people you love most, you won't want to come
back. The whole thing. It's simply what G-LOC does to the Cephalic
Nervous System. Want to have a go?'
'Um.'
'We give you a medical check first.'
'What's it about, though?' 'It's about consciousness. That's what all our stuff's about. You can get
your brain imaged in action, you can get hooked up and see your own
40hertz oscillations. You can see a real time simulation of the information
loading in the hydrophobic protein sacs of the neuronic cytoskeleton; or you
can try the blindsight experiment. Over there, you can get the two halves of
your brain virtually dissociated and experience being two people: try to
contact your right—brain self. Or you could do the collapsed wave-function
experiment— '
'Thanks for explaining everything. I think I'll just— '
'Most people,' said the young man, 'do the reductionist things first. Then
they listen to Olwen. That's also somewhere to start. There's a workshop
beginning now.'
In the centre of the tent there was a low, circular wooden staging. A
woman in a yellow sari and a crimson blouse was walking about on this
stage in front of a projection screen, fussing with her laser pointer and
checking over her props: an amaryllis lily in a tall glass vase, a cage of white
rats on a table, graduated plastic models of animal brains; a detailed plastic
human brain that came apart. That must be Olwen Devi, the Zen Self guru.
Fiorinda moved inward, as ready to listen to a lecture on the science of
consciousness as she was to do anything. She sat on the grass, which here
around the stage was uncovered, and remarkably green.
Olwen Devi led the group, which had grown to about fifty people, through some relaxation exercises, designed to be performed by a close—
ranked, seated audience. She talked about the extraordinary range of things
we do, in which intentionality does not play the part we imagine: courtship,
friendship, decision making, learning, ambition; then about the animals that
do things we would call human. Ant farmers, bird artists, altruistic vampire
bats, duplicitous monkeys. 'It seems we must either award self-awareness to
the ants,' said Olwen Devi, 'or accept that hominids may have practiced
agriculture, and buried their dead with ceremony, before they reached the
threshold that we have crossed —the state of being conscious of being
conscious. Think of this. When you decide to perform an action (reach out
your hand) the neuro-muscular preparation for that movement has already
begun: around 350 milliseconds before the onset of volition. We act first, then
we decide to act. We 'think' first, then we know we are thinking, This can be
shown by experiment. Perhaps our self awareness is merely an observer,
after the fact.'
Someone raised a hand. 'But couldn't that reversal mean, guruji, that
self-consciousness is a quantum effect, and not controlled by the time's
arrow illusion?'
'It could be.'
Many of the students, or punters, had adopted the lotus posture.
Fiorinda knelt, sitting back on her heels, her thoughts reverting to the hard
lesson that Rufus wasn't here, that he wasn't going to turn up and she might as well leave. Part of her still didn't believe it. She was irrationally convinced
that staying on would somehow make him appear.
'It could be that consciousness, the experience of being conscious, puts us
in touch with a plenum, the sum of all states, where the arrow's direction is
lost. Erwin Schrodinger once said, if we cannot find ourselves in our world
picture —meaning that image of the world which is the work we do in our
brains— it is because the sentient self is itself the world picture.'
What's all this to me? wondered Fio. As for Near Death Experiences,
she'd had one, without any help from a centrifuge. It had happened when
the baby was born. And slipping into no-time, leaving her body to take care
of itself, was something she had learned to do at will. She could easily slip
away while she was kneeling here. Perhaps that was what you were
supposed to do, let the words wash over and meditate. Just look at that
green, glossy blade of grass . . . Olwen Devi was right. She'd never thought
of it before but going into no-time did feel like two planes aligning together,
two slides from a kaleidescope lining up. The world that Fio perceived
moved into phase with this thing, Fio, that was doing the perceiving, so you
couldn't tell the two of them apart. She could well and happily believe that
the effect was caused by something chemical going on in her neurons, but it
still felt numinous and. . . an impossible perspective, like an Escher sort of
thing. Now she was looking through the tent wall, and looking back to that
moment in time where Ax stood, slightly lost in his shabby leather coat, nothing like Rufus O'Niall's. Ax became a focus point, a point on a disc, and
from this point sprang lines of sight, which reached to another disc, another
section through the helix of time and here was Ax again, in a different place,
in that same old coat, around him a huge crowd. She had the impression he
was selling tickets for something, or handing out flyers. They were going
like hotcakes (where are these cakes, why are they hot?): and here he was
again, an even bigger crowd, a flag with a red cross, people cheering, a
knowledge of terrible events, (an intense, violent feeling that she didn't want
to look any closer at that information. . .) behind the stark, resolute triumph
on his familar face—
Good heavens!
Fiorinda's eyes flew open. The Zen Self lecture was still going on. The
lotus—kneed people around her were quiet. For a moment a smooth, brown,
oval, middle-aged face filled her view, like a close-up on a tv screen. It was
as if Olwen was looking straight at her, and knew what had happened to
her. Distance reasserted itself. Olwen Devi was far away on her little stage:
Fiorinda got up and hurriedly left the tent.
Back at the van, Sage was standing half naked beside the corpse of a
sheep, which hung by its heels from a framework of raw timber. His slick
black dungarees were twisted around his hips, blood drizzled over them and
his lean, white, muscle-raked torso as if he'd been spattered by a fountain;
the whole scene gleaming in sunlight. His unmasked hands, surprisingly deft despite their deformity, were absolutely covered in blood, he was
flensing the animal with a long thin knife. The young sheep's head, adorned
with a cute pair of sprouting horns, stood on the grass, gazing at Fiorinda
with smothered, yellow eyes.
'Good grief. Where did you get that?'
'Farmer's market, up the road. We've been pursuing the feasibility study:
bought this as a sign of good faith. It costs nothing, meat on the hoof. Got
some potatoes too.'
'Did you kill it just now?'
'Yeah.' He stretched his blood-streaked arms to heaven. 'Yeah!'
'You are as a god,' said Fio. She sat on the grass to watch. 'I met Ax. Sage,
you know him, sort of. Do you have any idea why he is the way he is?'
'You mean, why does the miserable sod think he has to rule the world?'
The sheep's hide slithered free and fell in a heap beside the shit bucket,
which had been co-opted to hold its innards. 'Well, I did ask him that
question, more or less, one aberrant occasion when we were chatting. Far as I
recall, the explanation is. . .' Changing to a different knife, he cut some
generous collops of bluish-red flesh and laid them on the inner face of the
fresh skin. Still life. 'Mmm, his dad's a bit of a shite, and he loves his mum
but the tv she likes to watch makes him puke. So, he needs to rule the world
because he has a normal family background. Make of it what you will— '
'It's probably genetic.' Sage grinned at her, went to the back of the van, and emptied several
buckets of water over himself from their rain butt. When he returned,
masked and wearing a shirt of homespun grey under the dungarees, he had
a yellow ribbon tied around one sleeve.
'Why are you suddenly wearing that?'
The skull smiled enigmatically. Neat trick.
'Felt like it.'
Fiorinda suspected some oblique, sarcastic reference to the Ax Preston
development. She was sleeping with the enemy and she was sure Sage was
pissed off, though he hadn't said a word. But the skull looked innocent, and
the meat, raw and bloody as it was, worked on her salivary glands. She
attempted, for pride's sake, an assault on Head Ideology. 'Let me cook?
C'mon, you bought it, you butchered it. If I don't cook it, how can I eat?'
'No.'
'Please, please, I won't do anything frilly, I swear.'
'Nah,' said George, coming out of the van bearing an iceberg lettuce
wrapped in clingfilm and a blackened cooking pot; a litre of tequila from the
Heads' vast store of alcohol tucked under his arm. 'You won't do it right, Fio.
You know you won't. Look, we got you a lettuce. You could have ten sheep
for the price of this.'
The barbecue was laden with charcoal: the charcoal soused with paraffin
and lighter fuel. Cack commenced the cooking by hurling a lighted match and leaping backwards, and the chops were thrown onto the flames. George
dealt with the potatoes: Fiorinda was ordered to sit down quiet and stop
fussin' around.
'No, no, don't let her sit down! We're not ready! Shit, we gotta get genteel
with this babe. We gotta get suburban, she's not rock-brat trash no more—'
Sage and Bill rushed up. Bill spread a clean sheet of newspaper with a
flourish, and arranged a square of cardboard beside it. Sage dropped to his
knees and presented a pastel-patterned serviette, rolled up in a napkin ring.
'Lunch is served, Mrs Preston, ma'am.'
'You bastards.'
'Hahaha,'
'You are so full of shit, Sage. Lay off!'
But she felt forgiven.
Soon everyone was sitting around the barbecue, gnawing meat and
passing the lettuce from hand to hand. Fio brought out her saltbox, which all
the Heads except Sage shared with an air of guilty indulgence: and it was
surprising how good the meal tasted, although Luke did complain that the
lettuce was chewy. However this was found to be the result of his taking
bites out of the side still wrapped in clingfilm. Bill put the kettle on for tea,
while the potatoes bubbled sulkily. Potatoes always take too long. Fiorinda
lay in the grass under the oaktree that she thought of as their own, (dapple
leaves on the annexe roof); and smiled to notice the blackened kettle sitting among the greasy flames, beside the blackened cooking pot. That strange
experience in the Zen tent kept repeating on her, loaded with a dread so
large and vague she couldn't get a handle on it. . . something about, my
whole life, gone? What, gone? She willed it away. This was life, good as it
gets: dejeuner sur l'herbe, complete with amiably sexist male company,
mutton fat, tequila, paraffin and bruised grass—
'We could have a sheep every day,' mused George. 'Except they shit a lot
in the van.'
'Except we don't need it,' Cack pointed out. 'You should only kill what
you need. We don't fucking need to eat meat. It's cruel. There's plenty of
calories in alcohol.'
'What are you going to do with the rest, Sage? It won't fit in your fridge.'
'Sell it, trade it, give it away.' They finished the tequila. Sage, who had
eaten enough to build up his energy but not to repletion, started rifling in a
Japanese incense box with the letters NDogs burned into the lid, standing for
endogenous psychotropics. 'I feel like bein' overwhelmed by emotion. I'm
gonna do some oxytocin, go down the arena and pair-bond with something.'
'But Sage, you're wearing the yellow ribbon. You can't pair-bond without
sex. That's silly.'
'You're true, Fio, you?re true. Fuck, I'll take something else.What's the
rest of you having?'
'I hate modern drugs,' said Fio. 'I want to do some whizz, get pissed and go dancing.'
Ax was making lists:
Weapons
Police
Armed Forces
Airports
Roads
Freight Distribution
Communications?
The World
There was something wrong with the item Communications. He felt that
this was not a target. You would not gain anything by rushing to control the
airwaves, charging into Broadcasting House or whatever and letting fly with
automatic rifles. Other ways, the priorities were the same as ever in history.
Put a cap on the enemy's powers of retaliation, secure your borders, get
control of supplies. But let them talk. It will keep them happy. The World was
why he was here, looking out of the eyes of a daft little robot, which was
sitting-in on a meeting of Pan-Asian Utopian Revolutionaries, convened by
the Chinese. The robot sat on a chair at a table in a room with dun coloured walls, its little hind-legs sticking out in front of it. When standing it was
about a meter and a half tall, and built something like an upright vacuum
cleaner. RPs were small, so as not to look threatening. If you clothed them in
either skin or fur, it made people's ineradicable tendency to treat the remote
logger like a cute toy much worse. So here was Ax, in a dissidents? secret
talking shop thousands of miles away from his physical location. The
windows were too high for him to get a look out, but he believed he was
somewhere in Shanghai.
The PanAsians could not get their heads —or digital remote logging
equivalent— around revolutionary rock and roll. They were geeks and
nerds, they didn't have the context. Everyone who could understand tried to
explain: but the leap was too great. An assortment of cartoon domestic
appliances, humming Imagine, wasn't going to convince anyone of anything.
When they reached the religion item on the agenda it was the European
and the US delegates' turn to recoil. US and French-tradition radicals, trained
from birth to foam at the mouth when they heard the God word, muttered
and fell silent. The Chinese were uneasy too. Ax felt differently. Be practical:
understand that for a significant part of the population of England, this is
mighty real. He paid a lot of attention and asked questions, while the South
Asians and the Islamics and the Japanese bandied lines from the Koran and
the Lotus sutra.
At last they came to Ax's item, which however it got mangled by the simultaneous translation was meant to be about. . . Well, apparently he had
proposed that the revolution had magic on its side. Yeah, explained Ax,
going with it. For sure we all have to make our peace with God: but you
can't use God, you can only hope that what you want to achieve is in
accordance with His will. But we can use the magic, it's on our side.
Huh? What did he mean by magic?
I mean this. He raised the RP's skinny metal arm. Magic technology.
We've got the big advantage that we're comfortable with things like RP,
virtual realities, putting alien things in our bodies; doing strange things to
our brains. I think we're in danger of losing sight of that, with all the
emphasis on being ecological and green and getting back to nature. Not that
I'm against getting back to nature, but—'
A West African Marxist (physically present, must be teaching or working
here) leapt in joyfully, exclaiming, with reference to the model of the
nineteenth century in Western Europe, the creation of a proletariat leads to
revolutionary man, and revolutionary individualism leads to the creation of
anti-capitalist machines. . .! A babble of voices joined him, straining the ST
with their enthusiasm. The machines, the magic futuristic machines are
GAIA in disguise, the Demiurge is with us, our Mother Earth and her secret
informational armies, conspiring with us, we have the mandate of heaven!
Ax had struck a nerve, a rich vein, and it's good when you do that. But he
wished he could get them to stick to the practical. No use: they were stuck into the mysticism riff, really getting off on it. Well, better add that to the list.
Maybe it should be another list.
God
Magic
God he felt he could deal with. Ax could do business with God. He'd
have to get onto Fiorinda about the other. Magic being a feminine thing, she
was bound to know.
DARK and Fiorinda had agreed on a trial separation. The parting was calm,
possibly because Fiorinda had been taking Sage's advice. DARK returned to
their native Teesside. Fiorinda stayed at Reading, going up to London for the
Think Tank meetings with Martina of Krool, when the Heads couldn't be
arsed. If you believed the media, every Fest of Dissolution site, populated by
campers who refused to quit, had become a pocket state of violent anarchy.
But at Reading all was peaceful, though things were getting basic. Hippies
washed clothes in the river, and traded insults with the private security
guards who patrolled those nice-looking houses, all boarded up, on the other
side. Yellow leaves and lye suds drifted down to the watermill built by Sun
Temple, patriarch of a tribe who were neighbours of the Heads in the
Travellers' Meadow. It was constructed to a cunning design from the Whole
Earth Catalog website, to dervive maximum energy from the slow—flowing
Thames, but sadly it had no corn to grind. A couple of kilos of wheat berries from the Organic Grocery van had simply vanished between the stones.
Without grist, the mill turned on: a mournful, post-industrial aeolian harp.
In the Whitehall meetings they discussed names. Counter Cultural Think
Tank was hopeless. Some favoured The Dissolution Alchemists, which
appealed to Paul Javert. Fio was holding out for The Dead Metaphors. Hours
were spent designing a bus for the roadshow, and arguing about what they
should wear on stage The Heads started a small book on the incidence of the
sexual/scatalogical swear words the suits employed to liven-up their script.
The word shit had special rating, and was greeted with a cheer. Two shits in
successive utterances and they would jump up and start hugging and rolling
around like footballers. The poor unfortunate suits had no idea how to
defend themselves, just sat there smiling uneasily. Pigsty caused an impasse,
by refusing to let the tv cameras into the Committee Room: but of course was
forgiven. Could be he didn't want to get shown-up. He wasn't impressive in
these sessions. He had nothing to match Ax's Lennonist one-liners, or
Fiorinda's crushing put-downs. Couldn't even organise a childish wind-up.
It was the middle of October when the Heads decided to eat shit. It came
about because HurdyGurdy's site managers had banned them from the Blue
Lagoon. This was a tactical error, for the former Festival had become a
hungry, heaving mess, and if you couldn't give the mob bread you had to
give them circuses. The Dissolution Loaf —so firm, so brown— was served up in the Best of Fest tent, on a stage which had been ceremonially prepared,
a trestle table laid with a white cloth and real knives and forks. Cack did the
business, modestly at stool behind a red velvet curtain. His production was
carried to the board on a silver platter, and carved by George to wild
applause. It seemed like a sign that everything's allowed.
Then the rain began in earnest. Fires could no longer be lit, and anyway
there was no more wood to be had, unless you ripped it from the trees and
then the hardline hippies would kill you. The hoi polloi were best off, with
their sleeping bags tucked into binliners in the fug of their little tents, on the
higher ground. In the open spaces of Sage's van, almost afloat, Fiorinda and
the Heads huddled, miserable and sour. The heating had given up entirely.
'What' we stayin' on for, anyhow?' asked Cack, the puzzle apparently
fresh and new to him. 'It was two weeks. Why's everyone still here?'
'Because of the Dissolution, Cack. We're occupying the Festival site until
the end of the year. You lost the plot again, you arsehole.'
'And what's gonna happen then?'
'Then we all go home. . . I suppose.'
Cack was right. There was no sense or reason in hanging around in this
sloshing wet field. 'I want to book into the Holiday Inn,' whined Fiorinda. 'I
want to sleep in a room with walls, and be clean, and have a flush toilet and
a washing machine: look at my hands, they look like skinned toads. I want to
be warm and dry, I want to have a hot dinner. We could try lighting a fire in here, in a biscuit tin or something. Is there any wood left?'
'Nah, we burned the last of old Sun Temple's mill; and the charcoal sack
got left outside—'
'It got left, did it? Why is nothing ever anyone's fault around here?'
'Because that's the way we like it, Fio.' snapped Sage. 'You want laws,
you want crime and punishment: go somewhere else.'
Sage and Fiorinda glared at each other. The Heads, dismayed, cast about
for some way to distract their leader and their adopted princess.
Bill, the quiet Head —cadaverously thin, his skull mask always looking
too big for his narrow chest and coat-hanger shoulders— remarked, 'The
Blue Lagoon has a wooden floor.'
Energised, they fired themselves up with appropriate drugs and ran
round the campground, demanding support and illicit accelerants, neither of
which were lacking. Without anyone, except the Heads and their near
neighbours, knowing how it had started, the anarchist tribe of Festival stay
behinds poured into the arena, many of them bearing paraffin torches.
Sound engineers were dragged to Orange Stage, and forced to ply their
trade. The Heads put on a tremendous set, followed by various artists, and
somewhere in the middle of this the Blue Lagoon was indeed set on fire.
Nobody claimed responsibility, maybe many separate arsonists were
involved. Fiorinda took over Orange Stage, with Krool and some unknown
volunteers from the camper masses: and became alcohol-related furious about the way the staybehinds were waving their arms and singing along,
these round beaming firelit mouths and ecstatic eyes, as if Fio was some kind
of children's entertainer—
She dived, screaming. The slithery, resilient matrix of human flesh
engulfed her. They passed her from hand to hand as if she was a sacred idol,
as if she was the ceremonial turd. They were chanting joyfully, idiotically,
Live in the Pain! She struggled free and ran, and found a place in the circle
round the great bonfire. By this time not at all sure what was going on, still
believing herself on stage and surrounded by howling music, she screeched
that she was not doing this for pay, you bastards this is not entertainment,
this is me, this is what's inside me. So often she felt like a dammed stream,
such a head of power but she couldn't release it: desperately now, now, but
it didn't happen. It was like sex, like the huge reservoir of arousal and lust in
her that ought to flow like Niagara but it was blocked, barred, she always
had to work to get there. Only the baddest music understood her, only the
most violent, pounding beat and wail came close—
'I'm so fucking miserable,' she said to Cack, when Thames Valley Police
had (reluctantly and ineffectively) come and gone, when the fire was dying
down under hissing rain and the bodies of the fallen were being carried
away. He had joined her, hunched under a fold of tarp, back of Orange
Stage, bringing with him a sixpack of strong lager he'd found somewhere.
'D'you realise what's happening to this stupid country? Do you realise? Look, you see that bonfire? That's my life, that is. It's all going to go. By the time
I'm grown up, everything I wanted, a whole civilisation I needed, will have
gone up in smoke.'
'Oh well,' said Cack. 'At least yore among friends. Have another beer.'
'It had a rotten acoustic, anyway. I'm glad I never played in there.'
The fate of the Blue Lagoon, well-covered in the media, brought new crowds
to Hyde Park, to Worthy Farm and all the other venues, just as the weather
was becoming impossible. Shane and Jordan Preston, and Milly Kettle,
returned from Taunton. DARK called Fiorinda to tell her they'd joined a
campground in the North East, and intended to live outdoors all winter. At
Reading staybehinds who literally hadn't left the site since July shivered in
their summer clothes: but they would not give up. Fiorinda wore her party
frocks in extra layers, topped by a shapeless Dutch army surplus rain jacket;
and divided her nights between Sage's annexe, Krool's women-only bender
in the hospitality area; and Ax's basement in the Snake Eyes house. She liked
being of no fixed abode. The Heads were recording a new album, which
meant they spent a lot of time away, but the van stayed in the Meadow, and
Sage, sporadically, went on turning up for the Think Tank. So did Fiorinda.
She told herself that as long as Allie was involved there must be something
in it: because Ax was obsessed and Sage pathologically whimsical, but Allie
never made mistakes. It was like the whole Dissolution Year phenomenon. You kept thinking
you should quit but you found yourself hanging on, just to see what
happened next. And she wasn't wasting time. She was putting a lot of
thought (she didn't seriously believe the world was going to end) into
planning her solo career.
In November Sage had a call from Alain Jupette, mastermind of the radical
EuroTrash outfit Movie Sucré. Movie had been at Rivermead in July. They'd
decided to come back to check out the action, and Alain wanted a meeting,
with Ax and Sage and Fiorinda.
Ax rendezvoused with Sage and Fio in the arena, which was looking
more than ever like the centre of a refugee camp or a bedraggled mediaeval
township. It was noon, but white mist still limned the eau de nil geodesic of
the Zen Self tent, and shrouded the blackened circle where the Blue Lagoon
used to be. A giant tortoise on stilts loomed up: a hippie with a huge tray,
the contents covered by a steaming cloth. 'Get your breakfasts here!' he
bellowed. Ax bought three dumplings and handed them out. They weren't
much to eat, a tincture of red bean paste in a mass of greasy dough: but they
were wonderful to hold. Ah, thought Fiorinda, cuddling the heat. Hot cakes!
'You two know what this is about?'
'No idea,' said Sage. 'Power breakfast with Le Grand Grenouille.'
Ax frowned. 'Where we'll try not to say anything offensive.' Fiorinda did not think Ax had yet recruited Sage to his cadre. They got
on okay at the Think Tank, united in putting down Paul Javert; but there was
too much previous between these two. Things like Sage describing the
Chosen's music as 'complacent nostalgia' in front of a tv audience of millions.
People remember words of that kind, when the obscenities fade. And you
wouldn't think cynical manipulative crowd pleaser would have hurt Sage's
feelings, but it had. It was a difficulty in her life, because she really wished
they could be friends.
Movie Sucré's long white bus had arrived overnight. Alain was waiting
for them with Tamagotchi, obligatory Eurotrash kooky girl. No sign of the
rest of the band. Alain was wearing a scarlet quilted jumpsuit with a Ferrari
badge on the breast pocket. Tama, in pink flannellette pyjamas and a
fisherman's guernsey, was making coffee that smelled divine.
'Where's the others?' asked Sage at once, as if he suspected an ambush.
'Oh, they are in here.' Alain patted a black box. 'Figuratively. Too much is
going on at home, we could not all leave civilisation in person.'
'I fucking hope you said so on the tickets.'
Alain laughed. 'Tickets! What tickets? Tickets for the Blue Lagoon? There
are no tickets anymore, that world is over.'
'So, why did you want to see us?' said Ax.
'Well, it is the question of the British Squaddie. We want you Ax, and
your people, to know that we in Europe intend to deal with him strongly, and instantly, when the day comes.'
'Um, you're in Europe now.'
'Europe before,' said Tam, bringing the coffee. 'Europe afterwards, maybe.
In between, every country for himself. Hello Ax, we were in Shanghai with
you. Alain was the brave little toaster, I was the cranky anglepoise.' She put
down her coffee tray, tipped her naked skull into Ax's lap, and bared her
muscular, tattooed forearms.
'See my RP shunt scars, and now you want to see my new back flip?'
'She's such a clown, said Alain indulgently.
'I am a fucking clown!' sang Tam. 'Don't ever put me down!'
The English took their coffee, exchanging puzzled glances.
'Afterwards? After what?'
'We prefer not to deal with Pigsty.'
'Pigsty?'
'Oue. I prefer to talk to you. Direct, offhand, like this, it's the best way.
But we don't reveal any details and we understand it?s the same with you.
Only, when the violence starts there will be no time to discuss tactics, so you
should know and accept it will be "open season" as you say, on those
fucking mindless animals of yours, from the Baltic to the Sahara.'
'Wait a minute,' said Ax, 'What violence? I am not into violence.'
Tamagotchi sighed impatiently. 'That's fine,' she muttered in French,
rolling her eyes. 'Fine.' 'Well—' said Alain. He looked into Ax's face, head on one side. 'Well,
this is very curious. Ax, I think you will have to change your mind. This is
not going to be a Velvet Revolution. As you will soon find out.?
There was a pause. 'Hey, Fiorinda,' said Tam, eyes sparkling. 'Did you
eat the shit?'
'I was there,' said Fiorinda. 'I certainly inhaled. But I did not put
anything in my mouth.'
Then they were out of the bus, dismissed so abruptly they were still
clutching their coffee beakers. 'What was that about?' wondered Fiorinda.
'Organised trouble,' said Ax. 'Brewing in London and other venues.
Alain wanted to know what I know. Which is nothing, so now he's happy.
What you said, Fio: a few burned out cars, a few casualties, back to business
as usual. That's not for me. I'm in this for the long haul.'
Fiorinda headed off, leaving them together; hoping for rapprochement.
'Fucking frog-eaters,' said Ax. 'I hate the way they always talk English.'
'With those chichi accents. They could easily pronounce it properly.'
'If they felt like it.'
They stood together, self conscious. It was hard to know what to say
when there was no one else about. The skull's demeanour was forbidding.
'Sage,' said the Ax, nothing daunted, 'About Fio—'
'Shoot.'
'If she wants to fuck you as well, at some point, I thought I should tell you that would be fine. There's nothing exclusive going on: I'm happy if
she's happy.'
'No.' Sage did something, which didn't involve his hands whatever it
was, and the skull vanished. His natural features: wide nose, full lips, wide
spaced blue eyes, a close cropped fleece of yellow curls, made a rare public
appearence. 'No,' he repeated, face to face. 'I'll stick with playing the big
brother. I think it's more what she needs. If I'd wanted to have her, I shoulda
ignored the ribbon, shouldn't I. Only I know why the kid wears it, see.'
'So do I.'
'Well, you're a heartless bastard then.'
'I don't think so. I think it's okay, me going with her. It seems to work.'
He glanced down at Sage's unmasked hands, one with mere stubs for the
two outside fingers, the other lacking the two first fingers and half the
thumb. 'So that's what they look like. Tough. Was it the infant meningitis? I
read you had that.'
'Yeah.'
'Good job you're into mixing, Sage. You'da been in problems if you'd
wanted to play a guitar.'
The skull reappeared. Curiously, its expression was now almost
affectionate.
'Right, Ax. Well spotted.' In the first week of December the Counter Cultural Think Tank was up for a
full scale political reception. It was to be held in a prefab venue, installed
specially for the purpose on the edge of Hyde Park. Here the great and the
good of the CCM would gather to meet the Home Secretary's radical
rockstars. The Prime Minister was going to turn up. Paul was inexpressibly
proud and excited. Most of what was supposed to be ready for D day was
not going to happen. There was no way the English were going to have their
national identity cards in time. Petty border disputes, and the division of
capital assets, would grumble on for decades. But Paul's initiative on the
Countecultural problem was reckoned to be a great success. It had captured
the public imagination.
Pigsty was equally thrilled. He took an obsessive interest in the details:
the carpet, the paintjob in the prefab venue, the floral decorations, the buffet,
the dimensions of the stage. Nobody else was keen. Only Pigsty Liver and
the Organs were to play. The rest of them were doomed to stand around
making small talk with an assortment of government suits and the Green
Nazi aristocracy. Didn't sound like fun. But pity the poor VIPs, invited to
meet some of the best radical talent in English Indie music, and subjected to
nothing but a brainless, derivative Organs set.
The event started at dusk, on a cold day of heavy cloud and still air.
Around the prefab sleek dark cars cruised onto the grass, and disgorged
those guests who felt they could get away with personal transport hypocrisy. Farther off, beyond the metal barriers and armoured police, clusters of
campground folk stood and stared: some waved banners and placards.
Security checked everyone at the door. Fiorinda, who had come up from
Reading with Krool, endured the scan and bodysearch, surrendered her
phone and went off alone. The Grrls were ardent networkers, they'd be
circulating: Fiorinda didn't want to play. For a while she listened to Paul
Javert, who was talking to another suit about the wonderful team he had
created. We've done nothing, she thought. Absolutely nothing, except fill in
some slack moments on the tv, and talk drivel to interviewers. We haven't
even agreed on a decent name.
The Chosen arrived in a body. Paul zoomed over to intercept Ax: brought
him back to introduce him to the PM.
'Axl Preston, lead guitarist from the Chosen Few. Axl, because your
parents were big Stone Roses fans, isn't that right Ax.'
'Guns 'n Roses,' said Ax sadly.
'Ax is our Lennonist,' said Paul. 'He comes up with some killing lines, so
witty—'
The two men, with identical wide, fixed, shallow smiles, stared at Ax
expectantly, like dogs begging for biscuit.
Fiorinda moved away, grinning to herself. Poor Ax. He had not been
looking forward to this event. Arguably there were people here who were
actually doing what Ax talked about, and that must be so frustrating. Especially since they were doing it all wrong. She wandered, spotting the
Heads in their skulls, Rob Nelson and the Eyes looking very flash; but she
didn't want to join anyone. How strange that something like the Counter
Cultural Think Tank could get itself an existence, a website, a place in
politics, articles in the papers, headed notepaper, stacks of tiring documents,
when the content of the package was nothing. Most of the Lords and Ladies
of Misrule were in very correct evening dress. Probably the smoothest ones
were the nutcases, secretly behind the most ruthless, humans-must-commit
mass-suicide (or if not we'll help them along) eco-terrorism. But here they
were, looking dead pleased to have been invited. How insane.
Torn between longing to be introduced to the Prime Minister and feeling
completely, defiantly out of place, she drifted over to the potted palms by
the buffet table, where she bumped into Cecile Hunt, the Think Tank suit
who had endeared herself to many because she so obviously detested Pigsty.
'I should introduce you to someone,' offered Cecile.
'No thanks. I mean, yes, I suppose— '
'I hate these things.'
'So do I. What's the point of a party if you can't get drunk.'
'You can get drunk, Fio. Go ahead, be a rebel. What else were you hired
for? Look at Ken. He's going to be legless in about ten minutes.'
But she didn't want to be drunk, not here. In any case, the milling about
was over, it was time for the musical entertainment. Pigsty and the Organs moved on up. Security men stood in front of the double doors, only exit or
entrance (isn't that a fire hazard? wondered Fio) from this crowded room.
Pigsty was wearing vr goggles, leather jodphurs, jackboots: a new, shaggy
Afghan waistcoat open over his six-pack belly; the chains between his nipple
rings swinging and glinting. He strode to the front of the stage, the image of
a cleaned-up but still deliciously scary Countercultural Monster.
'And now,' he roared. 'All you RAVERS. It's time to GET DOWN!'
The lights went out. There was a drum roll, and a fusillade of wild bangs,
yells, crackles like machinegun fire: an incredible, shapeless racket. Typical
Organs, thought Fiorinda, a bored sigh rising in her throat. Get down! wailed
someone: grabbed her and dragged her to the floor.
Some lights came on again. Her knees were warm and wet. She was
crouching in a pool of blood. Cecile lay beside her, face upturned and eyes
wide open, the side of her head and her lower jaw blown away.
Where had the gunmen come from? Through the roof? The prefab was
full of choking smoke, coloured smoke from the stage act, grey smoke that
smelled of cordite: no, they must have come through the doors but how?
How did they get past the security? How many of them were there? Three?
four, five? People were running, pushing and fighting each other, to the
other end of the prefab: but there was no exit that way, no way out. The gun
men were going into the crowd, like shepherds among blundering sheep,
still firing. There was Ken Batty, the Think Tank's earnest politico, lying on the floor screaming, a horrible mess of blood and grey, puddingy stuff
falling out of rip in his belly. There was a man in a dinner jacket, trying to
crawl and falling on his face, oh God where's Ax. . .?
. . .and then right by her she saw someone dragged out from under the
buffet table. It was Martina, blood in her dreads and all over her Red Sonja
jerkin, but who was that holding her? It was Pigsty. He held Martina and
snogged her, very deliberately, mouth all over her face, hand inside the laces
of the jerkin, squeezing one of her tits as if he was trying to wrench it off:
then he hauled off and shot her in the jaw. Fiorinda backed away, staring,
electrified, her mouth open. . . and someone grabbed her again. Not Cecile,
Cecile was dead. It was Fereshteh the ghazal singer, dark eyes gleaming
through the eyepiece of her veil, drawing Fio with an iron grip into the
shelter of the palms. There they stayed, clinging to each other.
Somewhere off in the distance, sirens began to wail.
They were found, and hauled out. The room was full of the sounds of
people crying and screaming, full of a confusion of moving bodies; the air
smelled foul. The men who hauled them out looked like hippies from the
campground. They were not rough, only insistent: they hustled the two
young women out of the prefab. Fiorinda thought they were being rescued,
she kept saying I'm all right, because she thought the hippies should go back
and rescue someone worse off. But then they were bundled into the back of a
small van. No one else in there with them, no windows. Sirens all around but they could see nothing.
The women didn't speak to each other.
The van didn't go far. They were delivered into a big tent, one of the
Hyde Park indoor venues. It was brightly lit: the slick heavy duty membrane
of the empty floor shining like the surface of a black pool. Pigsty was on the
stage, holding a big hand gun. With him were the Organs, and some other
hippie goons of the same hard-nut type, armed with automatic rifles. Allie
Marlowe was up there too, looking very frightened. Down on the floor near
the stage, surrounded by more goons, stood a small group of people
Fiorinda recognised. There's Rob Nelson, in his electric blue suit, all
bloodstained. There's DK the DJ. There's those silly boys, Chip the black
cherub, Verlaine with his ringlets; there's Roxane Smith—
There's Sage and there's Ax. They're alive.
Sirens were yelling wildly out in the Park. There must be a whole fleet of
police cars and ambulances, whoever had called them: converging on the
scene of the shooting, rushing to sort out the survivors from the dead. Pigsty
didn't take any notice of these noises, nor of his Think Tank colleagues. He
was watching the back of the tent, waiting for something. Another vehicle
pulled up. Two more hippies appeared, holding a man in evening dress
between them. It was Paul Javert. They brought him up to the stage. There
was blood on his face, hard to tell if he'd been shot or just beaten up.
'What went wrong?' he gasped, shook his head and spat out some blood. 'I thought we were mates. I thought we understood each other.'
'Nothing went wrong,' said the Pig. 'The plan changed.'
Blam! There goes Paul.
Paul's body was dragged away. A hippie came up with a foam fire
extinguisher and smothered the blood: came back with a bucket of water and
splashed it casually around. It was Paul's plot, thought Fiorinda. Paul had a
plot, and maybe Allie was in it, she knew something anyway, but she wasn't
expecting what happened tonight. It was Paul's plot but the Pig has double
crossed him, and taken over. And this is what the Think Tank was all about,
this, not nothing. . . but she couldn't hold it together, couldn't think. Fear and
shock took over, please God, I never provoked him, never challenged him, I
didn't laugh at him, I kept my head down, didn't I? I knew he was dangerous—
What is he going to do with us?
Pigsty watched Paul being hauled off. He bowed his head, took a deep,
fierce breath. 'Now I want the Ax and Sage.You first, Sage.'
Tall Sage walks out from guarded corral. The skull is looking
unperturbed. Neat trick.
'Take off the mask,' orders Pigsty.
The skull vanishes, the crippled hands are bare.
'Will you kneel to me?'
Sage kneels, like he's been doing it all his life. Doesn't look up, doesn't
look down, no theatrics. 'Will you obey me, Sage? Will you accept me as your boss?'
'I will obey you,' he says. 'I will accept you as my boss.'
'That's good, that's enough for now. You can go.'
Sage gets up and doesn't know where to go. Decides to return to the
corralled group. This seems to be okay.
'Now I want the Ax.'
Pigsty is going to kill Ax. There's no question. Looking back now you
know you've seen the desire to kill Ax smouldering in his eyes, every time Ax
came out with one of those smart one—liners, every time Ax made it clear
that he is very clever and Pig is dumb as pigshit—
'Well, Ax. Will you kneel?'
Ax kneels. Everyone waits, knowing this can't possibly be enough.
Pigsty pulls down his zip, heaves out his prick, which looks enormous,
weighted by the thick steel thong through the glans. He starts to piss. Ax
kneels there, piss on his hair and running down his face.
'Will you say, 'thank you boss'?'
'Thank you boss.'
'There.' says Pigsty, zipping up. He waves for Ax to go away, Ax retreats,
wiping his face on his sleeve.
Pigsty takes another of those deep, deep breaths. He stands tall, the
coarse nobility of his features suddenly apparent under the bright lights. The
men holding Fiorinda and Fereshteh release them, and they join the others; the hippie guards stepping back.
'Now you're my team. Not Paul's. Mine. Let's go. We got a lot to do.'
He took them to the building where the Think Tank sessions had been held.
It was full of lights, people were rushing about. News of the incident in the
Park had clearly already arrived. The Organs and the hippie goons left their
rifles in the vans, but they were probably still armed: no one dared to make a
break for it. Maybe no one even thought of trying. The Pig lead them with a
swagger, talking to someone all the while on a radiophone. He used his
keycard to pass through security doors, up to the familiar room. How
strange the place looked now: the stately indifferent pictures on the walls,
the coffee trolley in the corner.
'Sit down.'
One of the Organs brought in a small tv and put it on the trolley, where
everyone could see it. They saw the scene in the Park. Benny Preminder
(whose absence from the reception nobody had noticed) was on the screen,
standing against a background of flashing lights, darkness, bloodstained
people wrapped in blankets, sobbing people being comforted; covered
stretchers being carried. The reporter with him was explaining to camera, for
probably the fiftieth time, that armed ultra-greens had burst in on the Home
Secretary's reception and opened fire, killing at least thirty people; and that
Pigsty Liver and the Organs had retaliated. 'Mr Preminder, what happened here? Can you explain why the security
was so inadequate, at an event of this kind? And how did Pigsty and the
band come to be armed?'
'These are not normal times,' said Benny Prem. 'In extreme cases, normal
rules do not apply. If it hadn't been for Pigsty's ability to fight back, there
would have been a lot more casualties before the police arrived. As it is,
many innocent lives have been spared. Surely a horrific incident like this
proves that those on the positive side of the Countecultural Movement have
to be free to fight fire with fire.'
This is what it was about, thought Fiorinda. This, not nothing. Feeling
like a guilty child. They had all of them stayed out playing by the riverside
too long, refusing to go home (but Fiorinda never, never wanted to go
home): and this is what happens. The monsters get you.
'Prem can be on the tv,' said Pigsty, dismissively. 'He can do the talking.
That's his shit. Now I'll tell you something Prem doesn't know. We're setting
off the Green Blitzkreig, as of tomorrow. It's gonna happen all over, there's a
shitload of us, finally going for it, no more pissing around. We're mad as hell
and we're not going to take it any more. Gonna save our mother earth, in
England's green and pleasant land, and I want to do a proper job of it. The
only question is, are you brainy types going to help me?' He reached down,
pulled the big handgun out of the waistband of his leather jodphurs, cocked
it and rested it on the table. He grinned at them. 'Or not?' A moment of stunned readjustment, then Ax says, 'yeah, I'll help you.
Get me some maps.'
The others sat, bloodstained, immobile and hardly breathing, while the
maps were fetched: listening to Pig explain how he'd been approached by
Prem and agreed to take over Paul's plot, but then Pig had decided to take
command for himself. Listening to Ax calmly discussing the whole thing;
able to realise that Ax was saving their lives. Rob began to get restless, began
to twitch like a limb to which circulation is painfully returning, having been
cut off. He started to mutter: he killed... gotta.... he killed.... gotta, can't let...
'Get him out of here,' said Ax, casually. 'He's bothering me.'
Fiorinda and DK, who happened to be sitting on either side, took Rob by
the elbows and moved him out. Pigsty's goons didn't stop them, but
followed closely. „Get me a phone?, said Fio, imitating Ax's manner; and this
worked. A phone was produced. But then she couldn't handle it, so DK
called The Eyes. They were safe. They were still in the Park, but they could
leave. They would come at once. 'What's going on there?' DK demanded.
'I don't fucking know,' answered Felice. 'We'll come and get our man.'
On the steps of the building Rob wept and struggled, beside himself. The
goons stood by, while Fio and DK held him, until the pink Cadillac rolled
up out of the streetlight dark. 'He killed a sister. He killed a sister, man, the
fucking bastard, I can't stand for that— '
'It's all right,' Fio pleaded. 'The Eyes are okay, they're here now—' 'He means Cecile, I think. Rob, hey, that was an accident. Friendly fire.
The Pig is cool. Be calm, the Pig is cool, you don't mean what you're saying.'
Fiorinda was sure there had been no accidents, the Pig had known
exactly who he wanted to murder. But Rob's losing it was also in some way a
performance. He wasn't struggling too hard. They piled him into the car: the
Eyes looking grim on the front seat, Rob into the back, like tipping a wild
animal out of a net into safe captivity.
'You're driving home?' asked DK, 'Are you sure it's safe?'
'We can look after our sweet selves,' snarled Felice, 'Why'd you think
there's three of us?'
'That's how many it takes,' said Cherry. Her face was streaked with tears.
'What the fuck happened? What's going on? We thought you were all dead—'
'Any sister waits in hope for a black man to look out for her, is a fool.'
said Dora, her voice shaking in the bitter fury of relief. 'C'mon, fellow-babes.
I don't care what's going on.'
The Cadillac rolled away. DK and Fiorinda, released from their terrifying
burden, stumbled into a hug, clinging tight, white knuckled, bone on bone.
'My God,' he muttered, 'My God—'
'We're still alive,' she whispered. 'We're alive, hang onto that.'
They were taken back. Then, in the familiar room, there followed an
extraordinary session in which Ax handed over detailed knowledge of how
Pig's 'Green Blitzkrieg' should be run. Where the arms factories were, how best to contain the security forces, the most effective way of closing an
airport or tearing up a major highway. The most poisonous chemical plants
and how to decommission them without disaster, leave the nuclear power
stations alone. Channels of communication that must be kept open and
frequently fed, calming the people and the world out there beyond. . . Often
in the Think Tank, Ax had teased Paul Javert, letting slip hints of how much
politically and socially useful information he kept stored with his
Lennonisms. Now it all came out. There was no one taking notes, and if the
Pig's wishes had been obeyed there were no recording devices in this room,
but that didn't seem to matter. All that mattered was that Ax could keep
talking, holding the Pig fascinated, so Ax went on doing that, while the
handgun stayed on view, sometimes pointed in one person's direction or
another, the hippie goons stood around, and of course Pig was joking. He
wouldn't shoot anybody, not in here, he just liked to see them scared.
Fiorinda remembered Martina's terrified face. He could do what he liked.
Pigsty's tremendous physical strength and resilience became evident.
While Ax turned grey and sank into his chair, while his hands began to
tremble, Pig stayed bright as a button: not stressed at all by the events of his
busy evening, showing not a sign of fatigue. Twice he sent the guards out,
once for cigarettes and once for curry. (Ax vetoed alcohol, the Pig took this
like a lamb). And still the facts poured out. Verlaine and Chip, Fiorinda and
Sage started to give each other wondering looks. Finally it was over. The last phase blurred, the Pig abruptly satisfied.
They were taken to another part of this building, where two connecting
rooms and a bathroom had been prepared, evidently prepared in advance
for this planned emergency, with camp beds and blankets. Ax went straight
into the bathroom and threw up, ran a lot of water, came out with his head
and face dripping, wiping his mouth; and collapsed on one of the cots.
The others grouped round him.
'Ax,' said Sage, softly, 'You've got a warehouse chip, haven't you.'
'An implant,' whispered Verlaine. 'You must have.'
'Yeah,' said the Ax, muffled, choking. 'You're true. Don't tell Pigsty. I
think he'd tear my head off.'
In the morning, Ax was separated from the others and sent on a tour of the
provinces: on what seemed like a rampage of mob violence but was actually
pretty structured, Ax should know because he structured it. Within a few
days he knew that the decision he had made was in some sense justified.
Pigsty really did have an army, an army of wild young men, and a few
women: led by hardened Green-violence veterans. It was growing all the
time; and the Pig really was in command of this army, so far as anyone could
be. There were no other leaders left, at least no one who was prepared to
claim that rank after Massacre Night. The wild rumpus couldn't have been
stopped, not without a major escalation of violence and death, but what was more shocking, more disorienting, was that nobody seemed to want to stop
it. The police, the government, they were going to stand by, and let the thing
burn itself out. So that's what Ax was doing, or directing, the burning out of
this energy: guiding the destruction, as best he could, along less than utterly
destructive channels. He felt like a lone paramedic at a massive traffic
accident, except that this paramedic was the same person who had allowed
the drunk driver to take the wheel. He'd been so determined not to peak too
soon —and to be honest, hoping the violent phase could be avoided entirely.
But Ax had got it wrong and Pigsty was the boss: well on his way to
declaring himself King, Emperor, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Milosevic.
At least there were remarkably few human fatalities.
Considering. Yet.
It was horrible, but it was quite an experience leading Pigsty's barmy
army. There came, maybe inevitably, a moment when it started to feel right.
It was in a vast supermarket, outside Wolverhampton —a staged event, this
one, with a local tv crew in attendance and Ax himself leading the action—
as the mob, the barmy army and a local crowd, let rip with blowtorches and
chainsaws. This had to happen, thought Ax. Two hideous little children
sleeping in a shop doorway, their names are WANT and IGNORANCE. We
cannot make terms with those children, they've grown to monster size, they
can only be driven out by force. He had just made a stupid speech about the
crimes of profiteering fat cats, and the real, terrifying consequences of profitmotive consumerism, but though stupid it was also true. Smash! Destroy! He
had never wanted it to be this way, but maybe there was no other way, the
crashing chords, the furious energy of sound and meaning fused—
(they would put his Jerusalem solo on the soundtrack for the tv item,
he'd made sure of that. . .)
Later: the Disney version. It was March, the postponed Dissolution Day
had come to pass. A retired Prime Minister, ceremonial Head of State since
the Royal Family quit, had quietly resigned and fled. President Saul Burnet,
(aka Pigsty) would take office now: a figurehead post but a substantial and
fitting compliment to the leader of the CCM. Fiorinda and the Ax —best
candidates for romantic revolutionary prince and princess— featured in the
parade, rolling up Piccadilly and down the Mall behind Pigsty's biker escort,
in a coach left behind by the Royals. It was balmy weather, the sky was clear
and china blue, the buds on the plane trees swelling and unfolding in a mist
of green and gold. The cheering crowds included many ordinary Londoners;
but few tourists.
They hadn't seen each other since December. Ax had been delivered to
the luxury hotel where Pig had his London HQ just in time for the start of
this charade. He didn't know what had been going on. He had not been
allowed to communicate with his friends. He only knew they were still alive,
all those who had stayed alive that night in December, alive and more or less
okay. He wanted to talk to her about the rightness, the immense power of certain moments, was that magic? She ought to know.
'I've been thinking,' he said, softly. 'What?s happened is terrible, but I can
use this—'
Today the formalities would be concluded. Northern Ireland already
someone else's problem, Wales and Scotland would go their separate ways.
Then it would be time to explore the new relationship between the English
government and the CCM, how would that power—sharing go? How would
things go in the continental EU, where versions of the same scenario were
playing at several national venues, to some degree or other? Alain had been
right about that non—Velvet Revolution. Now that he was free again, Ax
would be able to find out more. Fiorinda was looking so good. At first he'd
thought it was a new dress, then he'd recognised one of the old ensembles,
green silk under spiderweb lace, cleaned up and mended. There was a
jewelled netting threaded through her beautiful hair.
'We're still together, you and me and the others. We can still make a
good team.'
Fiorinda turned her head. Trust Fio, she was not impressed by his pitch.
'Ax, you are beyond belief.' She shook her head and added, with such
loss and finality she could have been speaking from an open grave, 'I'm
never going to write another song.'
And the crowd went crazy, a background of senseless rejoicing behind his familiar face. 3: Cigarettes and Alcohol
Ax was in the Zen Self tent. He hadn't been interested in the place before,
because Olwen Devi was Welsh and, by definition, none of Ax's business (be
practical: set your limits). But Dissolution was past and the Zen Self circus was
still here, so he'd decided to come and check it, see what Fiorinda and the Heads
were on about. He had meant to accost one of the Selfers, get the spiel. Instead he
moved through the little crowds around the installations, stopping and staring
and then passing on, brooding on the grief he was having with Fiorinda.
He hadn't known how much he'd been looking forward to seeing that girl,
until they were suddenly together in the royal coach, and she froze him out.
Things had been no better since. He was back where he'd started, with the stone
cold eyes, the clipped chill voice, the so, do you want that fuck? In times like these,
a lover isn't for sex. A lover is someone to reach for in the night, someone whose
existence in the world you can cling to when you're hard pressed. He'd been
imagining that was what they were for each other, but no way. She'd been living
in Pig's hotel under some kind of house arrest, which couldn't have been fun.
He'd thought she'd relax when he took her back to the Snake Eyes' place: it
hadn't worked.
She said the world where they could have been together no longer existed.
Ax said he thought they needed each other more than ever, now everything
was fucked. She said, 'I'm not going to be any rockstar political gang's Comfort Girl,
allowed to tag along in return for sexual favours.'
So then Ax had to face the question of what Pig might have been up to
(although at least she was alive, and in okay physical shape, more than some
people could say). She brushed that off, hurtfully as possible. 'Oh no. Pigsty
won't touch me. He'll protect me. I'm the Ax's main squeeze. I'm safe, as long as
you and he don't fall out.'
'Look, Fio,' said Ax, 'this is not fair. We're all equal under the Pig. You, me, all
of us. You think Pigsty or his goons would hesitate at anal rape? You're kidding.
Believe me, I've seen them in action. You're not “allowed to tag along”. You're
vitally important, you have been from the start, if that's what's fucking you up.
You're the one with the verbals, the one the suits respect and so do we all.'
Still the curled lip, the hostile eyes, the relentless tongue. 'He'll probably knock
me on the head, however, when he finds out I'm sterile.'
'You are not sterile. You had the injection: it's reversible— '
'Not the one they give to single mother thirteen year olds, who have just given
birth and have no one to read them their rights.'
It was impossible, he couldn't reach her, and he hated and despised himself
for taking the sex anyway. It was his own stupid fault for building up a crappy
fantasy. He'd come to like and respect Fio very much, but he hadn't thought of
himself as romantically involved, before Massacre Night. He'd regarded her as a
project, a friend in need. What a fucking stupid way to get involved. Not knowing what is happening, not thinking it out, just falling—
It had been a relief to go down to Taunton, where repossession loomed again.
That'd been a bizarre experience. Contrary to the look of the thing, Ax had no
money, certainly none to spare to pour into his Dad's black hole; not this time.
He'd been pleading with the finance company, thinking fucking hell, don't you
guys realise a word from me to the Pig and your heads might get blown off?; and
at the same time could have kissed their feet for not realising, for still managing
to live in a world where nothing had changed. Dad didn't realise anything. Ax's
dad would keep repeating on him like a bad curry, until the hideously distant
day when the bastard could be stuck in a nursing home.
And throw away the key.
Old people ought to die more. When he'd said that, what he?d meant was that old
people in this country might as well be dead, considering the kind of life most of
them had to endure—
Taunton had been only lightly bruised by the Deconstruction Tour. Broken
plate glass, a couple of burnt out buildings, nothing to mention. But there were
no young men. Apparently a bunch of hippies, led by one of the Organs, had
been through all this area on an aggressive recruiting drive. It made for a strange
atmosphere, especially at night. Ax had walked about the quiet, dark streets, and
felt chills up his spine. The idea of Ax raising an army in Somerset was
laughable, but it was a scary insight into the way the Pig's mind was working,
(we never thought he had a mind. What fools were we); and a view of the situation that had to be nipped in the bud. The fingernail and thumbnail coming
together, nicking out the disastrous growth before it has time to get started: he
could feel it. And there was Fio again, one of those Think Tank Fio-riffs about
words that make sense, language we can understand with our senses. . . Raising a
cruel, ridiculous nostalgia for the good old days of jamming with Paul Javert.
His brothers and Milly had been here on Reading campground since the coup.
Good thinking on their part, safety in numbers: safety in being seen to be part of
the Countecultural nation. He'd insisted that he needed to talk to them,wanting
to know how much freedom he had. His barmy army escort had agreed to drop
him off, no problem there. He'd told the band he hoped they could go home to
Taunton soon. But Ax would have to stay in London. In the Snake Eyes house; or
find somewhere of his own. What about Fio? Would she move in with him?
He kept wanting to call her, see if anything had improved. Like, right now. It
would be no use. Fiorinda and telecoms didn't mix. Her cut glass accent, her
mulish little white face on a postcard screen, communicated nothing.
Fuck. Relationship-grief was a distraction he badly did not need.
Was it the sterilisation? Women will do that, tell you anything but the real
problem. If she wanted to have a baby. . . okay. As long as it was just one.
Whatever the injection had done, they'd get it fixed: sure to be possible.
In front of the quantum-dissociation experiment he stood, distracted from his
trouble by a technical puzzle. What were the Zen Selfers running all this stuff on?
Mains Power was fucked to hell all over, to the extent that the campgrounds, with their dodgy little generators, were relatively well off. But these big science
installations looked too hungry to be feeding off a little chugging petrol engine
out the back of the tent. Ax was interested in novelty energy sourcing. There
would come a time when the problem of power was not transient, and it might
not be far ahead.
It was on the list called Solutions to Problems:
But Ax had envisaged years of working on the sidelines, tackling that list.
Instead of which he would have to spot the solutions that must be around in
embryo, and save them now, if he could, while struggling with a raft of horrible
present and pressing dilemmas—
'Good morning Mr Preston.'
A woman in a sari was standing at his elbow.
Ax the guitarist had prided himself on being non-famous. His face was not his
fortune, he didn?t do celebrity culture, no one was ever going to pester him in the
supermarket. He felt a bitter, irrational shrinking: he was public property now.
'You can call me Ax.? At least he remembered this woman's photograph from
the Festival programme, so he could return the compliment. 'And you're Olwen
Devi, nice to meet you.'
'Is there something you'd like to know?'
'Well, yes. How're you keeping all this stuff going? Is it a petrol generator?'
Maybe they had a landline all the way from some busy Welsh wind farm. But
that wasn?t the answer. All the renewables were the socio-industrial dependent National Grid concept, Greenwashed, and all the micro-generation he?d seen so
far was chickenshit. Nothing solved the problem Ax wanted to solve.
'We make our own power.'
'How d'you mean?'
'Literally. We use ATP, adenosine triphosphate, the energy currency of all
living things, from our own cell metabolism.'
'You mean, like a. . . like a potato clock?'
'Something like a potato clock. Would you like me to explain?'
'Hmm.'
Fiorinda flew out of his mind. He took a better look at the scientist. The
morning was chill, Olwen Devi wore a vivid red and green plaid shawl, trimmed
with black piping, around her shoulders —a colourway offensively drab-yet
garish to his English eyes. Her face was a smooth oval: half-circle eyebrows, high
round cheeks, round brown eyes, businesslike smile. What is she like? She was
like a calm, confident, Welsh Hindu Primary school teacher. He could imagine
her standing no nonsense.
'Okay. Explain it a little. No need to get too technical.'
She led him away from the drifting, idly interested campers, to the decking in
the centre of the tent. They stood among the collection of lecture props.
'Every cell of your body contains little powerhouses called mitochondria.'
'Yeah,'
'Which. . . it's a fascinating process—' Olwen Devi's hand edged as if magnetically attracted towards her laser pointer; the remote for her display
screen. Ax gave her a firm look.
'Translate fuel into work potential.'
'Right.'
'We've developed a means to draw on this power, through the skin, and
amplify it.'
'Oh yeah? And what can you make it do?'
'Ambient light and moderate heat are the most developed applications. Those
can be seamless. Otherwise, there's an interfacing problem. We're envisaging a
set-top technology, in the medium term.'
'But you're already running this whole show on it? How long—?'
'We've been running the Zen Self tent on human metabolism power since last
July. In times of high demand it can be exhausting, like running uphill. But
everything here is highly energy conserved and we are many: it's never too
much to handle. Of course it would be another huge step to move on from
experimental conditions.'
'Guruji, how would you like to work for me?'
'Please don't call me that. A guru is a chubby fellow with a penchant for half—
nakedness, glistening like a raw egg as he rakes in money from the gullible. Also
it is a title for a man. I tolerate it from the punters: I don't like it.'
'Then, er Dr. . . Devi?? But that was another nickname.
'Just Olwen.' Zen Selfers, most of them wearing some of that tacky Welsh red and green,
had come to see what was going on. They didn't look surprised, no more than
Olwen herself. It was as if they'd been waiting for Ax to turn up.
'Okay, Olwen. What about it? If I'm ever in a position to hire you, one day?'
The Zen Selfers looked at each other, grinning. Olwen Devi shook her head at
them a little. 'Mr Preston, Ax, we believe we're already working for you.'
'Huh?'
'We've been hoping you would come and see us. We would have sought you
out, but we felt that might be tactless. Everyone knows that you have defended
the country's science base wherever you could, but still, you are dux bellorum of
the CCM.'
Ax didn't know what a dux bellorum was. But he thought of the Tour, and what
these people were, and their position at Reading. It was something he hadn't
considered.
'Yes,' said Olwen, calmly. 'And yet we've chosen to stay on. Scotland has
already made the transition, it?s a European state. Ireland is an independent
power. Wales is small, confused and vulnerable. We have our skill resources, our
software, and pockets of highly developed sustainable technology: but the way
things are going, very little will stay in Welsh hands. It's a gold rush, since
Dissolution. We saw what was coming and decided to leave. Our parent
company stayed behind: but we believe that our work is safer here, in the heart
of the Countecultural movement and its anti-science fury: because of you. Because we are under your protection.'
'My protection.' Fucking ironic, indeed.
'As for payment, we consider ourselves well rewarded for the moment, and
we plan to make our own fortunes. But if you could look out for Wales, when
you come into your kingdom, Ax. . . that would be a bonus.'
Ax had never before had anyone speak to him as if they shared his sense of
destiny. He was amazed, and a little frightened.
'What about your, um, parent company?'
She shook her head. 'Oh, they won't be cherrypicked. They are not vulnerable.'
He felt that the subject was closed. Okay, forget the parent company.
'This ATP. Could you do. . . stage lighting?'
'Fuck shit,' muttered one of the Zen Selfers. 'Sudden death.'
'I can't see that, at present,' said Olwen sedately.
'What about, say, really heavy computing power? Where's your mainframe?'
She raised her right hand. On the middle finger she was wearing a ring with a
large, golden-white stone, brilliant cut but slightly cloudy within. Not a
diamond, maybe a white topaz? He'd noticed it already.
'Here she is.'
'I see. Does the ring come off?'
The Zen Selfers grinned some more. 'Not easily,' said Olwen. 'Serendip and I
are very close.' She eased the gold band aside. Sunlight falling through the dome
was caught, glittering, in a barely visible filigree, like spiderweb, between the jewel and her skin.
Ax thought of the meeting in Shanghai. High tech is magic that works.
'What about the actual Zen Self shit? Does that have some alt.tech rationale?'
'The ATP development is an aspect of the Zen Self project. We are looking at
all the ways in which Self and the world are connected, and how those
connections can be reconfigured towards our final goal. If you mean, could you
use the science of consciousness for your revolution, I don?t know. But there is
surely a synchronicity. When technology —applied science— becomes magical,
what does science become?'
The Zen Selfers had dispersed, at some signal Ax hadn't noticed. Olwen
stepped down from the deck, and made for the tent entrance. Ax followed. She
was right, they?d said all that could be said, for the moment.
'Did you know, the Upanishads were first translated in Europe during the
French Revolution?' She turned to him: absurdly symmetrical dark brows raised
in mild inquiry.
'I never knew that.'
'I see mysticism is not for you. But we understand each other?'
He had no way of knowing what this ATP technology was worth. The Welsh
can be plausible buggers, adept at making fuck-all sound good, they have to be
don't they. He'd need to try and find out more about it, from an independent
source. But he was sure Olwen Devi was a valuable acquisition, some way or
other. Without knowing it he'd been looking for someone like this. 'Yeah. Done deal. You work for me, I look out for you. And for Wales, if that's
ever an issue.'
They shook hands, like market traders. The ring on her middle finger felt
warm as flesh.
The Pig's hotel was a blank white tower on Park Lane. It had been empty with a
skeleton staff, due to lack of trade, when Pigsty decided he wanted to move in.
The foreign owners had made no problem over leasing their place as a
Presidential Palace, as long as someone would someday pay the bill. As soon Ax
was back in town, Pigsty called a meeting of the Counter Cultural Think Tank, in
one of the conference rooms. This turned out to be a grotesque replication of the
old conditions. No eighteenth century pictures, no ornate white plaster ceiling
high overhead. But here was Pigsty, flanked by his drinking buddies, at the head
of the table, where Paul used to be. Here was Benny Preminder taking notes, and
here were the radical rockstars, wondering why they'd ever signed up for this
charade. Some significant gaps in the ranks, otherwise no change.
The President hadn't done this before, he said, because he hadn?t wanted to
take Ax away from the Tour. From now on they would meet often. 'You're my
Cabinet,' he told them affectionately. 'The government can do the government
shit. You work for me. Ax is Prime Minister, 'course, an' I hereby appoint Sage
my Minister for Gigs. The people want that roadshow Paul was promising, I
want you onto it, Sage. We're gonna lose all artistic credibility if we don't get touring soon. The rest of you can have titles when I think of 'em.'
It lasted a couple of hours. They were all still alive at the end.
Downstairs, three Eyes, four Heads and three Chosen were anxiously waiting.
They'd been required to turn up, but President Saul aka Pig had decided at the
last minute that they were not allowed into the meeting. The hotel lobby was
noisy and chaotic, full of Pigsty entourage and hangers—on: stray campers from
the Park, hippie goons from the barmy army; fresh-faced teenagers who'd run
away from home to join the circus of the hour, and having reached it sat giggling
or ready to weep on the stained and ripely hungover luxury-hotel upholstery —
might as well have signs hung around their necks reading Please Kill Me And
Eat Me. If the foreign owners could have seen the state of their public rooms,
(where the cleaners had abandoned a losing battle) they would have had qualms
about that lease. But they couldn't check it out easily, owing to Pigsty having
made a clean sweep of webcam eyes.
The Pig's Cabinet —Ax and Sage and Fiorinda, Rob and DK, Chip and
Verlaine and Roxane; Fereshteh in her enveloping veil— joined the others. It was
the first time they'd all been together since Massacre Night.
No one spoke for a long time.
The body count after that night had ended up lower than first estimates, only
twenty three actually dead. The English nation, including the government,
seemed to feel that was a reasonable price to pay for the taming of the CCM,
especially since most of the fatalities had been out-and-proud Green Nazis: advocates if not perpetrators of the most murderous eco-terrorism. The funky
new President was fine. Even the Tour had been fine, now it was over.
The day after the Dissolution ceremonies Ax had had a phone call, an
invitation to lunch at a gentlemen's club in the West End. He'd gone along, and
found himself sitting opposite. . . Was it someone from the Home Office? MI6?
He wasn?t told, didn?t ask. No labels, just someone who wanted to talk to Ax. A
middle aged Asian guy, very well-dressed, thick silver grey hair brushed straight
back, giving Ax to understand that the facts were known and the situation, Paul
Javert murdered and Pigsty for President, was something the country could live
with. He'd talked about youth and age. How young people, if they are of any
worth, are convinced that what they do is important. Older people come to
understand that there are no new moves. Everything that we do has been done
before time and time again, it's what you are that matters, the unique personality
brought to bear on these inevitable actions. Ax had listened, having difficulty just
chewing and swallowing, thinking about ethnic origins, and how he didn't have
one, himself. If I?m not English, I'm not from anywhere.
What had shaken him was the way this well-rooted, well-finished someone
had waited, after he'd described the situation everyone could live with. Watching
Ax's face with a deeply disturbing kind of respect. The unsaid words had hung
between them: that if Ax planned to change the situation, then that would be okay
too, because he, Ax, was too dangerous to be messed with.
So he had what he'd wanted. Already, right now. Reach out and take it. He hadn't known that it would feel like this.
He twisted his Dissolution Fest wristband around: clear plastic, with a
shimmering rainbow border. Everyone was still wearing them, probably end up
like the Masons, shoot your cuff and obstacles disappear, oh, I see you're wearing a
Reading DY wristie, and with all the colours, access all areas, oh well that's different. . .
His head was full of cottonwool. How long since he'd managed to cop any REM
sleep? About a year, it felt like. His hands were cold as ice. He put his coat back
on and stuck them in the pockets, felt marginally better inside the trusty leather
armour. . . 'Is there somewhere we can go and talk?'
'What about the Garden Room?' said Fereshteh.
They trooped through the lobby to the hotel's breakfast buffet and coffee shop,
where there was a garden courtyard —formerly glassed over, now open to the
cold sky after some hippie prank. It was sad and empty, big hothouse plants
quietly dying in their pots and troughs. The broken glass had been cleared away,
but there was a scum of litter over the marble pavement, empty cans and bottles
in the water feature.
Ax sat on the steps by the pool, where a clogged fountain struggled to rise,
and looked around. Three brave, beautiful Eyes in bright wool coats, fuchsia,
emerald and tangerine, fun feather plumes at the wrists and throat. Their stocky
plum-dark beau. DK the party animal, his receding hair tied back in a ponytail,
big sunken circles under his pretty eyes, far strayed from the dao of fun. Roxane
Smith, flamboyant ex-man, veteran of God knows how many waves of rock idealism: looking like shit, the damage only emphasised by a Chinese Opera
scale slap-job. Rox's young boyfriend Verlaine (aka Kevin Hanlon); and
Verlaine's other significant other, Chip Desmond.
Shane and Jordan and Milly, Fereshteh the ghazal singer, five skull-masked
Heads; and Fiorinda in one of her party dresses under a drab, matted sweater,
looking even more shit than Rox. Walking wounded, all of them. Only Fereshteh,
alert and composed in her burqa, seemed relatively okay —and the kids, Chip
and Verlaine, who were just too fucking childish to stay shattered for more than
five minutes at a time.
'Well,' said Ax, at last. 'Let's start at the beginning. Most of you were at the
LSE that day, and I don't believe any of you were there by accident.'
'What d'you mean by that?' said Sage.
That amazing mask had maintained a merry and even-tempered grin through
the Cabinet meeting. It was now a bleak closed door, and what the fuck made the
difference Ax couldn't begin to tell, only it was there. Sage and the Heads had
spent the three months of the Tour with rural divisions of the barmy army,
killing surplus farm animals and stuff like that, and behaved so well they'd
earned the privilege of visiting their families.
Sage had been to Wales, to see his ex-girlfriend and his kid. Ax wanted to
know how that had been, now Wales was a foreign country, and especially in the
light of his talk with Olwen Devi: but it would wait. Anything to do with Sage's
kid was territory where the guy's worst enemy might fear to tread. 'I mean, some of us may not like to admit it, but we all have the agenda.'
'Yeah,' said Rob, elbows on his knees, the coal black fake-astrakhan lining of
his coat a rich frame to the lemon yellow of his suit. 'We wanted to make a
difference, got snared into that shit-for-brains Think Tank because we hoped it
would come to something. But what the fuck do we do now?'
'This thing has turned truly hateful,' murmured Felice, 'As bad as it gets. I'm
scared. I'm like, I'd leave the country, but it's my country.'
'I think we're all scared,' said Ax, 'but I'm afraid this isn't as bad as it gets.
Unless we're very, very lucky, we'll lose a lot more ground before we come to the
bottom of this slide.'
'Just a harmless little market adjustment,' remarked Verlaine cheerfully. 'Or
the end of the world as we know it. Whichever label sells best will win out.'
'Yeah. That's about it. You know the story. According the hardline CCM we've
reached the limit of what this planet will stand. We all ought to commit suicide
but we're doomed anyway. Far as I can tell, the grim truth in real terms is that
things could get a lot worse for the lesser spotted flycatchers and the
Bangladeshis, without the survival of modern civilisation being much
compromised. But there's such a thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and being in
the middle of the crash at the end of the longest economic boom in modern
history doesn't help.
„We're in real trouble, and we're not alone. One reason why the English
government is happy to settle for Pigsty, is that they see what's happening in Italy, and France, and Germany and the Benelux. They know we're better off
than we might have been.'
'Aside from a few dead bodies,' murmured Fiorinda.
Ax sighed. 'Aside from a few dead bodies, yeah. I haven't forgotten them. I'm
saying that since what happened, happened, we haven't come out of it too badly
so far. But because this is so widespread, and because we are pushing the limits,
in terms of numbers versus resources, in the short term, things are likely to get
much worse right here in England now the shit has hit the fan, in ways we can't
avoid. If you need convincing, I could give you detail—'
This offer brought back, with vividness, the relentless grey hours of that night.
Everyone recoiled.
'That's okay,' said Sage hurriedly.
'We believe you.'
'Not necessary, Ax,'
'You're the man with the plan.'
'Just tell us what you want us to do—'
He had not understood that they would be waiting for him. He had hardly
thought about them while he was on the Tour, except for praying to God he
would see Fiorinda again; and except that their faces would come to him
sometimes, vividly, on the edge of the sleep that eluded him. Faces around a
table, willing him to carry on, keep going, we're with you, Ax. But here they were,
still with him: and he hated what he had to tell them. 'We have to concentrate on doing what we can. First off, that means tackling
the masses. Getting rid of the leaders of the Extreme Greens hasn?t solved that
problem, no way, because the real problem is not the proverbial minority of
troublemakers, stirring up civil unrest. The problem is millions of angry,
confused citizens who have spent the last few years seeing their savings wiped
out, their prospects vanish and their self-esteem destroyed. And unlike Scotland,
Ireland and Wales, the people of England don't have the lovely feeling that the
world is young and early struggles will bring success. . . Misery. Normal, gut
wrenching human unhappiness. That's what fuels the drop-out hordes, that's
what will keep on feeding the CCM, and keep Pigsty?s barmy army dangerous.
Fact is, I think one of our major concerns as a culture, if we get through this
rough patch, is going to be finding new ways to make terms with normal
unhappiness, because the ways that used to work, such as wage slavery, will be
gone forever. But right now, we're talking about crisis control.'
It was strange how these successful rocksters —all of them at the sweet end of
a monstrously unfair system, if only the Heads were in the superleague— had
started listening, really listening, when he mentioned the gut-wrenching
unhappiness of the human condition. How Fiorinda and Sage especially had
lifted their heads, like they had heard some distant, magical, inevitable
summons. Shame he had to bring them back to earth.
'We have to manage the masses, keep them from breaking the place up, stop
this revolution from turning into a reign of terror. How can we achieve this?' 'Shoot more people,' suggested Fiorinda. At least she cracked a tiny smile.
'Thanks Fio. I'll hold that one in reserve. . . No, I think the best thing we can
do, for the moment, is carry on with the Paul Javert job. Accept President Pig.
Work with him, around him, get on the road. Free concerts, big ones.'
They stared at him blankly.
'You mean we hang on,' suggested Verlaine, hopefully, 'In deep cover? Limit
the damage best we can, and wait for our chance to take over the government?'
'Er. . . no. I am not planning to take over the government. Wouldn't do me any
good. I agree with Pigsty, let the suits run the bureaucracy. It's the function of
any government to be disliked, and people have to like us, or we won't be able to
do what I want us to do.'
Ax picked up a stem of dry bamboo, debris from one of the neglected plant
troughs, and began to poke at the fountain, to give them something to look at
while they thought it over. To work for the Pig. To endure him and his hippie
goons, and look as if they liked it. It was a tough offer.
'Is any one going to pay us?' asked Rob. 'Just out of interest.'
'I doubt it. No one was offering to pay us for the Think Tank stuff. Financially,
the whole thing is a bust, I admit. But the media exposure should be good.'
'Hey,' said Chip. 'No probs. We have Aoxomoxoa to bankroll us! If I run short,
I shall come straight to you Sage.'
The skull gave him a dour look, (crushing Chip utterly, for a minute or two).
'I'd have to decide if it was a worthy cause.' 'Listen,' said Ax. 'I didn't expect the Pig's coup. I didn't see it coming, my fault
entirely, and for the record I feel like shit about that. But we're on the other side.
We have to start from where we are and work with what we?ve got and I don't
want any more violence. Pigsty is convinced that he needs us, convinced that we
are his best mates, weird as his reasoning on that may seem. And he's the
President. That gives us leverage, some power for good in a bad situation. I want
to use it. Will you help me?'
'Okay,' said Sage. 'If that's what you want.'
The others all nodded.
'I think I see it,' said DK. 'Catharsis, joy: the power of the everlasting beat. Yes,
for sure, the best of drugs, a drug that truly heals. But no one can rave twenty
four hours a day, Ax. Not without dedication, and the dedicated are not your
problem. The barmy army recruits will flock to your gigs, and then they'll go out
and break the place up.'
'I was coming to that. We're gonna sell them community service. They'll
accept rockstars as charity work promoters: it looks familiar. We'll get them
cleaning hospital toilets, replanting hedgerows, picking up litter, chatting to old
ladies in geriatric wards. God knows there's enough that needs doing. And
they'll love it. We know they will, because we've all been there. Being nice to
people is a drug with a very pleasant kick, even when it's cut to shit. It's the way
we're wired, we get good juice from caring for each other. So, we'll give the
patients rock and roll for heavy medication, voluntary work as routine antidepressants. If we pitch it with enough conviction, they'll buy it. As we all
know only too well, human beings will do any fucking thing, no limit, if it is seen
to be normal and taken for granted, and the role-models say it's okay.'
'Circuses,' said Roxane. 'Occupational therapy. . . You left out the bread, Ax.
Your people will need to eat. They'll need the necessities of life.'
'I do have some plans for that aspect, but for the moment it shouldn't be our
problem. There are rich hippies, rich Greens. We'll scrounge off them, if the
government won't pick up the tab.'
No one else had any comments.
'It's like. . . shuttering,' said Ax. 'We had the industrial revolution, we've done
that mechanical work. The walls will stand on their own, we can knock away the
supports. We can go back to being ourselves—except that we don't ever go back.
We go on, further along Verlaine's helix of time. If we can just get through this
part, this difficult passage, we'll be there. Overpopulation, from which every
other problem stems, will be a pulse that we've passed through. The truly
liberating tech —for which over—population was in many ways the price we
had to pay— will be up and running. There could be, for the first time in history,
a genuine human, genuine humane civilisation. For everyone, not the elite few
who have always had a sweet life, any time this last however many thousand
years. I intend to try and keep things from going to shit, here in England,
through this particular shake down, because I want to give the future that could
happen a chance. That's my project, that's always been my project. To make this turning point the beginning of civilisation, instead of a fall into the dark ages. But
the only kind of Good State that's going to endure is one where nobody has to
make an unnatural effort to do the right thing. Utopian revolutions that demand
discipline and self-denial turn rotten in about six weeks, because default human
nature reasserts itself. Somehow we?ve been given responsibility for the so-called
Countercultural masses. Believe me, it?s not what I wanted, but it?s a place to
start, and maybe not the worst. I want to give them —to give the whole country,
if I get the chance— a model of life where we only take time off from having fun,
from making art, from being ourselves, to concentrate on each other, like the social
animals we are meant to be. The lesser spotted flycatchers may even be
reasonably satisfied, if my ideas come about.
„And yeah, before anyone says it, I know it won't work. If I succeed beyond
my wildest dreams, it'll be partial, fucked up and temporary. Partial, fucked up
and temporary will be fine. If we can get that going, for just a few years, just here
in England, we'll have made our mark. Something will survive.'
So he'd unveiled the manifesto. He hadn't meant to do that, and he wished
he'd kept his mouth shut, because he could see that not one of them believed a
word of it. Oh well. They would still do what he told them, because (like Saul the
Pig himself) they badly needed to be told what to do. At least the fountain had
responded to his persistence and was rising more strongly: nice touch.
'But on the way to Ax's rock and roll café society,' said Sage, after a polite
pause, 'There is this roadshow—' 'Yeah. You'll need help, Mr Minister.You better get on to Allie, she's the one. . .
Where is Allie, by the way?'
'Upstairs,' said Fereshteh. 'She couldn't face everyone. I think because she
knew, and she didn't warn us. I mean, I?m not saying she knew there was going
to be a massacre, but she knew something.'
'Well, tell her we need her,' said Ax. 'Soon's she can hack it.'
'She's spending time with Anne-Marie and Lola, and the kids. It seems to
help.'
Anne-Marie was old lady to Smelly Hugh, the Organs' second in command.
Lola was President Pig's wedded wife. She usually kept (or was kept) out of the
public eye: a side of the Pig's life that didn't fit well with the outrageous image.
Roxane and Verlaine glanced at each other.
'What about Benny Prem?' said Verlaine.
Ax was looking at Fiorinda. God, she looked terrible, oozing anger and
misery, hair tied up in a scarf that resembled a dishcloth. The party frock,
fullskirted blue taffeta, sprinkled as if with splinters of emerald, just made her
look like a mental patient. Oh, Fiorinda, why are you like this? He couldn't help
comparing her to Fereshteh, who had come through the same ordeal, so serene
and strong. He noticed, a change that had passed him by until this moment, that
she was no longer wearing the yellow ribbon.
That ribbon, originally a clubbing signal, had been born out of social
exasperation: there has to be a way to strike up a conversation, dance, flirt even, without the other person getting narked if you don't suggest a fuck after thirty seconds . . .
Inevitably it had come to mean other things, inevitably people wore it when they
were on the pull, and taking it off signalled some kind of plighting troth with a
new partner. Ax suddenly remembered that Sage, sitting beside Fiorinda now,
had been wearing the ribbon, on some bizarre whim, before Massacre Night. Not
anymore. He clocked this information, and Sage not touching her but very close,
with horrified, blinding insight—
'Prem? He's a government suit. If they're happy to keep him on, after what
happened, that's their business. We can live with him. He doesn't matter.'
The meeting degrouped, and he knew it had gone well enough because
everybody (except Fiorinda and Sage) found some reason to come up to him and
say a word, touch his sleeve. Even Shane, poor kid: with his heartfelt, justified
grief about the band. Ax followed the Heads into the Sunlight Bar, a spacious,
grope-dark locale where the de facto senior officers of the barmy army liked to
gather. He detached Sage, and took him off to the terrace.
'How was Wales?'
'Didn't look any different.'
'Did you take a passport?'
'Forgot. They don't want passports, anyway. They want national identity
cards, and I aren't got one of those. The border was nothing. But I'm in deep shit
at Parth Galen over this business. Marlon had been seeing his dad on tv, offing
the poor sick moo-cows, dumping them in mass graves. . . Did his head in. Fucking media folk—'
Ax was staring at the righteous Countercultural squalor in the hotel gardens:
the teepees, the bare-arsed toddlers, the dogs, the woodsmoke; the heaps of
refuse. Silent Spring he thought. The songbirds go first. Magpies, herring gulls,
rats. Nothing takes them down.
'Well,' he said, 'I suppose I better regard you as some kind of blood brother,
since you've decided to take me up on my earlier offer.'
'Huh?'
'I'm talking about Fiorinda.'
The skull stared, doing a thing that might have raised its eyebrows if it had
any. 'Oh, I get it. I've been in your bed, while you was off on tour. Well, thanks.
How do you think I managed that? Sneaked back here in my spare time and
climbed up a drainpipe?'
'Don't care. I said, it's okay. Just wanted the development out in the open.'
'Ax, if it's any of your business, I haven't touched her. She?s a child, I don?t
fuck children. What the fuck are you on about?'
Ax realised he was way out of order. He'd insulted Aoxomoxoa, stupidly,
needlessly, and it was the last thing he should be doing. He didn't know how to
recover. 'Nothing. . . Forget it. Fact is, I don't know what's wrong with that girl.
You've seen what she's like, letting herself go.Won't eat, won't sleep, she looks
like fishbones. . .'
'How strange. When everything is so hunkydory.' Sage concentrated on his cigarette for a few moments. 'Ax, d'you remember that tv show? When I was
slagging off the Chosen Few?'
'I remember.'
'After which you sought me out, took me on the town, insisted on us talking
all night whilst getting me legless drunk, and I couldn't work out why. You said
then that you always tried to listen to the people who made difficulties.'
'What's your point?'
'Maybe you should listen to Fiorinda.'
Eventually, freighted with beer and white powder, Ax went back to the house on
the Lambeth Road. He wasn't drunk, he was in the mood where nothing makes
you high; just tired. Fiorinda was in bed, wearing a greyish and raggedy
underslip, and reading by candlelight (the mains power was having a scheduled
brown-out). Her lovely hair —her best feature, in Ax's opinion— was in such a
mess it would soon be dead-cat whitey dreadlocks of no return, a style he hated.
The slip hung dismally slack from her skinny collarbones.
He went and sat on the floor in front of his Les Paul, and touched the strings
vaguely, without raising a sound. His fingertips were tender from lack of use. All
his guitars were valued and respected, but this Gibson was his first love, his
favourite instrument, constant companion. In that gleaming, dark red, classic
form lived the first big gig, lived the first time he'd seen a crowd go wild: lived
everything he most passionately loved to play, everything he'd written (though not the Jerusalem solo). The years of living with the band in a house that had
belonged to Milly's mother, after Milly's mum and her step-dad moved to Spain;
with the overgrown garden where they never did any gardening, the double
garage where they had rehearsed. Tours, recognition, critical acclaim. A whole
life, a whole world. Gone.
'Maybe you should set fire to it,' suggested Fiorinda.
'Wouldn't be a bad idea.'
He stubbed out his last cigarette and crunched the empty packet. He'd been
smoking tobacco all night, no wonder he felt disgusting. He turned around: on
his knees. 'Fio. . . I love you. You're right, I know it. We are fucked, it's horrible.
I'm just trying to stay positive, stupid as that may sound. Please be nice to me.'
'Ax,' said Fiorinda, dryly, 'I begin to suspect you love a lot of people. In your
own, deranged, megalomaniac way.' But she sounded mollified. 'Oh, come to
bed. Come and rest your weary head, idiot.'
He'd known that the word, which he'd never used on her before, would have
an effect (although it was a word she would perhaps never use herself). That and
telling her she was in the right. People are so easy to handle, as long as you pay
attention: problem is that you forget to handle the people who matter most.
The Minister for Gigs proved to have a talent for delegation. The organisation of
the Post—Deconstruction Tour was directed by Allie Marlowe, assisted by Ax
and Fiorinda and DK. The Heads turned up just about for their spots in a punishing schedule which dragged everyone, sometimes in the same venue,
sometimes scattered, all over the country. The rest of the time they kept company
with the barmy army. They cooked up batches of home—made napalm on
Reading campground, and went crop—spraying the swathes of 'green concrete'
that the government had purchased for destruction as part of their CCM
appeasement. A crowd-pleasing stunt that Ax hated. Sage had never flown an
aircraft before, but he picked it up. No more problem than driving the van.
There was no murderous violence in the Cabinet meetings, only the ever
present threat of it, but there was ugly stuff to swallow. In May, President Pig
intervened personally to insist on the summary execution of all the prisoners
currently sentenced under the restored death penalty (a crowd-pleasing stunt the
government had launched a couple of years ago, but never yet had the guts to
implement). He wanted them to hang, but had to settle for the lethal injection.
Fired with enthusiasm by the experience, he summoned Ax to the heavily
guarded family suite, on the hotel's first floor, to discuss the formation of a
Countercultural justice system. Public hangings, flogging and branding for
crimes against Gaia, what did Ax think? He was anxious for approval.
'We gotta get tough,' he insisted, alcohol-stunned eyes wandering, unable to
fix on Ax's face. 'Child molestors, all that kind of shit, we gotta be hardline, take
the moral high ground there, as well as on the green agenda.'
The suite was a very disturbing place. It reminded Ax of another thing
Fiorinda used to say in the Think Tank. It's all costume. There's no distance between the most in your face hippie godfather, and right-wing family values. He
began to feel the horror of the trap he was in. The Pig was popular, the country
seemed satisfied. There was nothing Ax could do, except walk away, (if Pigsty
would let him go); and he couldn't bring himself to do that.
A few days after this interview he was on the south coast, doing lunch with some
ancient ladies hauled out of that other, vastly more numerous death row, for the
pilot of the CCM Volunteer Initiative. 'I'm glad my mother had me,' said the spry
wheelchaired ninety-eight year old next to him. 'If she hadn't, I wouldn't be here
with you now, would I?' The way she said it, you'd have thought the decade
she'd spent dying of boredom between threadbare sheets, sometimes in her own
shit, had been wiped clean off the slate by this particular salt-aired sunny day, as
she sat gumming her fish and chips for the cameras.
After the publicity lunch he talked to the manager of several long stay care
homes in the south coast conurbation, and asked her what was needed.
Everything, she said. Economic meltdown had not been easy on the low-income
poor-health sector of the geriatric bulge. Donations in kind would be best, as
credit was difficult. She'd love some volunteers, nice mature ladies for
preference. 'What about young men?' said Ax. There were more nice, mature
ladies than you'd think among the revolutionaries, but they tended not to be at a
loss for occupation. Matron (not her title, but it seemed the natural term) looked
down her nose. She knew the kind of young man on offer: but she was desperate. 'I would consider them. As long as they were clean and tidy.'
'I'm gonna make you eat that tone of voice,' said Ax.
The media called them Ax Preston's Chosen, but that was already the name of his
other band, so they quickly became The Few. They moved into a derelict barracks
near the Park, that had been standing empty like the Pig's hotel, and set up their
headquarters: a press office, a club venue, studios, a works' canteen; hostel beds
for teenage runaways. They called it The Insanitude. After the national tour, Ax
managed to get his friends out of the hostage situation, arguing plausibly that
they should spread the message in the regions. The Chosen returned to Taunton;
the Heads retired to Reading. But the Pig started to get restive, so the others
stayed in town: Chip and Verlaine at Rox's flat in Notting Hill, Allie, Fereshteh
and DK at the Insanitude. Fiorinda and Ax stayed at the Snake Eyes house.
Fiorinda helped DK to run one of the Insanitude nights, keeping him company
in his eyrie above the ballroom, while he played merry hell with state-of-the-art
IMMix. She wore the new filter glasses to shut out the assault on her visual
cortex: looked down through blood-brown lenses at the huge crowd of dancers
swirling around, oblivious of their dolefully decrepit surroundings. Maybe they
needn?t bother to redecorate, virtual scenery would be enough.
'What did it used to be?' wondered the Mixmaster, mopping sweat and
chewing gum at a terrible rate. Forty-something, motormouth Dilip could lose or
gain fifteen years in a moment, depending on his mood or the light. He was young tonight, he was flying. 'This hideous heap, this pile of architectural dung.
Was it a factory? A power station, a boot camp a reformatory ?'
'I don?t believe you don?t know. You were living in the Park all last summer.'
'Was I? Oh, well, I only saw from afar, a big lumpen empty building.'
'You're having me on.'
'Mmm hmmtitum. . . I've never been interested in sightseeing. What a
beautiful gown you are wearing,' He did something that made the dancers
shriek, ejected his gum, stuck it on the underside of the desk, searched in vain for
a fresh stick. 'What do you think of the Pig, Fiorinda?'
'I think he's a braindead, brutal creep,' said Fio, far enough from sober to relish
the feeling of speaking dangerous treason.
'So do I. I also believe Ax did what had to be done, he had no other choice, and
he is still doing what has to be done, and all power to him.'
'Exercising the art of the possible,' agreed Fiorinda. 'Same old, same old. Don't
get me wrong, I know Ax is doing his crazy best.'
'And here are we, torn between Jupiter and Apollo or some East-West lyric that I
can't think of but let's be shamelessly midAtlantic: you want to come over to the
North Wing after this, back to my pad?'
'Sure.'
'That is, um, that is— '
'As long as it would be okay with Ax,' supplied Fio, resignedly. 'S'okay. He
won't mind.' 'Ah, Fiorinda.' DK swung around and wrapped her in arms like friendly,
roving snakes. 'Sea-green, oceanic, spellbinding, Fiorinda.' His breath was sweet
and hot. She reached over his shoulder, took off her glasses and was plunged
into deep water, filled with mysterious shapes that thrummed at her like
another kind of sound: then flipped to the roaring surface, stretched over the
peaks and troughs of gigantic midocean waves. Dilip was lovely and warm, in
the middle of this huge cold sea. 'Actually,' he confessed, nuzzling her throat and
at the same time leaning back to do something new to the illusion. 'I was having
you on. I know where we are. We're in Buckingham Palace, for a changing of the
guard, what could be more fitting, ah, green-eyed Fiorinda— '
Her eyes were grey, in some lights hazel; or maybe even brown. But it would
have been a shame to correct him when he was on a roll.
Ax arranged for Fereshteh to get him up to speed on British Islam, or English
Islam as they should now say. She and Allie were sharing a suite of Insanitude
rooms: a makeshift arrangement, like Ax and Fiorinda living at Snake Eyes, that
seemed likely to persist because it was impossible to make plans. No sign of
Allie. She was keeping a low profile, functioning okay, but nothing like her old
self. He was startled and intrigued to find that Fereshteh still wore the burqa, in
her own living room.
'You're not a male relative, and I feel more comfortable this way.'
It was certainly interesting to watch her hands, and her eyes, and guess at the shape of that smile in her voice. How old was Fereshteh? Her hands said young,
but her rich singing voice had all its growth, which he knew in a woman
normally meant late twenties. Was she fat or thin? A little fleshy, he judged, but
graceful. They talked about Islamic background, and how Ax would have to
learn Arabic if he wanted to get very far: Ax skirting round the obvious, which to
Ax was how can a woman put up with this religion?
'I don't get it,' he said, at last. 'Okay, I heard about how women get a better
deal legally in the Koran than in the Bible, and Muhammad was secretly an early
feminist, and wearing the veil is actually liberating, but give me a break. You and
I both know that what happens, among the faithful, is heavy inequality.'
'Qur'an.'
'K'ran'
'Better. Whenever we say the name of the Prophet, we say Peace and Blessings
of Allah Be Upon Him.'
'Muhammad, Peace and Blessings of Allah Be Upon Him. But how can you
agree to something that says you're less than a man, and you have go around
with a bag over your head because you're responsible for sexual attraction and
he isn't, all that?'
'I don't have to agree, Ax. I only have to accept, to stop fighting with the way
things are. Accept the will of God, and be at peace. That's what Islam means. But
not only Islam thinks like this: In la sua volonte e nostra pace—'
'That's not Arabic.' 'No, it's Italian. It's a line from Dante's Paradiso. In His will is our peace.'
For himself, he could feel the attraction: some kind of bedrock. Accept was a
riff that kept playing in his head just now. For a woman, a courageous,
competent, talented human being like Fereshteh, it was incomprehensible. He
shook his head. 'Nah, I still don't get it.'
She straightened the sleek dark braid, tinged with rust—colour, that lay on his
shoulder. 'You're like a little boy. Your information chip let you down, huh?'
'It doesn't help with understanding things, it's only a stack of facts and some
ordering software. So, are you ever going to take that off, while I'm around?'
'Not until we put out the light.'
In July Fiorinda moved back to Reading. Too many hurtful things had been said
and done, since that horrible ride down the Mall. Being with Ax had become an
unhappy marriage, they were better apart. She found a vacant hut, sturdily made
out of car body panels, in one of the farthest flung camping fields, arranged her
possessions and sat looking around, seeking things that dated from before the
Ax. Her guitar, a few dresses. My life is over, she thought. This is something else,
a useless aftermath. That was the way she'd felt since Massacre Night. It wasn't
Ax's fault, but maybe it was the reason they'd broken up. She picked up the
saltbox and held it in her palm. She felt no nostalgia for the cold house, those
years were dreadful to recall, but this double-edged talisman was still precious.
A present for a little girl who is going to live beyond the end of the world. She began to work for Olwen Devi, on a scheme training human gut bacteria to
chew up and neutralise shit, wherever it was laid (but not before!). As Sage had
predicted, it was getting direly necessary to have a policy for the brown stuff.
She didn't like being a pharm animal, but she knew she had to be there. That was
what The Few were about. She wasn't going to let Ax down, just because they
had personal differences. There were exercises you did, physical exercises rather
like T'ai Chi, which expedited the pharming, due to quantum entanglement or
something. She was doing them one morning, while her breakfast tea kettle
sizzled, when Sage arrived. When she'd finished he was sitting at her open door.
The skull was chipper enough, but it was lying through its teeth. The rest of
him looked bone weary. The Heads had all been ill with some bug or other: and
then Luke had gone down with a viral pneumonia. There was nothing a hospital
could do for him, and Head Ideology scorned such places anyway. They were
nursing him as best they could in the van. Fiorinda was not allowed to help.
They said she was too young, and what the fuck would Ax say if she got sick?
'How is he?'
She didn't invite him in. He looked as if he needed the sun and air.
'Okay, sort of, for the moment. George is with him.'
'Is he going to get better?'
The skull contemplated. 'No,' said Sage at last, stonily. 'I don't think so.'
She said nothing. Her fire burned with a strong, young, yellow flame, the effect of the exercises made her feel distant and sleepy. So this is what we will
do, she thought, as she crouched waiting for the water's note to change. We will
die. . . Well, that's not so bad. Without premeditation she reached out, and a
flame crept into her hand. It curled there confidingly, the little wild creature, full
of life: such a consoling thing, a fire.
Sage moved in the doorway, a boot heel striking—
She looked around. He quickly looked away.
'There's a letter for you. I brought it over.'
The campground Post Office was busy, these days. Cellphone networks had
collapsed as the hippies chopped down masts all over the place, leaving the
utterly, abjectly mobile-dependent English lost and bewildered.
The short letter was from Carly.
Dear Fiorinda, excuse me writing, but I couldn't get a number for you, you famous
person you. I don't know if you want to know this but I thought you ought to be told—
'My mother's sick again,' she said, when she'd read to the end. 'Sounds as if
she's dying.'
Summer turned to Autumn. Throughout Europe, Countercultural Revolution
flared and smouldered. In England appeasement, the President Pigsty route,
seemed to be working: but the conflict between Yorkshire's Islamic Separatists
and the police had reached the proportions of a small war. In the cold house
Fiorinda endured the hated company of the dying woman, not knowing if it made any sense to stay, sure she could not leave. At least Carly made no further
contact. She thought of Saul the Pig in his hotel suite with his bodyguards, Ax
the manager organising everyone, the Few obediently doing whatever he said:
and all the barmy army lads, all the campgrounds, all those thousands upon
thousands of people who had never gone home. From a distance she could see it
happening, Ax's future, the rock and roll lifestyle written over everything. The
nomadic idleness, the greedy self-indulgence, the emotional intensity, the anomie,
the tantrums. . . She saw no hope in the development. A certain model of human
life becomes accepted: once we were manufacturing workers, then we were
venture capitalists, then docile consumers. Now we're rockstars. So what.
Sometimes she thought about the magic. But Sage had been right to look the
other way, because there was nothing to discuss. Magic, when you hold it in
your hand, turns out not to mean anything useful. It's like life, it's like death: it's
not for anything. It just is.
The trouble in Yorkshire was getting very bad. Girls of Pakistani or Bangladeshi
extraction were found dead if they had so much as left the house unveiled or
without the escort of a male relative. Schools were closed, 'Anglo—Saxon'
companies attacked, mixed race families harassed. Terrorist bombings and racial
firefights were almost daily occurences. People who still had satellite tv started
seeing the map of England on Al Jazeera and CNN (shorn of Scotland and Wales:
you didn't even recognise the "headless chicken" shape, first few times you saw it); with Yorkshire outlined in jagged red. People who didn't were fed a milder
version of events.
President Pigsty decided there was a Countercultural issue. He was outraged
over the honor-killings, dress codes, all that oppressive stuff. He ordered the
toughest nuts of the barmy army up there, to liase with the police and sort the
bastards. When his Cabinet demured he told them to mind their own business,
they were a bunch of fucking wankers and he was the President. But there was
no change in Yorkshire, and the Pig's pride was touched. One day in September
he announced that he?d fixed up for Ax and Sage to go north. They were leaving
tomorrow, no argument. Let them solve the Islamic problem. If they were so
fucking clever.
The others gave Ax and Sage space, after the meeting was dismissed. No one
knew what to say. They were still hostages, still at the Pig's mercy. The two of
them went back to the Snake Eyes house and up to the room Ax had shared with
Fiorinda. It was twilight and there was a brown-out. Ax fussed with candles,
which to Sage was nostalgic. At Reading they had ATP lighting, a limited
system, but beyond futuristic: a glimpse of a world that challenged Head
Ideology in ways he didn't know if he could tolerate.
'Well? I suppose we have to go?'
'Yeah,' said Ax. 'I suppose we do.'
Without withdrawing his support, or causing trouble with the Pig, Sage had
been quietly going out of his way to annoy Ax, and Ax had accepted the situation. He knew it was his own fault, for impugning the guy's honour (to get
suitably mediaeval about it) that time, over Fiorinda. He shouldn't have done it,
and he'd wished often he could apologise, but some things are better left unsaid.
He was surprised and relieved at Sage's attitude.
'And we can take it that our secret rulers are happy for the barmy army to be
involved?'
Ax was sitting next to Sage on the bed, the room didn't have much furniture.
He leaned back, head against the wall, thinking about Benny Preminder, sitting
there so demurely, making his notes. Bastard. 'No secret. The PM?s clearly
decided that using the barmy army is better than sending in the regulars, which
is the next step.'
'So what are you planning to do when you get there?'
'I've no idea.'
'No brilliant solution to the Islamic Question, on that chip of yours?'
'I keep telling people, it's a datastack, not a wishing well. I'm only fucking sure
that street fighting is not the solution. This is a problem of emotional identity, it
feeds on that stuff.'
'Fine. Let them be the Islamic Republic of whatever.'
'Right. Then would you evacuate the non-Islamic population of Yorkshire? Or
let them stay, sit back and watch the ethnic cleansing? Come to think of it, where
would you set the borders of that Republic? What about London, Birmingham,
Leicester, Manchester? You know of any major cities thatdon’t have a significant Islamic population? No, there has to be some way to convince the Islamics they
want to be part of the new England. Maybe we have to find it. . .and without
offending the Pig. Last thing I want is to challenge that fucker's authority.'
The streets of Taunton, running with blood—
They sat in silence, watching the candlelight, and the shadows that played on
the red Gibson, on some sheet music lying on a table; a saucer of dry catfood
with which Ax had been trying to lure one of the Eyes' cat's pretty kittens into his
life, a scarf that Fiorinda had left behind.
'Pig's goons aren't going to be very impressed,' Ax remarked gloomily. 'I've
never touched a firearm. I managed to avoid them on the Tour. What about you?'
'I can use a shotgun.' Sage took off the masks, and flexed his crippled hands.
The right was worse off: that was the one with only half a thumb, the surviving
fourth and fifth fingers lumpy and crooked from long ago efforts at repair. 'My
left hand's more or less functional.'
'I thought you was right handed.'
'Yeah. Converted to ambidextrous by years of vicious bullying. Ah, it won't be
hard. Things like that never are.'
'Easy enough for you to say. You're the guy who juggles chain saws.'
'First time I've heard you admit you've seen our stage act.'
'Must've read about it somewhere.'
'Hahaha. So we go up there, and what, we shoot people? My God.'
'I hope it doesn't come to that.' 'I think it will.'
They contemplated the future. The sheer monstrous impossibility of what had
happened to them, the hopelessness of Ax's project.
'Maybe now you grasp,' said Sage at last, 'why Fio was so fucked up.'
Ax flinched. 'Please, could we not talk about Fiorinda.'
He hadn't been too concerned when she moved back to Reading. It was just a
spat, he'd known they would be together again. But now. . . She was living in
that house, her mother still dying: refusing to let him visit, refusing all help. The
last time they'd spoken on the phone she?d looked so bleakly unhappy. He was
terrified. The only comfort he could offer himself, in those grey hours when Ax
never slept, was that she was too down to get it together to slit her wrists or
swallow enough paracetamol.
'Sorry.'
Sage restored the masks and got to his feet: unfolding, as always, to
unexpected heights. The skull's stark grimace was irrationally cheering. 'Okay, we're off to the wars. Now lets find some company and get stinking drunk.' 4: The Straight Path
Ax did not get drunk. Talking with Sage had made him realise that being treated
like that by the Pig didn't matter. The Islamic question was something he had to
tackle: a hill to climb. Looking at it concentrated him so he forgot to drink; or if
he remembered, the drug had no effect. Maybe the calories from the alcohol went
straight into bit-minding, who knows. In the morning Sage was found in the
Mugs Room, curled up peacefully beside a savory pool of vomit and urine. They
woke him up and hosed him down, Ax and Sage went off to talk to media folk
about their expedition, and it was time to set off. Ax went on thinking about his
hill on the train: while Sage slept, folded in an impossible-looking pose on the
opposite seat in their ancient first class compartment. Sage could sleep anywhere.
In Doncaster they were taken to a disused office block on Chequer Road, that
the barmy army was using as a base. They were received on an upper floor by
someone called Gervase: who sat behind a desk, in an open plan office that bore
traces of its previous occupants, and explained that the barmy army in Yorkshire
had no use for their presence.
'I'd like to see you two dudes do your free concert or whatever it is, and get on
the next train back to London. We're running a war here, not a pissant rock gig.'
Gervase wore his new piercings and his custom-tattered camouflage with an
air of self-satisfied irony. His accent was more offensive than Fiorinda's, though
not so perfect. You had to feel a certain sympathy with the pleasure he took in
being rude to pop celebs: but he was frightening. Ax had met others of this chilling type. The kind of guy whose response to Massacre Night had been to
realise that joining the hardline CCM was a smart career move.
'A war?'
The Pig wannabe stared at him. 'What else would you call it? Now, if you
rockstars will bear with me, we'll take care of your gear, and I'll get someone to
drive you to your hotel.'
He picked up a sheaf of papers and pretended to read. The goons at the doors
of the office suite stared ahead of them. Either ex-regulars or they'd soon got the
idea. Ax got up and went to the windows above the street. He thought about the
rivers, the Don and the Trent, the line of the Great North Road: the old Roman
road to London. Strip out the confusion of modern civilisation and you could
easily see why this place had once been a guarded gateway to the south. And
here we are again. How long does it take to complete the fall back to the Dark
Ages? Not long. Not when the stumble and slide is being helped along by so
many venal idiots.
It was late evening and there was a police curfew, but there was a crowd on
the pavement for Ax and Aoxomoxoa. Gervase's soldiers were shoving them
back. Sage had got up too. He was prowling the deserted desks, turning over the
spoor of the accounting firm that had died here, suddenly, some months ago. But
the skull's eye sockets appeared to be watching Ax with lively interest, to see
how he would jump.
It was one of those moments when you have to take one path or another. Am I a visiting celebrity, or am I something else? Maybe, ignobly, it was a pure
rockstar reflex that swung it. That's my crowd, you smug bastard. 'Sage, let's go
meet the public. Take care of the gear, Gervase. We'll call you later.'
The lifts were non-functional. They went leaping down the stairs, passing the
occasional startled militarised hippie. 'Hey,' said Sage, 'What happened to not
challenging the Pig's authority?'
'It'll be okay, I can fix him.'
The guards on the ground floor seemed to have other orders, but Ax made it
clear that he was going through. Faced with the hero of the Tour and your actual
Aoxomoxoa, paragon and nonpareil of glorious English louthood, what could
they do but give way? Minutes later Ax and Sage were working the front row,
accepting eager, thrilled invitations to come along to the barmy army's favourite
club: marching away, the lads forming up behind them, roaring out the
Deconstruction Tour song: Oats and beans and barley grow Oats and beans and barley grow Do you or I or anyone know How oats and beans and barley grow?
At least they were clearing the street, police should like that.
The club was a dank basement arena, given over to drinking and male
bonding, the sound of yakking voices louder than the generic dancetrack. The
moment they walked in they were surrounded all over again. Ax knew he'd
made a risky move, but he didn't think it was too dangerous. He could handle the Pig, at least this far. He put the problem out of his head and got into Tour
mode. It wasn't hard. These lads were nothing like as bad as the merciless hordes
at the post—Deconstruction Tour concerts. They just wanted to get near,
grinning all over their faces, laughing stupidly, bursting with pride.
Sage went off with some local connections of his napalming pals. Ax stayed
with the first bunch: managed to get them past the gobsmacked stage, get them
talking. One particular kid was intensely up on the Chosen, eager to discuss
what had been going on in the making of Dirigiste (which album he kept calling
Dirigible, but never mind); picking up the references to past greats with heart
warming accuracy. It was a shame he couldn't have the attention he deserved.
Maybe another time.
'You know what it was like for me?' said one of them —young black man in a
Deconstruction Tour teeshirt, shaken voice and shining eyes of someone who has
seen the light— 'It was like, the world was in shades of grey, fuckin' shades of
grey. Suddenly it went into colour. Everything was green and alive, I was doing
something worthwhile, the first time in my life. Fuckin' magic, Ax!'
'Not only green,' said Ax. 'That would be monotonous. If you're going to have
only green, you might as well have only grey. Extremists are all alike, we want
variety.' If he'd learned one thing on the Tour, it was how to talk pleasantly to
drunken louts who had got idealism. How to understand that what for him was
the aftermath of a hideous trainwreck was the major event of their lives, their
righteous time, the moment when they had become real. 'But what about this Islamic situation. What do you guys think of it?'
The barmies and their Doncaster mates looked at each other.
'They say we're protecting the pimps,' burst out the Dirigiste boy, 'it's not
fuckin' true, Ax.'
'There's plenty of Islamics that run girls,' added a civilian, a bulky white
youth with premature Rapster Hulk tendencies. 'Fucks' sake. . . It's them, fuckin'
minicab drivers with big guns, they won't fucking give up—'
'That's why we gotta get military: go for the nests, burn them out.'
'The way it is now, it's horrible. Most of what happens never gets on the news,
I bet you don't even know some of it, Ax. Nail bombs, car bombs, shootings, and
all these dead girls.'
'We knew this Paki, we knew he'd killed this girl, his cousin or something, for
walking down the street. So we took one of his girls and we cut her, not badly
you know, but enough so he'd understand, and we sent her—'
'It's no good, they won't learn. There's only one way, got to finish them off.'
The barmy army lads were happy to explain what Gervase was planning, they
knew no reason why not. The police were useless. All they wanted to do was
play with their fuckin' helicopters. No, the barmy army was going into the
Islamic towns, in strength, with artillery, and. . . Shock and Awe, right? It was
bloodcurdling. To these young men the idea of turning Leeds—Bradford into
smoking rubble was not monstrous. Many of them had done time in the regulars,
had seen active service: they were used to that culture. Or they were from the south, or from the other side of the Pennines, which made more difference than
you'd think. Ax kept a straight face, listened, asked questions, and set about
turning their feeling on the scorched earth plan around. It would need more than
one conversation in a bar, but nothing like making a start.
Eager to offer him the best they had, they brought out a little very pure smack
and rolled it up. It was Islamic smack but they didn't think Ax would mind. In a
way it was like, proof that he was right. They could get on with the Islamists, still
doing business with them. Someone offered to go and fetch Aoxomoxoa.
'Nah,' said Ax. 'Leave him alone, he's fine where he is.'
'Oh yeah, he was a junkie wasn't he. He hates the stuff, I read that.'
Ax leaned back on the damp red banquette. Thinking, with great clarity, this is
what you do. You get a buzz going, enough so that they buy the album. They
buy the next two out of punter-inertia. By the time they realise your music is not
what they thought, it's too late, you've changed their minds. Ripping up
motorways makes them feel so good about themselves, with luck they'll take the
next thing you ask them to do on trust. . . So there was heroin in Yorkshire. There
was very little of it in the rest of England. Since legal drugs and government
analysis started, anything you couldn?t grow in England or cook in a lab had
disappeared, and Dissolution hadn't helped. Someone had synthesised a good
cocaine substitute (you really wouldn't know the difference), but there was no
satisfactory replacement for the classic hard stuff. Suddenly it struck him, with
more force than the mellow hammer blow of the drug itself, that there was a problem here. A problem for the future. The third biggest economy in the world,
or was it now the second? Are they going to let us, in Europe, get away with this
legalising everything, uncoupling the drugs from the crime route? They are not.
What then? Opium Wars. Now there's a bad problem, but never mind, got to be a
solution, it'll come to me.
Sage, being reasonably sober, tired of the defoliation enthusiasts and came
back to check on Ax. When he spotted what was going on he went off alone to
prop up the bar. There isn't a single woman in the place, he noticed. Strange, I
thought we were the feminists. Someone came up beside him, and gave a huge
fake start of astonishment.
'Oh my God. Has this place just gone costume or are you really Aoxomoxoa?'
'I'm Aoxomoxoa.'
'My God! Could you stand there, while I run home and fetch my copy of
Morpho?. . . And you could sign it or, oh no you don't do that, well just touch it
or something. My God, if I'd known—'
'I'm staying for a while. You can find me again.' Sage did not get off on being
a gay icon, and he was not at this moment in the best of tempers: however, the
skull grinned benignly, the skeletal hands accepted a cigarette from the guy —
who seemed genuinely trembling with delight. 'So, how do you feel about having
the Green Liberation army in town?'
The gay guy —thirty something and fresh faced, limp brown hair in a
fashionable bowl cut— hesitated, leaned close. 'It sucks. Having the barmy army in town sucks. Listen, let me tell you—'
Somewhat later Ax was alone. His soldiers had left him to get back on duty and
the civilians had gone with them. He was thinking over the facts and inferences
he'd picked up, ordering and sorting, reviewing possibilities, when Sage
appeared and sat beside him, looking big and wired.
'Hi, rockstar. Where've you been?'
'Hi, other rockstar. Around. Being worshiped. I haven't felt so famous for
quite a while. I came back before, but you were busy so I went away again.'
Empty sockets, black in this low light, surveyed the remains of the club crowd.
'Ax, I don't think I like our side.'
'Nor do I. That's partly why we have to be here, straighten them out.'
'Oh yeah? You're going to straighten them out are you, smackhead?'
'It's none of your business, Sage.'
'Isn't it?' The skull flashed him an ugly glance.
The discussion might have continued, but it was interrupted by the sound of
gunfire. They looked at each other. The steady firing broke off, then started up
again appreciably closer.
'Hmm' said Sage. 'Sounds interesting. Let's get outside.' They made for the
exit, through a jostling crowd.
'Glad I didn't check my coat,' muttered Ax.
The street was in near to complete darkness, municipal lighting a casualty either of the Tour or the power crisis, but a compact group of men could be made
out coming towards them, up the roadway between the High Street Generic
stores. They ran and dropped, alternate rows: fired, jumped up and came
rushing on. Many seemed to have white scarves wrapped round their heads.
This was the enemy. Three police helicopters rattled overhead, glittering like
giant dragonflies above a pool: but it was the barmies who were returning fire,
from alleys and roofs and upper floors of buildings. The ordered volleys gave the
scene a stylised, choreographed quality: you looked for the film crew.
A barmy army squaddie came running, laden. He seemed very relieved to
have found them, thrust an assault rifle at each of them and gabbled a mouthful
of instructions, orders, something. . . No use, they couldn't understand his
accent. He was gone, the video kept on unfolding, but they had no script, and no
ideas for improvisation. They stood amazed: oblivious of danger.
'I think Pig sent you up here to be killed,' shouted Sage, through the racket,
'Gervase is down to arrange the hit. And me, on account of the Pig is convinced
we are best mates.'
'I don't know how the fuck he got that impression. But you could be right.'
Ax looked at the weapon he'd been given. It was a British Army Issue SA80,
box fresh. The feel of it, its weight and heft, brought a flood of olfactory illusion.
He could smell blood, the warm metallic butchershop reek of Massacre Night.
'We better head for that office block.' When they reached the block they found it livelier than they had left it, full of the
bustling disorder familiar to Ax from the Tour. No sign of Gervase. Someone
took them to a big room in the basement, where a burly young-middle-aged
black man was drinking tea over a table full of OS maps, computer terminals and
landline phones. He was wearing the combat uniform of a British Army Infantry
major, a discreet pink triangle replacing the bar of colours on his tunic. With him
was an elderly gent in more casual dress.
Ax stared. 'Richard!'
'Ax! There you are. We were getting worried. Good to see you again— '
'Sage,' said Ax, grinning with relief, 'Otherwise known as Aoxomoxoa, this is
Richard Kent, friend of mine from the Deconstruction Tour. I'm glad to see you
too, Richard.'
'Pleased to meet you,' said Richard Kent, holding out a hand, fascinated to
discover that Aoxomoxoa really did wear that mask in private life, as it were.
The star kept his hands to himself. 'I didn't know the regular army was here.'
'I resigned my commission last year, because I felt I could and should be part
of Ax's new wave.' Richard shrugged. 'Now it seems I'm in the army again.'
'Where's Gervase?' asked Ax.
'Ah, unfortunate. Beauvel-Horton was killed a few hours ago, a drive-by.'
'Shame,' said Sage. 'We hardly had a chance to get to know him.'
'I don't think you missed much. This my lover, by the way, Cornelius Samson.'
The elderly gent looked like he deeply disapproved of the skull mask, but he nodded. 'Another regular soldier, before he retired. But we?ve seen the light. Or
jumped on the bandwagon, if you prefer.'
Ax had been wondering how to deal with the question of those British Army
SA80s. Was he supposed to pretend he didn't know what was going on? It would
have been hard, if things were made so fucking obvious, and he'd been dealing
with Gervase. With Richard and Corny he was on familiar ground. On the Tour,
there?d always been a great deal that must be left unsaid. Those who understood
one another had worked together, over and around the criminally insane.
There was a burst of renewed gunfire, somewhere up above. 'It'll be over
soon,' said Richard. 'This is the pattern. Terrorist tactics by day, in-your-face
shooting up the streets by night. The shootists come from towns just north of
here, or Doncaster itself, but we can't stop them getting in, not without building
some kind of Berlin Wall. A house to house search might do the trick, but we
haven't the authority for that, nor do we want it. We have a problem, Ax. This is
new to us. We never had to tackle organised armed opposition on the Tour, and
we're finding no solutions. Thank God the President sent you along. We've been
begging him to do that, as you probably know.'
'Yeah,' Ax sat down at the table. 'Okay, I have an objective, not a solution. I
want to get the violence away from the population. What about those famous
moors, wilderness with a challenging microclimate, good venue for war games.?
Richard sat down too. 'Get them out of town? How? This is outright war, near
as damn it, and this is how modern warfare works. Terrorism, street bombs, soft targets. Centres of population are what it's about.'
'Then we'll invent post-modern warfare. Time someone did, the present
version stinks. We've got a situation where certain cities and towns are no-go
areas, in effect an Islamic territory within Yorkshire. That's bad, but we can use
it. We blockade those cities and towns. Everything that has to go in and out:
water, sewage, power, we can get at those. There are mine workings that have
been linked to the gas supply, to channel off the methane: we can use them. We
can cut off their water, make their toilets back-up, spread farm slurry on their
market gardens. We fuck them up so they have to come out and get us, and do it
selectively enough that we don't cause a humanitarian crisis, much—'
'No more blowing up trains, though.'
'Definitely not. I never meant to blow up any trains, it just happened. We
might waylay some consumer-goods freight trucks though, that's always fun.'
Sage quietly took a chair. He watched, and listened, as the major and the
elderly gent pored over their maps, on paper and on monitor screens; Ax
relentlessly telling them the details (but they didn't seem to mind) and showing
them what could be done. Just astonishing: Massacre Night again, but this was
Ax among friends. To see him like this, this focused power, put a different
perspective on things. Hippie orderlies came and handed out more tea. The
police liasion officer, a sober, taciturn guy called Kieran Matthews, turned up,
with other barmy army de facto officers. They all listened, and made difficulties.
'It's a shame your green maniacs got away from you, and trashed the Air Force bases up here, Ax,' complained one barmy commander. 'God knows no one
wants this to escalate. But if the conventional forces have to move in, they'll want
local air power.'
Richard and Cornelius looked at each other and laughed.
'Yeah, I was sorry about that,' said Ax evenly. 'Those fighters are so pretty.'
He looked up, and around the table, including Sage in his glance. 'A lot of
things got away from me on the Tour,' he said. 'Things I?ll live with forever, in
the dark of night. But I trashed the fighter bases on purpose. I knew about this
situation, obviously. I didn't want the Islamics or the Air Force to have the use of
them. Let's understand each other, I wanted it to be hard for any full blown
violent-opposition-group conflict to get going in England. To me that was as
important as the green agenda.'
The barmies nodded gravely, apparently unaware that they themselves were a
dangerous paramilitary force Ax was determined to forestall.
'You did a remarkable job,' said Richard. 'As we now discover.'
'Yeah, right, but Ax, we?re a nation state. Green is good but we gotta be able to
defend ourselves, you havta see that—'
'I see it. First we have to stay a nation state, which begins to look doubtful.'
Silence around the table.
'Fabius Maximus,' said the elderly gent at last. 'Quintus Fabius Maximus
Cunctator, dealing with Hannibal's invading army, in 216BC or thereabouts.
Avoided the kind of battle they were trying to force on him, wore them down by cutting off their supplies. Much the same as what Ax has in mind, mutatis
mutandis. Who, by delaying, saved the city and the people of Rome.'
'If you say so. Yeah, delay.' Ax looked deflated, the never-in-doubt power
gone out of him. 'That's all I've got. Move the fighting out, let the police police
the streets, get life normal as possible again. Let's see how it works out.'
The police liasion officer said he had to go. He shook Ax's hand. 'I'm glad to
have met you, Sir. We'll be in close contact, but if there's anything I can do—'
'There's one thing,' said Richard, when Matthews had gone, 'I have to point
out, Ax. If we become guerrillas, we'll be forcing them to become an army.'
'That's happened,' said Ax. 'I just saw it. That's the situation. Better engage
with it.'
So they talked on, identifying targets; ingenious ways to use the landscape.
The crunch came in the morning, when after a few hours' sleep they had to start
implementing Ax's plan. The barmy army, conveniently, was already organised
into guerrilla sized groups, each a judicious mix of clueless amateurs, ex-army or
TA types and green-violence vets. When they moved out into the countryside,
the rockstars went with them. Same as the Few and the gigs, the community
service, Olwen's projects. They had to be there. There was no way they could stay
back in Doncaster sticking pins in a map, and retain artistic credibility. So those
SA80s were not video props. They were real. They must be used.
In October Sage turned up missing after a skirmish over a water pipeline. They went back for him. They'd have done it for any one, but the idea of having to
carry on without Sage upset everybody, not least the Ax. They had him located
him in the cellar of a house in an abandoned moorland village; that had been
blown up by home-made mortars. The only approach allowed by the steep and
narrow street —ancient cobbles under frayed tarmac— was covered by a sniper
in the church tower. Shots came out of the body of the church as they moved
through the churchyard. Ax walked, in the strange emptiness surrounding the
sparse pattern of fire, around the building; found a door and blew out the lock
with a short burst that was lost in the other noise. None of the Islamists in the
nave saw him, as he crept up the stairs. There he found the young man, alone
with his high powered rifle in a dusty space broken up by big diagonal rafters.
Sixteen or seventeen years' old, the same age as Fiorinda: blooming with new
muscle and height. He'd dropped the rifle. Maybe he'd run out of ammunition, it
didn't look like a weapon that would take kindly to the kitchen sink ammo that
was coming on the market. He had no way out, unless he jumped through a high
window. No one had thought about his exit, fucking poor planning; he's a
marksman, he's valuable. He clutched a grenade, about to pull the pin, yeah.
'Allah Akbar!' yelled this angry young man, fine dark eyes alight; serene.
God is great.
I don't want to live at this price, thought Ax. I don't want to. But the assault
rifle —a first, he?d never before used it where he could and must know what
happened on the other end— came up of its own accord: a terrific racket, Ax splattered in blood and tissue and fragments of bone. He snatched up the
grenade, tossed it into the grey winter graveyard, stayed alive.
Meanwhile Sage had rescued himself; and the kid Chris who had been
trapped with him. Whatever he'd done to achieve that, the skull stayed blank as
a Hallowe'en toy for a couple of hours after he rejoined them: a disconcerting
thing to see. But he was fine later.
In November they once camped in a ruined abbey. The Islamists?d had no part in
this destruction, most of the buildings had been bumps in the grass for hundreds
of years. No picnicers now, no virtual reality show in the restored tithe barn. A
thin sweeping of snow, a black night, frost and stars. They were looking for the
herb garden, which Ax knew should be around here somewhere, and talking
about food —oblivious of the heap of human corpses that lay in the shell of the
church. The Islamists had a habit of dumping bodies in churches, in the (largely
mistaken) belief that this would shock or distress the enemy. The barmies had
shovelled some earth over the remains, but the ground was hard and they hadn't
got very far. Something moved in the darkness, in the enclosed space.
'What's that?' whispered Ax.
It looked like a human figure, greyish and fuzzy in outline. It appeared to be
climbing out of the stone box of a table tomb. They were both armed. It was easy
to get attached to having a weapon, comforting weight, always slung over your
shoulder. But they didn't have the reflexes, not at this moment anyhow. They watched. It seemed to be alone, nothing else stirred. It started coming towards
them. A waft of foul air preceded it, and as it came close enough they saw that
though moving and limber it seemed to have been a long time dead. The teeth
had no lips to cover them. Only the eyes, sunken and wet, had somehow
survived. It stood looking at them, then it moved off, heading towards the east
end, where the bodies were. Ax started forward —to accost the phantom? To
prove it was someone in a mask, to ask it what business it had with the poorly
buried flesh?
'No,' said Sage, stopping him.
They backed off. Found the herb garden, but didn't fancy harvesting anything
from the wintering bushes. They decided not to tell the lads, just posted a double
watch and sat up all night themselves. Nothing else happened.
And between these and other adventures, back to the nearest non-Islamist town:
clean up, shave, delouse (the crusty-tendency in their group was incorrigibly
verminous, everyone had to live with the fallout). Become rockstars again, get
drunk, find friendly girls to fuck among the barmy army's camp following. Of
course, don't touch the locals —a veto that was becoming sinisterly easy to
observe. Local girls, Hindu, Christian, Muslim or nothing, didn't come out to
play. Women were disappearing from the streets, from daily life. Catch up on the
Islamist incursions into Lancashire and Teesside, the latest government and
police failure to negotiate. Do the goodwill ambassador, think of plausible reasons why Muslims still living in this town shouldn't move out. Try to stem the
polarization: get nowhere.
The only battle they were winning was a private objective Ax had spoken of
only to Sage, a vindictive determination to get the casualties higher for
combatants than for non-combatants; of whichever persuasion. They'd done that.
The anti-civilian terrorism was way down. For what that was worth.
—dreams of the young sniper's head coming apart. Soldiers are also human.
In December they were holed up in a conifer plantation, towards Wharfedale.
The weather was vile. They'd used larchpoles from a stack of thinnings they?d
found as flooring for the benders, but the mud got in everywhere. There was
nothing to eat in this forest, even the hippies admitted that, and supplies were
low. They had sent their two most respectable looking individuals —disguised in
more or less clean clothes— off to find a corner shop that would take cash money
(much of the Islamic territory that surrounded them was running on barter).
Now they whiled away an afternoon, sitting out in the cold under a stretched
tarp, as if around the campfire they didn't have because of the smoke. As usual,
the barmies were talking politics. Brock, their battle-reenactment weapons nut,
broad as a bear, grey hair in a bushy ponytail, was trying to persuade the hero of
the Deconstruction that selfish human interests should be as naught, compared
to the fate of one red squirrel. Or tropical cloud forest tree frog.
'You got to do it by force, Ax. Torch the car depots, raze the fast food joints. Like we did, and you didn't try too hard to stop us, did you. By force, there's no
other way to save the planet for the species that deserve to live.'
'I've thought about it,' said Ax. 'I care more for human beings, myself. But if
you don't, I think you still have to put them first if you want a lasting solution to
the problem. I think it works out. If you create a culture that is good for people,
genuinely good for their peace of mind, health and happiness, then you get a
situation which is okay for the planet. Not ideal in your terms Brock, but okay.
Maybe there won't be much wilderness, maybe we end up living in a garden,
that we have to manage fairly thoroughly— '
'Ah, fuck that Ax. If it's wild it's nature, if it ent wild it's gone, dead—' Brock
lifted the sword that he was working on (he loved sharpening his swords), and
glowered down the blade. 'There's no compromise on this issue.'
'England?s a fucking back garden already,' said another of the hippies.
'Wherever you park yer bender, you get some fucker claiming ye're in his face—'
Sage never contributed to these discussions. He just listened, as he was
listening now, lying on his back staring up at the cracked, muddy grey-green
plastic of the tarp, taking in the Ax manifesto at a remove and thinking: how
fucking strange. What if he can actually make it stick? It was a pity the two most
pass-for-normal barmies had to be the two youngest. Fifteen year old Chris, and
a seventeen year old third generation hippie kid called Zip, who was rebelling
against his background stylewise. It was a six mile hike to the nearest settlement,
but they'd been gone too long. Shoulda vetoed the foraging. But rank was not like that in the barmy army. You got groups of weirdly straightened out hippies,
polishing their boots, putting hospital corners on the bender tarps and howling
Sah! at each other: but the infection was mainly all the other way. You don't tell
'em what to do unless they clearly want to be told. Under fire. They find it
reassuring to be yelled at under fire.
And here at last were the two boys, humping their rucksacks, exhilerated by
success. They'd found a friendly corner shop. They'd bought potatoes, onions,
carrots, tinned fruit, fresh milk and pitta bread: and news. The Hindu shop
owners had warned them to go home and stay indoors, because the army was in
town. The Islamist army, that is: on their way to do some fighting. Yorkshire
Hindus, though of two minds on the subject of proper marriage for their
daughters, could be relied on to be neutral or wary towards the Islamics.
'That means us,' said one of the ex-regulars. 'We're on. Fancy doing some
drugs, Ax, mate? May as well celebrate now, might not be here tomorrow.'
'Brock,' said Sage. 'How about if we go and practice the sword fighting again?'
When he returned to the bender it was dusk. A pan of dahl and vegetables
stood on the chemical stove. 'Why does it fuck you up?' said Ax pre-emptively.
'Because you got caught, that's why. If you had never been addicted, you
wouldn't panic about the occasional.'
'It fucks me up because I don't think you are doing that for fun. I think you're
doing it because you need it, and in the position we are in, with the authority
you have, I don't like what that says about your frame of mind. Also, my experience is that if you need heroin, using it does not make you need it less.'
'I'm writing to Fiorinda. Want to add something?'
'Ah, I'm wasting my time. Go to hell then: what the fuck do I care. Okay, pass
it over.'
'It's not a very good letter, but it'll have to do. You missed the conference.'
This landscape had never been conducive to the mobile phone revolution, but
the barmy Signals corps handled it fine. They managed a nightly postcard-screen
'video conference' by landline and mobile transmitters; including the police and
sometimes (if he spared the time), the President. It was secure as hippie nethead
talent could make it, which was pretty good. They'd yet to spot the enemy
profiting from what went down.
'What happened?'
'The kids were right. We're going to meet the Islamists tomorrow morning.'
They took the pan of stew out along a Forestry track, far enough to escape
from the camp's dim stench into the scents of moss and water, stone and fresh
cut timber. A blackbird was singing in the twilight. The night would be cold, but
there would be no frost: the sky was thick with cloud.
'Why do they never harrass you about your green credentials? It's always me.'
'I'm the one who napalmed half Suffolk. My cred is impeccable.'
'Fucking perverse. I hated that stunt.'
'I know, I know. It was fun though. And it got me well in with your barmy
army, which—' 'Probably was no bad thing, in the light of this business.' Ax leaned back
against a larch bole, pulling up the collar of the battered leather coat. 'At least if
we get killed tomorrow it means no more body lice.'
'No more a shitload of unpleasant things. . . Hardly any loss at all, really.'
The skull and Ax grinned at each other.
I have never felt more alive, thought Ax. Never more alive, and never nearer
to the unforgiveable, the unthinkable. Despair, giving up.
'Where I was born,' said Sage, 'in Padstow, no one I knew thought about any
future beyond the next chance of getting whammed. My drop out parents didn't
give that attitude much of an argument. My Dad wanted me to be a software
entrepreneur, but I had other ideas. I started gigging to finance the drugs, went
well to the bad, got hauled out of that and agreed to go to university to prove I
was clean. I was so fucking bored it was intolerable, packed it in after six weeks
and went back to gigging. I'm sure I made the right decision, financially and
every other way. But it does occur to me, tonight. . . If anyone, long ago, had
trained me to have some ordinary, normal ambition, I might be safe in some far
away silicon valley tonight, pondering my golf handicap.'
'I'm sorry I got you into this.'
'If it hadn't been for you I'd have been dead last December. Technically, it was
Fiorinda who got me into this. She'd put her name down for the fatal seminar, so
we did too.'
'I wonder why she did it.' 'No idea. We'll have to ask her sometime.'
'I spent a miserable adolescence,' said Ax, 'because I knew I didn't want to do
anything but play guitar, but I thought everything worth doing in that line had
been done. I would lie awake agonising for hours about the problem.'
Sage laughed. 'I can imagine that.'
'Yeah, well, I know your opinion. I worked out a solution that satisfied me: I
decided being original or fashionable or mass market trend didn't matter, so I
should stop worrying. I still needed an audience. I started thinking about where
would this audience come from, and looking at the future prospects for rock and
roll as an art and craft, rather than a machine for making unreal money for
World Entertainment. I knew I'd have to do something about it. Went on from
there, really.'
'This is why we're here? So that you could be a fucking latter day B.B. King?'
'You could look at it like that.'
The blackbird stopped singing. High overhead there was a sound like tearing
silk. They looked up, with intense anxiety: nothing crossed the dim aisle of sky.
'That's definitely a fighter plane.'
'Shit.'
'Air power is the point of no return,' said Ax. 'I'll pretend it isn't, when I find
out where the planes are coming from. But it's the end. We?re fucked.'
At night the slightest wind roared through the timber, sounding like a hurricane. Ax lay listening to the weather, which he knew was due to get worse before
morning. He could hear Sage's quiet breathing, didn't think he was going to
sleep at all himself. No problem, they still had NDogs in the first aid. He could
dose himself with energy when he needed it.
Tomorrow they would go out on the moor, and if barmy army intelligence
was correct (which it often was), they would meet a matching unofficial army of
approximately fifteen hundred Islamists, who had been lured out to hunt down
the guerrillas. There would be, when this group and other remaining outliers
joined the main strength, about two thousand of the barmy army. Soldiers,
survivalists, hippies and clueless volunteers, equiped with assault rifles,
shotguns, pistols, crossbows, machetes, samurai swords, maces, police riot
shields, helmets from World War Two, re-enactment armour, any fucking thing.
How this strange life closed the world down. It had been a big relief, be quite
honest, after the unremitting tension since Massacre Night. Never looking
beyond the next tactical move, the next target, the next meal. No time to think,
except in black hours like this, when thinking was cruelly unprofitable, and he
couldn't stop. The sniper, other faces, all of them human, no longer human now:
dead meat. Lucky Sage, he didn't feel the same sick horror. They hadn't talked
about it, but Ax knew. Head Ideology, it seemed, could accept kill or be killed
without much trauma.
Accept.
The Islamists were not going to break. They were not interested in making peace, and they had no incentive to make terms. Meanwhile the Pig, instead of
resenting Ax's popularity up here, had simply lost interest. Ax could handle the
gut-reaction (not shared, far as he could make out, by other non-white barmies:
to their credit? Yes, to their credit) that he was on the wrong side. He was getting
less and less able to deal with the organised murder that was achieving nothing.
He should go back to London before his influence with the President evaporated.
The barmy army should quit, stop pouring petrol on the fire.
Pretend what happens next is not your business: except that it soon will be,
because the military solution is no solution, and the trouble won't stay in
Yorkshire. The Islamics are inextricably part of this country. Give them up for
lost, give up the whole thing—
Sage rolled over. 'You still awake?'
'Yeah. What time is it?'
Ax's watch was a piece of retro handicraft: you couldn't read it in the dark.
'Middle of the night time. What does it matter?' Sage stretched out his arm,
resignedly, so Ax could check his wrist. It was just after three thirty, by the clock
function figures that glowed through the skin, about an inch above where the
skeletal-hand masks would stop.
'That's a clever thing.'
'Nnmm. I think I don't like it. I'm gonna get Olwen to take her spell off again.
It's giving me future shock.'
'That's a daft remark, coming from you. I suppose the masks are acceptable because they aren't useful for anything.'
'Except intimidating people.'
'And hiding behind. They don't interfere with your closet—hippie belief that
we should all go back to hoeing the veg and getting up at four am to milk the
moo cows, the hardy few of us that survive—'
'Forget it, Ax. You're not going to inveigle me into one of your insomnia
conversations. Go to sleep. Or not, I don't care.'
In the dark of dawn it was raining hard. One of their trucks was so badly
grounded they couldn't shift it, the other refused to start. They covered
everything and set off on foot. After an hour they came out of the plantation into
a shallow upland valley: clad in straw-grey winter grasses, crisscrossed by fresh
tyre tracks, alive with barmy army guerrillas —sitting round their camouflaged
trucks, wandering to and fro, readying their unorthodox weaponry—; strangely
hard to spot in the thick, small rain. It was called Yap Moss, this place: about half
way, on a north east, south west diagonal, between Ilkley Moor and the Brontes'
Haworth. The great Muslim controlled conurbation of Leeds, Bradford, Halifax
lay to the south. Another December the ground would have been sodden and
impassible, but this (inspite of what the guerrillas felt about the weather) had
been a very dry year. The commanders consulted with their young Alexander.
The groups came together, split again into larger companies and moved to their
positions. Shortly the Islamists came over the hill, in about half their reported strength.
Ax and Sage's company was in the centre, at the lowest point of the valley. It
was intended that the enemy should believe they'd found all their quarry when
they saw this mass of barmies: that they would commit themselves to the low
ground and get caught. Down they came. Fewer in number, better armed,
looking much more like a New Model Army, they dropped and fired and
jumped up and came on, like that night-patrol in Doncaster magnified.
'Transmission mast,' said Ax to Sage.
'See you there—'
Don't go to meet them, let them come on. Those organised volleys are not as
dangerous as they look, here are no serried ranks to be mown down. Fire when it
is stupid-time, when there's really no chance that you won't hit someone. Soon,
in the racket and the blur of smoke and rain, the fighting will be hand to hand,
then the Islamists will lose their advantage. Now it's happening, a melee like a
dancefloor. There's Sage, using the roman legionary's stabbing sword Brock gave
him, easier for him to grip: the skull glimpsed, grinning, perhaps their eyes meet
but it's difficult to say. What hard work it is, how cold the rain, how sickening
the thrust into flesh and the grappling, the warm blood, warm as the sweat that
bathes your body. The slamdancing crowd heaves, something has happened. It
should be step two: the Islamists have committed themselves and our reserved
forces, that have been taking advantage of every dip and hump on Yap Moss,
have risen out of the landscape. A barmy Signals voice in Ax's ear confirms, yes that's where we're at. Now we push them up the hill again, yes it can be done.
The strangest thing is that if you look up, if you ever dare, you can see all
round you quiet empty stretches of the Moss. It would be possible to elbow your
way free (well, cut your way) and get out. I'm tired, the DJ?s crap, I don't want to
dance no more, let's get a drink. There's a hippie in a gasmask. What, seriously?
The Deconstruction Tour did its best to rip the heart out of this county's capacity
for organised violence, but there are still a few chemical plants around. . . No, it's
not a gasmask it's some weird gaming accessory. Islamists must think we're mad,
avatar masks and fancy dress—
Transmission Mast. There it is. So we're up the hill. This may mean we've
won, at least it means we have the advantage, what happened to the rest of the
Islamists? For a moment, with that spidery tetrapod looming out of the rain—
which had become a fine, stinging hail— Ax had the wonderful illusion that the
battle was over and it hadn't been too bad. But here they come, another rush. The
voice in his ear told him what was happening now: about five or eight hundred
Islamists had been waiting on the ridge, and it's all to do again. Pull the
company, such as has remained in reach, together. Slamdance over to the open
base of the mast, not much shelter but a focus, and now we can use the rifles
again, firing into the wall of this renewed advance. Sometimes you can think in
this. As if walking in the night. . . Do the mechanical things, concentrate your
mind on something else entirely. He realised that Sage was beside him. So they
had made it. They dropped together behind a heap of stones, an old cairn that stood by the mast. Breather.
Ax stared ahead of him, listening for Signals, hearing only static.
'What're you thinking? Chris, don't start posing, get down, you stupid fucker—'
'Space programme.'
Sage tipped back his head and cackled, skull's jaws parting on open—throated
darkness.
'Yeah, very funny, but think of what?s happening to us: no GPS on this
battlefield. Phone networks wrecked in the name of landscape preservation,
satellite owners changing the locks because we can't pay the rent. I don't see
going back to a terrestrial system. We may have to put up our own hardware.'
'Oh really? Launched from where and with what?'
'That's what I'm thinking about.'
'You, beyond belief. Better get back on. Are we winning?'
'Yes.'
The fighting was becoming scattered, spreading out. Their position between
the great metal limbs would soon be out of the loop, the Islamists were giving
ground fast. It's over: nothing left to do but fire from comparative safety into
what begins to be a full retreat.
'I hate this,' muttered Ax, coming down. 'I fucking hate the whole thing—'
'Could be worse. We haven't had to torture anyone yet.'
'Oh, right. We're having a clean war. But we know what's going on: and some
of the most evil stuff is being done by our side,' Suddenly he turned on Sage. 'What d'you mean had to? Under what fucking circumstances would you feel you
had to—?'
'Figure of speech, Ax. Calm down.'
'Fuck. Let's get after them. No point in staying here til we run out of ammo.'
Ax went charging out across the ridge, the others followed. Some Islamists
had formed a block and were departing in order, others spilling out in all
directions. The weather had worsened again, the hail driven by a bitter wind:
and suddenly, right overhead, that sound like tearing silk. Three silhouettes
zoomed out of the cloud, three unmarked fighter planes shearing down, raking
the field with machine gun fire. Everywhere bodies dropped, hit or diving for
cover. The block of retreating Islamists kept going, some of them falling: it was
not at all clear whose side the planes were on. Ax stood staring upward, trying to
identify them. Where the fuck are they coming from? The voice in his ear was
reporting victory but not any more. This is not a victory.
Someone grabbed him. It was Brock, the big mouthy Extreme Green. 'Ax!
Fucking hell! Yer not going to bring down any fighters with that popgun, let's get
off the hill!'
They ran: Sage and Brock in the fore with Ax, Chris and Zip, a few others,
such as Jackie Dando, Romany ex-squaddie, the man with the smack, someone
Sage would not have regretted much if he'd been left on the Moss. Soon Ax came
back from his blank-out, stopped short, changed direction.
'This way. Ground gets more broken, better cover— ' Of course he was right, he was always right. Through swerving gusts of hail
they could see the upland folding into valleys, furze of bare tree branches almost
underfoot: then they were dropping into a narrow gorge, a stream in the bottom.
Sage, jumping down from the rocks, almost landed on top of a lone Islamist.
He'd been hiding among boulders, using a phone. Sage got the phone. Brock
and Jackie got the unknown, hauled him to his feet, relieved him of a rifle, held
him by the upper arms. He was a slight young man, in battledress that looked
weirdly clean and tidy, like his mum had pressed it for him; a neat white
bandana around his brow. 'Who were you calling?' said Jackie, amiably. 'You
won't get a taxi to come and pick you up out here, Ahmed.'
The prisoner stood, mouth tight, eyes bright, staring at Sage: who was
checking the phone, and discovering something disturbing. He handed it to Ax,
the skull looking oh, shit, and went up to the prisoner, invasively close and evil.
'You're French,' he said. 'What are you doing here, mademoiselle?'
A second's stunned panic. Then she burst into life, threw off the startled
barmies, pulled a small automatic from inside her flak jacket and almost blew a
hole through the mask before they disarmed her. The tableau resumed, Sage well
in her face, that skull looking uncannily natural, peering out from a sage-green
British Army Issue balaclava—
'Yes, French, and a woman,' She spat, glaring defiance, 'So what, English?'
'Well, I'd rather be a woman than a frog-eater,' said Sage, grinning, wiping
saliva from the skull's chin with the back of a skeleton hand. 'Just about, rather.' 'Suit yourself, exhibitionist asshole.'
'I bet you know something about those planes,' said Brock.
The rest of the group had caught up. They scrambled into the gorge and stood
staring at the prisoner. About twenty men, some gaps in the ranks, some walking
wounded; some strays from other parties. All of them powder-blackened, dirty,
unshaven, dishevelled, many of them pierced and scarified like savages.
Ax repeated Sage's question, more gently. 'What are you doing here?'
'I fight for the cause of religious freedom,' she answered, visibly struggling
now to assemble her English. Her eyes flickered, taking in the size of them, their
numbers, the threat of their sex. 'That's all you will get out of me.'
'Right,' said Ax. He walked away, sat on a rock and stared at the ground. At
last he took out his own phone. 'You may as well relax, everyone. I've got to talk
to some people. Sage, could you come over here?'
Sage went over, and sat by Ax. The hail flew into their eyes and faces,
bounced glittering from the ground; rattled on stone. A very dead sheep lay
festering on the brink of the noisy little stream. What?s that stain in the water?
Iron? Ah, no: too dark, and crimson rather than rust. Blood, from some dead or
dying human body fallen in, back towards Yap Moss.
There'd been reports of foreign nationals spotted with the Islamists. This was
the first solid confirmation.
'Of course she knows something about the planes,' said Sage.
'Yeah. Fuck. Looks like we've got international intervention. Non government, I suppose, like us. Not that the French have much government at the moment,
not that it makes any difference. This is very bad.'
'What are we going to do with her?'
'I'll get a police helicopter, we'll take her to Easton Friars. It's not important.
Sage, I'm not going to pretend this can be fixed. I'm not going to carry on.'
'Okay.' Sage looked up into the darting white hail and the grey sky. 'Sounds
reasonable to me. If the Islamists have outside support, we are fucked. Might as
well admit it now, ?stead of pissing around creating havoc for about ten years
first. But what then? How do we stop the real military from moving in?'
Silence.
'Ax?'
'I've got an idea. No, it's more than an idea. I know what to do. I think I've
known since we came up from London. I just couldn't face it.'
'You gonna to tell me what the idea is?'
'Not right this moment. Sorry.'
'Oh, no problem.' No problem, except Ax looking as if he was about to jump
off a very high building. See if he could fly. 'Just remember, before you make
any strange moves: the President is holding my band hostage, as well as your
girlfriend, your brothers, your drummer, and the rest of the Few.'
'Don't worry. I can handle the Pig, and this will work.'
They walked a few miles to a headland where the helicopter (a very special concession: the police treasured those machines) could pick them up. The lads
went on, out to the road: to rejoin their own groups, get medical treatment; or
find their way back to the camp in the forest. Ax and Sage and the prisoner were
taken to Easton Friars outside Harrogate, present quarters of the barmy High
Command. Richard was waiting in the great desolate front hall.
'Congratulations. Come upstairs, to the habitable regions, we've made
arrangements for mademoiselle up there. You two'll want to clean up.'
'Suppose we will. Congratulations?'
'I hear you won a famous victory.'
'Old news.'
The house had been empty before the barmies arrived. It was ruined still: damp
seeping through the bare walls, shards of plaster fallen from the ceilings; dust
sheeted furniture that no one had bothered to remove rotting in situ. While Ax
spent the next day with the commanders Sage explored, opening doors,
surprising fieldmice, spiders, ghosts. He found the prisoner alone with her
chaperone, in a cavernous empty salon on the first floor. She seemed pleased to
see him. The mask didn't scare her now she realised it was merely a rockstar's
stupid affectation. Shame.
'So your friend is Ax Preston.'
She'd been treated nicely and politely questioned, and in the end had made no
difficulty about telling them who she was with. Her outfit called itself the Force Expeditionaire Internationale. They were French, German and Netherlanders,
mostly. She didn't know all the nationalities. Maybe some Russians. They were
all Muslim, and it was their right and duty to join the jihad. She'd come over by
sea. The planes were 'borrowed' from the French Air Force. She didn't know
about the pilots, or what weaponry they had, or where they were flying from.
'He's a superb guitarist, that I know. But how is he your Prime Minister??'
Sage chose one of the rotting chairs and sat in it, cautiously. Outside tall
windows, Easton Friars deerpark stretched gloomily to the horizon. Bit of a doer
upper; plenty of room to sling a frisbee though. The chaperone smiled, and
pretended to go on reading her book.
'Countercultural Prime Minister. It's a dual system. No idea. Because he wants
to be.'
'Quoi? What kind of reason is that?'
He shrugged, took out a packet of cigarettes and offered them. She shook her
head. My friend, he thought, had the bizarre foresight —before the crash— to get
a data wafer planted in his head, holding a phenomenal amount of information
about this country. He knows where the sewers are laid, how the contour lines
run, where the bodies are buried. I'm not going to tell you that. The fewer people
know or realise it the better. Richard knows, I'm sure: but he's okay. But it's not
the reason. Fucked if I know what makes him do what he does. He's just the Ax.
In the operations room, the group of men Ax had met that night in Doncaster discussed the girl's revelations and Ax's idea; and how to negotiate the necessary
arrangements. Richard Kent was concerned and puzzled that Sage had been left
out of the loop, actually barred from this meeting by Ax himself.
'It's for the best,' said Ax. 'Trust me.'
'But won't he—?'
'I?ll get some shit, but it?ll be okay. Head Ideology will see me through.'
'I suppose you know what you're talking about.'
The same helicopter carried them to Bradford, some days later: Ax and Sage and
the girl. They were to deliver her personally, unharmed, to the leader of Muslim
Yorkshire —and, by general reckoning, the paramount leader of English Islam—
Sayyid Muhammad Zayid al-Barelewi. The Muslim leader and Ax had never
met. The Sayyid didn't negotiate, he didn't do tv: he had steadfastly refused to
have anything to do with the infidel. Yet he'd agreed to this proposal. The barmy
chiefs had been incredulous of the idea. Ax had known it would be okay.
The machine landed them at a motorway junction north of town. From here
they were taken, in a cavalcade of huge black 4X4s, into the city centre. Then they
walked, surrounded by a hollow square of smartly turned out Yorkshire Muslim
soldiers, in battledress and white turbans. The streets were calm. There were
women around, with and without the veil; even children. In this community
armed men did not have the profile of a nightmare aberration. They were in
keeping, they belonged to the order of things. Ax's heart weighed him down like lead in his chest. This calm was terrible, a reason for Fiorinda's mourning, the
end of a world, an unbearable loss: but he had to bear it. Accept.
'Ever been here before?'
'Nah. Leeds, Durham, Middlesborough, Newcastle, Halifax. . . Beverley.
Weird place, Beverley. Never played Bradford, that I recall. You?'
'Don't remember. Take off the mask.'
The skull looked dubious. 'Ax, I don't think so.'
'Take it off. Please. No rockstar fancy-dress here.'
They?d reached a street where the substantial Victorian houses on one side
had been razed, replaced by a mosque and another building inside a walled
courtyard: the Sayyid's home. At an Arabian Nights gateway, candy pink with
gilt cartouches of Arabic lettering, Ax and Sage surrendered their weapons. The
escort dropped back. The crowd of hawk-faced young guardsmen inside the
gateway started muttering. When Ax tried to pass through there was suddenly a
wall of bodies in his way, rifles levelled.
'What's going on?'
'No Anglo-Saxons!' they shouted.
'Let me pass. It was agreed, you have to let me pass.'
He was so keyed up he hardly realised he was facing a row of trigger—happy
assassins. Some of the escort that had brought them from town hurried forward
in a panic. They hustled Ax and Sage and the girl back, and got between. There
was a heated exchange: something had gone terribly wrong. 'It's not you, Ax,' called one of the guards, suddenly, in pure Estuary English.
'You're okay. It's him. No one said you were going to bring fucking Hereward the
Wake along.'
'Told you,' murmured Sage. 'I'm no fucking Anglo Saxon,' he yelled, 'I'm
Cornish. Emissary of Free Kernow.' The mask reappeared. That or the fellow
subject-races appeal swung it. They were in.
Inside, in a courtyard of combed, rose-pink gravel, a guy in white with a green
sash and a turban came out to greet them —accompanied by a platoon of
spruce-uniformed women soldiers, green scarves low over their brows. The
women took possession of the French girl and marched her away: looking back
over her shoulder, looking frightened. Poor kid. Hope they just send you home.
He would do what he had come to do, that was certain. But was there any way
to do this without betraying Fiorinda? From the start and forever, make it
something she would understand? Walking along these corridors, everything
beautifully clean and serene compared to life with the barmy army: yes, it's
peaceful on the other side. At the entrance to the Sayyid's diwan he almost
couldn't take another step, Sage caught his arm.
'You okay, Ax?'
'I'm fine.' He pressed his hands to his temples, briefly. 'Future shock.'
The diwan was a large, long room: plenty of space, plenty of people —that is,
men— either in white or in suits. So much for the private meeting. Well, naturally. The Sayyid was in the position of strength. He could treat this as a
coup, the English Countercultural Prime Minister, forced to come unarmed into
his stronghold. They were led to a raised dais at the far end of the room, and
introduced by Sayyid Muhammad's son in law, their guide, to the Sayyid?s
brothers, brothers in law, and finally to Sayyid Muhammad Zayid himself.
The leader of English Islam was a suit: a strongly built, thick shouldered
businessman, very conventionally dressed, with a domed forehead and a
badger-striped beard. He looked like his photographs. He was briefly polite,
then asked Ax to wait: he had something very important to discuss with
somebody else just now. Okay, a standard move. Ax didn't mind. While the
Islamic leader pretended to do this very important stuff with his brothers, he
took time to look, because he must know this man. What is he? He chooses to
wear English formal clothes, not the robes. He doesn't wear a turban. What is in
his eyes? Sayyid Muhammad noticed this attention and returned it, and
eventually beckoned Ax to his side.
Sage stayed back with the onlookers. Ax and Sayyid Muhammad Zayid sat
together on a dark blue couch, trimmed with gold cord, strange hybrid of the
caliph's palace and some nice, solid,Yorkshire living-room suite: and they
talked. Of course they had to go over the ground of the failed negotiations. The
inferiority and corruption of Anglo Saxon culture, the outrageous irregularity of
the barmy army police action. Of course, the Islamist had to get preemptively
stroppy about the way Infidels treat their poor degraded womenfolk. Ax took it all, without pretending to be very impressed. It was verbiage. He
knew he could do business with Sayyid Mohammad, if only he had the right
key. In a sense they had already reached an understanding, a distant but real
engagement, dating from the time Ax had come to Yorkshire and initiated the
blockades. Someone had chosen to put a brake on the anti-civilian terror tactics.
Someone had accepted Ax's alternative to urban mayhem. It was this man. This
man, who was surely no happier than Ax —no matter what he said to his own
public— about the arrival of the International Brigade.
Time to lay the cards down. 'I suppose you will send that girl soldier home,'
said Ax. 'But what are we going to do about the rest of them: the foreigners on
our soil, muscling in on our quarrel? It's a problem, Sayyid Muhammad. I'm
hoping you and I can find some answers.'
Sayyid Mohammad Zayid looked at his bold visitor in silence, for a few
moments. 'It is very interesting to meet you, Mr Preston. No, more than
interesting. It is an honour to meet the hero of the Deconstruction.'
There you have it. The Tour. The more Ax himself found out, or realised,
about things he'd done and instigated on the Deconstruction Tour, the more he
was appalled. Must have been on drugs. Or temporarily completely out of his
mind, after Massacre Night. Yet everywhere he went he found that the Tour had
made him friends. He had struck a nerve. Somehow all that reckless burning of
the boats (no going back) had been what people needed: a moral turning point.
And now this descendant of the Prophet, revered Quranic scholar, him too, seduced by green violence.
Fucking bizarre.
'It's an honour to meet you too, and a crying shame if we can't work together.
I know that the Muslim community has a lot to offer, in this new England. What
about that saying of the Prophet, Salla—llahu alayhi wa salam, 'All the earth is a
mosque'. In the Hadith, in the Chapter of the Prophet's tradition, 3172 if I
remember right. Muslims have always known that they should regard the living
world as sacred.'
'Ah, and a scholar too.'
'Not me. But I've been trying to learn, from Muslim friends. There's the sixty
seventh surah, also. Live on what He provides, but always remember that you will all
one day be answerable to Allah—'
Sayyid Muhammad smiled. And shook his head. 'Mr Preston, I appreciate
your courtesy. I would like to help you. But there is nothing to be done. You and
I both know it. There is nothing I can do and nothing you can offer, except
territorial recognition. Discussion is pointless.'
'I don't think discussion of the Holy Qur'an can ever be pointless,' said Ax.
Sayyid Mohammad Zayid gave Ax a long, measuring look, which Ax
returned. Then he straightened, and his manner changed. He became something
else than the guy in the position of strength giving Ax a polite brush—off; and
they started to discuss the Holy Qur'an. Ax must have acquitted himself okay,
(though he felt like an eight year old playing chess with the person who invented chess) because after a while the Islamist said, 'We should continue this
in private.' He stood, Ax stood. He beckoned to one of his brothers.
They went to a room on the first floor of the house. Sayyid Muhammad's
brothers and son in law came in with them. It was furnished as a study, with a
mihrab set in the eastern wall, and windows overlooking a courtyard where a
fountain played. The Sayyid sat at his desk, gesturing to the chair on the other
side. He was stern now, on his dignity. The brothers, brothers in law, son in law,
settled in the background.
'Now we are private. Let's speak frankly. What do you want, Mr Preston?'
'Ax. . . I want you to end this so-called war. I believe you can do it. I believe
you want do it. I think it's substantially by your choice that Muslims in the rest
of England have not, at least not yet, been drawn into the conflict. I think you
don't want to see this country torn apart, any more than I do.'
'Maybe you're right, maybe not. Maybe I have different priorities. But I asked
what do you want. You personally, Mr Preston. I have the impression that you
are telling me something that wasn't one of my expectations for this meeting.'
Ax nodded. 'Ax, is fine. Yeah. I want to become a Muslim.'
'Hmm.' Sayyid Muhammad Zayid considered this young man. Obviously of
mixed race, no telling exactly what went into the mix: North African? Caribbean?
Saxon of course; some Chinese? God only knows. Taller than average, no more
than average build. Almond shaped brown eyes. Dark hair drawn back from regular, clear-cut, clean-shaven features—
'You think if you do this I will be able to give the English government peace,
because of the effect of your conversion on my people? Is that your reasoning?'
'I'm hoping for something on those lines.'
'You're very sure of yourself. You think you are so important?'
'I'm not sure what effect this will have. I'm sure I want to do it.'
'Why?'
'I need some kind of bedrock. I think Islam can give me that.'
'I see. And you don't anticipate any difficulties? With your President, with
your “barmy army”, with the dissolute way of life you've lead up until now?'
'No problem with the President or the army. Plenty of difficulties with my
way of life. I don't know whether they can be reconciled. There?d have to be
room to move on both sides.'
'You're a very arrogant young man!'
'I'm trying to tell you the truth.'
Sayyid Muhammad, a warlord, a forthright Yorkshire businessman, a spiritual
leader, stared intently. Maybe it was his turn to want to know who he was
dealing with. Ax could see that the businessman and community leader was
tempted by the prize of a celebrity conversion. The warlord needed a big
inducement, or he wouldn't even try to call off the fight. Was Ax in person
enough for those two? But there was another Sayyid, the one who had allowed
himself to respond to a fellow human being. . . It would take more than one conversation in the diwan to get to know that man. Another time.
'If I thought this was some cynical ploy— '
'If this is cynical, it?s cynical to know how many beans make five. I think it's
what has to be done, and I know it can't be undone later without making things a
hundred times worse. I also mean it, as far as I understand myself.'
'Well, go on then lad. If you've made up your mind. We have witnesses.'
Shahadah. The declaration. It has to be done. Accept. Sort the details later.
'I testify that there is no god except Allah and that Muhammad is the
messenger of Allah.'
They returned to the diwan: and from there to a hall where a banquet had been
spread for the honoured guests. Still no women. Men came pouring in, excited
by the obvious success of the meeting: everyone wondering what was going on.
They didn't have to wonder long. Sayyid Mohammad Zayid quickly made things
official, with an announcement in English and in Urdu to the whole company.
Ax had agreed to this. It would do no harm. Pigsty already knew, the barmy
army already knew what he?d been planning. If it turned out to feel right, and
depending on how he was received. . . Ax Preston has declared his Islam. How
strange that sounded, very strange.
Only person here of any significance who hadn't known was coming up now
to join him, mask inscrutable. Please, Sage, don't give me a hard time.
At least the news seemed favourably received, on the whole. And now, Sage's physical presence at his side, what a relief, a babble of
conversation rising in waves. Sayyid Mohammad, having seated Ax at his right
hand, tactfully, blessedly left him alone, and got stuck into some neutral but
important topic to keep the brothers and the son in law occupied. Ax stared at
the handsome platters of food, wondering if he'd ever want to eat again. What
the fuck have I done?
'Well, you're going to be interesting to live with come next August.'
'Huh?'
'Ramadan. Good idea not telling me,' added Sage —dealing stoically with the
double irritation of conventional eating irons, and having to eat with his right
hand. 'I might have felt obliged to do something weird and drastic myself.'
'Sorry.'
'I fucking hope it works, that's all.'
'It'll work.'
Ax decided to blow out the settlement talks, after the first day. He found the way
Sayyid Muhammad talked to the government people, his air of condescending to
the bureaucrats, already having dealt with their shaykh, alarming. He and Sage
spent a month meeting with imams, mullahs, Christian ministers and non
aligned community leaders: while the Internationals were given notice to quit,
the Muslim Army (hopefully) was demobbed, and the barmy army guerillas
were moved back to Doncaster; where they were (more or less) disarmed. The English government made concessions. Muslim and Hindu leaders agreed to an
equal rights for women agenda; and a structure for dealing with recalcitrant
offenders, religious or otherwise. Ax had not pressed for this element, no paper
signatures would turn back the fundamentalists, only time would tell; but he was
glad it went through.
In that month of public relations, one of the deputations they received was
different. The soldiers wanted Sage and Ax to do a gig. Just the two of them. It
was great that the Few were coming to tour the North, with a Big Name line up
of guests, but it wouldn't be the same. Peace Tour later, now the Ax and
Aoxomoxoa. One night, something rare, for both the armies. Sayyid Mohammad
would like it. He'd never been to a rock concert before.
'You don't know what you're asking,' Sage told them.
It was a challenge, they worked something out. Right until the actual night,
they didn't know what it was going to be like. It didn't sound promising: Ax
Preston on guitar, Aoxomoxoa on scary visuals, horrible noises and violent
athleticism. They had no idea, until they were in the middle of it, that they had
produced something stunning: and what a feeling then, eyes meeting across the
stage, the huge civic centre hall packed, glittering sea of enraptured faces
swirling out there in the void. . . Ax grinned at the skull, and looked away from
this zing of glances to segue into „Dark Star?, a surprise for him, something they
hadn't planned. Now that is true love, Sage. I hate the fucking Grateful Dead,
and I'm going to start hating them again the moment I get off this stage, but just for tonight, here you are, here's a nightfall of diamonds for you to play with, yes
I thought you'd know what to do—
In the second set there was more stuff that had not been planned. Ax kept up,
not really surprised at the mayhem, Sage was known for it. He was amused to
find himself playing the man's part in this extended pas de deux: his role to be
there, rock steady under the pyrotechnics, anticipating, taking the weight, so that
Sage could not lose the beat, could not falter, could not fall. He was effacing
himself but he didn't mind. The Jerusalem solo would have been a touch tactless.
But more than that: he'd had Sage supporting him, through this gruelling
campaign. Taking the weight, always there. Time Ax gave something back.
They?d agreed that they would do no encores. Sage wanted to finish with
'Who Knocks', a track from the Heads' new album, Bleeding Heart.
Ax had not been sure that they should do this. 'Who Knocks' was a little too
appropriate, if you accepted, as many did, in their hearts, that sex was a huge
issue in this conflict. Plus the immersion (even diluted to mere visuals for a
concert hall) was fearsome. He'd let himself be persuaded, and here it was, the
final number. The faces, the whole hall drenched in red, and slippery intestinal
silver: distorted, excorciated images, that teased the eye with the promise of
shuddering horrors, mutilated openings in flesh, never giving you a straight
answer. . . The sound that goes with them compounds the fascination, stirs up
reactions that you can't control, and at last here's Sage, menacing and graceful,
just standing right at the front of the stage, singing: Who knocks?
singing about the beauty of women, their terrifying subtleties, and the things
of which we know we are capable, any one of us. . . Yeah, tactless as hell, but a
different, justified order of tactless from Jerusalem. He is a brilliant performer,
thought Ax, watching from the shadows. Dunno why anyone would want to buy
this stuff and take it home. (Fucking bizarre lives they must lead, Heads fans).
But in performance he is superb. Great voice too, the bastard. Crying shame he
hardly ever uses it. God, what are they making of this?
This hall full of men—
Sage walked off, the stage went dark. There was an accolade of stunned
silence, and then the roar.
In the dressing room, Sage drenched in sweat, ebullient. Ax yelled at him,
because of the second set, Sage unrepentant, says I knew you were okay. I can't
never keep those stupid lists in my head, too bad. . . Back in the hall the house
lights were so far only producing a stubborn, thunderous clapping and stomping
resistance. In time they'd realise no one was coming back. A knock on the door.
Both of them were used to being surrounded by a protective blur of people in
this situation, they were off their guard, they let the person in. It was a starry
eyed Aoxomoxoa fan, who wanted to tell them he had got the whole thing, the
whole Aoxomoxoa and Ax command performance for the soldiers at the end of
the Islamic War. He would love to send them a copy.
Well, fuck. It had not occured to either of them that this whacking great new civic hall might not be proofed, so it hadn't occured to them to announce that
recording devices were unwelcome. Sage was up against his own Ideology
anyway. At a normal Heads gig the rule was go ahead, try. The performers
displayed self control, thanked starry-eyes nicely, sent him on his way.
'Fuck,' said Sage. 'I didn't want that recorded. Did you want that recorded?'
'No I did not.'
He'd realised half way through that this brilliant thing would be gone forever
when it was done, nothing left but disparate fragments, the working records in
Sage's boxes, nothing you could put together again. The feeling that this was
once, once only, had added considerably—
'Ah, the fans,' The skull grimaced in resigned contempt. 'Who can figure'em?
No taste, no manners. Let's get out of here, before anything worse turns up.'
They went back to the hotel suite, both of them dazed, ears ringing,
thoroughly spaced. They'd been on stage for three hours, one short break. They
opened a bottle of vodka, some stupid generic brand and barely chilled but never
mind. Sat collapsed opposite each other, across a glass topped coffee table, an
impressively ugly thing. Big windows full of gleaming, impenetrable dark (the
suite was on the top floor). How strange and disorienting still, to be indoors, to
be unarmed, to be clean, to have no lads around.
'That was good,' said Sage mildly, at last.
'Yeah.'
'And the war's over. You did it, Ax. Not too painful, being a Muslim, is it?' Ax's conversion had yet to make serious inroads on his dissolute way of life.
He'd declared his Islam, genuinely. He didn't know, and wouldn't speculate, on
how much traditional practice he would come to follow. He would need time.
This was the way he'd decided to play it, fuck of a sight better than getting
caught out with a bacon sandwich. It satisfied everyone so far. The Islamists
understood that they'd got Ax, Ax Preston of the Tour, and that this was a major
acquisition. They weren't making difficulties. They were saying, well, being a
Muslim is a practical spirituality. Ritual is important, practice is important, deeds
and intentions matter more. With luck, they wouldn't notice for a generation
what they'd done to the ringfence.
'I'll keep them happy.' He swallowed vodka, and stared at the top of the coffee
table, 'But I'll tell you one thing I won't do. I won't do this again.' He looked up,
wide-open, passionately earnest. 'Never. Anyone ever asks me again to play a
game of soldiers, I will die first.'
'Hey—' Sage reached out and grasped Ax's hand (from Sage, a gesture of most
unusual intimacy). 'It's okay, Ax. It's over. You stopped it. You don't have to do
that no more.'
He got up, quickly, and loped across the room. 'I'm starving, what d'you
think's the chances of getting anything to eat?'
It was after midnight. 'Zero. I think there's a chocolate bar in the fridge, or
maybe some peanuts.'
'Ecch. I hate chocolate and the peanuts will be salted. I'll have a cigarette.' Ax's phone lay on a hotel dresser, quivering patiently. Sage picked it up,
checked the fridge, (nothing); tossed the phone. 'Call for you.'
'Who is it?'
Sage had walked into his own room. 'Dunno. Didn't look.'
It would be Fiorinda. Sage flopped onto the bed. Will I kneel to you, he
wondered. Will I call you boss? Yeah, why not. As long as you can provide this
level of entertainment. . . And if you ever give me the chance, I will try to protect
you from the horrible things you feel compelled to do to yourself. Lit a cigarette,
couldn't hear the conversation if he wanted to, Ax was speaking so low. His
body flooded with sweet exhaustion. Is it really over, can we go home?
'Sage—'
So he got up again. Ax was standing, strange expression on his face. 'That was
Fio. We have to go back to London. At once. Pigsty's killed a little girl.'
'What?' said Sage, stupidly. 'An accident?'
'No. Sounds like. . . not an accident.'
They looked at each other, caught out: not surprised, not shocked enough. A confession of fugitive, guilty knowledge, for the first time shared. 5: Who Knocks?
Fiorinda was on the platform at St Pancras, alone: coming into focus out of the
crowd, in a winter coat they didn't know, her face pale and bright, hair glowing
like a beacon fire as it tumbled out from under a dark knitted tamoshanter. It
was mid morning, the station was busy. She kissed them both: reaching up on
tiptoe to touch her lips to the grim reaper's grin. They retired to a café in the
Eurostar terminal and found a table.
'Are you really okay? No hideous injuries you've been keeping from me?'
'Not a scratch.'
'I dislocated my shoulder once,' boasted Sage.
'He fell out of a tree.'
'How thin you both are.' She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup, real
English coffee again, after so long in the wilderness of that scary aromatic stuff —
as some ungrateful wag of a journalist had pointed out. At least it was hot.
'Nah, we are blooming. You should have seen us after Yap Moss.'
'There's nothing fit to eat up there,' complained Sage. 'Only evil northern
ethnic muck. Fried mars bars, chip butties, black pudding bhaji, dog pie, all
disgusting, they can keep it.'
'It is amazing the amount of perfectly normal foodstuffs he either cannot or will
not eat— '
'Ah, come on. I ate the worm omelet—'
'Only because our hippies had you convinced they'd found some unusual, but of course not threatened in numbers, species of earthworm packed with weird
alkaloids—'
'I don't believe in the worm omelet,' said Fiorinda, laughing. 'If you had an
omelet to put the worms in, you could have eaten the eggs.'
'What ignorance. You don't make a worm omelet with eggs, Fio. You skin the
worms, beat them into a kind of patty, and fry it like a burger— '
'Takes fucking hours.'
'Piss poor energy audit—'
The traditional blank wall, she thought: this cute, evasive double act is all I'm
ever going to hear. Will they babble about dugouts in their sleep?
'Well,' she sighed. 'The good news is, no nuclear power stations blew up.'
'And the bad news?' said Ax. 'Where is Pigsty now?'
The people in the café must have noticed it was Fiorinda, Aoxomoxoa and the
Ax sitting there, but no one was letting on. At Ax's question there was a guilty
quickening of attention at nearby tables: but not a head turned. They knew Ax
didn't like being stared at, they respected his privacy. This is fame indeed,
thought Fiorinda. Stone Age fame.
When she'd told the media people to stay away from the station, their
response (relayed back to her, through the San's press office), had been hurt
astonishment: what do you take us for? How could you doubt our tact in this
sensitive situation? Where will it end, she wondered. For my Ax, for us all. If it
has any further to go, that is. If it isn't finished. It was a week since the night she?d called Ax in Bradford. It hadn't been
possible for them to leave straight away: they had to handle the story up there,
before the Islamic negotiators heard about it on the news. Tact and sensitivity
hadn't stopped the media from leaping on a devastating Presidential scandal,
first chance they got. Ax was sacred. The fact that the funky green Pres was
helping the police with their inquiries was all over the shop.
'At the hotel. The police want to move him, but I don't think they should, not
yet. In a strange environment, where he can't believe there are no spying cameras
in the room, he might stop talking to me—'
Ax frowned. 'To you?'
'Well, yes. There's an unused bedroom in the suite, I talk to him in there:
police outside the door, and I have a panic button.'
They were staring at her, appalled.
'What, alone—?' said Sage, 'You've been alone with him?'
'Fiorinda, that's got to stop—'
'Ah, bother. I didn't think. I should have broken it to you gently. It's the way
things turned out, and it?s working. Look, let's start again. From the beginning.'
After her mother died, Fiorinda moved back into the Pig's hotel, voluntarily
returning to the prison. Why did she do this? Ax and Sage were gone. She
wanted to rejoin the Few, but she didn't want to live in the Snake Eyes house.
There was antagonism between Fiorinda and Rob Nelson. Nothing serious, but something she didn't want to have to deal with every day. Also there was the
issue of sexual independence. She didn't want Dilip, or any other guy she might
go to bed with once or twice, to get the feeling that he knew where he could
easily lay his hand on her. No thanks. Anyway, she moved back. Allie and
Fereshteh had already done the same, on the excuse that the refitting was
making the Insanitude uninhabitable. They resumed the old arrangement: a
room each, on the floor below the Family Suite.
So there they were. The women in President Pig's zenana, of their own choice.
Everyone keeping up Ax's Crisis Management plans: the community service
shifts, the tv discussions, the hassling of rich sympathisers for money. The gigs,
the personal appearences (but never away from London for more than a night).
An infrastructure was forming: recruits to Allie's administration, volunteers,
other bands and artists joining the gigs and the social work. No new faces that
Fiorinda yet distinguished from the crowd.
The Chosen stayed in the West Country. The Heads took the opportunity to
spend more time with their families. George Merrick had a wife who was a
potter, in St Ives (however that worked, the odd few weekends together over the
years; but it seemed it did). Bill Trevor had a dress designer girlfriend in Bristol.
Whatever Peter (Cack) Stannen did when he wasn't being a Head he went off
and did that. But they were never away long. They had to keep making sure
Fiorinda was okay. Because if you're not, said George, we better move to another
planet before the boss gets back. It turned out that she did most of the Pig-handling. The suits tended to
address things —memos, e—mail, texts, personal approaches— to Fiorinda,
either because of the accent, or because she was Ax's squeeze; and none of the
others wanted the job, not even Rob. She began to lose the horrible, constant,
sexual fear of him, which she'd taken out in bitter anger against Ax when he
came back from the Decnostruction Tour. She was still very scared. It was an
ordeal to walk alone into the room where they met, the same conference room
where Countercultural Cabinet meetings were held. An immense effort to stay
calm and endure the Pig's constant groping and scratching of himself, always
convinced that big hand gun was about to reappear.
He had few official duties. The new England was shaking down, no one really
knew what the funky green President ought to be doing. It was just as well.
Without Ax, the Pig as Ceremonial Head of State was way, way out of his depth.
He was happiest on the tv, wearing a flak jacket and talking about 'the war'. Then
he became another person, the crude-but-honest noble savage Paul Javert had
invented. But the war palled, and she could see panic growing in him, more
dangerous than the most brutal confidence. Benny Prem kept wanting her to get
him to sign things and agree to things. Now that the excitement had died down,
Prem was tired of being bossed around by a coarse lump of wood. Do it yourself,
she said. I'm not going to get my head blown off for your convenience.
She hated the little inadequate-male grin. Those sickening white baby-teeth,
like Peter Pan. Mostly she was buried in the problems of the Volunteer Initiative, Ax's New
Deal. She kept thinking, this is insane. I'm not a bureaucrat! I won't quit while
you're away because that would be mean, but just wait 'til I get you home, Ax
Preston. . . They were all working ridiculously hard. They would meet, the Few
and friends, when they could, at that pub by Vauxhall Bridge where they used to
gather when they were the Think Tank: drink like fish, laugh like hyenas, watch
the news from Yorkshire.
Then it was Yap Moss, and soon after that Ax had made peace.
They were wondering what would happen when Ax and Sage came back.
Pigsty didn't seem bothered, he was proud of the peace and smug that he'd got
his feminist agenda (hisfeminist agenda, in Pig?s mind) into the settlement. But
everyone knew Ax would have to be really, really careful.
Late one night Fiorinda was in her room, on her bed, softly playing guitar:
crouching over to set down notes in black ink on manuscript paper. It was the
way she had always written her music and probably always would: formally, by
hand; and late at night and secretly.
Ax had been right about the exposure. No Reason, the album she'd recorded
with DARK, had been selling madly since it was reissued. Her solo debut Friction
—recorded last year, amid all that stress and confusion—, was bizarrely getting
hailed as a stunning achievement. Fiorinda had money, for the first time in her
life. She could pay her hotel bill, if anyone ever asked. And she would go on
making music, it seemed, although the world was over. Felt guilty about having told Ax that she would never write again: but it had
seemed true, in the cold light of survival, with that madman babbling beside her,
though you only had to look into his haggard, gaunt bewildered face to feel
compassion, to know —
Someone knocked on the door. Instant panic: why did I move back here? If the Pig
wants he'll come in, door is nothing, he can blow the lock out. The knock came again,
in the pattern that meant Allie. She hid the music under her pillow and opened
up. Allie came in and sat on the bed, biting her lip.
'What's the matter?'
'Oh, Fiorinda, we need to talk to you.'
'Who's we? All right.'
She went off and came back with Pigsty's old lady, Fereshteh, Anne-Marie
Wing; and her partner Smelly Hugh, second in command of the Organs. They all
looked very glum. They perched on the hotel furniture, and stared at her so
desperately she was plunged again into terror.
'What is it??
'It's okay,' said Allie quickly. 'It's not about Ax.'
'Lola wants to talk to you,' explained Smelly Hugh.
The President's wife was like her photographs, only older: a bottle blonde Mrs
Leisurewear whose elaborate makeup and aerobic-toned body said sadly, I know
I'm not really pretty. I know I have no style. She was dressed for outdoors in a
mink lined trench coat, and clutching a big Harvey Nichols straw-look tote bag. 'I don't want to talk,' she said. 'I want you to come with me, somewhere.'
'What, now?' It was about one am.
'Yes, now.'
'Why?'
'I'm not answering any questions. You have to see for yourselves.'
'Are we all going?'
'No.' Smelly Hugh appeared to be sober, for once in his life. It didn't suit him,
he was looking gruesome. 'I'm staying. My kids are upstairs.'
'I'm staying too,' said Anne-Marie, giving her old man a look of contempt.
Fereshteh wore a long, heavy, long-sleeved and high-necked embroidered
shift, and the hejab, serious piece of headscarf, close round her cheeks, low over
her eyes, showing not a millimetre of hair; but no burqa. Maybe she counted
Smelly Hugh as a relative. Feresh, like Rob, could be hostile towards Fiorinda.
Something like, you abuse your position as Ax's squeeze, shameless infidel white girl.
Only never spoken. There was no sign of that now.
'I think we should go with her, do what she says.'
'Oh, I think so too,' said Allie, round-eyed. 'Really.'
Fiorinda could not take the Family Suite. Fereshteh and Allie were in and out
of there, doing women-and-children stuff: not Fio. She'd barely spoken to Mrs
Leisurewear, ever. That must be why she didn't have the slightest clue what was
going on, what kind of emergency this was.
'The Pig's out drinking,' said Anne-Marie. 'We've got all the kids. If he comes back, I'll tell him they're asleep and he'll go away. I've done that before.'
'Okay,' said Fiorinda, slowly. 'But if this is so serious I want to call Rob, and
Dilip if he's reachable, get them to come along. Does that make sense?'
The others looked at Lola. She nodded, yes.
So the women set off, the hippie nightwatchmen downstairs encouraging
them with the usual tired comments (you on the pull again, Fiorinda? what's it
worth not to tell your boyfriend? etc); Fereshteh in her burqa. They took a black
cab into the cold early-hours drizzle. It was a long ride, out of the centre, through
Stepney and Stratford to Manor Park. Lola had the cab stop by Woodgrange
Station and they walked through grid-straight dark streets: a town-planners'
dream from before words like organic or natural.
The house was number 113 Ruskin Road. It was divided into two. Lola let
them in to the hall, and through the front door of the ground floor flat. It was as
cold inside as outside. The rooms were furnished and smelt occupied, but in
some perfunctory way: an occasional retreat, an investment property between
lets. In the front room there was a soft, bulbous three piece suite, terracotta to
match the floor length curtains at the windows. Lola gave the housekeys to
Fiorinda and sat on the sofa.
'Go on,' she said. 'Have a look round.'
'For what?'
Lola stared, blank and horror in her eyes. 'Take a good look in the cellar.'
She turned her face away from the young women's gaze. Feresh took off the burqa, stripping for action, and they searched the place.
Furnished rooms, an empty bathroom, an empty kitchen. An unplugged fridge
containing a half empty Corona bottle. A carton that had held cans of lager. Two
mugs by the sink, a stained newspaper with a date six months old. The silence
was eerie.
'Thank God it's not a brown—out night,' said Allie. 'I'd hate to be doing this by
candlelight.'
'Has anyone got a torch?' asked Fio. 'In case—?'
They hadn't. Shit. Not very well organised.
'Do you two know what we're supposed to be looking for?'
'Something terrible,' whispered Fereshteh.
The upstairs flat showed more fugitive signs of habitation: a tube of toothpaste
in the bathroom, a centrefold model from some Men's magazine stuck to the
living room wall; a jelly sandal belonging to a child. On a student desk in one of
the bedrooms stood the remains of a roll of parcel tape, well used. They tried the
lower flat again, and this time found the door to the cellar. One of the house keys
opened it. They went down the stairs. It was a bigger room than you'd expect. It
held a big black chest with deep drawers, a video recorder of ancient make, a
bentwood chair, a camera tripod and lights. A painted satan face in trompe l'oeil
detail covered most of one wall. There was nothing else unusual; the normal
debris. Cardboard boxes full of rusting junk, old cans of car body filler. A row of
dusty, empty glass demijohns. Paintbrushes stiff and rotting in a jamjar on a cobwebbed shelf.
'What's that smell?' said Allie. 'It's like formaldehyde—'
'Do we have the keys to that chest?' wondered Fereshteh.
They did. They opened the drawers, one by one. In the top drawer, a power
drill, ancient make. In the second, a pair of scissors and a ball of twine. In the
third a crumpled and grubby bundle of children's clothes. They looked at these
clothes without touching them: then at each other. They shut that drawer again.
The deepest, bottom drawer was empty, but as Feresh pulled it open they
heard something shift. Kneeling on the floor, they hauled the drawer right out.
Fiorinda reached inside, and rapped.
'It's a false back, this is hollow. I can shift it.'
The chest stood against the back wall of the cellar. Behind the panel there was
a hole hacked through the brickwork and into earth beyond. Fiorinda and Allie
together dragged out a large box: a roughly made box of black-stained wood
composite. They used a blade of the scissors to pry off the lid, which had been
lightly nailed down. A strong smell of formaldehyde rose, mixed with decay. In
the box, wrapped in a blue bath towel, was the body of a little girl. She was on
her side, naked, hands behind her back, knees bent and legs folded under her.
Withered parcel tape was strapped across her mouth, and around her waist,
binding together wrists and ankles. Her sunken eyes had been wide open when
she died. Someone had soaked the body in preservative, before packing it away.
Fereshteh gave a choking gasp, barely managed to push herself back from the box before she threw up. Allie just turned away, hands over her face.
Fiorinda knelt looking down, feeling neither shock nor horror, but a dizziness
that cleared almost to a sense of relief.
Ah, so here it is, so this is it. . .
Things came into her mind that she?d hardly thought about, for such a long
time. How naive and ignorant she had been the day she arrived at Reading,
convinced that Rufus O'Niall, ageing Irish megastar, was about to emerge as the
leader of English Countercultural Politics. Barbecue fuel, bruised grass, the aural
mulch of Festival noise, the mind of an angry, stupid, deluded little girl. . . How
strange to revisit her grand obsession, how hard to believe that she had ever
wanted to see her father again. Here in this cellar, the filthy cobwebbed relics,
things you thought were of value, which you hardly recognise when you come
across them again—
Back in the present she put aside a rush of useless pity. She had to think about
the man who had saved her life. What would this murdered child mean to Ax?
She sat back on her heels, 'You okay, Feresh?'
'Yeah. I'm okay.'
'When we were vetting the Pig,' said Allie —forgetting to say Oh!— 'back
when I was working for Paul, we found out that he likes kiddie porn. No one
was too shocked. It isn't uncommon, is it. I think Paul was actually pleased. It
meant we had a hold on the guy. But someone,—it wasn't me, I swear—, found a
big hint of something worse, and I don't know what but I know we buried it. We'd gone too far, we'd invested in Pigsty; and Paul liked taking risks. He liked
being right when everybody thought he was wrong, that was his self-image. I
didn't know a thing about gunmen at the reception. Not one thing. But all the
time, ever since the Massacre, I had the idea that something like this might be
what was buried. I couldn't tell anyone, I had no proof, no evidence. It's not
something you can easily say, is it?'
'We all knew,' said Fiorinda. 'We knew there was something. Why else did we
go back to prison, except to wait for this to surface?'
'Not me,' said Fereshteh. 'He was in power, I needed to be near him. That's all.'
'Oh, I know about that,' said Allie, wiping her eyes. 'I have done that.'
'Me too,' said Fiorinda softly. 'Me too.'
They knelt around the dead little girl, in the stunned silence that tragedy
exacts. Then Fiorinda stood up. 'I suspect she's not alone, but I don't think we
should search any further. Let's go back upstairs, wait for Dilip and Rob.'
They went back upstairs. When they came into the front room Lola gave them
one look and burst into tears. She curled up in a foetal ball, face hidden in a
cushion, hugging her tote bag. They waited in silence: long enough for Fiorinda
to wish fervently that she still smoked cigarettes, and for Allie and Feresh to stub
their way through most of a pack. At last the men turned up.
'Sorry,' said Rob, 'Bomb at the Insanitude.'
'God,' Fiorinda had opened the door. 'I thought the war was over. Scare or
real?' 'Real. Not the mainstream Islamics, they're outraged. Some freelance bastard
fools. No dead, thank God.'
'Many hurt?'
'None seriously,' Dilip shrugged. Bomb boredom. 'What's going on here?'
'Pig's old lady decided to tell us something. Brace yourselves. It is not good.'
All five of them went down to the cellar. Rob and Dilip looked at the dead girl,
touched nothing, said nothing much. They came back and stared at Lola.
Fiorinda went and sat on the end of the sofa.
'Lola, sit up and talk.'
She sat up. Her expensive makeup had survived her tears. Frightened,
desperate eyes looked out pathetically (if you accepted the pathos) from a geisha
mask.
'Tell us what you know.'
'I don't know anything. He used to come here. He used to bring kids here, to
take pictures, make videos, nothing else: that's all I knew.'
'I don't believe you. You didn't bring us here to show us his hideaway studio.'
'I didn't know, I didn't know!'
'You knew she was there. Were you here when she died? Did you watch?'
'Fio—!' breathed Dilip, horrified.
'Shut up. Were you here, Lola?'
Mrs Pig shook her head violently.
'But you believe your husband killed her. Why? Can you prove it?' Lola thrust the tote bag at her. It fell open, spilling a heap of multipurpose
disks and big, old, plastic video tape cassettes.
'Oh, okay. I see. But why now? That kid has been dead for weeks, and I'm
afraid she may have company, under the floors, behind the walls. What made
you decide to call a halt, suddenly, after letting it happen for so long?'
The Pig's wife grabbed the bag back, glaring in dumb misery at her tormentor.
She dug in the bottom of it, and pushed something into Fiorinda's hands. A pair
of pants for a girl about three or four years old. They were pink lace, with bows;
and bloodstained inside.
'Right,' said Fiorinda, stone hard. 'I suppose that would do it.'
'I found them today,' sobbed Lola. 'They were j—just under her bed. I asked
my baby, and she says, Dada says it's okay, and she won't make her pants dirty
again, she'll be more careful. I never believed he would do that. Not his own flesh
and blood—' She curled into her foetal ball, stopped sobbing and just lay there.
The five of them moved to the other side of the room, where terracotta
curtained windows shut out the winter night, the street, the great city.
'My God,' said Rob, 'What are we going to do?'
'Fiorinda—' Dilip tried to put his arm around her.
'Lay off. We're going to call the police.'
'What?' Rob's horror broke into anger. 'No! You don't take that on yourself. We
get hold of Ax, right now. We talk to Ax, we think very carefully before—'
'Shut up. I can't deal with stupidity at the moment. Sorry, Rob. We do not contact Ax. We do not sit around thinking up a spin. We call the police. Now.'
'She's right,' said Allie, tight lipped, huge eyed. 'I know it could be a disaster,
but she's right. It's what Ax would say.'
So they called the police, and the police came to 113 Ruskin Road and took
possession.
'That was ten days ago,' said Fiorinda, in the cafe on St Pancras. 'I got the cops to
do nothing, just take Lola's statement and keep a discreet cordon round the hotel,
until after your Bradford gig. We tried to act normally, except that Lola took the
kids and left, right that night before Pig got home. She's at her mother's, police
are there too. The morning after I called you, armed police came to the hotel. We
thought there'd be a gun battle, but it was easy. They told him they wanted to
ask him a few questions about that house in Ruskin Road, and he said, I want my
lawyer. Simple as that. The hotel is practically empty now, except for him and
the Met team. The Organs and all the other people, Pig's entourage, moved out
as soon as the police would let them.'
'Fio,' said Ax, 'I don't think you should be going anywhere near him.'
'The police asked me to come to the suite with them, to try and avoid violence,
and I did. That's how I come to be talking with him. He won't talk to anyone else,
including not his lawyers, about anything but evil cameras, and how they are
pointing at him everywhere. With me, he tells me the lot. It?s speeding things up
a great deal: knowing where to look for the bodies, things like that. So I'm going to go on doing it. Sorry.'
They were looking at her as if she was a piece of broken china.
She sighed. 'Okay. I know what you're thinking. The whole story about me
and my father. How he seduced me when I was twelve, not knowing who I was,
and I had his child, and the baby died. I'm grateful that none of you have ever
brought it up before. Or not much. It?s bloody good of you, really.'
The hum of the cafe seemed to rise, rushing in to fill their helpless silence.
'You know the miserable facts, and I'm sure you know the rumour, which I am
certain is completely untrue. But it isn't relevant.'
Like hell, said the glance that flashed between them.
'It isn't, so lay off, both of you. I can do this. And me helping the police, for
which they are dead grateful, will help you to manage it, Ax. Trust me.'
She smiled, ruefully. 'My poor heroes. What a homecoming.'
There was a small commotion at the entrance to the cafe. Three idiots with
skulls for heads were blocking it, grinning cheerfully (they couldn't help it) and
waving their arms.
'Hey, my band!' Sage jumped up, slung his bag over his shoulder: kissed
Fiorinda on the cheek, touched Ax's arm lightly, 'See you later— '
They watched the Heads depart. 'He told them to look out for me,' said Fio.
'And they did. When I was at my mother's house I used to come down and find
them drinking with my gran in the basement. She thought they were great.'
'He never said anything about that to me.' 'Nor me. I don't know what they'd have done if anything had happened.'
Fiorinda was pretty sure the Heads were armed. It would have been out of
character for George Merrick not to get that sorted, after Massacre Night. She
wasn't going to mention this to Ax, it would only upset him. 'Died in my defense,
I expect. The Heads are weird about Sage. He's their sacred icon.'
'He's a very loveable guy.'
'For all his faults,' suggested Fiorinda, grinning.
'For all his evil faults. And winding me up something rotten, whenever he
feels inclined. Okay, I changed my opinion. I can change my opinion, can't I?'
The Few, she thought, were going to be amazed at the new relationship, the
new body language, the whole double act. She was amazed herself, and she'd
been forewarned by the letters. She had loved getting the letters (although
censored, what a noble soul he is, never takes advantage of his rank), but she'd
been gobsmacked that they came with a cuneiform scrawl from Sage tacked on
the end. Sadly, not even George had been able to decipher the text, and no use
asking Sage: it would only piss him off. But what a formidable team they made,
Ax and Sage united. And so natural, once you saw it, unlikely as it seemed until
you did—
An elderly woman, very soberly dressed, went by their table: and stopped
with the little double take people do when they have decided to give the beggar
some spare change after all. Came back and patted Fio on the shoulder. 'I'm so
sorry for your trouble, my dear.' 'Thank you,' said Fiorinda, reaching up to touch the hand, smiling. The old
lady nodded shyly at Ax, and hurried away.
Stone Age fame.
'Shall we go?'
They went back to Snake Eyes, found the house quiet and reached their room
unmolested. Ax hung up his leather coat, took the Gibson out of her case and
restored her to her place; sat down on the bed and started to roll a spliff. Fiorinda
sat by him, 'What a considerate guy you are,' she said, knowing what the grass
was for. 'Well. . . did you meet any nice sheep?'
He grinned at her: that flashing smile she remembered.
'No lasting attachments. And you?'
'No lasting attachments.'
'Thank God for that.'
He took her hand, kissed it, and held it while he looked at her. What a
phenomenon she was, this Fiorinda. At that first meeting of the Counter Cultural
Think Tank, how everybody had stared. . . How could they help it? She's a sixteen
year old girl. How can she be talking to us like this? Where are the strings, who is
making the kid's mouth move? Where did she get those cold, wise eyes, where
did she find that tone of contemptuous authority? The skull-masked Heads
sitting there grinning, like: haha, we knew! We found her!—especially that one
mask more flexible and expressive than most naked human faces. Ax had known
the kid's reputation (drinking buddies with Aoxomoxoa, for fuck's sake). He'd put it down to hype, and Sage being wilfully bizarre. He hadn't expected
anything like the girl herself. He had thought then, I will have her, without any
sexual meaning at all. . .and even now it was not lust he felt, or not pure lust but
something more painful: the shock of realising he had missed six months of her
growing up. Was she actually taller? At Fiorinda's age, it could easily be. Still
thin, but she no longer looked like fishbones. She looked well put together, clear
eyed and strong, her hair crisp and bright as copper wire on the surface,
deepening to wine in the soft depths. I must never leave her again. Never, never.
'Ax. I was so afraid you would be killed.'
'Me too.' He lit the spliff, and handed it to her. 'I would love to fuck you now,
but I could understand if you're off the idea. If you don't want, it's okay.'
'You have a point. I warn you, you may be off sex yourself after you've seen
the Pig's video diaries. But oh no. Soldier home from the wars gets to fuck girl.
That is the rules, I wouldn't want to break the rules.'
'Hmm.' He wanted very much to have her, but was not sure about the terms.
'Even if he's turned into a Muslim.'
'Ah—'
Ax realised with horror that he still had to deal with that. He'd convinced
himself it was better not to try to explain until he was back where he could touch
her. Then the news about Pigsty had happened, and he had nothing scripted, he
was helpless—
'Oh, don't look so terrified. It's okay, Ax. You believe in God, everyone knows you do. That's something people cannot help, it?s just the way you are wired. If
you had to sign up for something organised, you might as well be a Muslim as
anything. They're all equally horrible.'
'Good.'
'Long as you don't grow a beard.'
'I will not grow a beard.'
'What about getting circumcised?'
'I plan to avoid that if possible. I have heard it is extreme pain.'
'So, do you want that fuck?' Smiling at him so tenderly, her heart in her eyes.
They finished the spliff as they stripped. Slipped into bed: God what a joy to
hold her. She reached down her sweet cold hand to his balls and he buried his
face in her hair, laughing for sheer relief and thinking, if all the rest is about to go
to hell, there is a good thing I have done.
About eight in the evening of that day, Ax and Sage and Allie and Fiorinda were
in one of the smaller presentation rooms on the mezzanine at the Pig's hotel, with
DCI Barbara Holland and some of her team. The room had been shut up for
months, the air smelt of ghostly carpet glue and stale coffee; withered business
stationery was arranged on every desk. The police techies muttered to each
other, occasionally focusing in on a detail: replaying or trying another angle. An
unspoken delicacy had separated the civilians, Allie and Fio together down at
the front, the two men further back and several rows away. It was going to take months to analyse the material that Lola Burnet had
handed over. This disc was one of the simpler records: no computer generated
backdrops, props, animation to be stripped out. It involved Pigsty and other
adults, and a child. The adult faces and hands were blurred, very professional
job, all attempts to restore them had so far failed. Only Pigsty had been
identified. The others were all men, and seemed to be four separate individuals,
but not even these facts could be relied on. Once an image has been through a
mixing desk, anything might have been changed. The desk that had been used,
for all the disks, was a generic, High Street model: could be the same machine as
one that Pigsty had in his possession, but that had yet to be proved.
Fiorinda could not concentrate. There was no point in being moved or even
sad, her pity would change nothing. Her mind kept straying to the implications
of the scandal. Was this the end of the Countercultural Cabinet? What would
happen to the revolution now? Beside her, Allie wrote on faded hotel-corporate
notepaper, Dachau, Buchenwald, Auschwitz. Fio nodded. Maybe it was because
they were faceless, but they were like death camp guards, those men on the
screen. No orgy, just working stiffs, plodding through their dehumanised
routine.
The movie ended. 'Nothing that has been digitally manipulated is evidence,'
said DCI Holland. 'That's the law. None of this material can be used in court.'
'But you don't need to prove anything,' said Allie. 'He's confessed.'
'Not exactly,' said Fiorinda. 'He knows he's guilty as hell, but he?s not guilty of murder, as he never meant to kill them. He sticks to that.'
'We still need evidence, no matter how he pleads.' DCI Holland looked at Ax
and Sage. 'Only a few of the recordings involve other adults. We believe they
were made some time ago, same vintage as the commercial kiddie-porn
videotapes. They've been copied and re-copied, there are no masters. This next
one is a little different.' She held up a plastic cassette, bagged and sealed. 'The
picture and sound quality are poor, but for some reason he didn't enhance
anything, and there are other differences. It could be an original.'
They watched. The movie kept moving as planned. It was the same drama,
familiar by now to Allie and Fiorinda. The child who does not want to be there,
who keeps asking, can I go home now, who tries charm and tries co-operation and
tries pleading, and then just panics: but nothing works. The adults barely
speaking. In this movie they were wearing hoods over their faces instead of
having their features blurred out; white robes over their naked bodies. There was
a fire, and candles. Maybe they liked the idea of the Ku Klux Klan or some other
secret society thing. The scene seemed to be happening in a cellar, and there was
a satan face on one wall.
'As you can see,' DCI Holland murmured, 'this isn't 113 Ruskin Road, but
somewhere strangely like it—'
Shortly, Fiorinda said, 'I don't think it's original.'
'Why not?'
'Because the original would be more than thirty years old, the tape would have rotted away. I think the cellar in Ruskin Road may be an imitation of this
one. . . The little boy is Pigsty.'
The techs stopped the tape, plugged their cassette playback machine into their
Conjurmac, cut and pasted the child's face, rebuilt it, aged it, lined it up with
photos of the adult—
'She's right,' said one of them, 'I think she's right.'
'Oh, what a surprise,' sighed DCI Holland.
'What goes around, comes around,' muttered another of the techies.
'Doesn't it. Always. . .? The bleak-eyed police officer turned to Ax. „I think we'll
stop there, Mr Preston, Sir—'
'Ax,'
'Ax. And Mr —ah— um— er—'
The poor woman was baffled as to how you address Aoxomoxoa politely—
even unmasked, and revealed as merely a very tall blond, with cornflower blue
eyes and the body of an oversized gymnast. Fiorinda noticed again the weird
way the police treated both of them. With reserve naturally, we are all under
investigation; but with serious respect. It was most clear in DCI Holland. The
techies were more just old-fashioned fascinated.
'Sage.'
'Yes. Thank you both for attending the session. I won't subject you to any
more of this tonight, but we will have to ask you to view all the material. And
answer some questions.' 'Of course,' said Ax.
The techies were packing up. 'And thank you, Fiorinda,' said DCI Holland,
warmly. 'As ever. You'll be seeing him tomorrow, usual time?'
'Yes.'
'Mr Preston, now that you're back we'll need another meeting with your press
office. I hope we can co-operate fully over handling the media. Could we—?'
'Yeah, sure.?
Allie and Ax went out into the corridor, fixed a time. The police took
themselves off. 'How is she coping?' said Ax.
'Fio? Just amazing. She's held the whole thing together.'
'I know that. I have not been on another planet. I meant, with this shit.'
'I think she's okay. The only sign of. . . well, the night when we'd found the
body, she was vicious with poor Lola Burnet. It was shocking. Suddenly she was,
she was like some people think Fiorinda always is.'
'Yeah. Talented little monster, not capable of normal emotions. Only we know
different, don't we. God, I wish I could keep her out of this. But I can't.'
Allie didn't know what to say. To feel flattered that Ax was confiding in her
seemed a cruel response to his anxiety. She wanted to touch him, but those video
diaries poisoned all gestures of affection.
'I'm glad you're back, Ax. We've missed you.'
'Yeah. Look, I?ll see you later.'
Fiorinda and Sage were sitting where he had left them. He sat down again beside Sage. Somewhere overhead the grown up version of that little boy, those
soft little limbs, that sweet, open face, was watching tv with his burly police
bodyguards, who never let him out of their sight (except when he was with
Fiorinda), in case he should harm himself. Ax had been to visit, before the video
session. What could you call it? A courtesy call? Pigsty a little slack and gone to
seed. Wanted to get back to his tv. Spoke of what he'd done as a terribly bad
habit, that he'd taken up again because he was under a lot of stress.
'I didn't kill them, Ax. The deaths was accidental. That's a fact.'
'When my mother was dying,' said Fiorinda, 'All that time, I went on hating
her. I still hate her now. It isn?t about what happened with my father, I know she
wasn't to blame. It?s about years and years of her being sunk in misery, and
ignoring me. It?s so easy to be brutal to someone who is helpless. It is instantly
addictive, instantly. She was dying in pain and loneliness and I couldn?t be
gentle. Couldn't even fake it, most of the time. . . That is such a vile state to be in.
I think it's hell. I've been thinking, that's where Saul Burnet lives, that's where he
lives, it?s the place where his emotions survived. It's very strange. When he talks
about what he did to those other children, when he's saying really hideous
things, he becomes human. And I pity him, and I feel that we are not so far apart.
The rest of the time he's still a complete jerk, with his cunning plans to get round
the system. God, he's mortally afraid of being declared a head case—'
She wiped away the tears that were running down her face.
'I'm so sorry for him.' Later, around midnight, they gathered in the Sunlight Bar. No staff: they were
serving themselves. They'd come to find Ax, hoping that Ax home from the wars
would have some brilliant solution, but Ax wasn't doing them any good. He was
in a booth by the terrace, Fiorinda in his arms and her head on his shoulder,
neither of them taking much notice of anyone. Sage was in the window seat
opposite, staring through dark glass into the night. The others, grouped around
these three, were getting drunk but not at all merry, wreathed in cannabis smoke
but not at all mellow. Gallows humour impelled them to discuss Bleeding Heart,
the Heads' new album, which was raking it in, usual Aoxomoxoa and the Heads
style. And that hideous hit single, too.
'What do you do with all your money Sage?'
'Don't think he spends it on clothes,' muttered Allie.
'It all goes on running that van,' said Chip. 'How many fossil fuel gallons to
the millimetre?'
'Van doesn't run on petrol, so there.'
'Doesn't run at all, mostly,' said George Merrick. 'Can't get greener than that.'
'So where does the fortune go?' insisted Verlaine. 'What's the secret vice?'
'I give it away.'
'What, all of it?'
'Nah, just most of it.'
What was 'Who Knocks' about? The lyrics weren't provided, you had to piece them together. There's this cannibal in a cellar, (it would have to be a cellar,
wouldn't it) sitting among bones and bits of flesh, that used to be beautiful girls,
(spooky, delicate detail about the beauty of parts: hair, eyes, ears, etc). There's a
staircase with a door at the top. He's watching this door, up there in the
shadows. Someone's knocking, it's a woman he's killed and eaten, she wants to
come in, he's very scared, should he let her in?
Well, does he let her in or doesn't he. We need to know, and it is not clear.
'Can't remember.'
'You are so weird, Sage,' said Anne-Marie. Since that night, the second utterly
terrible night in their history, Anne-Marie and Smelly Hugh had switched
camps; and been accepted, with reservations. Anne-Marie was okay, if she was a
bit of a crystal swinging folkie: and Smelly wasn't such a bad guy. 'Why d'you
have to do a song about a serial killer anyway?'
'Tisn't about a serial killer.'
'How d'you know it isn't? You just said you've forgotten what it's about.'
'Because I'm not a serial killer.'
Sage had taken off his mask for the video session. The skull was back in place,
but there wasn't much sign of that glorious monster, Aoxomoxoa. The person
there in the window, tired and still, absently fending off the banter, was much
more like the Sage that Fiorinda and the Heads knew; and now Ax. But the guy in
Who Knocks is meant to be me, he said: and implications blossomed like cancers.
How far from Sage's personal darkness to what Pigsty did? How far from those dead children to the heart of rock and roll?
Everybody is thinking the same thing, thought Fiorinda. We went to that
seminar, out of pique, or curiosity, or because those tree-hugging, car-trashing
hippies were about to become important; or for some other reason that seemed
important at the time. Really we were looking for our leader, and we found him.
But the leader wasn't Ax, it was Pigsty. That's what we have to face now, delayed
reaction, finally hitting us. Paul invented him, we accepted him. We went along.
'Why?s he protecting the other bastards in the videos?' said Dilip, eventually.
'I don't think he's protecting them,' said Ax. 'I think they may be dead.'
'He's killed them, too?'
'Not exactly. Remember the death row thing? Five of those prisoners were re
offending lifers, on paedophile charges. I think Pigsty's movie-making friends
may have been among them.'
'God,' said Sage: and then, frowning, 'Why didn't you tell DCI Holland that?'
'Because I only just thought of it.'
The emotional atmosphere deteriorated further, if that were possible.
Abruptly, Sage jumped up, like a huge bouncing toy. 'Ah, this is no good.
C'mon, let's go somewhere, out. Not the San. Let's see if Allie can get us in
somewhere cool and fashionable.' The skull wore its craziest grin. 'C'mon, come
on. On your feet, out of here, all of you, let's hit the town.'
Next day at the Insanitude, in the room the Few had refitted as their office, with the windows overlooking the Victoria Monument, everyone pitched in to bring
As up to date. A ring of scuffed tables and chairs, secondhand classroom
furniture bought very cheaply, had become their forum. Ax and Sage took places
on either side of Fiorinda. The alert, don't-even-think-about-it physical presence
they'd brought back from Yorkshire made them look like her bodyguards.
The government was keen to co-operate with Ax?s Crisis Management plans,
not so keen on funding. Luckily the dangerous element in the drop out hordes,
still growing, still roaming around looking for action, seemed happy, for the
moment, with free gigs, good works, beer money; the occasional dodgy
vegetable curry. In some regions the Volunteer Initiative was working well, some
not so good. There was a danger that employers would use the volunteers as free
labour and dump their unskilled staff, simply exacerbating the problem.
'It doesn't happen much,' said Fiorinda. 'They give our drop-outs simple
chores, that do not cause much damage, and displace no one.'
'Good, that's good. Better than I'd hoped.'
'They like the romantic packaging, but they know they're buying into a
protection racket. Do just what the Countercultural Movement wants, or else.'
'Right,' said Ax, grinning. 'Wouldn't want it otherwise. We need them scared.'
The Few laughed, very glad to have Ax back, to have these three installed: a
wall nothing was going to get through, an inevitable triumvirate.
Pigsty was formally charged and taken into custody. Fiorinda persuaded him
to co-operate with the psychiatric assessment. She went on visiting him, in the remand centre at Lloyd Park in Croydon, the Category A public sector prison
that had replaced the disgraced Wormwood Scrubs. The story in the media grew
in baroque detail, but the expected eruption of Countercultural violence did not
happen, not even in Saul Burnet's native Northampton.
The Chosen came up to London and had a terrible conference with their
frontman and with Kit Minnitt, the band's manager. But then, instead of quitting,
Ax started gigging with them, driving down to the West after dark, meeting the
others wherever they were playing. No advertising, people just arrived and
found Ax on stage, and were thrilled: and the fingers still worked, though it
seemed to Ax that they should not. They began to plan the album, their first since
Dirigiste, that would become Put Out The Fire—the valedictory, the personal
goodbye from the Chosen to a lost world, that seemed to belong to everyone
who'd been travelling with them through these two years. The title was not a
reference to the end of the Islamic Campaign, but to a classic Who track. It
meant, that song is over. There's no going back.
It was amazing how normal life seemed in this interlude; normal in terms of
what they'd started to call normal. Slave for manager Ax. Do your shift on the
hospital cleaning, the hedge planting, the classroom aiding; whatever's going.
Late at night, if you get the chance, do some drugs and get on the town with
Aoxomoxoa. Lean on the big strange guy's ferocious energy, like all those global
punters, until he pounces on some willing unknown, and disappears with her.
As Dilip said, watching Sage on the pull was like flat racing: over too quick to be entertainment.
'Have you noticed,' said Verlaine to Chip, 'how he keeps away from her on the
dancefloor? Because when he's smashed out of his brain he can't trust himself—'
'He keeps away from me too,' sighed Chip, 'I tries not to take it personal. You
are way off, Pippin. Haven?t you noticed him and Ax? It's classic, innit. The
endless one night stands, the mask, the outrageous homophobic remarks—'
'Don't get your hopes up,' said Verlaine unkindly. 'I'm right.'
They'd been missing their telly, for which they had no time under Ax's regime.
Triumvirate watching was shaping up as an excellent soap—substitute.
Ax went to visit his old lady in Hastings, the one he'd met at the Volunteer
Initiative launch. Her name was Laura Preston, nice coincidence. She was ninety
nine now, and still glad to be alive. She said she thought bringing back National
Service was a good idea, but there ought to be something for the girls. His
postcards from Yorkshire were up on her wall.
Then the shrinks said Pig was sane. He would stand trial, and it was time to
talk the thing out.
Saul Burnet's parents were members of a magical cult: not mainstream Satanist
or Pagan, something of the group's own invention. He was sexually and
violently abused by both his parents, and others, when he was four and five and
six years' old. Then his parents split up, he went to live with his maternal
grandparents and had no further contact with that lifestyle. In his early twenties he began to collect kiddie porn, and was drawn into the world of sexual violence
against children. He got scared when some of his confederates were arrested,
and gave it all up. When he returned to the habit, and started using the house on
Ruskin Road, he avoided all former contacts. No one, not even his closest
associates, knew what was going on. He would take children there, assault them
in the cellar that he'd set up to look like the room that had dominated his
childhood; and record the action. He had to frighten them, hurt them and
particularly immobilise them, or he didn't get a good experience. But he knew it
was wrong and he only did it when he really needed to do it.
He'd been forced to do away with four children during the past five years, due
to the stress of the Organs' success, and then Paul Javert's Think Tank, and all
that had followed. On each occasion, although he admitted he'd tortured them,
the death had been an accident that he could explain. He had tried to preserve
them, because that was what seemed right, like the ancient Egyptians. He
believed that his wife must have been secretly filming him, and that was how she
had found out about the house.
'Four bodies have been found,' Fiorinda went on. 'Three little girls and a boy,
where he said they would be. No more, though the police have taken the place
apart. In most respects Pigsty's version checks out, except his story of how he
procured.' She gazed ahead of her for a moment, this word gave Fiorinda
trouble. Her bodyguards, though they did not stir or look at her, seemed to the
rest of the circle to have moved closer. . . 'procured the children. He says he "bought them off the internet", but the details aren't convincing. He?s protecting
his sources. So that's it. Everything I've told you has yet to be fully investigated,
proved, names named; stand up in court. But it will. Including the torture, to the
point of death. Nobody, not the police or Pigsty's defence team, has any doubt of
what's going to happen.'
'That's why he hated cameras,' murmured Roxane. 'The fear of getting caught.'
Fiorinda gave Rox a puzzled look. 'No. It's because he hates to be reminded.
Cameras make him feel sick.'
'The trial won't come up for months,' said Ax. 'It could be a year, or two. But
as the law stands, and the way Pigsty has reacted, he's going to die.?
'Maybe it's what he wants,' said Dilip quietly, while the rest stayed silent.
'I'm quite sure it is,' Fiorinda had started some careful crosshatching in the
margin of her printed notes. She spoke without looking up.
'But what do we want,' said Ax. 'Should he die, or should he live? Well?'
The office was barred to its normal traffic, no one in here today but the
remains of the Counter Cultural Think Tank. It was February. Weak, clear,
morning sunshine streamed through the naked windows: made a glowing
aureole of Fiorinda's hair and bathed Ax's long fingered, well-knit hands in
silver; but left untouched the rosy darkness of the skull's blank eyes.
'Will you go on wearing the mask, Sage?' asked Roxane, suddenly.
Three other deathsheads turned on hir as one, displeased at being separated
from their chief. 'It's a fair question,' said Sage. 'We've talked about it. Yeah, we?ll keep the masks. If we stop wearing them, that says the next weird-looking
person you meet is probably a murdering paedophile Satanist. We better reverse
the drugs legislation, fold the volunteer programme, go back to worshipping at
Tescos, let gun culture and green concrete agribusiness have their wicked way.
Clear the campgrounds, shoot down any resistance. I don't think that makes
much sense.'
'A good answer.'
'Probably have to have some kind of global ban on the Heads' music too. Then
I wouldn't be rich an' famous any more, and I wouldn't like that at all.'
'But I asked you something,' said Ax, with a faint smile. 'I mean it. I want to
know what you all think.'
Rob looked disgusted. 'How can we answer that? It's not our business.'
'It might be.'
'Okay,' said Felice, 'I'm not in favour of a life for a life. I didn?t like it when
they brought the death penalty back, before I ever knew what was coming. But
you just came back from a shooting war that started half way up the M1, Ax.
People die by violence all the time in this city, and all the cities of England. This
is our times, we got the law for these times. You say he's ours. Dilip says, he's
ours. I hear you. But I'm sorry, I don't see the death of one sick, murdering
bastard, who doesn?t even want to live, is a big issue.'
'Good point,' said Sage.
The other Babes made it known that they were with Felice. 'What about you, Sage,' asked Cherry. 'What's your choice?'
'I've spent the last couple of months playing paintball with live ammunition,
in defence of the nation state. It was a lot of fun, but I don't know: somehow I
still can't stick judicial murder. I vote for life.'
'I say he lives,' said Roxane grimly. 'I hate the death penalty. It stinks.'
'Lives,' said Chip, his round cherub face almost looking grown up.
'Life without parole,' said Verlaine. 'It's the only way.'
'He would be better off dead,' said Dilip. 'Back to the clay, remoulded in the
hands of the Divine. But that's too bad. We cannot let him go, we must carry him
round our necks like the albatross, we cannot pretend he didn't happen, we have
to keep him by us over the years, assimilate, accept, who knows, maybe redeem
our shame, our boss. Life.'
'He should die,' said Fereshteh, in a low voice. She wasn't wearing the burqa,
only the hejab scarf. She never wore the burqa again, but the change was hard on
her. Her liquid dark eyes looked to Fiorinda for support, but found none: she
quickly lowered her glance, trying to make a veil of just not looking at anyone.
'Fiorinda?' said Ax.
'I think it is cruel,' she answered, concentrating on her crosshatching, the
clipped accent well to the fore. 'I think it is torture, because I don't believe he can
recover or repent. He's not capable of that, Dilip. But he has to live.'
Ax kept talking it around. In the end they all said live. Even the Babes and
their man, even Smelly Hugh. Even Fereshteh: because that was the answer Ax wanted. It was ruthless attrition. He didn't go after their hearts and minds, just
their assent. They didn't have to mean it, he was satisfied to nag them into saying
the right thing. That's Ax, thought Sage. Always the art of the possible, always
willing to take partial, fucked up and temporary, if that's what he can get. How
strange that that's what makes him such a formidable guy —the way he's
prepared to settle for a fuck-up.
'Okay,' said Ax, at last. 'I said, it might be our business. Or my business. I saw
the er, the real Prime Minister again, yesterday.' His expression was reserved,
bleak: not a hint of triumph. 'He made me an offer. Not unexpected, but. . . well,
I made him a counter offer. I told him I want a referendum on the death penalty,
and if the people vote for capital punishment, I won?t accept the Presidency. For
the record, he says it?s not out of the question, in the life of this Parliament.
There?s been a “revulsion of feeling”, on that issue, among others. I told him
that?s not good enough. I need an answer now, or they can find someone else to
babysit the CCM, and pick another Funky Green Ceremonial Head of State.'
They had known the Presidency was on the cards. For everyone except Sage
and Fiorinda, the rest was a shock.
'This is important,' said Ax. 'The guys offering me this job know the truth
about Massacre Night. They may not have known about the children, but they
knew Pigsty was a cold-blooded murderer when they hired him. Now they're
glad of the chance to be rid of the monster. I want the Presidency, I admit. I think
I can use that position. But I'm not quite hypocrite enough to try and build the Good State over Pigsty's dead body.'
'A referendum takes forever to organise,' protested Roxane. 'The CCM won?t
wait. They?ll play hell if they don?t see you installed soon—?
'Day and a half to pass a bill,' said Fiorinda, doodling hard. 'If there's a will to
do it, and cross party support. A month or so to print slips and mobilise the
polling stations. Electronic voting is fucked-up and discredited, but the
traditional method is on the shelf, and in working order. It's like the corporate
music biz. If they don't care, they'll sit on your stuff for years. If they're keen, it's
hyped and out all over the world in a week.'
'So, they?ll be voting on whether or not to retain the death penalty?'
'They'll know what they're voting for.' said Sage. 'We?ll make sure of that.'
'Sage,' said Fiorinda, getting next to him and away from Ax, as the meeting
broke up. 'Are you registered to vote anywhere?'
The skull looked a little shifty. 'Not sure. I might be, down in Cornwall.'
'Have you ever voted?'
'Ah. . . No.'
'Thought not. I better tell George.You?ll never handle an electoral roll all by
yourself.'
The skull got on its dignity, gave her a mean glare. 'I will sort it, okay. What
about you, brat? Where are you registered huh? No fixed abode brat.'
'Actually I hate the idea,' said Fiorinda. 'I don't want to vote for anything, ever. This is not my world. But with luck I don't have to worry about it this time. The
most likely date is March the twentyninth. I won't be eighteen.'
Not eighteen yet. My God.
Fiorinda was tired out. She went back to Lambeth Road with the Eyes and Rob.
Sage went looking for Ax, and found him alone in the Fire Room, over in the
North Wing: so called because it was one of the few rooms of the six hundred
with a chimney that worked, and small enough to be heated by a fire in the grate.
The room was lit by one meagre electric lamp, with a parchment, tasseled shade
from the nineteen fifties, on a table by the hearth. Ax looked round and smiled
wanly. Sage pulled up a chair.
'You knew about Pigsty's kiddie porn habit, didn't you?'
'Yeah.'
'So did I.' Sage took out a pack of the government-licenced Anandas he
perversely favoured, offered them.
'No thanks. I don't know how you can stand those things.'
'So denounce me to the Campaign for Real Cannabis. I can't be fucked to roll
my own, it takes me too long. Anyway, I like the advertising. . . Ax, arguably we
made a shit choice on Massacre Night. We stayed alive. Arguably we made a shit
choice when you came back from the Tour. We could have fled the country or
something. But you are not responsible for what happened to those children.'
'I knew enough,' said Ax. 'I should?ve known he was a psychopath.' The skull looked at him in silence for a moment, then turned away and stared
into the flames. 'Where?s the line between? Ever been near it? You know about
me and Mary Williams? Of course you do.'
'I remember some of what got into the papers,' said Ax, diplomatically.
'Yeah. Well, it was all true. All true. I used to beat her up. Me hitting her was
basically our relationship, that and the smack. I hurt her badly enough to put her
in hospital a few times, including once when she was pregnant.' Sage looked
down at his masked hands and closed them into fists, the virtual ghosts that
replaced the missing fingers moving with uncanny realism. 'Not so great for
needlepoint, but they work fine as weapons.'
This Ax knew. He'd seen those weapons used, up in Yorkshire. Sage in a fist
fight was a thoroughly horrible proposition.
'No wonder you hate heroin.'
'Oh no. No, no no, never blame the drug. It was me. And I am sane, I think.
What I mean is. . .well, I'm not sure what I mean, except you're not to blame.'
'How tall were you when you were sixteen?'
'Same as I am now.'
'God.'
'Yeah. Fucking ridiculous.'
Ax thought about the sixteen year old giant junkie, prowling the chichi little
streets of Padstow, seeking for meat. 'If it was so bad, how come you had a kid?'
'I didn't know Mary had decided to get pregnant. Never crossed my mind. Girl?s stuff, contraception and all that.' The skull grinned in self-contempt. 'I was
horrified. Got the injection, soon as I found out. I'd've had it done permanent if
I'd been old enough.'
'But you made her do a DNA test.'
'That was when she set the lawyers on me. I was being nasty, I never had any
doubt he was mine. I had him with me a lot, first few years. But her lifestyle
changed, she got bored of trying to show me up, I don't know. . . There's a court
order giving me access but that was also me being nasty. I don't pursue it. I'm
not sure if it runs any more, now Wales is a foreign country. I've seen him once
since Dissolution. Don't know when I'll see him again. He's eleven this year. I
have an eleven year old son, isn't that weird.'
'You love him?'
'I try not to think about it.'
'Sorry.'
'What can I do? She hates me. I hate her too. Nothing personal, just the whole
fucking idea. Ah, horrible. She doesn't want me around, she doesn't want her kid
to be with me, and I can't blame her.'
'Have you hit any other women, since?'
'Haven't hit anybody since, except for Yorkshire. Not seriously.' Ax smiled.
This would exclude some crowd-pleasing showmanship on the tv and other
public occasions. And fair enough.
„Oh, and George. I hit George occasionally. He doesn't mind.' 'Bizarre lives you Heads lead.'
'I suppose we do.' Sage finally lit the cigarette he'd been holding. 'Ax, I—'
The sentence stalled. They stared into the red caves between the coals.
Nothing's really changed, thought Ax. The administration is the same dodgy
team that Paul Javert was playing for, same bunch of amoral chancers. The peace
in Yorkshire may not hold up. We're still deep in shit. But Fiorinda calls the
police, the hippie-goon regime collapses like a house of cards; and suddenly it
feels as if we have a chance to make something of this disaster. To pull ourselves
out of that swamp where murder is law. . . Astonishing girl. He had asked DCI
Holland what the fuck (expletive deleted) did she think she was doing, having a
seventeen year old kid interview a murdering paedophile, alone in a room with
him? She'd answered: ordinarily you would be right, but this is Fiorinda.
The girl who told me, the first time we were alone together, the first night I
took her to my bed: Pigsty is a childfucker.
In just about that many words. How did she know?
Maybe that was a stupid question.
He'd had a terrible struggle, but tonight his mind quiet in a way it hadn't been
for a long time. A stillness inside. Insh'allah. Whichever way things went, it
would be okay. Shit, what do I really want? If I come out of the game with
nothing except Fiorinda and Aoxomoxoa, I'll be well up on the deal.
He just unfolds, this guy—
'Listen, Sage. Would you do some oxy with me?' Sage looked up, startled out of deep abstraction. The skull went blank, and
stayed blank long enough —measurable seconds— for Ax to get alarmed. It was
something he'd been thinking about, doing the intimacy drug, but maybe this
really wasn't the moment. No, it was okay: the mask came back to life and he
was getting the you, beyond belief grin that he considered his personal property.
'Yeah,' said Sage. 'Yes, I would.'
'Not now, but if we are ever through this. Next time there's a good time.'
'Done.'
'Good. You were saying—?'
'Was I?' Sage shook his head. 'I've forgotten. I was probably going to say, that's
enough about Mary and Marlon. I just wanted to tell you—'
'Yeah.'
'C'mon. I came to stop you from moping. Let's go find some company.'
Sage had been living, in so far as he needed a place to sleep, at the Heads' studio
in Battersea. That weekend he took Fiorinda and Ax to his cottage in Cornwall, a
retreat that even the band rarely visited. It was on the north coast, in about
twelve acres, up an execrable washed-out track. The Atlantic was on the other
side of the hill, a tumultuous small river ran through the land; there was a tiny
village two miles away. He had done almost nothing to the cottage since he?d
bought it, except to get decent crystal cable laid, set up the parlour as a studio
(where he'd written most of the Arbeit Macht Frei and Stonefish immersions: place should be hideously haunted); and move a big, low bed into the living room. He
slept down there, couldn't be fucked, drunk or sober, to negotiate the narrow,
crooked staircase at night. The place was otherwise a miracle of inconvenience,
especially for someone with Sage's hands. Most of the domestic appliances were
left over from when it had been a failed holiday let.
The weather was terrible. Sage and Ax did old jigsaws, Ax having discovered
a stack of them in a cupboard. Fiorinda read the children's classics she found in a
bookcase upstairs. At twilight, when the rain eased off, they walked to the pub:
down the track, the river rushing in spate over its granite boulders beside them,
hazel catkins unfurled, shaking under the bare oak branches; primroses shining
like milky stars in the high banks along the lane.
On the night they didn't get astonishingly drunk at what was known (though
who was locked out was unclear: it wasn't the local police) as „a lock-in? at The
Powdermill, Fiorinda sat dreaming by the hearth. Ax and Sage had fallen asleep,
on the couch and on the bed. There was no sound but the whisper of the flames.
Sage's property was called The Magic Place. The name was on a stone marker
at the turn-off, in Cornish: he'd shown it to her when they arrived. Nothing to do
with Sage, it had always been called that. It wasn't the cottage that was supposed
to be magic but a stone, he thought. Or a tree, or a pool in the river.
She had asked him, do you know which word is which?
Don't get smart with me, brat. Certainly I do. That one's magic, that one is
place. How do you say it?
I've forgotten. Have to ask George.
They'd been alone because Ax, who had driven them down in his precious
classic Volvo coupe, had kicked up a big fuss when he saw the track. He was
walking up the hill, fuming, to make sure it didn't get any worse. Fucking
perverse, why do I have to put up with this—
I'm glad you're here, Sage had said, the mask doing enigmatic smile. Always
meant to bring you here.
I'm here, she thought, reaching out to the fire. My friend, my brother, I'm here.
A handful of flame lay quivering in her palm, and she had that Escher feeling,
the two planes sliding into one. She looked round and found Sage, unmasked by
sleep, blue eyes wide open. 'So you can still do that,' he said.
'Please don't tell anyone,' said Fiorinda. 'Not anyone.'
'I won't.' He turned over, and as far as she knew slept again at once.
Sayyid Muhammad Zayid had come to London and taken a suite at the Savoy
(never backward with the panoply, Muhammad). He did not try to influence Ax
on the question of Pigsty and the death penalty. Perhaps he even agreed that the
perpetrator of such crimes should live out his guilty life. But he'd come down
because he was sure Ax would be the next President, and what was on his mind
was Shari'a. They had discussions—the Islamic entourage in attendance, Ax
alone— which were good and friendly, in which neither of them shifted their position in the slightest. One day Ax arrived at the suite and found to his horror
that Fiorinda was there, alone with the Sayyid and his brothers-in-law. Fiorinda,
straight backed on the hotel sofa, hands in her lap like a princess in a fairytale,
wearing a grey voile shift over glistening cream satin; her hair burning through a
grey cobweb scarf. When Ax came in she smiled at him, made her excuses, took
her coat and left.
'So that is your wife,' said Sayyid Muhammad.
'Ah—'
'She's a charming young woman, intelligent too. You did well there, lad.'
'Muhammad, could you do me a really big favour. Could you. . . not use that
term, when Fiorinda is around.'
'She seems like your wife to me. I think I must call her your wife.'
'Big favour. Please.'
Sayyid Muhammad smiled at the young man's anxiety. 'You are under that
little lady's thumb: well, it's natural for a while. But you be careful. You know,
the difference between Islam and Christian, on the matter of women —and it's a
real difference, though I've never argued with you on the civil rights issue, I'm all
for that kind of equality— comes down to the danger of idolatry. We recognise it,
we guard against it, the Christians don't. We're so weak, where they are
concerned, every man is the same. We would put them next to God, and that is
not allowed.'
'How can you talk about the people of God,' said Ax, 'and say we, when you're leaving out half of them? What is Fiorinda then, a djinn?'
She is a fine lass, thought Sayyid Muhammad. She dresses extravagently, but a
sight more modestly than most Christian girls: and she has something very
strange in the back of her eyes. 'There are such beings, in some sense. This is a
matter of revelation.'
Ax had been going into djinn, and the whole ingenious project of making
modern science line up with the magical and supernatural hierarchies of the
Qur?anic cosmos. It was interesting stuff.
'As long as we stick to in some sense, and it?s an Islamicized term for autonomic
software agents, or mysterious big number behaviour. I can go with that.'
'Well, mysticism is not for you. But government is, so let us return to that
problem.'
Ax sometimes wished his prophet of choice had had the tact to get crucified
and bow out of it, instead of sticking around to set up a religio—political state.
He sat down, frowning.
'Muhammad, to me Islam means accepting the will of God, and accepting that
the task of the human community is to become the presence of God's mercy and
compassion on earth. I?m not interested in the jurisprudence. If you can
miraculously square Shari?a with abandoning the death penalty, leaving out the
headscarves, and dropping the discussion of how much you have to nick before
you get your hand chopped off, good luck to you: but I?m not going to be your
ally, even if I was ever in a position to influence the lawgivers.? 'As long as we're talking,' said Sayyid Muhammad, 'I'm in with a chance.'
Times and times he had crossed London, from Paddington to Battersea, coming
up from the cottage —yes, using public transport. Always, why not? I like to see
life— without hearing a single English voice, sometimes without hearing a word
of English spoken. No chance of that this evening. The Eurostar invasion rolled
back. No tourists. No oddly garbed munchkin Japanese girls, no vast middle—
aged North American couples. Posters and video clips everywhere about the
referendum. He joined the patient crowd on an Underground platform, thinking
about the last six or seven years. On tour and gigging, plugged in at the cottage,
working with the Heads in Battersea, plenty drugs to paper over the gaps.
Could have gone on forever, sitting there in Limbo. On the Circle line he
obstinately stayed by the doors, propping up the carriage roof, (you can move
down, sunshine, you fit better); and played the game of desert island Londoners.
The ones he liked the look of, the ones he'd have to feed to the sharks. There's a
clay-coloured soulful, sexless face from the Fertile Crescent. I'll have hir. A face
from West Africa, young but Traditionalist, scarified cheeks like a ripe fruit
bursting. She's okay. One from the Horn, very superior profile, but he looks
sulky. Sharkmeat. A black haired, pale-eyed, white skinned Irish girl, chatting
hard with her sparky hejabed girlfriend whose looks are from the Gulf
somewhere, (keep those two). Red braces type, essentially Norman French,
standing out still after a thousand years, that hard T junction nose and eyebrows, slab cheeks, keep him on trial: and they are all English. Gingery Scot in a
cashmere overcoat, a senior suit of the first order. Don't usually see those on the
Tube, maybe he's a devout Countercultural suit. Now there is a stunner. What
went into that? Vietnamese-Irish-Nigerian? Wonder if she'd like to fuck
Aoxomoxoa? And they're all English. Presumably, pragmatically, since they're
still here. Wonder what they make of me.
Wonder are they feeling merciful.
Change at Baker Street, and here we wait and wait. People looking at each
other, saying not a word but what a buzz in the air. Something had happened to
London, jerked the whole gross, unspeakably huge mass of human parts into
vivid alertness, the brain?s P300 response (the very same that Aoxomoxa used for
his wicked immersive purposes) New York must have felt like this, he thought,
after 9/11. But the Frankenstein here was not the shock of unprecedented injury,
no, something far different, something rarely, rarely so powerful as this. Call it
Ax Preston, call it hope, but don?t forget to be afraid.
At some point on Massacre Night, I decided I would stay with this. Not
sticking around to get vengeance on the Pig. Perish the thought. Simply because
it would be a crime against the Ideology to walk away from something so fucking
strange. When is it going to end? Trouble ahead, trouble behind. When will the
state of affairs formerly known as normal resume? Never, he began to suspect.
This isn't nearly over, it has only just begun.
Green Park, and out into the pale, warm powdery twilight. The gates were open. The hippie guards were outside one of the sentry boxes, deeply involved
in a crap game. 'Hi, Sage.'
'Hi, slackers. Maybe we should invest in a flock of trained geese. Ax here yet?'
'Haven't seen him. Try the North Wing.'
Instead he found Fiorinda, playing the piano alone in a dusty drawing room.
'What's that? Scarlatti?'
'Yeah.' There was a bottle of wine on the grand piano. He topped up the glass
beside it, and took bottle and glass off to a row of chill-out assorted armchairs.
Something Insanitude must have been going on in here.
'Hey, don't take my wine. . . Bring it back here.'
He came back and leant there watching, as the serene music spilled out from
her hands. 'You managed to find your way to the polling station?'
'I did. Very sweet and old fashioned, the whole thing. I had no idea.'
'Sage, tell me this stupid referendum is going to work out.'
'This stupid referendum is going to work out.'
'Are you just saying that because I asked you to?'
'Aargh. Don't do that, Fee. It pisses me off. Have you been out much today?
I've come across London, looking at people. I think they've voted for him.'
'Then I'm glad. Oh well, why not. The hero of the hour, with a battle-hardened
army at his back, having embraced the religion of the coming age, asks the
people to elect him king. Sure, of course. Since we are heading for the Dark Ages
anyway. It's romantic, but not what I would call progress.' 'You been talking like that to Ax?'
'No, but I've been thinking it. This is not my world. No matter what the result is,
my world ended on Massacre Night. Look what happens to me. You and Ax go
off to war, I stay behind to look after Ax's baby project, and manage the
household. Until you get back, and I'm required as a pet again.'
'Don't be so snivelling ridiculous.'
'Okay, what if I had wanted to come with you, join in that killing game?'
'Fuck, would you want to?'
She smiled nastily. 'Nah, but you don?t fool me. I know exactly how you think.
You, and Ax, and all the caring menfolk around here. I'm not built to play Red
Sonja, so I?m the lickle princess. There no parts for me as a human being in this
movie?'
'Better than being one of the lickle serving wenches.You are in a brilliant mood
this evening. Election nerves getting to you?'
'Ax is worse. He's pretending he doesn't give a shit, but the pretending is
painful to be near. He's not here, by the way. He's off playing with the band.'
'Okay, leave that. Let's go find Roxane. Nothing s/he likes better than a good
rousing political circus night. S/he'll cheer you up.'
For six weeks Ax had been working the crowd. Roxane and Dilip had been his
best allies, Chip and Verlaine surprisingly reliable filler. They'd been careful not
to do too much, they hoped they'd done enough. The Counterculture was believed to be split between those who would vote for Ax and those (the
majority) who would not vote at all. The country. . . well, no matter what they
thought about judicial murder, after they'd heard the arguments, they'd vote for
the hero of the Tour and of the Islamic Campaign; and for keeping the CCM in a
safe pair of hands. Unless of course they didn't. Could go either way.
An overwrought party mood developed in the Insanitude. In the smaller
venues there was trance-drumming and other semi-magical rituals going on. Tv,
radio and webcast people wandered, licensed but confused. Dance music started
up early, in the club venue in the State Apartments. On the fly-eye wall screen in
the Office, and on big and little screens set up here and there, the coverage rolled.
Political figures from the neighbour states of the former UK offered their
comments. Counterculturals of the campgrounds came on camera to explain that
Ax was selling his soul to the straights with this referendum, tv was just a shite
spreader for the socio-industrial-military complex; and hello Mum. As the
evening progressed, channel hopping converged on mTm, (many-To-many, the
nearest the world came to a global Countercultural telecoms company); and the
trashy-intellectual English terrestrial channel 7, (popularly known as CultTV).
CultTV had gone straight for the jugular. They were treating this as a general
election night with all the trimmings: the talking heads, the coloured maps, the
swingometer, the dancing pie charts, the video-booth clips and email from soi
disant ordinary citizens. The big gig in Birmingham, where Snake Eyes were
headlined. 'It'll be close,' said Rox, uneasily. 'There's been a massive turnout. That could
be good: but it could be bad. They've never been asked to vote on this issue
before. And they will vote on the issue, just because we don't expect them to.?
Ax finally came in around one am, looking calm and distant. The Chosen had
been playing the campground at Taplow (former Neolithic theme park), in
Buckinghamshire. He sat with Rox, Fiorinda and Sage, and talked a little with a
nice polite tv woman. Chip and Verlaine were insufferably chirpy. The fly-eye
was set to default to Channel 7 and the results, whenever there was nothing
more interesting to be found. Its cells began to switch to the map of England,
until the whole wall was maps of England, filling with cute little guitars.
By two thirty they knew it wasn't going to be close at all. Ax had a landslide.
'Looks like we're on,' he said to Fiorinda, wrecked by unacknowledged
tension, grinning with relief. They hugged for the media folk, and everybody
cheered.
Fiorinda and Dilip did another club night, in the IMMix box together: Dilip
pumping up the springtime, breeding lilacs, sending the sap shooting, breaking
open the seedcase bodies of the dancers with a near-lethal dose of phototropism.
'Ah, Islam, Islam,' he sighed. 'The English are fools for it, always were, the
disastrous spoor of this infatuation is all over the former Empire. Did I say
disastrous, shame on me. But why did they not prefer Hinduism? Because we
poor Babus, with our taste for fussy office work and teatimes, we are are are too confused, too colourful, too cheerful, too fuzzy, too like the English, in a word.
So are you smashed enough to tell me truthful nonsense, what do you think of
Ax now, Fiorinda?'
'You want to know what I think. What I really, really think?'
'Go on, go on, tell me tell me tell me— '
'I think he's the Lord's anointed. I think he has the mandate of heaven. I think
he is rightwise king born over all England. But still—'
'But still you are the cat who walks by herself, green-eyed Fiorinda— '
'But still nothing's changed.'
Pigsty would stay in Lloyd Park until his trial came up. On one of her visits
Fiorinda found out that Lola Burnet was coming down from her mother's in
Norfolk, for a conjugal weekend. For some reason this gave her a bad feeling.
Well, there were plenty of reasons, but this particular for some reason was the fact
that Lola had given the Insanitude as her contact address. Who was she staying
with? Probably Fereshteh. Feresh and Allie were living in the San, while they
looked for a flat together. Why didn't I know? Perhaps her friends thought loopy
Fiorinda was not safe with Lola. Would grow fangs and try to tear the woman
apart if they should meet. Not far wrong. But she had decided to keep silent
about what she knew—without proof, without evidence. Leave it to the
professionals. She didn?t say anything about her bad feeling, because could not
explain her antipathy. One April dusk Sage, coming up to the Insanitude from Battersea, met Chip
and Verlaine and Rox just leaving for the Easter Vigil at St Martin's in the Fields.
They tried to convince him to join them. The new fire, the blessing of the water
and the holy oils. The chanting and the candles, it was so great, so primitive, like
the mysteries of Eleusis insisted Chip. You have come and weep for Adonis, it's
such a turn on, the whole thing. When the priest goes, like, lumen Christi, or even
in English: I just die!
'Sorry,' he says, the skull doing bemused distaste. 'Got to meet Ax and do
some tv. Er, thanks.'
Fereshteh went to Lloyd Park with Lola that evening. The staff searched Lola
and her weekend case. They did not search the veiled Islamic woman, Ax's close
associate, with any officious thoroughness. In the rooms where Lola would
spend the night with her husband the women embraced in tears, and parted in
silence.
At the Lambeth Road house the Few and friends gathered to eat together; and
to watch Ax and Sage being dead genial and relaxed on a late night rock
programme, getting teased about cronyism as they both insisted, laughing their
socks off, that Snake Eyes was reaching new heights, best sound this year. Well
okay, says the show's presenter. Let's hear some of this fabulous PoMo—
Newsflash—
The Few and friends didn't like newsflashes. They all sat up. At least nothing
horrible could have happened to Ax or Sage; or Rob or the Babes. What does that leave? A wide field. It was Pigsty. He was dead. His wife had smuggled a plastic
shooter into the conjugal quarters, someone having disabled the surveillance in
there for her; or previously taught her how. She shot him dead and then shot
herself. Lola was still alive, but seriously injured. It had just happened, all this,
but a group called the Daughters of Islam had already claimed responsibility—
Fiorinda, electrified, pounced on Allie before the newswoman had finished
her autocue. 'I'm going out there. Will you come?'
'What do you want to be there for? What can you do?'
'Lola's dying. I want her to tell me something, if she can, before she goes—'
Lola Burnet was in the prison hospital operating theatre when they reached
Lloyd Park, her situation had been too desperate for her to be moved anywhere
else. Fiorinda and Allie had been waiting an hour, to know the outcome of the
emergency surgery, when Fereshteh appeared. With her were two other women,
all three in fiercely modest paramilitary uniform: heavy scarves, brown tunics
over trousers, Sam Browne belts, epaulets. Fereshteh was looking shocked and
distraught: but proud of herself, big eyes glowing, patches of bold scarlet in her
honey cheeks—
Fiorinda jumped to her feet. 'How did she convince you to do this, Feresh?'
'She asked for help,' said Fereshteh simply. 'We helped her. I'm not ashamed
of that, I'm just terribly sorry. . . I didn't know she would turn the gun on herself!'
'What did you think? You thought she'd live happily ever after?'
'He had to die!' cried Fereshteh. 'She had a right. We had a right. Ax wanted this. He couldn't say so, but we know he did. You're the one who should be
ashamed, not me. The way you protected that monster—'
'Ax did not want this. You fool, she should have been in here herself!'
'We know what she did, when she was helpless and terrified of him—'
The Daughters of Islam stood solemnly, looking on.
'My God,' said Fiorinda. 'I don't know what the police will do, but I will not
forgive you for your part in this. Ever. You better stay out of my way—'
'You never liked me. To you any woman is just competition.You only like
men, don't you Fiorinda. Any dominant male with a big dick. Maybe Ax should
ask himself how close you used to get to the President, while he was away—'
Sage had arrived with Ax, who had been waylaid by the prison governor.
He'd come into the waiting room at the start of this verbal cat-fight, and stopped
at the door. At this point he was forced to wade in, grab Fiorinda and move her
out, before she floored the Daughter of Islam.
She didn't struggle, she knew she'd be a fool to struggle, there was nothing she
could do. But he didn't think it was safe to let go until they'd run the gauntlet of
the prison staff and were outdoors.
'If you want to hit someone, hit me.'
'No.' She walked away from him, and sat on the kerb by the bus shelter. In the
distance, partly blocked by buildings, the perimeter fence, with its brilliant lights
and rolls of razor wire, stood up against the hollow, empty night.
'A child murderer taken out of the equation and rendered harmless,' she said, distinctly, 'is worth something, even in this fucked-up disaster movie. It means
the damage that was done to Pigsty stops here. That thread is broken, of all the
thousands, the thousands. A child murderer, murdered, is worse than
meaningless. It says the system just goes on.'
'Most people are not as rational as you, Fee. They?ll take the solution that looks
like a solution, without thinking it through the generations, see if it checks out.'
'Lola was getting hold of the children for him. It had to be her, who else? She
was doing it to keep her precious family life intact, she thought it was a price
worth paying. Oh well, what does it matter. I don't care. . . Ah, poor Feresh, she's
right, I never reckoned her. I didn't look further than the veil. My fault. I'm still
never going to forgive her. What a joke, eh? Paul Javert let a no-kidding Islamic
Terrorist slip through his vetting, and we never spotted her either.'
'Looks like it. Made fools of us all.'
'You know, I start to wonder about Ax's buddy Muhammad and this— '
He shook his head. Not meaning no, she understood: meaning forget it. You
can investigate, dig deep, uncover the shocking truth. Where does it get you?
Some place like this prison car park tonight. Fucking nowhere.
Allie came out of the hospital wing, Ax behind her. They stood with Sage.
'Well, it's over now,' said Allie.
'What? Is she dead?'
'Yeah,' said Ax. 'Died about ten minutes ago.'
So here we are, thought Fiorinda. So this is where we are at. Doomed to play Stone Age royalty to forty-odd million post-civilised people, while our world
falls apart; and we have failed at the first test. Fereshteh and Mrs Leisurewear
have wiped the floor with us and our Good State. Poor Ax. But they were
looking at her with such pity and concern she couldn't stand it.
'I am not a piece of broken china!' she yelled. Jumped up and stormed away
madly. Ax came after her, caught her and held her. The two of them walked
slowly back, his arm around her, her face very pale but tearless, and calm again.
The resilence of this girl is amazing.
'What are we going to do now?' asked Fiorinda, after a long silence. 'Ax said
Pigsty had to live, and he is dead.'
'Bury it,' said Allie. 'Do something to distract them. Look as if we don't care
and hope the Daughters of Islam story dies of not being fun. It's all we can do.' Yeah, bury it. Accept the defeat along with the victory. And go on. 6: Sweetbriar
It takes longer to organise a big splashy day-to-night rock concert than it does to
pass an Act of Parliament; but not that much longer, if you have everything in
place. Post-Deconstruction Tour and general Crisis Conditions had to be
accomodated: but Allie's team was used to that. A flattering number of VIPs
from the former nations of the UK managed to accept short notice invitations.
Public transport to the Rivermead site was organised, and Reading town agreed
to accept a brown-out, except for the hospitals, police and emergency services.
The Heads had decided to take Sage's Ministerial appointment seriously, so they
wrote the programme, mixing bands with glee, and they could have fucking waited
for a less fraught occasion to assume responsibility; but it was okay.
It was the fourth of May, heavy and humid under low skies. The day-trippers
started pouring in at dawn. Sanitation hell descended once more on the peaceful,
post-futuristic grunge of the staybehinds. Hippies, actual hardline hippies were
heard talking about getting a sewage pipe installed, to the site gates. There were
twisters in Staffordshire, yet more homewrecker floods in East Anglia, and the
anti-nucleaires in the Rhone Valley might be bringing the European branch of
modern civilisation to a sudden close; but that last wasn't a big topic of
conversation, Green Apocalypse Boredom having set in many moons ago.
It was strange to be back, to see the rebuilt Blue Lagoon, the Zen Self dome
same as always, the Mood Indigo tent where the shit-fest had been held —the
dishevelled permanence that had settled over all the rockfest ephemera of their history. The Chosen went on early in the afternoon, which the tv schedule
people didn?t like, but too bad. The crowd seemed pleased (though they howled
and begged for Jerusalem, and didn't get it), and for once the frontman's
girlfriend managed to be there. At five the Heads were on Yellow Stage,
otherwise known as Scary Stage because of its accident record; however nothing
went wrong. There were other stages, other acts, poets and fire-eaters, dance
troupes, storytellers and tumblers, non-Few Name Bands: but these were the
images of that sweltering May holiday. Aoxomoxoa on the big screens, stalking
around with a hand held mic, having left the visionboards to Cack Stannen,
chanting the lyrics of 'Kythera' —previously unintelligible to all but those
trainspotters with the personality and the equipment required to strip a Heads
track down to the bit stream.
Venus
Lo in the western sky
Can you see the green light
That means go
Fireballs, interstellar gases, balls of glowing plasma shooting through the
arena crowd, Sage in black and white optical print trousers that took on
pinwheels of whirling rainbow and shards of piercing gold, sweating so hard he
appeared to be melting; the sun a small pale burning blob through the overcast,
like the star of a different planet
Can you see the colours
of the stars?
And Ax Preston, in subfusc brown jeans and a faded red Tour singlet (with
the It's The Ecology, Stupid, message on the back), holding an immense crowd —
all of them longing to wave their arms and sing anthems— in silence, as he plays
the long, hypnotic solo in „Put Out The Fire?, (the title track): fine-boned profile
detached, intent; as if there?s nobody but God.
At sunset Fiorinda was in Allie's new van, hiding from the suitish, grown-up
things that Ax was having to do. Allie had decided, now that Fereshteh was off
the scene, that she didn't need a place in London. No fixed abode Allie. . . The
back of the van already felt like her Brighton flat, where Fiorinda had dossed a
couple of times: a rooted place, a lovely womanly bookworm's study; a little
cloying. But the green aircon worked. Anne-Marie Wing was there too, with a
few of her rugrats. AM and Allie were talking about the Volunteer Initiative;
Anne-Marie interested to know the ropes. 'You park yourself on a crusties' lot?
And move in with the message?'
'You don't get as far as that. They are lost souls. The Counterculturals who can
handle volunteer work are the tip of the iceberg. I've spent, hours, explaining
how to catch a bus. No kidding. The world's become a very mysterious place to a
lot of the people we?re dealing with.'
Ax's New Deal had been invented to keep violent eco-warriors from breaking
the place up. Now they were running into a submerged mass of hopeless cases, and no one knew what to do. Is that a live metaphor or a dead one?, wondered
Fiorinda. Hull down in the killing cold water outside the citizen-ship, this
mountain of rotten ice, the twisted and broken and bent-out-of-shape Unculture.
Collateral damage. . . She wished Anne-Marie would lay off, she didn?t want to
think about the size of the problem. But that was what it was like today. Non
Few bands, outsiders, guests, kept coming up all bright eyed, asking: what's it all
about? What IS this thing, where are you heading?
We have no idea. Go ask the Ax, he knows everything.
Jet, the baby, was fastened on his mother's tit, Ruby the boy toddler watching
the process with intent, professional interest. Eight year old Silver lifted books
from Allie's cardboard boxes, with the air of a museum curator examining
curious relics, and handed them to her little sister Pearl, who was using them as
building blocks. Anne-Marie's oldest kid was thirteen, already fucking, already
flown. . . Fiorinda listened to backstage PA messages whispered in her ear. There
were half a million people packed into Reading arena. Fifteen millions, hey,
who's counting, why not let's say twenty!, on sites countrywide, watching the
show in front of big screens: the Countercultural Very Large Array.
There can't be half a million people, she thought. That isn't physically possible.
'I'm going to open some wine,' said Allie, 'I'm sick of being sober. Sun's over
the yard arm, I think I'm off duty. White or red, Fio?'
'Nothing for me. Not til after the show.'
'God,' said Allie, greatly impressed. 'Are you feeling all right?' 'Oh yeah, no problem.'
If the day belonged to Ax and Sage, it was Fiorinda's night. When she
appeared, having been dead elusive for hours, she was dressed for the stage in a
silver and white lace cowgirl dress and red boots, her hair a burnished storm.
Sometimes Fiorinda was kooky-pretty, sometimes beautiful, sometimes just a
sulky, skinny white girl with a stubborn jaw. Tonight her fickle redhead's good
looks had come out to play: she looked absolutely wonderful and she knew it.
The New Blue Lagoon was packed, government suits and other VIPs taking up
too much space in their raked seats, canvas walls reefed high to allow the crowd
to spill out across the arena; the mosh pit one deliquescent squirming mass,
yelling in undamped delight when Fiorinda walked on, picked up her guitar
from the piano stool and waited, grinning, for DARK to get settled.
Charm Dudley, DARK's frontwoman, had decided she couldn't make it, which
was on the whole a good thing. Friction between Charm and her spinning black
hole of a vocalist had been a major problem when they were last together. And
away they go, Fiorinda leaping into the attack, from that calm little grin to
instantly— In the wings, the Fiorinda Appreciation Society gathered: crew and
stars, by no means all of them male, staring like rabbits caught in the headlights.
'How's that for Sugar Magnolia, Sage?' murmurs Dilip.
Sage, beside him, shrugs, 'All right I suppose. If you like that kind of thing-'
Skull gives Dilip a little crooked twinkle of acknowledgement, and they both
resume concentrating on the rock and roll brat: who has calmed down a little and is singing that Jesus doesn't want her for a sunbeam.
Doing it the Vaselines way, but louder.
DARK had not managed to get to Reading until the day of the concert. That was
okay, rehearsal had never been the band's forte. It only led to trouble. They
arrived at the Leisure Centre after their brilliant performance, sweating like pigs,
grinning fit to split their faces, accepting with no false modesty congratulations
from the non-Few famous. In their shared dressing room they jived around
stripping off soaked clothing, sousing each other with cold water from the sinks,
gabbing happily about the terrible mistakes they'd made in various songs, the
impressive company they were keeping, the thirst they had on them: sniffing up
powder, pouring cooling draughts of alcohol down their throats. Fil Slattery
raised the bottle on which she had been swigging.
'Absent friends-'
'Absent friends!' they yelled in chorus.
'Go on,' said Tom Okopie to Fiorinda, hopefully. 'Say it. You miss her.'
Cafren cuffed her boyfriend gently around the head. 'Eee, Tom, trust you—'
'I miss Charm's guitar,' said Fiorinda. 'On stage. I fucking do not miss Charm.
Absent is the way I like her. Sorry, folks.'
It was Charm Dudley who'd formed the band, with her friends Cafren Free
and Tom Okopie, and enlisted Fil Slattery and Gauri Mostel on drums and
keyboards. A year of thwarted-ambition hell, shit venues and flashes of genius later, they'd demoted Gauri from lead vocals, and advertised, which was how
Fiorinda had come to join them. Cue a different kind of hell, because Fiorinda
and DARK were soulmates, utterly right for each other, but the mix was volatile.
The kid was in a hurry, far more ambitious than Charm: and the effect of Charm
Dudley and Fiorinda jockeying for control had quickly become awful.
Just awful. . . Four happy faces fell. They all looked at Fiorinda, and she
looked back, the five of them reality-checked, deflated.
She had wanted DARK so badly, in Dissolution Summer. Wanted DARK and
been such a little horror she didn't see why the fuck she could not have. . . The sad
thing was that she still wanted DARK, just as badly: and they wanted her too.
But she was grown up now, so she knew they weren't going to break up with
Charm. Whereas Charm and Fiorinda could not work together. Situation
hopeless. Fiorinda sighed, and hunted around for a towel for her hair. She
suddenly didn't want to be here. It was like looking through a window at a life
she'd lost, seeing it all going on without her.
'Hey, whose are the flowers?'
'Oh, they were for you,' said Cafren. 'Sorry, forgot—'
'Who the fuck sends me flowers?,' growled Fiorinda. She did not like cut flowers.
Who didn?t know that? She tore off the florist's paper, harbouring a wild idea
that Charm might have Interflora'd her a bunch of pink roses, as an insult.
There was no card or note. The rose leaves had a sweet scent. No, not these,
some other pink roses, long ago . . Sweetbriar, what her father used to call her. Oh. Oh no.
something like a bright, silent explosion in her brain.
She had walked into one of those waking nightmares, the weird kind of
migraine-without-the-headache she?d once suffered occasionally, hadn't had one
for ages, she'd forgotten how bad—
She put the flowers down, so clumsily they fell to the floor. She felt very sick.
Oh. This isn't migraine, this is me feeling very sick. She felt so dreadful she
thought she should shout something like oh shit, I've been poisoned: but before she
could get that together something started happening, an experience she couldn't
stop, couldn't escape, couldn't deny—
What is going on, does it show, I DARE NOT look in a mirror.
'Are you okay, Fio?' said Gauri, putting an arm round her.
'Yeah,' said Fiorinda, drawling, hearing her own voice from a long way off,
wondering how she'd got to be sitting on this chair; little snip in time. 'I'm fine.'
She told them to let her alone for five minutes, and managed to stay fine until
they were gone, which wasn't long. Thank God for the awkwardness of the
Charm issue, which made them probably glad to get away—
Tom thought Fiorinda was not okay. But there was history that made it
difficult for him to pay her special attention. And that red headed kid had
changed so much. Her beauty and authority daunted him, daunted all of them. If
Fiorinda wanted you to go, you were gone. After DARK the show was over. The day-trippers and VIPs were efficiently
channeled off, the bands came out and danced with the staybehinds. Cooling
breezes flowed through the Blue Lagoon, where Olwen Devi stamped and
whirled to highly-evolved bhangra, long ago classical training put to use:
thinking of Ax Preston and the future of all this (thinking about the energy audit
of stage lighting, in fact). Zen Selfers, notable campers, faces and costumes
named and namelessly familiar surrounded her —particularly the lean young
giant in the skull mask, who seemed almost to be dancing with her. A sweet boy,
once you got past the loutish affectation, but she started to feel a little confused
about his motives. This would never do: she left the floor and made her way to
the bar. As she waited in the press of bodies, Sage was there again.
'Hi Olwen. You got that boyfriend of yours staying tonight?'
'Ellis? Yes. He was tired, he's back at the trailer.'
'Shame.'
Olwen knew the Heads well. They were some of her best converts: genuinely,
intelligently fascinated by the project. Their boss (as the band called him) was
funny and crude and charming: an A student, a delight. But what was this? The
skull's inviting grin went on giving her the message, while she stared in disbelief.
'Get away with you, you joker. I am old enough to be your grandma.'
'If my gran could dance like what you can,' he said gallantly, grinning more
sweetly than ever. 'I would want to fuck her too.'
The bar staff and the people by did not seem to be hearing this. She hoped not! 'Sage, I am afraid you are smashed out of your young brain.'
'I certainly am.' But there he stayed, waiting, exactly as if he had asked a
reasonable question that deserved a civil answer.
'He's not my boyfriend,' said Olwen. 'He's my husband. We've been married
nearly thirty years, but we have always spent a lot of time apart. It suits us. He's
a professor at Cardiff, he'll be going home tomorrow. '
The mask came off. Sage beamed, pupils so dilated his eyes looked black
instead of blue. He nodded, „Okay, later.? The skull snapped back: he plunged
into the crowd, vanishing like a seal among the waves of his natural element.
'Hi rockstar,'
'Hi, other rockstar. You look very. . . interested. What have you been up to?'
'Something I?ve had in mind for a while. Where's Fiorinda?'
'I was wondering that myself. Let's go find her.'
No Fiorinda, anywhere. They found part of DARK, Tom Okopie and Cafren
Free: Cafren thought Fiorinda might still be in the Leisure Centre, hob-nobbing
with non-Few Big Names. So they set off on this expedition, an adventure, many
music biz friends and enemies to avoid.
'Your parents gone?'
'Thank God. I find my dad fucking unendurable, around things like this.'
'I like my parents,' said Sage, magnanimously, 'Not both in the same room
because that can turn ugly, but separately they are good. I like going to visit them in their lives. I would very much appreciate if they would stay out of mine.'
'Yeah. . . Sage, If we're going this far, you could change those trousers. They
are getting me down.' The white singlet was fresh. The trousers were the eye
hurting Bridget Riley rip-offs that Sage had been wearing on stage.
'No. I like 'em.'
'Ah well.'
The Leisure Centre was empty. They strode along an endless-seeming
corridor, feeling equal to anything: never got this whammed in Yorkshire but
what if we had, we'd still have been useful. By some dimensional trick they
missed (possibly he'd come out of a door, there were doors) Chip Desmond was
heading towards them. They advanced with friendly intent, but the kid
unaccountably veered away and scuttled off.
'What's wrong with him?'
'Looked as if he thought we were going to eat him. What's in this stuff you
gave me?'
'Nothing special. Bit of MDMA, bit of acid, toad venom, trace elements.
Coming up on you now is it, Teflon-head?'
'Yeah. My God, if anyone had told me two years ago I would be taking
unidentified candy from Aoxomoxoa. . . I must be outa my mind.'
The skull grinned at him beatifically. 'You soon will be.'
They came through the door of the dressing room together, laughing,
expecting to find it empty, there was obviously nothing going on around here. But Fiorinda was there, still wearing the cowgirl dress. She stood in the middle
of the floor, fists pressed to her mouth. She didn't move. She was staring right at
them, but didn't seem to see them.
'Fio?' said Ax.
No reponse. He went up, put his hands on her shoulders—
'Fiorinda? What is it? Sweetheart, what's wrong?'
Sage had stayed at the door. As soon as he saw her move, as soon as she came
out of that frozen rigidity, he turned to leave, sure he had no place here—
'Sage,' she wailed. 'No! Please! Don't leave me! Please!'
He shut the door, came swiftly over. 'Okay, I'm here. I will not leave you.'
They sat her down. Her eyes were black, her pulse thready and racing, her
skin cold and clammy as if she was bleeding inside. Her hands were covered in
small red scratches. They looked at each other, the Heads' patent cocktail
dropping out of them like something fallen down a lift shaft, leaving them —for
the moment— stone cold sober.
'Fio, what have you taken? Do you remember?'
'Nothing.' She was clinging to both of them, clutching Sage's ruined right
hand, hanging onto Ax's shoulder. 'I didn't want to be smashed on stage in case I
fucked up in front of all those Prime Ministers and things. Not even a glass of
wine.' Her breath was coming in gasps, small breasts heaving under the sweat
soaked lace. 'We came back here and there were some pink roses, for me: and I
didn't like that. But I managed to be. . . be okay. I was fine, really. Then the others went off and left me. They can't be too chummy. They think Charm would smell
me on their breath and kill them. And then. What time is it? I don't know how
long I've been here. Is it the same night?'
'What's wrong with pink roses?' asked Sage.
'I hate pink, and I hate roses.' She let go of Sage's hand, grabbed Ax harder,
burying her face in his neck. 'I think my father sent them.'
Ax wrapped his arms around her, soothing her like a baby, sssh, ssh, don't be
frightened, I'm here. Sage followed a trail of bruised petals to a sink. The remains
of a bouquet lay there, torn to tatters. He turned over the fragments, flowers and
leaves and stems: natural roses with real old fashioned thorns, dark thorns the
colour of old blood, Fiorinda's scratches explained—
'Who delivered these?'
'I don't know. They were here, and Caf said they were for me. I have no idea.'
'Was there a card, a message?'
'No. No one told me they were from him. I KNOW BECAUSE I KNOW!'
'Leave it, Sage. The flowers don't matter. I think we have to get the
paramedics. She's in shock, she's so cold, this isn't safe.'
'No!' Fiorinda jumped up, pushing him away. 'No! I'll be okay. No doctors no
nurses no injections. Please, no whitecoats not even hippie whitecoats. I just want
to get away from here. Please, please Ax. I don't want anyone to know, if people
see me like this they'll think I'm no good, they'll think I'm a pathetic hysterical
wipe-out—' 'All right, okay.' He put his arms round her again, 'Ssh, little cat. You won't
have to see anybody. I'll take you straight back to London.'
But she stared at him in new horror, in what seemed wild fear for him: like,
how could he suggest anything so insanely dangerous? 'No, oh no! Not London!'
'What about my van?' offered Sage, quickly, 'How d'you feel about the van?'
'Yes! Sage's van. Let's go there.'
She was shivering hard. Ax passed her over to Sage and sought for something
to combat that icy chill. He found a thick dark jacket. They put it on her: and a
sailor cap from the same heap of DARK's belongings, pulled down over her eyes.
Thus disguised, they tried to walk her to the door, but Fiorinda's knees buckled.
'I'm gonna get the van,' decided Sage. 'I can bring it round.'
'You sure?'
'Better than making her face the public, there are far too many people out
there. Fiorinda, I'm going to the Meadow, fetch the van and bring it here. You're
gonna stay with Ax. I will be gone a little while, you'll look and you won't see
me, but I'll be back.'
Fiorinda huddled on the chair, knees to her chin, wrapped in the dark jacket.
Ax knelt beside her, holding her hand. She didn't speak, she was completely out,
teeth bared and locked in rictus, dilated eyes unfocused, the tendons in her neck
and hands visible and taut as overstrung wire, breath coming fast and shallow.
He talked to her softly, but he didn't think she could hear him. Maybe it had to
happen. She?d been so tough for so long. Maybe it wasn't serious: but he was terrified. Something appallingly precious, appallingly fragile, was breaking in his
hands, he was trying to hold it together but no way he could succeed. It was a
very long time before the door opened and there was Sage again.
'We're on. Short corridor, emergency exit, van right outside. Fee, big effort
now. You have to pass for normal, for a short walk. Up. On your feet.'
She stood up, miraculously. 'I can manage. Do I look strange?'
'You look very cute and brave,' said Ax, tugging the sailor cap down to shade
her face. 'You look like you're being rescued from the sinking of the Titanic.'
'I'm sorry about this, Ax. I'm sorry Sage. I am really sorry.'
'Sssh.' Ax kissed her, hugged her briefly. 'Let's go.'
The corridor was empty. Fiorinda managed it well, between her bodyguards.
Through the emergency exit into the Leisure Centre car park, running the
gauntlet of the crowd; to where Sage's van was waiting. Sage jumped into the
cab, Ax lifted Fiorinda, passed her up, climbed after. Sage took the wheel, Ax
took the babe, on his knees, holding her tight, and they were out of there, no
problem, except for a minor near-miss incident at the exit
—involving the rear end of a taxi that was taking on passengers.
'Fuck!' howled the driver. 'Who the fuck does he think he is, the crazy fuck!'
'That was Sage,' Verlaine told him. 'Cheer up. You can tell your friends you
nearly had Aoxomoxoa in the back of your cab.'
'Oh, well—' said the taxi driver, mollified. 'Well, he's a crazy fuck.' 'We're back to normal then,' boomed Roxane, as s/he arranged hir silk-lined
cloak around hir in the passenger seat; the boys together in the back. 'For a little
while there, I thought we had a grown-up Sage batting for us. Now that would
have been bizarre.'
'I saw them, a few minutes ago,' whispered Chip to Verlaine. 'Boy, they looked
hot. Trust me, tonight poor old Fiorinda is nowhere. She is not even going to get
her socks off.'
'You want me to drive you to Notting Hill? Jesus. Don't you know we got a fuel
crisis on? Awright, who am I to argue? It's your money.'
The skull turned to Fiorinda. 'There. The night is ours. What d'you want to do?
Wanna drive out to the motorway bridge and chuck cans at the slaves of the evil
empire? Or shall we go into town, go people-watching among the common folk?'
'You c-can't take the van into town, Sage. You know what happened last time.'
'How about visiting the Ancient Britons, see if they died yet—?'
'What Ancient Britons?' asked Ax, guessing that last time must refer to
Dissolution Summer. Fiorinda had escaped, back into the days of their
innocence. 'Tell me, I know nothing. Eyes forward Sage, it is customary although
I realise it may not make much odds.'
'It's the Sun Temple people,' said Fiorinda, between chattering teeth. 'If you
were a camper, you'd know. God, I'm so cold. They dug some ground, in a field
out along the Oxford road. They t-try to grow pure native food things, fat hen, purslane, beechmast-'
'Beechmast?'
'Oh yeah,' said the driver. 'Old Sun is in this for the long haul.'
'But they're dying of starvation, or they would be if they played fair. None of it
grows.'
'Or if it does the sacred holy slugs eat it.'
'Like sacred cows in India. Can't be touched. Sage keeps ent-t-treating them to
hear the voice of the Mother, and top themselves. They get really pissed off.'
'I can imagine.'
'Well, they are hardline,' explained Sage. They were in the arena. The word
sounds empty, no such luck, it's a shapeless mediaeval village having a carnival
night. He swerved around a trail of people who had not been planning to give
way. Maybe they couldn't believe the van was real. 'And here is Gaia giving
them the clear message, you are dead meat, but they just go down the Organic
Grocery van and stock up. Can't understand it-'
'Oh, Sage, I am in such a bad way. Oh, doctor, doctor, what do you prescribe?'
'Cannabis and red wine.'
'Chocolate.'
'No chocolate. Chocolate is for Atzecs.'
'You bastard, you are so full of shit. Sugar. I need sugar.'
'Think I got some dried apples.'
'Fuck you. Oranges and bananas.' 'They don't grow here, babe.'
'Yes they do, they do. I've s-s-seen them-'
'Not for fucking long, then. How many times do I have to tell you, ignorant
brat, global warming makes this country colder, not warmer—'
'God, that is so unfair... Hey, Sage, watch out!'
'Whoops. Hmm. You know, I really shouldn't be driving-'
'M-my least favourite Sage remark. Up there with I did not tempt fate, fate
tempted me.You should never be driving, you are a menace. Oh, Sage, don't kill
anyone—'
'I'm not going to kill anyone. No, no, no. Look, they scatter.' But the van was
going round in circles like a vast, lost dodgem car. 'Ax, have you spotted an exit?'
'How did you get in?' said Ax.
'Can't remember.'
'Head for Blue Gate.'
'That's what I'm trying to do, man. Only, I have to confess, I can't strictly see
what is presumably out there, in the real world. Not in any clear order.'
'Stop thinking about it,' advised Ax. 'Do it on physical, leave your mind out of
it.'
'Good idea.'
'Tell me when we're at the van,' said Fiorinda suddenly, urgently.
'She okay, Ax?'
She was not okay. They should not have shifted their attention for a moment, her whole body had gone rigid in his arms. He could feel the cold that gripped
her spreading, her lungs filling with icy water. But, thank God, Sage had found
his way to an access lane. The van was rumbling through a different darkness,
elfin glimmers in humped rows of tents: a thump and a crash as he pulled up.
'What did you hit? Oh, Sage, you hit something.'
'Water butt. We're home. I hope I didn't run over the annexe.'
'Where's the van?'
'Get a grip, Fiorinda. We are in the van.'
'Oh. I didn't know that.'
As she went ahead of them Sage caught Ax's forearm, and clocked the blood
specked weals on the inner side, as if measuring an index of her distress.
'You've seen her like this before,' said Ax.
'Couple of times. Not so bad.'
They followed Fiorinda. Sage touched the wall and a pearly radiance spread.
Things had been flying about, during Sage's navigation of the asteroid belt: a lot
of unsecured stuff was on the floor. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'Anything breakable
in here, I broke it long ago.'
Fiorinda sat on a couch, knees up, arms locked around them, head bowed.
'Sage, can we handle this?'
'Oh, yeah. Easy. Administer first aid, talk her down, she'll be fine.'
Stepping through debris, he opened lockers until he found a bottle of red
wine. 'Fuck, an actual cork. Who bought this? I hate 'em.' He handed it to Ax. 'You do it. Ought to be a corkscrew in one of those drawers but I don't know.
This van disappears things as if it was trained by Argentinian paramilitary.' He
pulled a white box from another locker, and advanced on the patient.
'Fiorinda, gimme a thumb.'
'What for? I'm all right. I said, I took nothing.'
'But humour me.'
She gave him her hand, and hid her face again. Sage stood looking down at
her, and tapped the implant on his wrist. 'George. . . Hi, George. Don't want
anyone near the van tonight. Yeah. Thanks; later.'
'I have the corkscrew,' said Ax.
'Excellent omen. I have the NDogs. We are equipped.' He took a slim lacquer
box from the First Aid, rummaged and selected a handful of poppers.
'You want some straighten out mix, Ax?' He slapped a popper against his
throat. 'Mmmph.'
'What's in it?'
'Adrenalin, mostly.'
'Gimme,' said Ax; and then, 'No, wait.' He was not a hardened NDogs abuser,
and those things could be treacherous. Because Aoxomoxoa does it all the time,
doesn't mean anyone else should try. 'Better not.'
'You sure?'
'Me, Teflon head. I'll stick with what I have, you court cardiac arrest.'
'Okay, if that's the way you want to play it.' 'If you collapse, will your wrist let me get hold of George—?'
'Course it will. It'll probably work for hours even if I'm dead... Ah, no. Hey,
Ax, I didn't say that. Come back. Don't panic, nobody's going to die.'
'I am not panicing.'
'Are you sure you don't want me to straighten you out?'
'I'm sure. What about Olwen? Could you get hold of Olwen quickly?'
The skull looked amazed. 'Why Olwen? What made you think of her?'
'She's a doctor of medicine, isn't she? They have emergency stuff in that tent.
And I think Fio likes her.'
'She was a neurologist, don't know what you'd call her now. Yeah, she's on the
campground. I scream for help, I think she'd come.'
'Okay,' said Ax. 'We're sorted, let's go. Operation serve the princess.'
So this was Sage's van, this battered, pearly-lit, gaffer-taped moon module,
more of a Russian than a NASA ambience. The focus —for quite a while, at the
beginning of all this— of Ax's covert and jealous curiosity. He'd been wrong, he
understood that now. Whatever mystery bound Snow White to the giant space
cadet and his crew, it was not fuck.
The compartment they were in was already, surely, bigger and squarer than
was possible inside a trailer; other spaces beyond, it probably went on forever
back there. The windows were jet black, sheets of obsidian. There was a kitchen
table, counters with lockers over and under them, couches bolted against the
walls. He righted a chair, sat on it and began to roll First Aid spliffs, watching Sage with Fiorinda. He'd taken off her red boots, but she didn't want to take off
the jacket; and indeed it was cool in here. They were muttering about Aztecs and
fat hen, the brass buttons on the sailor jacket, are those things meant to be eagles
or anchors? keep talking to me, she insists, every few seconds.
When he joined them she sipped a little wine from the glass he put to her lips
(her hands were shaking too much for her to hold it); and started to say that she
was better —then suddenly dropped to the floor, fists to her mouth, stifling
tearless, gasping sobs.
Ax on his knees beside her, trying to hold her, 'Fiorinda what is it—?'
'I can't tell you there's nothing to tell please don't be angry, I can't help this—'
'Why would we be angry? No one's angry with you—'
But she was gone, incoherent, struggling like a panicked bird. He had to let
go, he could see the bones through the flesh of her arms and shoulders, so white
and brittle, he was sure he would break something. Sage took over, held her
securely, reached left-handed for one of the poppers he'd laid out, checked the
code and slapped it against the pulse in her throat.
'Don't do that to me!' she screamed, fighting.
'Gimme another.' He took the second popper, did it again. Almost instantly
she relaxed: her head drooped, her eyelids closed.
'What's that?'
'Pro. It's a prostoglandin cocktail: safer than melatonin, it starts a cascade that
puts you under, very gentle, unfortunately it may not last.' 'She hates modern drugs.'
'I know. But I don't keep sleeping pills. Let's get her to bed.'
Sage picked her up and carried her, Ax following, through the van to a room
at the end, and laid her on a bed. They covered her up and left. Back in the
Heads' kitchen, the air seemed filled with after-images of her terrified fluttering.
Sage checked the screen in the white box.
'Did she take anything?'
'Nothing to mention. But you're always testing for things you know about
already. . . I was wondering about those roses.'
'What?'
'Stranger things have happened.' He closed the box, frowning, and self
administered another dose of straighten-up: shook his head at the stinging hit.
'How Muslim are you feeling? Got some Chopin in the freezer.'
'I'll drink.'
They sat at the table, frosted Polish vodka and shot glasses between them.
'Is there any chance he could have been at the gig?'
'Who?'
'Rufus O'Niall.'
'I really don't think so. He definitely wasn't on my guest list.'
O?Niall had given up on the Seychelles. He?d been in Ireland for the past
couple of years, since Dissolutions summer in fact, living in a castle, toying with
the idea of playing the ageing celebrity statesman. Thankfully he'd never taken plunge —not overtly, anyway. He was not someone they had to meet.
'He needn't have been with the Irish VIP party. He could have slipped into
the country privately, and walked in here with the crowds.'
'He'd have been recognised; and anyway why would he do that? Forget it,
Sage. This is about a whole shitload of things that I shouldn't have let happen.
This is not about one sad bastard called Rufus O'Niall.'
'No?'
'Come off it. She's been under incredible strain and she's vulnerable. People
think Fiorinda is hard as nails, they are wrong. She's not heartless, she's
damaged. Sometimes she's like someone walking with broken bones—'
'Agreed. And do you remember how she got to be like that?'
They stared at each other.
'Well, okay,' said Ax at last. 'I admit there are things I'd like to do to him, but
it's no use thinking that way. Nothing is going to change the past. Fiorinda is
who she is. She starts from now. . . Sage,' He didn't like the mask's expression.
'Lay off. As long as he leaves Fiorinda alone, he?s not our business.'
'Is that an order?'
'Oh, for fuck's sake. Listen, as far as the public record is concerned, he didn't do
anything. Nobody sold the story to the tabloids. Okay, in our world no one is in
any doubt of what happened: but that just makes O'Niall a rockstar who fucked
a precocious twelve year old, and thoughtlessly got her pregnant. In our world,
yours and mine, that's not a crime. It is disgusting shit behaviour, but it is not a crime. He didn't know his ex-girlfriend's sister had set him up with his own
daughter. If you want to go after someone, go after Carly Slater —if you can find
her. Fiorinda won't thank you. She doesn't want that stuff dragged up, you know
that's the last thing she wants.'
Sage downed his vodka, refilled the two glasses. 'What about the other
version? The ugly rumour that says he knew she was his daughter, that's why he
was interested, for some fucking reason, and he was the one who screwed Carly
Slater into setting her up?'
'People will say anything, once the dirt starts flying. As you should know.'
'As I should know, yeah, thanks. . . Then who sent the roses? Someone expert
at pushing buttons, evidently. Who knows things we don't know. What if he
likes to jerk her chain, remind her, occasionally, that he is in the picture? I don't
think I can stand for that.'
'You've seen her like this before. Any pink roses or postcards from Ireland
involved?'
'Not that I knew about, but—'
Ax slowly shook his head.
'You think I'm making it up?'
'I think Rufus O'Niall is not another Pigsty. He has a hateful taste for very
young girls, but he is not crazy. He's not going to go obsessing over his own
daughter, when it could make real trouble for him in his new respectable role.
He's a rich, vain, Big Name bastard, with a reputation for bearing a grudge, and he is influential on the government of our most powerful neighbour. I don't need
him for an enemy, I don't want Fiorinda caught in the crossfire. . . and even if I
believed your ugly rumour, I'd feel the same.'
'But you've thought about it.'
'I'm stupid enough. I'd like to avenge my lady's honour, yeah. I've thought
about it, and decided to forget the idea. I advise you to do the same. Let it go.'
'What if I don't want to let it go?'
'I don't know why I'm listening to this. Sage, Fiorinda has had very hard times,
the scars will be with her for life, and I hate myself for letting her get into this
state. But going after O'Niall stinks. It's not on the agenda and it never will be.'
'Okay,' said Sage, after a moment. 'We drop the subject.'
'I knew she was on a knife-edge, after Pigsty—'
'Yeah.'
They sat in silence. Ax watched the beautiful detail of the mask; and looked
around the capsule, mildly curious as to why nothing was floating. Sage filled
their glasses again.
'I could get Allie to run over the Irish party's hotel records, see if any of them
ordered any flowers. If it would make you happy.'
'Nah, leave it. It would be very fucking stupid for us to be caught snooping.'
The skull grimaced horribly. 'What a shit, eh. How low can we go, holdiong our
breath in case the Irish won?t tolerate our eccentric rockstar solution to the CCM.
And decide to send a gunboat. . .You think they enjoyed the show?' 'The Celtic nation VIPs? I think they were keen to check us out. They find the
size of the CCM thing frightening. So do I.'
'Me too. I have terrible visions. What if all the English decide to leave home an'
join your rock and roll band, Ax? All forty million.'
'It won't happen,' said Ax. 'Something worse, weirder and totally unexpected
will happen instead.'
They laughed and shook their heads. Future shock.
'You know,' said Ax. 'I used to wonder a lot why you hadn't jumped on her,
back in Dissolution Summer; spite of the yellow ribbon. You obviously liked her,
and you do jump on women, Sage. You are known for it.'
'Yeah, well. Sometimes even Aoxomoxoa can tell when he's not wanted.'
Soon as he spoke Ax knew he'd been tactless. He had a propensity for doing
this to his friend, saying what should be left unsaid. But Sage didn't seem to have
noticed. The skull's blank eyes were staring sombrely into the middle distance.
'Ah, you're right. Tonight doesn't have to have anything to do with O'Niall. To
Fiorinda, what?s happened to us looks bad enough: this trap closing around her.
Forced to live on when her world?s ended, reduced to the status of a pet
animal—'
'I hate it when she starts that one. That's such nonsense.'
„It's the way she feels, Ax. It's the future she sees.'
They both looked up, sharply. Fiorinda was crying.
The trailer?s master bedroom was dark. Sage touched the wall, raising a little light, and there she was, sobbing desolately, face buried, hair a cloud over the
pillows — she was like a map spread out, a little country sinking into stormy
seas. Ax felt himself grow in scale, he had to be big enough to hold her. He
stretched his arms across the miles, the distances, touched her and folded down
into the middle dimensions again, into human forms, Ax and Fiorinda: lifted the
babe and hugged her, murmuring hey, ssh, I'm here.
Fiorinda stopped crying, stared at him in horror, scrambled to her knees and
backed away. 'Sage! Where's Ax? Help, come quick, Ax is gone—!'
It was all Sage could do, coaxing and pleading, to talk her down this time. Ax
was no help. A moment ago he'd been aware he was seeing himself and Fiorinda
as the land and its defences, harmless brain-candy picture language: now his
control was gone. The Heads? cocktail overwhelmed him, he was the monster,
this demon his darling saw. . . He heard their voices, like the thin piping voices
of strangers, victims, prey—
'hey, hey, none of that, it was just a bad dream-'
'I hate it when nightmares go on when you open your eyes—'
'Yeah, yeah, me too, worst kind. But it's okay, you're in charge. Take over.
You're not going to let a stupid dream push you around.'
'I take over?'
'C'mon, you know you can do it. Now, this is Ax. Give me your hands.'
Ax's eyes were open, but his vision so disturbed he could hardly see. Cold
fingers touched his face. 'Yes,' she whispered, 'This feels right. This is my Ax.' 'Of course it is.'
'I'm sorry Ax.' Her face came into focus, blurred as if by rain, 'Did I frighten
you?'
'Ssh,' said Ax, holding her. 'I'm sorry too. Sorry, Sage. Lost it for a moment.'
They hugged each other, all three: Ax and Fiorinda both of them shaking,
recovering from a near-miss, things that had almost turned very bad. Another
swoop in scale. The wide bed, surrounded by its walls of digital hardware, was
hiding the three of them, they little sparkly software people safe in the depths of
the machine. . .
'Don't give me NDogs again,' said Fiorinda. 'I don't want to be asleep, being
asleep is like being awake only worse. Ax, don't let him do that to me.'
'Ha. You think you're sorted now, don't you, brat. You can go whining to Ax,
any time you think I'm pushing you around. Anytime he pisses you off you're
going to come whining to me. It will probably work too. . . C'mon, if you don't
like being asleep. Back to the kitchen. Drink some wine, smoke some spliff.'
'You won't send me to the whitecoats?'
'We will not send you to the whitecoats.'
'I'm so sorry, I know I'm being a horrible nuisance.'
'Leave that out, stupid brat. You are not a nuisance.'
'I'm all right.'
'I know you are. You have Ax, you have me, we're in the van. Everything real
is good.' They went back to the kitchen: and in some ways things were better after that. But she was not all right. She couldn't or wouldn't tell them what was
going on, they had to give up asking, it upset her too much. She couldn't keep
still. She had to pace up and down, bite her lips, dig her nails into her palms. She
had to talk, incessantly, but could not complete a sentence. She needed to shit,
they both had to go with her and hold her hands. Sage coaxed her into drinking a
pint of dioralyte, because dehydration was obviously one of her problems:
matched her gulp for gulp with the filthy tasting stuff, assuring her he really
didn't mind if she threw up all over him. Then she did throw up; and afterwards
refused even plain water. Ax began to feel sure, deadly certainty, absolutely
immutable, that this wasn't a temporary breakdown. Fiorinda would never come
back. No, worse, this was the real Fiorinda. This thick, bloody spring of
desperation was welling up from the core of of where Fiorinda had always lived.
She had fallen into herself, she would never get out again—
They'd promised they would not to give her any more NDogs. But she was so
distressed, so exhausted they changed their minds and dosed her again, put her
to bed again. Stayed with her this time, talking softly about neutral things.
'That was a very low key set you did.'
'It was meant to be.' Ax wanted a cigarette. His were in his jacket, he had to
make do with one of Sage's Anandas, because she couldn't be left.
'An' you didn't play your Jerusalem. You haven't made some kind of sacrifical
vow about renouncing that solo, have you? Because of Pigsty and all that?'
'Nah,' said Ax. 'I wasn't in the mood. They would've sung along, and I really thought, this afternoon, if they started a singalong, with that or with fucking
„Oats and Beans?, I was going to have to trash my gear.'
'That I would have liked to see.'
Fiorinda stirred and murmured. Sage reached up and touched the wall. The
dim light brightened; she was still sleeping.
'What's that feel like? The ATP?'
'Tiring,' said Sage. 'If you're using it heavily. Very tiring, if you forget what
you're doing. And hungry. But this—' he touched the wall again. 'Feels like
nothing, feels like flipping a switch. The light-propagating gel is doing most of
the work.'
'I've been talking to people about a pilot scheme in housing, in London. But
I've never actually. . . How d'you turn it off?'
'Vary the pressure.' Sage touched the wall, darkness: another touch, light.
'And there's no power-source but your cell metabolism, and we can set this up
anywhere. Beats any other microgeneration I?ve looked into. . . How bright can
you get the light? Could you cook with ATP?'
'Bright as day: I'll show you when she's awake. You can slow cook, haybox
things; same as keep a well-insulated room warm. Piss poor energy audit on
grilling a steak. New housing, or conversion? Conversion wouldn?t be hard, it?s
what I did in here. Move out the furniture, spray on the gel, move back in. The
catch is, anyone who wants to use it has to take the treatment. A tricky concept to
sell to the science-hating CCM.' 'Or to the general public, who are unfortunately getting that way. Collateral
damage. . . I'm thinking about it.'
She slept for twenty minutes: woke crying, accusing them of breach of trust.
They returned to the kitchen and stayed there, fighting Fiorinda's demons.
Sage had to do most of the talking: for Ax, the nightmare was too real. He felt
that they'd agreed on this division of labour. Ax would go down with her, into
the dark, and Sage would keep watch, ride shotgun for them both. Towards
dawn they were together on one of the astronaut berths, Fiorinda wrapped in the
sailor jacket, her head on Ax's shoulder, Sage beside them: bhangra playing
softly, the bass mixed out to a filmy, miles-deep oceanic murmur.
'I hate the idea that evil is essential and complementary,' she said. 'That's what
my gran believes, like a good Pagan. I despise that way of looking at things. I
believe that suffering, passion is the other side of reality, the stuff we have to
respect. Evil is just what sad bastards do.'
'Not important at all,' agreed Sage.
'Important, but contemptible.'
'Okay.'
'But pain is valid. You can tell because when you are inside it, you can live
there. You can get to the place, level, state, don't know what to call it, where it's
breathable. Usually I can do that, but sometimes, like tonight, I daren't.
Sometimes you can't go there, because of horrible things that are lying in wait on
the way. Do you want some more of this, Ax?' 'Thanks,' He took the spliff from her cold, shaking hand.
She stroked the sleeve of her jacket. 'Oh, I meant to tell you. It's not the Titanic,
it's the Battleship Potemkin. This is Tom's stage coat. He likes to be a deserter
from the Potemkin on stage, you know, from the Russian Revolution. In
solidarity with the revolting masses of the fucked-up. We wouldn't let him, last
night. He'd have steamed to death like a pudding. It's written on the hat. Look.'
'If you say so.'
He couldn't read the lettering. But an attack of dyslexia wasn't much to worry
about, after the past few aeons (amazingly, according to his watch, less than four
hours since they left the Leisure Centre), during which he had been utterly
convinced that his darling was going to live the rest of her life insane, in a state of
unreachable terror: and it was all his fault. The Heads? cocktail was bottoming
out, paranoia fading. He wondered what it would have been like, untainted by
mood and circumstance, but he didn't think he'd be trying the same mix again.
The post-Massacre-Night world outside was a hard vacuum. Open space
inside the van was not so bad, but Sage seemed in real danger when he left them:
which he did, occasionally, to fetch essential supplies or whack himself in the
throat with another popper. But he always insisted he would be okay, and he
always came back safe.
At ten in the morning Ax was sound asleep. Sage lay awake on the opposite
couch, unmasked, smoking a cigarette, staring at the ceiling.
Where am I? In Northern Europe, early in Dissolution Year. An Arts Festival with a 'strange
rock music' component, DARK on the line-up with the Heads, and they are all in
the same hotel. I am prowling the Northern Europe Breakfast Buffet, staring,
through the protection of the mask, at the pickled herrings and the smoked
peppers, the cucumber surprise and the chopped beetroot, the heaving platters of
boiled eggs, baked meats, glistening cheeses, my God. At least it?s colourful.
George comes up beside me—
'Well, did you fuck her?'
'No.'
'Does she even know you want to?'
'Hope not. She's not supposed to know.'
The mask his brother Head is wearing doesn't do natural expressions, or it would be
looking between bemused and exasperated. George has no idea what kind of night that
was, and he isn't going to find out from Sage. He can't make out what is going on.
'Now lissen up, Sage. Some day soon she is going to take a fancy to one of those other
blokes, the ones she does fuck because she’s afraid to say no. And then where will you
be?'
I will be here.
Didn't think it could happen. If some other guy takes her away, before she is
ready to say yes to me, I will take her back. How could that be a problem? I'm
Aoxomoxoa, and she belongs to me. How was I to know that the unscrupulous
bastard who would take my baby down, knowing that he did not have her free consent, and make her happy. . . would be Ax?
'Hallo?'
She was standing in the doorway, barefoot, still wearing that grey rag of a
cowgirl dress, and the sailor jacket.
'Ah, Fiorinda.' He sat up, stubbed out the cigarette. 'C'me here.'
'I'm better.'
'I am glad to hear it.' He examined her face. She looked wretched, tallow-pale
and huge shadows under her eyes: but herself again. 'That was a fun-packed few
hours you gave us. What's the name of the Prime Minister?'
'Huh? What's he got to do with it? I'm really sorry, Sage.'
'Don't start that again.'
Ax woke and sat up, combing back strands of fine dark hair with his fingers.
Fiorinda tugged Sage to his feet and pulled him to the other couch, settled herself
between them, smiled at them angelically. 'It's over and I don't want to talk about
it. Except, thank you very much, both of you, and I think you ought to go and get
yourselves some breakfast. You must be sick of the sight of me. I'm going to have
a shower, if the van will let me. I want you to call Allie. Tell her I'm ill in bed,
and she's to please come and read me a storybook. She'll understand. We used to
read to each other in Park Lane, when we were prisoners of the Pig.'
Sage didn't have Allie's direct line stored on his wrist, and none of them could
remember the number. They had to hunt down a phone, the night ravelling up:
parents, Prime Minister and his lovely wife, Fiorinda on stage. . . and then what? Where exactly did we leave things? Sage tracked down Ax's phone in the cab,
came back into the kitchen talking to Allie.
'What do you mean, ill in bed,' she demanded. 'She was all right last night.'
'I'm only saying what I was told to say. Girlcode, I assumed.' . . .'Now the
horrible woman thinks we've been beating you.'
'I heard that, Sage. I don't suppose you keep any books in that overgrown
Tardis?'
'Oooh, shouldn't think so,' he said, looking straight at a clear fronted locker
stacked with ancient hardbacks and paperbacks.
'So there's no point in asking what you have. Shit. Those kids have been
building suspension bridges with my entire library. . . oh, I'll find something.'
Fiorinda had switched the back of the door to the outside world to mirror, and
was staring at herself. 'What a disgusting object. Tell her I've got Tom's jacket.
And his hat.' She headed for the shower. 'And tell her to bring me some clothes.'
'Right. You get all that Allie? Bring the princess some clothes.'
Shortly Allie turned up, exquisitely dressed in a slim cocoa brown sleeveless
shift over matching narrow silk trousers, bearing a smart overnight bag: Allie
with her dislike of Aoxomoxoa well on display, prickly as a cat stepping into a
dog's kennel, and not too pleased with Ax, either. . . Very difficult. Fiorinda
emerged from the shower, wrapped in a bathrobe that belonged to George
Merrick, and rescued them: told them again to go, go.
'You'll want the mask, Sage,' said Ax, stopping him as they were about to walk out the door. 'You look terrible.'
'Oh yeah, forgot.' He peered at his reflection: deathly-pale, bloodless lips,
suffused eyes, lines of fatigue deep as ditches. 'Adrenalin will do that. Thanks.'
Out into the heat and glare. It was shattering.
'Well,' said Ax. 'Another night to remember.'
They stared for a while at the crumpled water butt, and began to walk to the
arena. Green grass, blue sky, colourful campers, noise. It felt like an illusion, a
paper world. Nothing meant anything, except the sense, already acutely
nostalgic, of the immense peril (yet again) that they'd come through together.
'What?' said Sage, 'Why are you looking at me like that?'
'Nothing's wrong. I'm just very, very glad you were there. You were amazing.'
'Don't be nice to me Ax. Anyone's nice to me this morning, I'm gonna burst
into tears.'
'Let's go down the Oz Bar. I'll buy you a steak.'
They went down the Oz Bar, but Sage wasn't happy. He was edgy, fidgeting,
he seemed to have had enough of Ax's company. They'd been there for a few
minutes, steak breakfast hardly touched, when George and Bill came into the
tent. 'Oh, my band!' says Sage, jumps up and makes his escape.
Yeah, thought Ax, watching him go and understanding why. I cut you out,
brother. . . Didn't even know I was doing it, though I did kind of doubt the
brotherly affection story. But it was her choice, and you can't ask me to regret the
way it went. I'll just have to hope you can forgive me, for knowing what I can't help knowing, after last night. But nothing could be a problem, between Sage
and Ax and Fiorinda. The night they'd just spent had been a voyage such as the
legends of friendship are made of. This morning it that Fiorinda had been
fighting demons for all of them: a rite of purification that had finally put the
horrors to rest. The future rushed in on him, (long gone the days when you could
pin down the prospects in a couple of lists). He met the onslaught, exhausted but
positive. Thirty thousand staybehinds on this site alone, insisting on living like
Bangladeshi slumdwellers, and more and more of them all over the country;
where is this going to end? I'll sort it somehow. The project is real now. It's
happening. Better engage with that. 7: Big In Brazil
In mid-May it was Luke Moys' birthday, Luke being the Head who had died of
pneumonia the summer after Dissolution. The Heads held a service in Reading
campground's boneyard: a staybehinds' affair, no outsiders; unless you counted
Chip and Verlaine. Fiorinda was there, ZenSelfers, the Sun Temples (Sage's long
suffering neighbours were a forgiving bunch of hippie tribals); an assortment of
random campers. This was when Sage was fucking Olwen Devi —two weeks
and going strong, record-breaking stuff for Aoxomoxoa (must be the dead clever
Sage, the one who wrote the immersions and built the avatar mask, who was
getting it on with the guru). But Olwen wasn't at the service.
Luke would have been twenty three. He was the only one of the Few and
friends to lie here: Martina Wyatt and Ken Batty, who had died on Massacre
Night, were represented by memorial plaques. The boneyard décor was still raw:
a henge of car body panels, weird camper memorials. No plantings allowed but
native flowers, lovely enough right now; no marble angels as yet. They laid the
stone, (a slice of polished serpentine, about half a metre square) and sat around it
talking. Some grass was smoked, but no alcohol was taken and no other drugs:
the Heads had decided it would not be seemly. At last they sang a few hymns.
Luke had liked hymn tunes. The ZenSelfers were usually reticent about their
musical talent amidst the crap-at-it English, but if Aoxomoxoa was singing with
them that was different. Which he was, because of all the utter balderdash Sage had laid upon the media folk over the years, the one about his grandad and the
Methodist choir was perfectly true. The effect was beautiful, so seductive the
whole crowd was trying to join in by the end. Only Fiorinda held out. She didn't
know the words or the tunes, and had no desire to learn.
The Last Days Of Disco song, „Dear lord and father of mankind. . .? sank to rest.
Luke's cousins and his gran (he had no closer family) left to catch their train. The
close friends of the deceased waited a while in the afternoon sun, to let the
congregation thin out.
'It's getting to be like two complete worlds,' said Verlaine. ' Occupying the
same space.' He pointed with a chewed stalk of grass at the hedge that divided
this raw garden from the Thames. 'Do they know we're real? Are we still real?'
'We were real enough when we put their lights out,? said George.
'I don't like it,' grumbled Bill Trevor. 'This futuristic stuff is getting personal. I
don't want to end up transformed into some crackpot post-human elf.'
George and Cack laughed at him. 'And you're sittin' there with a fuckin' skull
for a head,' jeered Cack. 'Lissen to yourself.'
'Relax Bill,' said the boss. 'We won't change. Doesn't matter what we do to
ourselves, we'll be like Edwardians watching tv. It'll be the next generation, the
kids who never knew any different, who cross the borderline.'
Fiorinda lay in the grass, in tattered green silk over yellow underskirts, a
donkey-eaten wheatstraw hat shading her face: a Countercultural Titania. Two
weeks of sun had turned the skin of her arms and throat an amazing shade of deep fallow gold. 'What's it say on Luke's stone?'
'I rise from sleep,' George translated, 'And leave my dreams behind.'
'But I don't want to leave my dreams behind. Not even the bad ones.'
Sage laughed, hugging her shoulders as they stood up together. 'Hear that?
Fiorinda wants to live forever. Get onto it, someone.'
They began to walk back to the arena, Sage falling into step beside Fiorinda
with his slow, deliberate stride: deliberate, she thought, because he takes it for
granted he's going to be walking down, so to speak, to anyone he's with. Hands
in his pockets. Even masked they must be hidden if possible: tucked in pockets,
into belt-loops, curled into fists.
'I don't want to live forever,' she said. 'I meant, I'll be very pissed off if it turns
out, after all the hassle, that this was only rehearsal, a daydream. Do you believe
in life after death?'
'Not sure.'
'I never did, until my mother died. I wasn't there. She wasn't supposed to die
that night, I'd gone off to lie down. The nurse fetched me but it was too late. I
knew then that. . . she had not stopped being. It was obvious, can't explain why. I
don't exactly believe in another life after this one. Doesn't make sense. But there's
something. Something about time not being what we imagine it is, maybe? That
means death is not what we think, either.'
'It's a topic I'd rather not dwell on. I have killed people, Fiorinda.'
'I know. Let's go down to the river.' They dropped behind the others, crossed a stile in the hedge and found a
place to sit at the water's edge, by the footpath to Banbury. It was a weekday
afternoon. There were boats on the river, people strolling; small children. She
took a painted smokes tin out of her backpack —same shabby, tapestry
compendium she'd been using since before Dissolution— lit a spliff and handed
it to him.
„You want to talk about it?? Neither of them had said anything about that
aspect of the Islamic campaign. Walked out of the soldier-business and shut the
door behind: she'd supposed it was the best way.
'Didn?t bother me. Not as much as it should have done. There was one
occasion, when I had to fight my way.' The skull grimaced. 'Well, one occasion
was seriously unpleasant. Otherwise, it was contact sport. You or me, brother,
nothing personal intended. We couldn't stay back at HQ keeping our hands
clean, so—' He shrugged. 'I'm not a pacifist by nature— '
'No!' Fiorinda gasped and stretched her eyes. 'Gosh, really not?'
'Fuck off. Ax bloody is, though. He has no objection to taking insane risks with
his life, or commiting awesome damage to property. But he hated the killing.
Hated it. Don't know how he hacked it. Went on hacking it, day after day. . . It
was horrible to watch.'
'Well,' said Fiorinda. 'I know about one of his brilliant coping strategies.'
'The smack? He told you, or you just knew?'
'He told me. And he told me how you harrassed him into seeing the error of his ways. Thank you.'
'De nada.'
Fiorinda had found a cache of downy swan feathers, in the shining grass
beside her. She lined them up and started setting them on the water, one by one.
Would the swans belong to Ax, she wondered, when he was President? Or did
they still belong to the ci-devant Royals, absentee swan-lords. But Ax wasn't
going to be President. He preferred a different title, and was holding out for it.
'Is he still saying they have to call him dictator?'
She nodded. 'The suits think he's joking, but he isn't. He?s a jumped-up
outsider who can somehow control a dangerous, violent mass-movement. . . He
knows what they see in him. I think he sees insisting they say it out loud as
making up for the shame of getting democratically elected.'
'Hahaha. . .That didn't feature on any of the lists.'
'Absolutely not. Ax doesn't think much of democracy.'
'It's just a word the masters of the universe like us to use. But trust Ax. Fuck,
why does he keep doing these things to himself?' Sage considered, and rejected, an
itemised list. Might contain some nasty anxieties Fiorinda hadn't thought of.
The company that did Ax's implant had gone bust while they were in
Yorkshire. Ax had said, casually, there go my updates: Sage didn't want to ask
how much he knew about the unpleasant possibilities. He was tired of hearing
about dislocated risk perception, and generally getting out-Aoxomoxoaed by a
soft-spoken, introspective guitar-man. 'I dunno how he gets away with this Mr Sensible tag. I think he's the most perfectly reckless person I have ever met: and
that's counting me and you, brat.'
'So naturally you adore him.'
The skull did a mix of its you beyond belief grin. 'So naturally I adore him.'
Another feather down the stream, with a freight of silvered water drops. 'Sage,
what'll I do with my money? Suddenly I have money. I don't want to give all of it
away, I am not that noble.'
'Ah, now, this is the beauty of hyperinflation. You get a rush of cash, and
suddenly all the vanished goodies reappear. Jet planes, diamonds, fresh fish. You
could hand it over to me an' George, let us play the markets for you.'
'No.'
'Then cash it. Buy something solid. Not gold: real estate.'
'No thanks, I hate the idea. I am no fixed abode. You don't have any property
in your name except your hovel in Cornwall and the van.'
'If ever you have an irate ex after your hide, come to me. I?ll tell you what to
do.'
'She's not still after you, is she?'
'Don't think so. But I've found out that this is the way I like to live. I like my
hovel.You could buy yourself a decent piano.'
'Oh.'
'Sounds good? Then you'd need somewhere to put it.'
'I'm going to move in with Ax.' 'Oh yeah. I knew that.'
Ax was buying a place in Brixton, having turned down all the suits' preferred
candidates for the Presidential Residence. They sat in silence for a while,
listening to the plash of oars; birdsong from the trees on the other bank. Sage
turned to her. 'While you're here,' he said, skull doing something like cautious
speculation. 'Could I look at something?' He picked up the tapestry bag, hefted it
and shook his head sadly. 'Still luggin' your pet rock collection around?'
'It's my bag, do I ever ask you to carry it? What are you looking for?'
'This.' He held the birchwood saltbox in his masked hand. 'I just wondered, do
you ever need to refill it?'
The fallow gold was mantled in carmine: Fiorinda blushing, a rare and lovely
sight. 'Leave me alone, Sage. It's none of your business.'
'So that would be a no, I take it.'
'I don?t know what you?re talking about. Of-of course I refill it, just not often, a
little salt goes a long way, that?s all.'
„Okay, different tack. Can we talk about the way you were the night after the
May concert?'
The lovely blush had faded. She took the box from his hand, and stowed it
away. 'All right, but I can?t remember much. As far as I can tell you, it was like
suddenly, inside, I was somewhere else, best described a tunnel full of monsters. I
had to keep fighting them off, but they came thicker and faster, and I knew that
in the end, if I got past them, there was just a big black hole. But I was in the van, the whole time. That was what scared me most, almost. Two worlds trying to
occupy the same space, like Ver said—?
„It?s dark ahead,? said Sage. „I?m armed, but it?ll do me no good. The horrors
keep leaping out at me, I keep on fighting, but I know that in the end my luck
runs out and I die. Me too. I think everybody?s been having that dream—?
'But I?m the one that crapped herself. Me, the Weakest Link.'
'I don?t think so, Fiorinda. But I think you ought to tell Ax.?
„About a nightmare?' Fiorinda picked at the threadbare, unravelling hem of
her green dress. 'I have told him.' She looked up, scowling. 'Hey, I lost the plot. I
had a panic attack. Is that such a crime?'
He?d pushed her far enough. „Okay, okay. We drop the subject.'
'Some day soon, you'll dive into one of your black holes, and Ax won't like it at
all. He doesn?t have the rockstar tantrum gene, and he won't understand.'
'What black holes? Don't know what you're talking about.'
The skull and Fiorinda pulled hideous faces at each other, and laughed: white
water fishes, kindred spirits of extreme emotion. Fiorinda sighed. 'Sage, how did
we get into this? I do what Ax puts in front of me because I love him: but I don't
believe anyone can change the world, or save it.'
'Dunno.' He drew up his knees, giant pixie style. 'But I've been thinking, about
it. I've decided I was looking for trouble. Some way to go into the desert, find out
what I'm made of; and this glorious opportunity came along.'
'Are you serious?' 'Yeah, why not?'
'Oh, please. One of you with a mystical mission is bad enough. Take it back.
Tell me going to that fatal seminar was just Sage being wilfully bizarre as usual.'
'Of course, now I remember. It was just Sage being wilfully bizarre. Fiorinda, I
really hate it when you do that to me. Why the fuck do you do it?'
She was dismayed. 'I?m sorry, it's a silly game. I'll stop. I just like to hear you
tell me everything's going to be all right. Especially when we both know it's
nonsense.' She ducked her head, hiding under the donkey-eaten straw, not
knowing how to say it without trespassing: I'm going to live with Ax, I'm not
your brat anymore, but I can't bear it if we're not best friends—
'Everything's going to be all right.'
She risked a glance. The skull was looking at her very kindly. Fiorinda smiled.
They got up and walked on, talking about the houses on the other side of the
river, which were being squatted, ravaged, dismantled. Some cases, it couldn't
happen to a nicer bijou riverside residence. Others it was a real shame.
Well, I go this way. She left Sage at the gate to the Travellers' Meadow, and
wandered (catching the occasional nudge and glance, hey, there's Fiorinda: but not
much of that, the campers were too cool). Thinking about Ax Preston and early
days. When was it he read her the lecture on safe sex? Said lecture received by
sixteen year old Fiorinda with indifference and dumb insolence, but she'd had to
agree that if they gave up his precious condoms she'd always use protection with anyone else. Oh, all right. I'll get some of the spray-on stuff Sage uses, that you
don't have to think about. One size fits all, hahaha. . . (But Ax would be a Durex
man until his dying day: such a fogey). It had taken her weeks to realise that he'd
finessed her into going steady.
He's a sneaky bastard.
Oh, it's never going to be easy. It's a relationship full of dead ends and
winding passages, some of them going right back to that twisty, blocked
beginning when I thought he was someone else. Involved is a good word: I can
feel it. I'm involved with him, something different from and more vital, more
permanent than being in love. Even the sex wasn't simple. It could be very
frustrating, when she held him in her arms and knew he was off on another
plane, making love to his china-fragile Fiorinda-of-the-mind. All the more
wonderful though, when it worked right. Fiorinda in the front row, Ax Preston
with the Chosen in some tiny West Country venue, the Crisis Management show
goes on, grimly necessary crowd control: but he looks at her out of the complete
mastery of his playing, such a flash of pure, besotted lust. I ought to yell at you,
I'M NOT A GUITAR, but I can't. Knees are too weak, know what you plan to be
doing minutes, nay seconds, after you get off that stage, and I can't wait—
She walked through the fair: Titania wearing a reminiscent grin of ravishing
sweetness that turned the coolest heads, counting the changes and the survivals.
The wildflowers that the staybehinds had sown, tough pretty weeds in clumps
and skeins, right up to the beaten-earth in front of Red Stage. Anansi's Jamaica Kitchen, the van where she and the Heads used to buy breakfast, gone from its
pitch. Rupert the White Van Man must be on tour. A new climbing wall in Violet
Alley, where the Megazone Circus lived but the karaoke and amateur-night tents
(Bands of the Highly Improbable Future), had vanished. And my hut's gone, she
thought, the one where I lived when I was fighting with Ax last summer. When
Luke was dying, and Sage was so miserable, and I got that letter from Carly—
Beyond Violet Alley rose the eau-de-nil geodesic of the ZenSelf tent.
She came to a halt, pretending to watch the kids on the climbing wall, but the
beautiful smile had faded. She was twelve years' old again, and there was
something terrible growing inside her. Is it worse at the first shock, or is it worse
when it seems as if nothing?s happening, but you know it's still in there, still
growing. . .? Would anything show on a brain scan? An inoperable tumour,
perhaps? Olwen Devi had been trying to get hold of Fiorinda, ever since she
dropped out of the gut-bacteria pilot scheme: but Fiorinda had ignored her
approaches. Trust Olwen? Tell her, what? That I have very weird nightmares
about my father, that I can coax a flame to creep into my hand? Oh, great. Go
straight to rehab, Fiorinda, and don?t take your shoelaces—
And what if I could prove it, what then?
She could not remember ever having refilled the saltbox.
It scared her that Sage seemed to take the idea (what idea, Fiorinda? Care to
put it into words?) seriously: but at least he would never tell. Never trust Sage
when he backs down too easily; but he'd never tell. No, she decided. I did what Sage told me, I took control and I won that round. If ever, for a moment I feel that
I'm not winning, I'll tell Ax and Sage and Olwen Devi the truth, at once.
She turned and quickly walked away.
The weeks after the Mayday concert were incredibly busy. Ax had established
that nobody had dibs on Oltech as a domain name or a trademark, and they were
pursuing that development. Ax's old lady friend Laura Preston had told him
about a scheme she remembered, back in the nineties, where manufacturers and
distributors handed over surplus goods —food, clothes, furniture, anything—
and if you were a worthy cause you could go along to a warehouse and take
what you could carry; for a nominal price. They were looking at scaling up that
idea, trading in surpluses to finance the drop-out hordes welfare schemes. They
sent Fiorinda out with a business plan she'd devised.
Since the May concert, rich entrepreneurs were very willing to meet that wild
cat glamour puss, whatever they thought of the CCM. They met her,
encountered glacial intelligence, and it was a killer combination.
It was Allie who thought of the banners at the gates of the Insanitude: tall
Japanese-style banners, bearing the names and insignia of the Few and
friends:DARK's eclipsed sun, the white-on-black cross of Kernow for the Heads;
ZenSelf's gold infinity-strip figure of eight. Snake Eyes on three pair of dice, held
in the loving-cup of two dark hands. The stone axe which had been the Chosen's
logo since their first album; Chip and Ver's favourite molecule. Those artists and others now eager to get in on the act, could earn the right to have a banner up
there, if they proved themselves useful. Everyone loves a competition—
Ax wanted ZenSelf daughter cells in other campgrounds. He thought this
would be safe. As long as Oltech tinkered with humans, not crops, no animals
were harmed and no fossil fuel employed, he reckoned the CCM masses could be
won over. The anti-science hardcore would be left in peace, denied the oxygen of
argument. Spinning ATP for the general public was a more difficult project.
'Whyn't we tell them it's a cure for obesity,' said Fiorinda; who'd never taken
the treatment, and never would. 'That?s something people really care about. Use
ATP, and you can be svelte as the next hyperactive anorexic giant rockstar,
without compromising your couch potato lifestyle. They'll love it.'
'Oh yeah,' said Ax. Who hadn't taken the treatment either, the fogey, on the
poor grounds that his implant (which no one out there knew existed), and his
being a Muslim, was enough already; plus though he opposed them, he had to
keep the anti-science tendency sweet. 'You know, that might work.'
Everyone laughed. There was a lot of relief-from-strain and escape-from
panic-laughter at these meetings. Fiorinda giggled to herself, head down and
doodling hard. Her bodyguards looked across her shoulders, sharing a grin.
She's fine. Bounced right back from that night of fugue. The babe is magic.
So they were putting up hippie decorations and scrounging, how
Countercultural can you get?: but there was another side to things. Some of the
bad guys who ran protection for London's clubs and venues came knocking, letting it be known that the Insanitude needed to think about its security.
Negotiations ensued, in which Ax let it be known that on the one hand he was
committed to non-violence, but on the other hand he had an army at his back. It
ended in a meeting of bizarre formality, in the Ballroom late one night, barmy
army staff officers in attendance. The gun-crazy gang leaders were thrilled,
feeling so good about themselves that they swore allegiance. For now. How long
will that last? And fucking hell, what are we getting ourselves into?
Shouldn't be driving the car alone. But Ax reckoned he could afford a little
personal transport hypocrisy, for the Rural Rides. Here we are at a miserable
barracks for multi drug resistant TB treatment, in Shaftesbury. The apparatchiks
welcome the rockstar do-gooder (webcam, live global transmission on the cheap,
no actual camera people today). Then he became a paramedic volunteer,
changing bedlinen, administering drugs, cleaning up limp and withered bodies.
They are prisoners until they manage to get non-infectious, but it isn't a big issue.
Many of them are incapable of coping with the world outside.
Here's a guy blind all his life, decades on the road. Touring, crusty-style,
doing a lot of drugs: picked up one day and dumped in here like a sick old dog.
The man has to be cleaned, and his bed changed. They chat, while this gets done:
he's very docile, very apologetic about the stink of piss and the wet sheets.
'No worries. Happens to friends of mine all the time, hazard of getting
smashed, innit.' 'But I've not had a drink.You use yer hands a lot. What d'you do wif 'em?'
'I play guitar.'
'Oh right. In yer spare time, eh? Will yer let us touch yer face, lad?'
The face proffered. 'Where d'you come from?'
'Taunton.'
'But you're coloured, aren't you?'
'Yes.' Wondering how the blind fingers worked that out.
'I c'n 'ear it in yer voice,' said the old man proudly. 'Just very slight. So where
d'you come from origerenally?'
'Oh, originally,' Touching, reflexively, the place where they cut open his skull.
Lift the slack bag of bones, insert arm into fresh pyjama jacket. 'Originally I'm not
human.' Insert other arm, smooth jacket down, lay him back on his pillow. 'My
people came here from a dying world. . .'
He stayed half an hour, sitting on the end of the narrow bed, making up
answers to the old man's questions about his home planet. Took out a cigarette at
one point and was detected instantly. You can't smoke that in 'ere lad. . . Sat rolling
it between his fingers, thinking about that meeting with the London Yardies. Ax
in his best suit —not flash, but luckily impressive enough for the occasion. His
friends ranged around him, including Fiorinda and the Babes. The women had to
be present. That's a vital signal. . . Thinking of Muhammad's diwan, that day in
Yorkshire. Talking smooth and hard, knowing he has to do these things, despair
hammering on the back door, praying to God he can make her understand— Straight up, being good to others is the light relief. It's a rest cure.
Though not, of course, if you do it for nothing without a break at home, or
sixty hours a week in a dump like this; for shit money with no respite. After his
shift he sat in the staff lounge with other volunteers and the regular screws,
(everyone enjoying telling him he couldn't smoke his cigarette) and was asked
How long is the volunteer thing going to last?
I don't know, he said. As long as you all want it to go on.
But is there still a Crisis?
Is there? he asked them. And refused to say more.
After Luke's birthday, the Heads moved in on the Office computer network.
They'd been shocked at the state of affairs they?d discovered, when they got
involved in organising the May concert; and had decided they'd better sort it.
Three days into this operation Sage was in the Insanitude canteen, alone: an
untouched cup of coffee in front of him. Just drifting, thinking about the software
he'd been installing, Allie Marlowe's attitude problem. The tender, gravity
defying undercurve of Fiorinda's breast, held in green silk, as she stood up
beside him in the boneyard—
Benny Preminder came along and said, 'Ah, Sage, I was looking for someone
to consult. Could I have a word with you?'
Benny Prem, the suit that wouldn't die. They wanted to get rid of him but Ax
said, ominously, that it might not be easy. Better work around him, just don?t tell him anything. On the public record Benny had been innocent of any involvement
in the Pigsty coup, and he had friends. So here he was, with his rambling, post
Dissolution Government job-title, Parliamentary Secretary With Responsibility for
Countercultural Liasion, still playing Mr Jones. He'd reinvented his appearence:
lost the flab, grown out that thick, shiny black hair and had it styled, got himself
some sharp threads. Good looking dude, in principle, but repellent.
Sure, anything I can do. Except I was about to leave.
'It's a little problem of etiquette,' Benny explained. 'How to get rid of Albert.'
This was strange enough to be followed up. They crossed the Quadrangle and
into the State Apartments, the night club venue,that gilded bordello staircase
ugly by daylight. It was mid-afternoon, the place was empty. They stood in front
of the statue of Albert, Queen Victoria's consort, with bare legs and what looks
like a marble nappy, seemingly they had an interesting private life, those two. It
was about the only original objet d'art left behind by the Royals. Apparently,
some unnamed people wanted it thrown out.
Benny Prem felt it wasn't cool to dump Albert on a skip. He had alternative
suggestions, and somehow this became a chat about the way Ax keeps giving
Worthy Farm the cold shoulder. Why is Ax so down on Glastonbury?
'Ancient Britons,' explained Sage. „You know about all that.?
'But there wouldn?t be a problem for you, Sage? Being a Celt yourself.'
'Yes there would. I hate 'em, crystal swinging faggots, Bronze Age dikey
matriarchs with their fuckwit psychic powers. Sooner they get wiped out by that organic cholera epidemic they are asking for, the better I will be pleased.'
Benny laughed uneasily, a nostalgic touch from Think Tank days.
The Ancient British Tendency were aggressively anti-science and covertly
white supremacist. They weren?t going to swear allegiance. They wanted a
controlling share of the action and they couldn't be allowed to have it. So what
was going on here?
'You, ah, you don't like the idea of power-sharing?'
'Nah,' sez Sage beginning to get the idea. 'Got to have it all, me.'
They left Albert to his fate and strolled. The former owners had been good
about leaving fixtures and fittings. There were carpets and curtains; even
furniture here and there, left over from when the tourists used to pay a tenner to
trot around. In the Throne Room, Prem decided they would stop. He sat on the
red carpeted steps to the dais, where two frumpy embroidered chairs were still
standing in front of a swag of red curtain.
Sage folded down beside him. Prem started to play, in fun of course, with this
idea of Sage being a Celt, and having such charisma, such a great populist
following; generally being, amusingly enough, so much more like the natural
leader of the CCM. So they went a few rounds, how would Sage like to be the
Duke of Cornwall hahaha, until at last Prem came out far as he was likely to
come, with the remark that if anything were to happen, there'd be no need to
worry about the government. They'd turn a blind eye to a little powershifting
within the funky parallel establishment, long as the CCM was happy. So now I'm Pigsty, thought Sage. Well, well, well. The skull doing cautious,
guilty speculation, with a touch of naively impressed.
Prem (not very flattering, this) seeming readily convinced.
'Uh, this is a good game, Benny. I'm enjoying it. But you've missed out
something. You've missed out. . . yeah, got it: there has to be a reason why I
would do this. Why would I want to be the leader of the CCM? I'm rich an'
famous already, an' I don't need the aggravation. You'll have to think of
something that would turn me on. What would be the inducement? Not that it's a
serious option.'
'All in jest, but suppose I say: you get Fiorinda.'
'Oooh. You're saying you could, er, deliver Fiorinda?'
'Well, all in jest: but I think she'd follow the money. The little lady is a realist.
Remember the murdered children? Frankly, I admire her for it: but the first thing
she saw in that affair was an opportunity for her boyfriend.'
'It's a point of view.'
'But if she didn't er, follow the money, that could be fixed.'
'Really.'
'Hypothetically,' Benny twinkled, a coy smile twitching at his well-cut lips.
Sage began to laugh. Laughed uproariously, overcome with merriment. Prem
sat there, nonplussed, absurdly offended. 'Nah,' said Sage, when he could speak.
'It doesn't appeal.' He leaned forward, 'A piece of advice: you'll have to look
farther afield. You won't get anywhere with the Few. It's not that we're incorruptible, everybody has a price. It's to do with what happened one night,
and I don't believe you're going to get past it.'
The night was Massacre Night, but Prem didn't catch the reference. He?d
probably forgotten the whole thing: politicians will do that.
'I think I've been misunderstood.'
'I think you haven't. Forget it, Benny. Attractive as your offer might otherwise
seem, someone I have to trust has warned me never to trust you.'
'Sage, you're taking this far too seriously,' Benny was smiling, keeping his
temper, 'It was a joke, nothing more. But I'd like to know, who told you not to
trust me? In all fairness, I think you should tell me that.'
'It was Paul Javert. Remember him? Guy who got his head shot off by your
last protege.'
Everyone was out in the gardens. Dilip came into the empty canteen and
found Sage there, the skull looking very glum. He helped himself to a bowl of
salad and some camomile tea, and sat opposite.
'Hey, Sage. What's wrong?'
'I just made an enemy.'
'Around here? You? I can?t think of anyone, aside from Allie.? He grinned.
'Benny Prem.'
'Oh? What did you do?'
'Laughed at him. Over a ridiculous proposal he made to me.'
He recounted the pitch Benny had made: oh, purely in jest. Suppressing the Fiorinda part.
'You think it's serious?'
'Why would he talk like that if not? Yes, I think it's serious, and I shouldn't
have called him on it. Unfortunately the fucker made me lose my temper.'
'What did you say?' Dilip stirred the salad for which he now had no appetite.
Sage rubbed the skull's browbone with his masked fingers. 'I told him I
already have a life, and he should look for a struggling outdated instrumentalist
in need of a part-time job. . . But he might do that. There's no shortage of them
around here; and our friends in the suits can't be trusted. Prem, and whoever is
backing him, offer the Westminster Government a more malleable leader for the
CCM, they?d probably jump at the chance.'
'Fuck. Are you going to tell Ax?'
'Of course I am.'
'I hope he pays attention.'
They both knew Ax would not pay attention. Ax would continue to come and
go as he pleased, drive around alone in that instantly recognisable black Volvo,
park it wherever he liked. Unarmed. No bodyguards. He would go on treating
Benny Prem like a difficult sessions musician with an unlovely personality, who
sadly can?t be fired. Go on living his fearfully public life in this fearfully changed
world as if he was a private person with no enemies, and the date some mythical
year in the early nineteen sixties. Fiorinda needed a new publishing strategy. She'd decided she hated the idea of
being a solo artist, dancers and costume-changes, yuck, disgusting. Playing with
DARK at the May concert had reminded her how much she missed the band,
and in some weird way the aftermath of that concert had made her realise what
she must do. Simple: accept that the band would always belong to Charm, and
convince Charm to take her on again as an associate, songwriter and vocalist. No
control-struggle, no more fist-fights, just sometimes I play with DARK,
sometimes I don't. However, if she was going to do this, she had to detach herself
from lambtonworm.com, the North-East artists' co-op that had brought out both
No Reason, the DARK album, and Fiorinda's solo album, Friction. There was
nothing wrong with lambtonworm, but the co-op was run by Charm Dudley's
best mates, and that wasn't going to work. She had to take her solo work
elsewhere. Production, publishing, marketing, all of that. How do you begin?
Life goes on. Career decisions have to be made. On the night of the twenty
fourth of May she was alone in the new place in Brixton. They had two floors, the
ground floor was going to be studio and offices. There were two more floors
above, flats belonging to other folk. It was late, Ax was playing with the band
somewhere: she was sitting up with a spliff and a bottle of red wine, surrounded
by unpacking debris, secretly plotting. What, me set up my own cyberspace
company? Before she'd tackled the Volunteer Initiative she wouldn't have
dreamed of such a thing: but she?d had to learn. She was more confident with
information technology now. There were plenty of Fiorinda sites (most of them best ignored), and of course
she was on DARKspace, but she'd never had an internet presence of her own.
She still didn't want one. She liked being mysterious, being difficult to access.
Okay, without the web they'd all be either corporate slaves or nowhere. She'd
had that lecture. The Heads, needless to say, had been in this business since it
was born. . . But without exactly yearning to be one of those dreadful corporate
slaves (perish the thought), she couldn't help thinking, surely all this part,
shopfront, sales and marketing, is somebody else's job?
I'm a child of capitalism. I don't want to be Renaissance Girl.
So, find another co-op. But that seemed kind of a wussy option.
She clicked around, looking at SweetTrack. (the Chosen); Tone. the Somerset
artists' outfit started-up by the Preston brothers, now run by other people.
Whitemusic.com, which was the Heads, and Tide. (Sage). Amused by the different
personalities, thinking, I could talk to Chip and Verlaine, or even Shane Preston,
get some advice. NOT Sage. Not the Heads. Couldn't have those heavyweights
taking charge, that would never do. Pity there were no women she could ask. But
the only female nethead in the Counter Cultural Think Tank had been killed on
Massacre Night.
Tiring of the investigation, she sneaked a guilty look at some of the stranger
Fiorinda stuff: and some rather unbalanced DARK/Fiorinda fanpages. Bit
unfortunate for the project of disarming Charm Dudley's resentment. Well, I
can't help it, she thought. I didn't plan to be the fucking Crisis Sweetheart. Benny Prem?s approach to Sage had scared her. Maybe Prem had scared
himself, too. Today at the San, he?d come sidling up to her and asked, 'Fiorinda,
what does PoMo mean? Does that stand for post modern?'
„Black music, lot of people on the stage, lot of four beat melody. It stands for
Post Motown.? She?d returned his trademark uneasy smile, blandly. „That?s an
old name for Detroit. Mo town, Motor Town.?
'I find it difficult to keep the jargon straight, I?m afraid I give offence.'
'Don't worry about it,' she?d said. 'No one expects you to understand.'
No, Benny, there?ll be no repercussions. You just make my flesh creep, same as
you always did. Ax had displayed complete lack of interest in Prem's wooing of
the Cornish Pretender. This casual attitude, my dear Ax, will bear further
discussion. . . But now Fiorinda had crashed.
She wasn't surprised. The internet was always crashing. She wasn't alarmed,
only annoyed, when she found she couldn't shut the screen down. Shook the
remote control, considered throwing it against a wall or dropping it hard onto
the uncarpeted floor. Better not. Finally she unplugged at the wall and booted up
again. Same screen, still frozen. A message in gothic font slowly growing in size.
GOD MUST BE A MUSCOVITE.
Fiorinda got stubborn, and decided to call the Heads, in Battersea. They'd
know about GOD MUST BE A MUSCOVITE, how bad it was and how to fix it.
Unfortunately, her phone wasn't working. Typical. The maisonette didn't have a
landline connection yet, so that was about it. . . She tried a couple of cable channels, to make sure the tv reception wasn't buggered. Normal rubbish.
Went to bed and read a book.
One of the two viruses involved in what happened on the night of the 24th came
out of the Polish Counterculture. Its name was Ivan, it was supposed to attack
Russian sites, as a protest against one of the ongoing Russian Federation wars.
The other was English, she was called Lara, and she meant no harm to anyone,
she was just expert at getting around and exploring places. On the night of the
24th, Lara escaped from a hackers' meet, and she and Ivan got together. Within
minutes, Ivan/Lara had wrecked Euronet leisure-and-reference: had destroyed
huge swathes of big science, research and academia; had been downloaded into
the cellphone system, and was doing appalling scary things like crashing air
traffic control, power-station and water-pumping software.
A few years before the effect would have gone global in no time, but the
internet, or nets, had been re-engineered with exactly this situation in mind.
Between the virtual boundaries of the signatories of the World Internet
Commission there were complex, fractal bulkheads, designed (among other
policing functions) to contain infection. The people of Europe, from Belarus to
Portugal, from Sicily to the Baltic, were the ones who woke up with a real
problem.
Ironically, apparently Ivan never made it into Russian cyberspace.
The English public didn't panic, not even when certain hardliners eagerly claimed responsibility on Gaia?s behalf, and promised Worse To Come. There'd
been so many demon viruses that fizzled out, so many cataclysms that had
turned out to be not so bad (such as the Tour). Emergency preparations went into
gear, but most people assumed it would be over soon.
On the afternoon of the fifth day, Ax went to check how Sage was getting on.
Ax had been helping to nail the myriad ways Ivan/Lara could fuck the
infrastructure of English civilisation: getting to some of them in time, others not.
Thank God the Internet Commission had forced its signatories to maintain a
worst-case scenario drill. At least they had a plan. . . Nothing had been said, but
he was sure the high-powered bureaucrats he was dealing with must know he
had a warehouse implant. Did that matter? He was too tired to think about it.
Sage had been drafted onto the assault team —a European network of
legendary hackers, academic and state security cryptographers, robotics experts;
modern artists, even rockstars. Ax knew very little about this effort, except that
he?d heard one of them say, on a podcast, that Ivan/Lara would be defeated
within ten days, or it would be beyond control. The limit seemed arbitrary, but it
had stuck in the mind. So this was half way.
The Heads' studio was a converted warehouse, right by the river. George
answered the entryphone. Peter and Bill were off on volunteer shifts, the show
must go on. Ax went up to the impossibly cluttered room with the wide
windows overlooking Battersea Reach, where Sage was working on his piece of
the puzzle: Sage with a wireless wrap around his eyes, lying in a big, heavily designed-looking padded chair, a bank of monitor screens in front of him, his
masked hands moving over the boards. He'd been at it for ten hours this session,
George had said: catheter-job, as they called it. But Sage was like that when he
got stuck into something: incapable of taking a break. It wasn't a bad sign.
Ax stood and watched. The first time he'd known there must be something
more than a giant drunken toddler behind the skull-mask, had been when he
noticed (ignorant as he was), the complexity of those immersions. That flood of
weirdly sensual, brain-battering sound and light was built, bit by fucking bit.
Listening to Sage and Peter Stannen talking about what they did: shooting
strings of code at each other, computing the rainbow, could be chilling. It made
you think that this was how Sage handled the skull?s beautiful repertoire of
emotions: shuffling telephone numbers. But it was impressive.
Maybe they?ll sort it, he thought. We could get lucky.
'Hi, rockstar.'
'Hi.'
'How's it going?'
'Have a look.' The masked little finger of Sage?s right hand moved a slide: a
dizzying landscape of hills and valleys appeared on the centre screen, faux-3D: a
cratered plain, an array of glassy smooth volcanic cones, the impression of
immeasurable vastness.
'You any the wiser?' inquired the skull, malignly.
'Something to do with probabilities, statistically preferred solutions.' 'Well done.'
Ax peered at another monitor. 'Who's Theodosius the Dacian?'
'Romanian bloke. We met 'im when we did the East Bloc tour. Computer
artist, good one. He's bonded labour to some division of World Entertainment:
they bought him, they own everything he does, and they do nothing, just sit on
it. . . Is he bitter? Very. He ripped us off. . . can't remember how. Tickets? Venues
that didn't exist?' Skeletal fingers kept tapping keys, shifting slides and toggles,
but the landscape didn't change, that Ax could see. 'George doesn't like him. I got
into a correspondence, never sure whether it was friendly, always, you can fuck
off rich lucky crass no-talent, I'm better than you. . . which you endure because,
you know why. . . And here we are, talking about how to fuck Ivan. He's my
cellmate, him and Arek. You know Arek Wojnar?'
'Music publisher? Shit, yes I do.'
'Also hacker. . . Small world.'
'You're working in a virtual reality?' Ax looked closer at the dizzying
landscape, 'In there?'
'Nah.' The skull kept staring ahead, the wrap around its eyesockets looking
very weird. 'I never had much time for frolicking around in cyberspace dressed
as the Easter Bunny, if we could spare the bandwidth. I wear my mask on the
outside. The machine I'm using is standalone. What you see there is an image of
what my cellmates and I are trying to do, but we're working separately. I prefer
to have their chat as lines of type, it's less irritating. But I can talk to them; and I can send them updates in plain code by cable. For a while longer,'
There was a glowing ball rolling up one of the slopes. As Ax watched, it
slipped back. 'Can you tell me anything I'll understand?'
'Oooh, okay. Look, this is part of a reconstruction of the original Ivan.'
The landscape on the centre screen vanished, replaced by a lot of code.
'Ivan is. . . slow. Polish anti-Russian comment. That's where GOD MUST BE A
MUSCOVITE comes from, in whatever language you're using. Apparently it's a
quote from a letter of Chopin's. . . meaning, God's always on the side of the
bastards. Ivan slows things up a tiny amount, but over a few billion iterations, it
clogs the works. That's what Ivan does. Very simple. What Ivan is, is fucking
outrageously complicated. This is not some plug-the-modules late-capitalist-slacker
conceptual art. This is a class act. The shits who put Ivan together could have got
a fucking nobel prize for this kind of coding. But no, they are hippies. They prefer
to tear things apart. And that's why I'm in on this, by the way. . . there.'
Sage pointed at a section of teeming code, at random for all Ax could tell, with
a virtual finger. 'That's from Morpho. I wrote that.'
The Heads' first album, which had burst on the world like a solar flare, a new
dimension: telling a retro-handicraft guitarist he might as well pack it in. If Ax
had been prepared to listen.
'Oh. So. . . if you wrote it, then you must be able to unwrite it?'
'No such fucking luck. I was a lot cleverer when I was seventeen, and the
Morpho code is back at the dawn of time by now. Precambrian. I haven't a clue.' 'What about Lara? What does she do?'
'Oh, Lara. Bless her. What d'you think she does? She wanders around looking
for things. She jumps, she runs, she can get into impregnable strongholds, and
she is. . . strangely attractive. But you knew that. Lara is also seriously over
determined, extremely complicated: a labour of love. You should be proud of
these people, Ax.' The hands moved with bitter precision, doing something that
made the ball hop around in a wistful way, like a bored toddler. . . 'They are
genuine post-futuristic artisans. We have the guys who wrote Lara on the team,
as you probably heard: couldn't turn themselves in quick enough, and they are
very sorry. They can't help much. She's back at the dawn of time too. Trouble is,
nothing we already thought of works. This is like, chaotic alien molecular biology.
Oh, someone will work it out. Someday. But it?s not going to be me. Other
problem, worse than the weirdness of Ivan/Lara, is the revolution. Trying to
contain a really smart virus, never mind zap it, under pan-European CCM Crisis
conditions, is fucking impossible.'
'So the Lara part sneaks itself into different systems, then the Ivan part slows
things down, and this causes all hell to break loose.'
'You got it.'
The question that Ax had wanted to ask was answered by the skull's bleak
expression, the tired, angry sound of his friend's voice. He sat down anyway,
clearing a stack of immersion storyboard notebooks from a chair: thinking of Yap
Moss, the great comfort of having Sage by his side through that whole ordeal. Wishing he could do something, bewildered that he could not, hoping that by
being here he could offer some support.
After a very few minutes, the astronaut couch swivelled around. Sage pulled
off the eyewrap. The skull wasn't looking friendly. 'Ax, I had a visit this morning
from the Babes. I spent an hour trying to explain quantum cryptography to them.
I don't know why I did that, I am weak and vulnerable. Would you kindly fuck
off. I'm busy.'
'Okay, sorry. I'm leaving. Just one more question.'
'What?'
'Are we winning?'
'No.'
By the seventh day, people were worried. It had even dawned on the Few that
their livelihoods were at stake. Bill came up to the studio to tell him that Sayyid
Muhammad had called for special Friday prayers from all the Faithful. Huh.
Muslims don't argue with God. Think I don't know that? Christian and Hindu
leaders followed suit, not to be outdone. Did no good. Gaia obviously had the
divine intervention angle well closed down.
On the ninth day, they knew they had to give up.
'Hey, Arek. . . Theo. . . Reckon it's time to call Mission Control?'
. . .Way past time, dear Sage. But convince our team leaders. Who likes to
admit defeat? Theo had stopped talking. He sent a poem. The poem said, everything is
fucked, the only thing left is to die with dignity. It didn't seem to Sage like an
over-reaction.
The team-leaders decided to quit about six in the evening.
The morning after the virus-crackers surrendered, four skull-masked Heads
turned up at the Insanitude together. The Few had been there all night. Ax had
been waiting for a summons from the Prime Minister, who would tell him what
the Internet Commission had decided to do. The PM had called at midnight to
say he had no news yet. Nothing since. Everyone was in the Office, drinking
dishwater coffee and staring at the flyeye. Nearly all the cells were blank. Two
were playing kiddie programmes, there was one black and white movie, and a
single French station, reporting with very bad sound from Lyons on some
fearsome street-fighting. The radio news had nothing, either.
'This is ridiculous,' said Verlaine. 'How are we supposed to find out what
happened?'
'Go out and buy a paper?' suggested Chip.
'It's an idea,' said Dilip. 'Are you going to call the PM, Ax?'
He shook his head. „I?ll wait.?
It felt like Pigsty all over again, but the monster they were shackled to this
morning was a bigger killer. The mutated virus had already murdered hundreds
or thousands, directly or indirectly. Left millions more stranded without power or water, destroyed Europe?s e-commerce, slashed billions from the finance
markets. And it was theirs. It would be called theirs. A product of the Green
Revolution, if not the English CCM: wreaking apocalyptic havoc—
George said, 'This network's been offline since well before Ivan/Lara struck.
We're clean. Let's power up and log on, see if we can get out.'
'We can't do that!' protested Allie. 'We'll catch the virus! What do you mean?
Get out of where?'
'Someone hasn't been paying attention,' said Bill Trevor.
'Fucking bizarre,' said Peter Cack Stannen. „And yet she?s a whizz with a
spreadsheet.'
Sage sat at one of the office terminals, powered up, and (with a sour grin for
the Heads) ran the new virus-checker they'd installed. After taking Allie so
severely to task for her appallingly poor security, the Heads and Sage had both
been wiped out within minutes of the strike. Fiorinda must have been among the
last hitters to see them alive. There was no defence against Ivan/Lara.
'Might as well,' said Bill. 'Why not.'
Everyone stood around, praying they wouldn't see GOD MUST BE A
MUSCOVITE.
'Off to Australia,' said Sage. 'Straight from our gate, no changing planes.'
No entry.
'Well, fine. I don't like Australia anyhow. Too many huge blond guys, getting
hammered and falling over things, crap like that. I think I'll go to India.' No.
'Let's go to Russia, watch some war movie—'
No.
'What about China?'
No way into China. Or Africa South, or The West African Union, or United
Islamic-Republics. Or Israel, or ASEAN.
'Shit, this is boring. Shall I try Venezuela? Nah, let's go an' ask the masters of
the universe what the fuck? What kind of way is this to run a communications
business—?'
No entry to North America.
It was the charnel look today, dry and yellow, with the clinging slivers of
flesh. The upper joints of the virtual fingerbones on his right hand were stained
nicotine brown, sly touch. He went on trying and failing, cheerily rattling in the
codes, seeming to take a mordant pleasure in it, until he had covered the whole
wide world. He pushed himself away from the desk.
'That's it. Meltdown. We do not exist.'
'Maybe they just upped the barriers,' suggested Bill.
'You wish.'
'Maybe it's a solar flare,' said Chip. 'It would be like our luck—'
'Not at this latitude,' said Verlaine wisely.
'Maybe it's World War Three-'
'Oh, excellent idea,' The skull turned on her with such a vicious snarl, poor Allie actually jumped backwards. Everyone else involuntarily also moved back.
Sage tapped his wrist. 'Olwen. . . Hi, Olwen. How's Serendip?. . . Thank God
for that. . . Well, I am feeling superstitious. Yeah, we just found out. . .' Silence,
Sage listening, sombrely attentive. At last he said, 'Thanks. Yeah, you too.'
The Office, with its stacks of flyers and acetates, documents and reference
files, everything neater than usual because of the network overhaul, seemed to
watch them as they waited for him to explain. On the wall above his desk was a
cork noticeboard stuck with map pins and messages. A cartoon clipped and put
up by Fiorinda: guitarist bends vampiric over his girlfriend's lovely throat. Think
bubble says: Why! She's got a neck just like my Stratocaster.
A dance beat thumped from the club venue, where life was going on. The San
was established now, it had its deadpan entry in London Listings:
Great system, no dress code, very mixed crowd.
Resident DJ is classic IMMixer DK;
if you really want your brains burned,
must catch Aoxomoxoa and George.
'This time yesterday,' said Sage, 'We thought we could see Ivan/Lara starting
to downscale. We couldn't prove it, and we couldn't take the risk. Today, Olwen
says someone's proved that the virus will fade, soon. It's too late. Ivan/Lara
sneaked into the US somehow, and flared up there yesterday afternoon, Eastern
time. They'll be okay, it's contained, but this made up the Commission's minds to
proceed with the most extreme of the sanctions options. They're building clear water firewalls around Europe, to remain until we have replaced the infected
networks from scratch.Which is not going to happen, the state things are in. So
that's it. We are fucked. The Dark Ages begin here.'
He stood up and put his arms round Allie Marlowe. 'Sorry. Shouldn't have
yelled at you.'
This unprecedented move did not last long. Sage backed off at once, Allie just
nodded, hurriedly, still looking scared. But it confirmed the grim awe of the
situation.
'What does clear water mean, exactly,' said Chip, cautiously. 'In this context?'
'Sudden death. Physical exclusion, besides the software barriers and signal
jamming. Cut the undersea cables, fry the earth stations, police the ionosphere.
They've had two years to watch what's been happening in Europe, and plan for
this kind of disaster. They were ready to go. They've already cut the transatlantic
cables, and zapped Madley and Cobbett Hill. Also Goonhilly, as somebody over
there feared we might raise the dead.'
'Jee-sus. . .' breathed George. 'Can they do that?'
'I just said, they've done it. They're the firemen. They can do what they like.
And since Ivan/Lara has been going around destroying modern civilisation, for a
while at least, wherever it strikes, I don't fucking see how we can blame them.'
'I can't believe it.' whispered Felice, the senior Babe, 'How could things get so
bad, so quickly?'
'It?s one of the high impact, high probabilty losses,' said Ax, wearily. When he spoke they realised that he?d been silent, and that their cyborg was
standing apart, watching them across what suddenly seemed an abyss. Fiorinda
instantly went and put her arms round him. Ax's head went down, face hidden
against her shoulder for a moment. He looked up.
'Welcome to my world, folks. I told you we hadn?t reached the end of the
slide. Remember when you wouldn't let me explain the details?'
They went on staring, some of them looking very weirdly concerned.
'Oh, don't be stupid. What d'you think I'm going to do? Stick a jack in my eye
socket? I will not catch Ivan/Lara. Fuck's sake, let?s get this in proportion. It was
more or less bound to happen, it's not new bad news: and we'll deal with it.'
The phone rang at last. Ax went off, and was gone for hours. Rob and the Babes
went back to Lambeth Road, to bring the household up to speed on the state of
the calamity. The others stayed. The world seemed in suspension. It was like a
metaphysical power-cut, a loss so formless it felt like a physical symptom: a dull
headache, a hangover, a bereavement.
In the afternoon, after the last clubbers had gone home, Fiorinda went looking
for Sage. He was in the ballroom. How strange, if they'd just been bombed back
into the Stone Age, that he was still able to search the fx index, and plant this
huge, ivory-white carved column of coherent light in the middle of the floor.
He was staring at it, arms folded.
'What is that?' 'Trajan's column,' he said, without looking round. 'Scanned from the plaster
cast in the V&A. Amazing, isn't it. Did you know, the Romans had military
technology that wasn't reinvented in the West for fifteen hundred years?
Battlefield medics as good as anything until World War Two. Brock used to be
full of shit like that. Pub quiz answers.'
'Brock?'
'Re-enactment nut, up in Yorkshire. He'll be a happy man today. Those guys
on the losing side are Dacians. Romanians. I think my friend Theo killed himself
last night. Not sure, but I think he did.'
She could feel the pain and anger that surrounded him, pulling him into the
dreadful spiral where nothing is any good. 'Sage, is there anything I can do?'
The skull turned on her a look of cold, final distaste. 'Leave me alone.'
That evening the club was closed. The door police, catering and bar-staff either
didn't turn up or were sent home. The Few and friends gathered in the Bow
Room, where the nightclub chill-out lounge opened onto gardens. No one
wanted to be in the Office, with those Sunspark screens staring like the eyes of
dead animals. Rob and the Babes had returned with a stack of takeaway, the
cartons were scattered around: none of it very appealing but people were eating
anyway. It was something to do. Everybody was longing for Aoxomoxoa to
jump up, saying 'Ah, this is no good!' and make it all right. Not this time. Sage
was sitting in bleak silence, the avatar mask doing fuck off and leave me alone; the other Heads grouped around him in defensive guard.
'We should cut a collaboration,' said Dora, the middle Babe, huddled by the
windows to the terrace; propped against one of the Bow Room's coloured marble
columns. It was summer evening out there, but so cold you looked for frost on
the grass. 'Call it Dead In The Water.'
'What fucks me up,' said Cherry, the youngest babe, 'Is the way it goes on.
One damn thing after another, one damn thing after another.' She was near to
tears. 'It's never going to stop, never going to let up and if I ever have a life again
I?ll be so old I?ll have nothing left to do but spend ten fucking years dying of cancer.'
'It's a tough way to spend the last days of my youth,' agreed Roxane, wryly.
'At my age, catastrophic disasters show up far too clearly in the mirror.'
'You probably won't die of cancer,' Ax told Cherry. 'It was an epidemic, we
brought it on ourselves, it's on the way out. The Green Movement and the price
of oil can share the honours.'
'Gee, thanks Ax. That really helps.'
'Who needs cancer,' said Sage, bitterly, out of his dark distance, 'When we
have fifteen hundred strains of viral pneumonia, and no drugs for any of them.'
Ax had returned from his trip to Downing Street looking haggard. They were
not in trouble. They?d been fools to think they could be. This for certain was not
the moment for the government to be picking a fight with Ax Preston. In every
other way, everything was as bad as it had looked this morning. The Ivan/Lara
devastation went on, and they had been dumped out of the world. Apart from grey areas that didn't count because they were in worse disarray
than Western Europe, the only protest against the sanctions had come from
South America, where a few countries were asserting that they would maintain
some form of data relations. How they would manage this, in defiance of the
Commission and across the firebreaks, remained to be seen: but it was
comforting to know that they'd like to. Ax Preston and the Chosen had always
been mysteriously big in Brazil.
The status of Ireland, where some of the Commissioners had been gathered, in
Dublin, since the Ivan/Lara emergency began; and of Portugal —for different
reasons reckoned clear of infection— was under discussion. Scotland and Wales
were with England, deep in shit.
'Losing the cables and satellites is a fucker,' said Ax. 'But we still have short
wave radio. Olwen picked up the news from the US quite easily, this morning.'
'Whatever "policing the ionosphere" turns out to mean-'
'Look, it isn't so bad. The European finance markets have survived so far,
money is still moving around, which is vital. And there?ll be the Commission's
quarantined satellite link, which we can access; and the multinationals aren't
going to give up and go away—'
'Those that haven't quit Europe already. Along with our US ambassador.'
'This isn't anti-virus hygiene,' said Rob, 'It's punitive.'
'Yeah. And well fucking deserved.'
'Sage,' said Ax, tired of this. 'Can't you think of anything positive to say?' 'No.'
No one was going to say it, but could it be that the reason Aoxomoxoa is so
gutted is because he's the global megabuck earner? A grossly unfair comment,
which was why nobody was saying it: but it hung in the air.
'What really fucks me off,' Sage said now, 'is how many hippie idiots are
triumphant tonight.'
'You're exaggerating. It was an accident, or not an accident, a helpless
consequence of monoculture and system overload. Nobody wanted this.'
'No? Then Gaia is some fucking ace virus author.'
'Don't say that, Sage. Grow up. Conspiracy theory is the last thing we need.'
'Oh, please tell me what I'm supposed to think, Ax. What's the spin? What's
your fucking happy little fantasy this time?'
'I'm not going to pursue this conversation. If you haven't the brains to know
when you're burned out, I can't fucking help you. Go away and get some sleep.'
The skull and Ax glared at each other. Everyone else kept quiet.
'Hmm.' said Sage. 'George.'
'Yeah?' said George, unhappily.
'You remember, few years ago, we discussed having a manager?'
'Uh, yeah.'
'We talked it around, an' we decided we don't need any no-talent parasite
scum telling us what to do. We can run our own lives.'
'I remember,' said Bill, looking hard at the floor. 'Then let's go.'
Up on his feet in one lithe movement. Aoxomoxoa stalked out of the room, the
band following, glancing at Ax apologetically.
'Shit,' said Ax, after a shocked pause.
'Don't go after him,' said Fiorinda. 'It won't do any good.'
'I'm not going to chase after him, I just want to- '
He stood up. They all followed him, in a flurried procession, upstairs and to
the East Wing, to windows that looked down on the Victoria Monument. Then
they saw what Ax had wanted to know. The Heads were cutting down their
banner. George stripped it from its pole, rolled it up and stuffed it under his arm.
There was no one else about, no sign of the nightwatchmen. Four skull-headed
idiots walked off, crossing Buckingham Palace Road.
'I hoped he wouldn't do that,' said Ax. 'Fucking childish. Well, I suppose he
means it.'
The netheads of England decided to hold a rock concert wake. They hired the
McAlpine Stadium in Huddersfield, and naturally invited the Heads to do a set.
They came on stage. Their frontman lasted ten minutes, walked off and did not
come back. Aoxomoxoa, in various altered states, had subjected his band to
many kinds of mayhem, had totalled expensive equipment, their own and other
people's (never on purpose): knocked himself out, broken a wrist, a foot; cracked
ribs, dislocated his shoulder, temporarily blinded himself, sliced open his scalp and played on with the skull mask bathed in blood. This was a first, an appalling
breach of the Ideology. The Wake was not a Crisis Management gig, but Sage's
behaviour was taken by many to mean that the split was permanent.
The Heads returned to Reading campground. Stayed there, incommunicado.
The Chosen stayed in London. Ax took his brother Jordan out, to see if they
could resolve their difficulties. The problem was the same as always. The band
wanted Ax back, and life to be like before. The way it expressed itself was hard
to take in the present situation: You're our brother, why aren't we more important?
They ate together and went to a bar. By eleven Ax was heading back to Brixton,
drained and miserable, Sage's absence walking beside him like a horrible ghost.
Fiorinda had been on at the Academy with Snake Eyes. They'd been running
free concerts there with nightly guests, through Ivan/Lara. She came in at two,
heard the guitar as she plodded upstairs, and knew from the way he was playing
that he was alone. She wasn't surprised. She hadn't expected the alcohol therapy
to work. He put the guitar aside when she walked in.
'Oh well,' he said. 'I hope your show was better than mine.'
Fiorinda shrugged. 'I turned in a performance. Nothing special.'
They sat up in the bedroom, talking. Fiorinda in her midnight blue taffeta,
with the emerald sparkles (Sue Ryder shop in Belgravia, long ago), curled on the
bed; Ax on the floor by her feet. There was no other furniture. Not much else in
the flat, besides a newly-delivered piano, Ax's guitars, and some partly unpacked
boxes. They'd had neither the time nor the heart to think about interior decor. 'I hated my childhood,' said Ax. 'My dad's not violent, have to give him that,
but he battens on people. We'd be penniless, literally: and he'd be down the pub
spending the child benefit. I wanted not to be like him, the way other aspiring
rockstars want the private jet. As blind desperately, probably as stupidly. From
when I was about six years old. The idea of being the man with the guitar:
someone with pride, dignity, a code, righteous standards—'
'The Chosen One,' said Fiorinda.
After that Ballroom parley with the bad guys, she'd had him crying in her
arms, I can't help what's happening to me, I know you hate this, please don't leave me.
And she'd promised him she'd always be there. She lay back, thinking how
trapped they both were, how miserable her future—
'Yeah, right. That's where the megalomania comes from. Getting away from
my slimeball of a father, being that guitar man, taking Jordan and Shane with
me, that's where it all started. Now, I look at Jordan, and I see my dad. He looks
at me, he sees a celebrity, he wants a bigger share of the perks. Where?s his limo
fleet. . .? Did I tell you Milly's pregnant?'
Oooh. 'How pregnant?'
'Bout four months.'
Ax had never talked about his ex, or how he felt about being traded-in for his
hunky no-brain brother. But this was bound to sting. 'Well, it's no use whining to
me,' she said, bracingly. 'I think you're mad to expect anything different.'
'All blood-relationships being poisoned and rotten to the core. Can?t blame you. Your next of kin would frighten the Borgias.' He leaned back and kissed her
bare foot. 'I'm not expecting sympathy, I just feel like whining.You wait til I get
onto racism in the school playgrounds of the rural South West. Another spliff?'
'Yes please.'
No use whining to Sage, either, thought Ax. Fucker used to slide away from
the topic: we drop the subject. Ax had treated his band like kids, so they behaved
like kids. They saw Ax as big daddy the meal-ticket, and it was Ax?s fault, Ax?s
choice. Sage knew it, but he would never say it. But thinking about Sage's
forbearance brought him back to that night in the Bow Room. Aoxomoxoa
baffled, defeated, up against the wall.
God. I could have given him one kind word.
'That's something I admired about Sage,' he said. 'Even when he was plaguing
the life out of me, the bastard. The way he refused to behave like a celebrity.
Something Chrissie Hynde said in an interview once, if you can't sit on a doorstep
in a crowded street eating a slice of pizza, you have lost the game of life. Sage won't let
anyone kick him off that doorstep. Does his circus act, an' drops right back into
the crowd: and I know he doesn't find it as easy as he makes out.'
'He says he loves being famous,' said Fiorinda. 'But he wears a mask.'
'Yeah. I spotted that. . . Ah, shit. How the fuck could he walk out on me, Fio?'
'He didn't mean to hurt you. He'd just had enough. He gets like that. Did you
know, when he went to Parth Galen, after Yorkshire, Mary threatened to ban him
from ever coming back? She said he's made Marlon into a terrorist target, getting involved with you.'
'God. . . .Why didn't he tell me?'
'I suppose because he didn't want you to know. I'll be in trouble if he finds out
I told. If he ever speaks to me again, that is.'
'Well, at least he's got Olwen.'
She went on staring at the ceiling. 'That day we were moping around at the
Insanitude, George told me he thinks the fling is over. Very good friends, better
friends than ever, but it wasn't going to be long term, was it. She and Ellis are
very married, in their peculiar way. And Sage is no breaker-up of happy homes.'
'But if he isn't with Olwen, why's he at Reading?'
'I don't suppose he cares where he is.'
It was nearly daylight. The naked bulb overhead had faded to sickly yellow.
In the unpacking litter on the floor lay a fancy American magazine a month old,
Fiorinda on the cover: Cool Britannia? They don't come cooler, but please don't use the
'B' word! Ax stared at it with eyes too tired to look away. Cinders and ashes.
There'd be no more covers like that. The internet was over, he told himself.
Permanent gridlock. A couple of years' down the line, we'll have something new
and better. Look on this as an opportunity. . . Cinders and ashes.
'Ah, sod it. This is ridiculous. Let's go and dig him out.'
Sage was lying on his bed in the back of the van, which was more or less what
he'd been doing since the Huddersfield gig. . . Chewing on the humiliation of having walked off stage (please tell me I didn't do that); thinking about stupid
things. Why do I have crippled hands? Why do I have a kid whose existence ties
me for life to the corpse of an evil destructive relationship? Why do I have to be in
love with my best friend's girl? Does Ax know about the Flowers for Algernon
scenario? Round and round, down and down, getting nowhere, scraping bone,
the tedium of it worse than failing to crack Ivan. I don't know what to do with
the rest of my life. I just don't know. Thinking of Theo, and the millions who had
really been fucked over by what had happened to the world, despising himself.
He heard people arriving, voices, George saying, 'Come to see the Creature
From The Black Lagoon?'; and didn't move. Fiorinda and Ax walked in.
'Hallo,' said Fiorinda, 'Are you feeling any better?'
'No.'
'Luckily you don't have to do anything except sit in the car,' said Ax. 'Come
on, get up. You're taking us to Cornwall.'
The avatar mask stayed blank. Sage's long body sunken flat into the silver
grey quilt; not a spark of interest. 'You can't go anywhere. You have to help the
government sort the crisis.'
'Fuck'em,' said Ax. 'They'll have to get by. "??? ????? ???? ???????? ??? ??????
??? ?? ????? ????? ???????? ?? ????? ???????? ??? ??????????”?
'What?' said the mask, barely moving.
'It's Ancient Greek,' explained Ax, sitting on the end of the bed. 'Means
something like I didn't get into this shit so I could let down my friends. It's what
Themistocles said to the Athenians, when they were accusing him of cronyism
one time in the Persian wars.'
'Themistocles?' Sage sat up, abruptly, 'What have you been doing, Ax?'
'What's the matter? I've been looking at the freebies that came with my data
chip. I never bothered before, I naturally assumed it was a pile of junk. But it's
good. There's a whole lot of the Greek and Roman stuff, God knows what else.
I've hardly started.'
'You're completely mad,' said Fiorinda. 'Your head will explode.'
'And when you've opened these files,' said Sage, looking at Ax intently, 'they
stay instantly available, in your memory, yes? Have you tried closing them?'
'Well, no, because the only way I know how to do it is with Delete, and I don't
know if Undelete works. I'd hate to lose something I might need. There's stuff
about it in the manual, but it's in gibberish, and anyway who reads manuals?'
'Some people do. You can download, can't you. Would you download a copy
of the manual for me?'
Ax shook his head. 'No,' he said firmly. 'Sorry, but no. This is mine.'
'Okay,' said Sage, reckoning he could surely find what he wanted somewhere
on the nets. Should have thought of it long ago—
But not now—
Ax laughed. It was wonderful to see the mask come alive, mobile and
transparent as ever. 'Better get him out of here. He's just thought of something
else that he can't do.' 'Well, I'll have to talk to George.'
'You don't need to talk to George. Just get in the car.'
'Let him talk to George,' said Fiorinda, resignedly. 'It's quicker in the long run.'
Ax and Fiorinda had started the day very early, but arranging their flight
responsibly (Allie had not been pleased) had taken time, and the long drive was
slower than it had been before the Tour. It was twilight when they reached
Bodmin moor. Ax pulled up in the middle of nowhere. They got out of the car:
the road at this point an unfenced single track, the rising land stretched out, vast
and wild in its small compass, to every horizon. They listened again to what Ax
had heard. A few sheep went on cropping the summer turf, unperturbed.
'That is a wolf, isn't it.'
Sage nodded.
'How many are there?'
'Eleven. Used to be thirteen. One got killed, one decided she was a care in the
community case and kept hustling for scraps round Bodmin. Had to go back to
the reservation.'
'Aren't you afraid they'll kill the panthers, pumas or whatever they are?' said
Fiorinda.
'All those pumas are labradors. The world can spare a few stupid labradors.'
He walked away, into the landscape. After a while they realised they'd better
follow. They found him sitting in a hut circle, stone-age debris half buried in green bracken. They sat on either side of him, leaning against the stones.
Fiorinda looked at the nameless small flowers around her feet; a moss covered
with tiny red-capped stalks; lichens on the boulders like thick, slow spiderwebs.
She thought the moor was like Sage's art: bare and stark on the wide scale, nit
pickingly complex in detail.
'Ax,' said Sage, at last, 'You have to do something about Benny Prem.'
'Problem with that,' said Ax, 'I don't want to get involved in politics. . . All
right, very funny, both of you: go on, laugh. I mean conventional politics.'
'Oh yeah. Like assassination, that kind of conventional.'
'It won't come to that. I'd rather leave him alone, unless he forces me to act.'
'I can't stand him,' said Fiorinda. 'There's a kind of bloke who, the first time
they look at you, their only thought is she wouldn't fuck me, and probably they are
right, but where do they get off? And they instantly hate you for it, and will feel
justified in doing you down, forever afterwards, any spiteful way they possibly
can. Bastards. Huh. All men are scum.' She noticed that they were staring at her.
'What? What's wrong?'
'Except us?' suggested Sage, anxiously.
'Fiorinda, could we have a truce on the battle of the sexes? Just a temporary
truce? It would be a kindness.'
She sighed. 'Ah, okay. Truce while the woods are burning. Or while Sage is
having a nervous breakdown, whichever is shorter.?
They stayed there, listening for wolves but failing to see or hear any further sign of them, until the stars began to show, in a chill sky of robin's egg blue. Then
they drove on.
The cottage was cold. It had been empty since they were down in March.
They'd eaten before they reached the moor (Ax had eaten: Sage and Fiorinda had
stared at some food), so they didn't have to worry about cooking. Fiorinda lit the
fire left set in the living room by Sage's housekeeper. The kindling was damp,
but she used her tinderbox and it caught instantly. She sat back on her heels, the
apple-shape of the box cupped in her palm. The last time they'd been here, the
situation had been like a game in comparison. Relief at being friends with Sage
again was intense, it turned everything around: and changed nothing. She stared
at the young fire, fear crisping her nerves, a thought coming to her unbidden, in
the end, there will be nowhere I can hide. Ax had taken their bags upstairs. He came
back, and headed for the jigsaw cupboard, touching her hair as he passed. Sage
reviewed the archive of black vinyl and other dead media, that filled high
stacked cabinets against the back wall.
'Any requests?'
'Better be nice to him,' said Ax. 'He's having a nervous breakdown, remember.
How about a lovely four hour reel-to-reel Dead concert bootleg, circa 1972?'
'Any more insolence, I'll make you sit through From Anthem To Beauty again.'
They'd been forced to watch From Anthem To Beauty, the video record of the
Grateful Dead's early years, a sacred scripture of the Ideology; in March. 'That
would be fine,' said Ax. 'I have no problem with the fiction. It's the music I can't stand.' He brought the puzzle he'd selected over to the hearth, set it on the jigsaw
board and began sorting out edges. 'I can take the feedback. And even some of
the songs. But that endless futile impro on over-sugared melody-'
'Like yards and yards and yards of pink fondant icing,' agreed Fiorinda, 'The
acid they had in those days must have been sickly stuff.'
'Why don't you put on Aoxomoxoa, Aoxomoxoa?Very Crappest Dead album,
against some tough fucking competition. Did he ever play that for you, Fio?'
'Yes he did. Well, he put it on.'
'What'd'you do?'
'I howled like a dog.'
'You two are sleeping with the slugs.'
'I?ve wondered, with the name: do you really admire that unbelievable shit?'
'That's it. You're under the hedge, you are spider meat, both of you.?
'I think it's the first track of side one that counts,' said Fiorinda. 'Saint Stephen.'
Stephen was Sage's original name. He stalked out of the room, the skull giving
them a blistering glare: returned with a bottle of red wine in each hand. 'Can you
get some glasses from the cupboard, Fee?'
'Sainthood, what a touching aspiration. We all have our little fantasies.'
'Don't we, Oh Chosen One. You can stop being nice to me now, thanks. I feel
much better.' He set down the bottles, and returned to the dead media wall.
Something warm and steely and classical began to play, the reproduction in
stunning contrast to the age of the vinyl. 'What's this?'
'Beethoven, cello and piano. Okay?'
It was a very old jigsaw, a three masted ship under a lot of complex canvas,
the subtle difference between the sails and a faded, cream and golden, rack of
sunset clouds going to be a challenge. They worked on it together, drinking the
wine, Sage and Ax continuing to snipe at each other gently: softly-barbed play
fighting. Fiorinda sat back to get a better look at the pieces, and suddenly, in the
lamplight and the fireglow, she saw them as two animals —as if she'd taken one
of those jungle drugs from South America. Sage stretched out at lazy length,
uttering harmless threats. That growling sound is really the big guy purring. Ax
crouched on one knee, the other leg folded under him, eyes fixed in alert, relaxed
calculation on the prey. This pasteboard world, which he will patiently subdue
into order: sort it, sieze it, run it to the ground. . .
My tiger and my wolf. I wonder what I am to them. Not an animal I think.
More like some vital element, like water or fire.
Or meat.
The next day was still cold, as if the May heatwave had never been. They
spent it as they'd spent their time in March, bickering pleasantly over the chores,
playing computer games in Sage's studio, watching the birds in the garden. They
ventured outdoors once, late in the day, to walk up and down the little river Chy
from the waterfall pool to the stepping stones, but did not leave the twelve acres
of Tyller Pystri, the magic place. Came back to the house to cook together in that inconvenient little kitchen: smoking grass, drinking wine, Fiorinda making
chapatti dough, Ax chopping vegetables (not from Sage's garden: Mrs Maynor,
his housekeeper, had brought them from her husband's allotment); Sage rooting
out a tin of chickpeas. 'Fuck, an actual tin, no ring pull. . . Oh, Ax, reminds me.
Remember the bottle of wine we drank in the van, that night with Fiorinda?'
'No.'
'I'm not surprised,' said Fiorinda. 'You were severely out of it, Ax.'
'Look who's talking. Well, it turns out that was a bottle of wildly expensive
irreplaceable Montrachet, given to George by Laurel last Christmas. (Laurel was
George's wife, the potter). He thought it was safe from me because I hate trying
to use a corkscrew. I told him it was nectar of the gods, and he's happy with that,
so you will back me up? Hey, isn't anyone going to open this for me?'
'Nectar of the gods. Sage, last time we were here I recall trying to take an
antideluvian tin-opener task away from you, and you were at my throat. Said
you fucking come here to get away from being treated like a fucking toddler.'
'Yeah. Sometimes I feel like that. . . Sometimes I don't.'
'And we have to guess,' said Fiorinda. 'Like Russian roulette.'
'Thas' right.'
They ate and settled to a round of Risk, the world domination game. The
usual pattern swiftly emerged, Ax and Fiorinda stockpiling their plastic soldiers
and plotting: Sage playing go for it until you got no armies left. To Ax's annoyance,
this idiotic strategy swept the board as often as any other plan. Honours in the tournament were even.
'Do you wear the masks when no one else is around?' asked Ax. 'Often
wondered.'
'Yeah, we do.'
'Can you tell whether it's on or not? Are you conscious of it?'
'If I think about it. Not usually.'
'So when do you take it off? Are there Head Ideology rules about that? I'm
gonna seize China. Two dice.'
'I have to take it off to sleep: but otherwise, lessee, what else? To shave—'
'Right. Brings us up to about twice a year—'
'Fuck off. As a gesture of respect or to make a point, sometimes; and to fuck.
But even then,' The mask switched, grinning evilly, to the freshly rotted version,
with tiny crawling maggots, '—not always.'
'You don't scare me,' said Fiorinda. 'Do the sicking-up worms. See how Ax
likes it.'
'Ha, the Red Army stands firm. Another throw?'
'Yeah. Why d'you have to take it off to sleep?'
'If I don't, it gives me nightmares.'
'Really?' said Ax, 'That's interesting. My implant gave me horrible nightmares
when I had it done. Literally indescribable. It's a very unpleasant feeling, waking
up terrified from an experience for which you have no words, no images. Went
on for weeks. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Again. . . And once more.' 'The things you do to yourselves,' said Fiorinda. 'You're both insane. You must
be dead clever, Sage, if you can make a mask that will lift your expressions and
copy them in the avatar in realtime. Which we always assume is what it does, at
least, when you want it to.'
'Nah. Building an avatar mask is simple, just obsessive. I could teach you.
Either of you.'
Teach, Ax heard. Now there's an idea. 'China is mine. I'm stopping there, give
me a card.'
'It was my hands that I wanted to hide,' said Sage, unexpectedly. 'Call it
childish if you like, Ax, but I don't enjoy looking at them. The skull was a
natural extension, then we all had to have one, and it became a game, an
addiction. We couldn't give it up now, for business, the punters would never
forgive us. But I won't wear mine any more when I'm with you two, if you don't
want.' And his natural face was there with them: eyes lowered, smiling faintly,
white skin wheat coloured from heatwave doses of NDog sunscreen.
'Oh, but I love the mask,' said Fiorinda.
'Hm.' He grinned. 'Well, I always thought it was an improvement, myself.'
'I know it's not a mask, I know it's you.'
'I don't mind either way,' said Ax, 'It's all Sage's face to me.'
'I?ll quit the mask. Fiorinda, I'm attacking Iceland.'
'Hey, I thought we had a pact of non-aggression.'
'We do, we do. I just have to recover my continent. Look at you two, divvying up the world between you. C'mon, let me have one miserable continent.'
About midnight, Fiorinda said, 'Are we going back tomorrow?'
When she spoke they all looked at the landline phone, on the table by Sage's
bed. Allie had that number, and permission to call if she needed to. It had kept
quiet. They'd had two days of escape. Couldn't really ask for more.
'I suppose we'd better,' said Ax. 'You okay for that, Sage?'
'Oh yeah, since we must.' He sounded surprised. 'Why wouldn't I be?'
'Er. . . you were having a nervous breakdown two days ago.'
'His tantrums are vile,' said Fiorinda. 'But they vanish without trace.You'll get
used to it.'
Sage went to change the record, giving her topnotes of withering scorn and
dire warning, mixed with tender affection: remembered that he was unmasked
and started to laugh. No remote controls, only about four tracks to a side,
listening to black vinyl entailed a lot of getting up and down, kind of like a
religious ceremony. He came back and lay on the couch. Fiorinda and Ax kept on
working at the sailing ship jigsaw, although they weren't going to finish it.
Fiorinda in her venerable green dress, her hair aglow. Ax's guitar-man hands
problem-solving as if with their own inbuilt intelligence. . . Suppose this is it,
Sage thought, watching them. She's mortally afraid of things she can't tell. Ax is
in despair at what's happening to him, but he can't quit. I'm no better off, in my
trivial personal way. The world out there is fucked to scary shit. What if there's no way out, and things only get worse? What if this, now, is the best we?ll ever
have? After a while Fiorinda looked up, and then Ax. Nothing was spoken.
Fiorinda returned to the jigsaw, Ax went to look at the vinyl. The lamplit room was filled with a strange and painful tranquillity. Very bitter, very sweet. 8: Rock The Boat
Strange how much remains unchanged, although the world ended (again) ten
days ago. The tv studio, late night and live: very simple, no fx being layered over
what you see here. The comfy chairs, the presenter: Fiorinda, Aoxomoxoa and
the Heads, and Roxane Smith. Quite a line up. This was a date scheduled before
Ivan/Lara, and postponed. More than half the country still had no tv reception,
but they'd decided to go ahead: it might be a while before the proverbial normal
service was resumed.
The presenter is a rising star called Dian Buckley. Thrilled at having the Heads
—who so rarely did this sort of thing— on her programme, she's unwisely
decided to kick off with questions about the big break. Did you have any idea
that Morpho was going to be so successful?
'No,' says Aoxomoxoa, unhelpfully.
'So, how did you feel. Suddenly, you were eighteen and world famous?'
'Surprised.'
'What about the rest of you, were you surprised?'
'Nah, we knew,' says George Merrick, 'We kept tellin' 'im, but he wouldn't
believe us. He thought the record company would dump us in six months.'
'Whereas what happened was that you decided to dump them. . . and it
turned out to be hard work. Do you now think that was a mistake?'
'We're a live band,' said Sage, ignoring this, 'For what we do, do it best, you
need a volume of space you can saturate and manipulate, and a couple of
hundred sweaty punters. I can't never really see taking our stuff home and sitting there with a wrap round your head.'
'They shouldn't be able to dance. The club IMMix stuff you get now is nothing
like what we started off with—'
'Uncontrollable vomiting and defecation is okay—'
'It?s useless doing the show in a fucking great field,' puts in Peter Stannen.
'But we don't mind taking the money—'
Moving on to the anomalous situation vis a vis Ax Preston and friends.
Fiorinda, now you're the one who's eighteen and famous. Before the virus,
Friction had bumped the Heads from the top of the European album charts, and
you were keeping Ax Preston and the Chosen out of the English singles spot (it's
such a cliche isn't it, teenage girl beats the heavyweights?), with „Stonecold?, the
solo version of a DARK track. How d'you feel about people saying it's only the
Ax effect?'
Huh.
'Gutted,' said Fiorinda cheerfully, and answered some more patronising
questions in the vein of, how does it feel to be the kid sister in the gang? with
good humour. She had a nerve-free indifference to this sort of interrogation that
came of having started when she was fourteen, and so wrapped up in her own
little world she 'did tv' without a thought.
'It's her aerobics video what worries us,' said Aoxomoxoa, leaning back to grin
at the teenage star. 'Once she gets that out, rest of us are totally fucked.'
Okay, but how long can this go on? We can't talk about figures, we have no figures at the moment, but is the Ax effect distorting English music? Every
month since the Deconstruction Tour there?s been a bigger gap opening. Snake
Eyes, DK, the Adjuvants, have seen sales rocketing, non-Few bands are suffering.
Is this getting to be like a Rockstar Totalitarian State, where everyone has to um,
buy Chairman Mao's Little Red Book?
'I don't think you can shoot us for being the latest over-exposed media
sensation,' said Fiorinda. 'It'll pass. We'll be on the scrap heap soon.'
'No one's forcing them to buy the material objects,' Peter Stannen pointed out.
„They could have all our tracks for free if they liked.?
'But isn't there this atmosphere? You have to have a banner up at the Insanitude
gates? Conformity or else—'
'You?d have a point,' said Roxane, 'if the artists were of a different class, or the
music was totalitarian. But when some of the best musicians in the country—'
'Nah, it's the B list that goes for charity work,' Bill reminded everyone dryly.
'Either crap artists, or flagging-career stadium rockers. Not sure which we are—'
'I'd rather be the crap,' growled Sage.
'The Ax effect is the kiss of death,' sighed Fiorinda. 'For a kid like me. Now I'll
never be taken seriously.'
'Let me finish, children,' boomed Rox. 'I repeat, contrary to what happens in
commercial music business, in this case there?s no skullduggery. Some of the best
rock musicians in the country are selling records simply doing what they do.
And even then, most of the money goes back—' But here s/he was vehemently shouted down. The Heads and Fiorinda didn?t
want to talk about where the money goes. Perversely, as if they couldn?t use the
publicity, the Few consistently refused to discuss the Volunteer Initiative, the
Crisis, the reason for the giant free concerts, with music media-folk. It was a
point of honour. The presenter sat smiling in this lively cage of lions: happy,
excited, glad things were getting more relaxed. Moving on. Roxane, as a male to
female transexual, with a bisexual boyfriend, is changing sex the way we change
our clothes still glamorous, still radical—?
'I'm not female,' The doyen of rock critique wore a long gown of teal green
velvet, under a draped, crimson lined jacket, with a sort of flattened, tassled
turban in the same colour scheme: something like Dante in opera make-up.
Crossing one long leg over the other, folding much beringed, sadly aged hands
around one knee, s/he fixed Dian with a look of stern reproof. 'Whatever gave
you that idea, young lady?'
'Oh, well, er,'
'I'm an ex-man. It's a long time ago, but I'm sure I never intended to become a
woman. That wasn't, for me, the object of the exercise.'
'So, how would you define, er, your sexual identity?'
'I believe the object of the exercise was to escape from definition.'
'And d'you think you've achieved that?'
'Who can say? Perhaps I didn?t need to achieve anything. Sexual identity is a
convention that breaks down naturally—behind closed doors, among the rich, among the poor, among artists and their camp-followers. It's a phenomenon that
disappears in any natural society, moral or immoral. Whenever it gets the chance
the Great Divide vanishes, collapses into a fractal mosaic.'
'And do you wish you'd known that—?'
'Thirty years ago? No! I made a personal, innate decision. I'd do it again.'
'Your shape in the mosaic. . . But isn't this just old-fashioned decadence?'
'It?s the way the cards always fall. That should tell us something.'
'What about you, Sage? You're king of the lads, you?ve reportedly said you
hate gays, here you are in this post-futuristic, post-gendered supergroup, have
your opinions mellowed?'
'I don't hate the idea of blokes fucking blokes. It's the gay nation. If it's not
Fascist uniforms it's a shitload of bitchy misogynist wannabes pretendin' they are
girls. Can't stand 'em.'
'Sage! That is so crass!'
'And dikes are as bad. Perpetuating the very structures of oppressive gender
determinism. Why make a secret society of who you fuck?'
'This would be completely different, of course,' mused Fiorinda, 'From four
close male friends habitually going around together dressed up as Hallowe'en
decorations?'
The Heads cheered. 'Let Fio interview 'im, Dian,' shouted George. 'She's up to
'is weight.'
'Ask 'im why he calls hisself a Palindrome, if he don't go both ways-' 'I don't like sex,' announced Peter firmly. 'I've tried it, I don't like it. Sage c'n
have my share.'
'Fiorinda, do you have an opinion—?'
'Me? I'm a phallus-worshipping lesbian. You get those. I read about it.'
'About those masks,' says Dian, after the laughter, 'Do you ever feel trapped
by them? Stuck with something that was a novelty ten years ago?'
'Wouldn't do it now,' agreed George, 'But ten years is a long time. We're set in
our ways.'
'It's true, you see a lot of masks around these days.?
'We only like the skull'eads. We think the rest are crap.'
'Sage, yours is different. Now that's something many people find far more
controversial than unorthodox sex, a non-medical implant. Isn't that unnatural
and scary?'
'Nah. It's a harmless little thing. Look.' Aoxomoxoa popped the masked fifth
finger of his right hand into his mouth, sucked it, held his masked right eye
stretched wide with the left index finger and thumb, deftly inserted the sucked
fingertip into the corner of his eye and—
'Auwk!' squawks Dian, recoiling.
—reaching far inside the eyesocket, brings out a bright, tiny button, resting on
the now unmasked fingertip: offers it to the pretty media person. 'There you go.
Don't drop it.'
She can't take it, can't even look at it— The other skulls have vanished too. This is a startling occasion, the Heads au
naturel: George Merrick looking splendidly piratical, Bill Trevor splendidly
cadaverous, with that elegant hatchet nose, (that's why Bill's skull looks too big,
the mask having to acommodate the nose); Peter solemn and rosy and bucolic,
wearing his glasses for a treat. He hates contact lenses, but the others usually
veto hornrims, even hidden. They tell him it?s not the right message.
'That's why we've never let 'im make us avatar masks,' explains Bill, entirely
sympathising with Dian's reaction. 'Too fuckin' intimate, sticking things in yer
eyes. And gross. But him, he'll try anything weird—'
It has been obvious from the outset that Dian Buckley would not be averse to a
twenty-second dancefloor courtship. Aoxomoxoa unmasked, right next to her, all
blue-eyed, oversized animal magnetism, puts her in a complete tizz, a situation
the bad lad clearly finds most entertaining. (Dian seems to have been forgiven for
daring to talk about Morpho). Now, mask button carefully laid on the table, he's
showing her the wrist implant, letting her feel the other little button set into the
bone behind his ear. Not weird at all, no no no: rockstars always having to stick
different beans in their ears, it gets annoying, this you can programme, makes
life much simpler—
So then Dian tries on George's digital mask, the countercultural market stall
kind, that can be run from a piercing stud, lapel badge, a cufflink, an earring;
controlled on a wristband. No, it doesn't need a battery. Works on ambient. 'You
know,' she says, skull-masked, intrigued, turning her head this way and that as she looked off the set into a monitor. 'I can see this! I can see going down the
supermarket like this, after a heavy night. . .'
'Skull 'ead nation welcomes you,' sez George.
Moving on to the newest of the Heads' rockstar toys, something called ATP,
and that's why there?s a goldfish bowl full of water on the table in front of the
Heads, it is to be used for a demonstration. George takes off his jacket; Sage is
already wearing only a singlet. Bare arms, nothing up their sleeves, they touch
the water for a few seconds and sit back. Dian, gamely playing her Blue Peter
part, confirms the water was cold and is now hot. Wow, it's really hot! Within
seconds it bubbles: it boils.
Can't prove anything on television, but that is amazing!
At the moment, says Sage, that's a party trick. Doesn't make sense to use ATP
to boil an egg, not yet. But we're getting there. He's in disgrace with Olwen Devi
and with Ax, for inciting the staybehinds? weird-science tendency to pump their
weedy hippie systems full of creatine supplement and grape sugar, so they could
do tricks like this. Tonight he restrains himself, leaves George to say a few words
about metabolic energy amplification, the fun of being your own powerhouse.
Sage picks up the mask button on his fingertip, licks it and casually tucks it
back into place. With all the skulls restored, (before Heads fans watching this
start to panic) the technology discussion continues: Rox providing intellectual
comment, Fiorinda deflating the excesses. How near to cost-free these futuristic
tricks can be, in production and in use; how easy on the environment. And (a rare slip into compassion land) the lives that could have been saved when
Ivan/Lara struck, by radically decentralised energy supply—
Hope you're enjoying this, dear manager.
Not too little, not too much. Soon they retired to interview territory, Are you
going to tell us any new cheats to get at the secret stuff on Bleeding Heart? No!
says Sage, laughing. If we told you it wouldn't be secret, would it, explains Peter
patiently.You got to use your initiative. . . Fiorinda, do you do this? Is, um, the
Guinness Book Of Records since1989 inclusive hidden on Friction anywhere? Not
that I know of, says Fiorinda. Whatever shape I am in the mosaic, I do not have
the anorak gene
Curled up in her comfy chair with her boots off, bare toes hidden under
opaline organza skirts, she was thinking: life used to be so simple. There was the
pain, and there was the determination to get even (though she didn?t call it that).
No nerves, no doubts, no question. Every day, even before she met the man who
was her father, a step towards, or a setback on the way to the finest kind of fame.
Fame on her own terms, no grovelling: just by being the best. Now that's gone.
All gone. That arrogant, stupid little girl Fiorinda used to be must see her life in
terms of the people she loves, because there?s nothing else left. So here she sits in
Gulag Europe, playing Ax's game, contemplating this new gestalt. People I love.
Roxane was smiling at her, with such understanding she felt frightened.
The Insanitude intranet was running again: Allie's staff picking up the pieces of their empire, Sage on hand on start-up day to troubleshoot. Fiorinda and Anne
Marie Wing were there too, plus Chip and Verlaine allegedly helping out, in fact
pestering Sage. The Triumvirate soap-watching pair were most intrigued by the
flight to Cornwall. It was a great relief that the three had returned reunited: but
what was behind these tantalising references to slugs, and jigsaws?
'What d'you do when you're there?' asked Verlaine.
'Get a little peace,' Sage unfolded from the board where he'd been sorting out
a problem for one of Allie's people. 'Okay, try that.'
'Thanks, Sage,' said the victim nervously. It's an alarming privilege having
Aoxomoxoa for technical backup. You pray you won't fuck up.
'And war. Ask him what happened in Venezuela,' suggested Fiorinda, from
across the room.
'Vicious brat shafted me,' said Sage, 'that's what happened.' He left the
nervous kid and went to peer at Allie Marlowe's screen.
The tour of the north, promised by Ax and Sage at the end of the Islamic
Campaign, was about to go ahead, and damn the torpedoes. The road show
circus, the Few and friends, illustrious guests, local support, would be zooming
around Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumbria and the North East for a month, through
the start of the Festival season. Then straight into rehearsal for Ax's inauguration
concert at Reading —inauguration, accession, or whatever it was. The suits had
capitulated to his terms, and now wanted this to happen as soon as possible. The
whole thing was a nightmare to organise. But by this time Allie felt she was addicted to nightmare conditions.
'Is that the big date?' asked Sage.
'So far,' She wished people wouldn't look over her shoulder; something she
hated. 'It works for the suits, haven't had a chance to ask Ax yet— '
'You're gonna have to change it. That's the middle of Ramadan.'
'Is Ax really going to observe Ramadan?' asked Chip, coming over.
'Of course,' called Fiorinda. 'No food or drink from sunrise to dark, plus he
plans to take no drugs at any time. No cigarettes. You're all going to meet that
nice Ax Preston's evil twin.' Possibly no sex either, but she didn't think the kids
needed to know that.
'Shit,' muttered Allie. 'In July you'll all be touring. It'll have to be September.'
'You don't have to move it far. Just past Eid il Fitri.'
'But we have to have the full moon,' protested Allie, unexpectedly
sentimental—
'Got to have that fat old moon coming up behind Red Stage.' agreed Verlaine.
'Does it? Oh yeah, suppose it must—'
Now they were all breathing down her neck, all getting into the game. 'You
couldn't have done it on the August full moon anyway,' said Anne-Marie. 'That's
Hungry Ghosts, I'm sure it's inauspicious—'
'You better not clash with the Last Night of the Proms,' said Chip worriedly.
'Can't go to October, that's too near Samhain, very much the wrong message.'
'Ooh, mid-September, isn't Yom Kippur around there? What's the feng-shui on that?'
'That's not helpful, Sage. And Yom Kippur is not at the full moon, thank you
very much.'
What to do about Benny Prem? At the end of a Whitehall meeting Ax attached
himself to the Parliamentary Secretary and strolled with him to his private office.
It was in the building that had been the original home of the Countercultural
Think Tank. The meeting had brought up news from France about Alain Jupette
and his cadre: it seemed as if Alain was trying his version of the Ax effect, pop
culture icons for law and order. In some very French, anti-authority way. So,
what d'you think Benny? Can Mr Miniskirt swing it?
'You mean the Marquis de Corlay?'
Ax grinned. 'Alain has a terrible taste in stage names.'
'I can't get over the way you all know each other,' said Benny wistfully. 'All
you rockstars.'
His office was a nice big room, furnished with taste. He?d looked after himself,
the treacherous slimeball. Ax sat down by the desk. Benny hovered, clearly very
uncomfortable, but seeing no way to escape. 'We don't. It's the way you and Paul
Javert picked out your Think Tank. English rock musicians who'd come to a
seminar like that would be likely to have run into Alain.'
'The natural leaders of the Movement.'
Ax laughed. 'The natural leaders of the CCM were gunned down on Massacre Night. Except for the ones still lurking in the woodwork, resenting me deeply.
The Movement is a political thing. What we are is something different. Listen.'
Thus invited, Benny —not daring to put himself behind his own desk— sat on
another chair.
'We're not their political leaders, we're more like their gods. That's what
rockstars are to their public, Countercultural or otherwise: objects of
superstitious devotion. And most of them are clueless, docile cashcows, getting
well fed and making the priests rich, same as most of all the gods you ever heard
of. Except for the ones who are also criminally insane. It's fair enough. People
choose to worship lumps of wood, they?re only as fooled as they want to be. But
I'm not like that, Benny. Sage isn't like that. Or Fiorinda, or any of the Few.'
He took out a cigarette and offered the packet. Benny shook his head.
'So that's what you're up against,' said Ax, easily. 'A handful of minor deities,
turned out to be real, and effective, and walking among the mortals. It's a
strange situation. Be careful how you mess with it.'
He held the guy's gaze for a good long moment of calm, smiling silence.
'I see,' said Benny.
Ax had been more worried than he'd liked to admit by that approach to Sage.
But he was convinced it was better to leave Prem in place, until he knew what
lay behind it. He felt sure he could romance this guy, poor Benny with his
irrational longing to be one of the gang. Sucker him with a charisma punch, get
him to talk: quite possibly turn him, temporarily at least. Celebrity culture's got to be good for something.
Benny's secretary put his head round the office door. He had some urgent
information from the Internet Commission link, arrived by courier from GCHQ.
Benny took the disk, put it into his new Ivan/Lara checker-box, fed it into his
machine only when it had come up clean, decrypted it and stared at the text. Ax
waited, wondering what now.
'Ax,' said Benny, chummily, looking a bit thrilled (it must be bad). 'You said
losing the internet was something you expected. What would be new bad news?'
Ax shrugged. 'The Black Death?'
'Mmm. I'm to pass this on to you. And the PM will want a meeting, urgently.'
Displaced persons, on the move through Continental Europe, had been a
constant of the last few decades. They were called refugees, asylum seekers,
economic migrants, and sometimes welcomed, sometimes turned back. Crisis
conditions, and the phenomenon of the home-grown drop-out hordes, ought to
have made the problem worse. In fact there?d been a lull since Dissolution: if
only because it was more difficult for anyone to reach this offshore island. There?d
been rumours this happy situation was about to end, that there was a new influx,
mixed origin, coming up the Rhone corridor, and down the Rhine from the east:
collecting numbers from failed internment camps on the way. The news from the
satellite link was that a mass of refugees were preparing to cross the North Sea.
Challenged by virus-free landline, German and Netherlands national authorities confirmed the report, and said they couldn?t help it, they would have to let the
people go. Scandinavia was stuffed, Ireland had its own problems. The European
Parliament was planning to hold an Assizes On Displaced Persons, real soon
now. (Thanks a lot). There was no escape. The nations of mainland Britain were
going to have to deal with this.
Getting down to numbers, the numbers were big. An Armada of over a
hundred vessels was involved: idle passenger ferries, bulk freighters and car
transports that had been lying empty in Rotterdam and Hamburg, stranded by
the collapse of world trade. If it couldn't be halted, the refugee population of
mainland Britain (currently around 300,000) stood to be more than doubled, in a
single month. Approximately three quarters of these people would be at least
nominally Muslim. If they were turned back, there would be hell to pay with the
Islamic community.
If they were allowed to land, dealing with that would be a different hell.
The gentle people, the genuine radicals of the Counter Cultural Movement, came
out on the streets, insisting that the Boat People must not be turned away. Ax
decided to join them, and the Few went with him. By this time nobody in the
country would have expected anything else. Sayyid Muhammad Zayid came out
too, along with other church leaders. It was awkward, and touching, to be with
the sensible-shoes wing of the CCM: peaceful middle-class civil disobediencers,
do-gooders, aid-workers, persons of goodwill. To see them out in such strength. But there was a lot of anger on the streets, directed at these do-gooders: there
were ugly scenes. Better hope the governments of the three nations, in urgent
consultation with their continental partners, managed to secure a compromise.
Emergency preparations got underway, construction workers putting up
instant reception centres. The army had to move into the ports to protect them.
On the eve of the North East tour the Few met around those schoolroom tables.
There wasn't much to discuss. Cohorts from the Volunteer Initiative would
joining the government aid-workers: that was all fixed. The barmy army was
ready to be mobilised, but everyone was wary of that option. Campground
councils, reluctant about offering space and opening themselves to a deluge,
were offering to share their sterling expertise on lo-impact living
'I don't think so,' said Sage. 'Can't believe these DPs are going to be desperate
to know how to swing a crystal, chew their own comfrey leaves—'
'My grandfather's name was Markowitz,' remarked Allie, wearily. 'My
mother's from Hungary. I suppose even Sage's family must have come over with
the —the Beaker People, or something, and displaced someone else—'
'Just nature taking its course,' agreed Dilip. 'My God, I am tired of all this. Why
did that bastard Javert have to pick on me?'
'He didn't,' said Fiorinda.
'Huh?'
'Paul Javert didn't pick anyone, except Pigsty.' She looked around, surprised at their surprise. 'You know he didn't. Paul knew sod-all about rock music.We used
to joke about it, remember: how he should have gone for a team of soap-opera
stars, footballers, conceptual artists, that he could talk to on his own level and
they wouldn't always be giving him an argument.' (Her grasp of the demotic,
thought Sage, has come on wonderful). „Paul bought himself a big fat gun. It was
Allie who recruited us.'
Everyone stared at Allie.
'Oh yeah.' said Sage. 'Shit, you are right. I never thought of it.'
'I suppose it's true,' said Allie, biting her lip, eyes down. 'I'm sorry everyone.'
'Hey, don't apologise! Never had such a glorious time in my life!' Sage cackled
horribly, skull doing an oafish leer. 'I'm so immensely flattered! I had no idea!'
Allie, olive cheeks aflame, was not finding this funny.
'Lay off, Sage,' snapped Fiorinda. 'I?m an idiot, but you can be a bastard. Leave
her alone.'
'Whatever his weight in pounds shillings and ounces,' murmured Chip the
irrepressible, 'He always seems bigger because of his bounces—'
'Forgive me, Allie,' said Sage, dead sober. 'Warped sense of humour.'
'I'm sorry too,' said Fiorinda. 'I wasn't thinking.'
''S' all right,' said Allie. She wiped her eyes. 'I don't know why I'm crying.'
They were all on edge, all burned out.
Fiorinda had taken down the vampire guitarist, and put up a page she'd
pulled from a history textbook in the network library. It showed what had been going on, invisible to the people on the ground, in the fifth century CE, the last
time a European civilisation was falling apart. The broad arrows of displaced
population, sweeping across Europe, bringing on the end of a world. Thanks,
Fiorinda. Most helpful. Ax stared at this cold-equations diagram, from across the
room. What did that? Climate change. Yeah, always that one. Anaerobic bacteria,
dinosaurs, the Roman Empire, us. Dead ironic that this global-warming summer
continued to be dismal as November.
They had no solution, they were back to the original hapless plan, staving off
anarchy with free rock concerts. At least they'd be on the spot. Apparently these
Boat People were convinced they?d be turned away from the south of England.
They were refusing to communicate by radio, but helicopter observers, tracking
the ships as closely as the bad weather allowed, reported they were heading for
the Humber, Teesside and the Tyne. As close as they could get to the Yorkshire
heartland of the Islamic separatists; who had been at war with the rest of the
country until Ax made peace six months ago.
Great. Just great.
'Okay,' he said, 'Tomorrow we're going to have Oltech phones for everyone,
our own virus-free network. They have ATP batteries, new development, so
treatment virgins will be okay; the base stations will be driving around with us.
Voice and text only: but we'll be able to stay in touch. Keep your phone with you
always and keep it switched on. This means you, Fiorinda.'
The telecoms-allergic teen, sitting between her bodyguards as usual, ducked her head and muttered something. Sage poked her in the ribs. 'What was that?
Didn't hear you, brat.'
'I said all right. Okay?'
Ax sighed. 'It's probably going to be fine. Immigration happens, it's natural,
we need it. The numbers'll turn out to be wildly exaggerated and the panic is for
nothing. Let's hope so.'
'And pray,' said Dilip.
That too.
On the 23rd of June the circus rolled north. The first gig, in Sheffield, had its
share of disasters. Aoxomoxoa and the Heads found themselves facing the
packed stadium with no power at all on stage. They coped handsomely, Sage
seeming glad of the chance to wipe his awful crime at the Internet Wake off the
record. Incidents like this were bound to be commonplac, in current conditions;
but they would soon be regarded as minor indeed. Already, on that first night,
they noticed the extraordinary mix in the audience: people of all ages, all classes,
all dress-codes, all shades of Green and otherwise politics. This could have
seemed like a compliment, but it did not. Seemed like a deeply, deeply mistaken
confidence. Sheffield, Doncaster, Leeds, Bradford, York, Hull—
On the 28th the first ships arrived on Humberside: inadequately crewed,
overcrowded, poorly provisioned, battered by heavy seas. Turning them away
would have been a humanitarian disaster. The government chose this moment to announce that negotiations had broken down, and the whole Armada would
have to be accommodated, at least temporarily. Rumour carried this news to the
wide areas where there'd been no internet, no tv or radio, no newsprint for
weeks (not to mention no mains power); and made it sound much worse. A lot of
people were sincerely convinced that the refugees were carrying plague, anny
contact with them deadly. The east coast of England erupted in panic.
The circus had split into two at York, one line-up staying east of the Pennines,
the other heading west —to be reunited at Gateshead Festival, fourth weekend in
July. When things got rough, the eastern tour split again. Ax and the Chosen
stayed on Humberside (at the local authorities' request) for a week of extra gigs.
Fiorinda and DARK, with the Snake Eyes big band, headed north. Fiorinda's
plan for a negotiated peace with Charm Dudley, DARK's frontwoman, had been
interupted by Ivan/Lara: but Charm had agreed on a reunion, for the duration of
this emergency. On the seventh of July DARK rolled into Newcastle on Tyne
with a police escort, through shouting crowds. They'd left Snake Eyes in
Middlesborough, owing to the same sort of situation as in Hull/Immingham.
Fiorinda was playing Pictionary in the back of the tourbus, with Tom and
Cafren and Gauri, and Fil Slattery the drummer. She sat up, listening grimly to
the sound of her own name. Fiorinda, Fiorinda. Fiorinda. Charm, drinking and
yarning with a couple of music press types who had hitched a ride, glanced over,
narrow-eyed. Idiot woman, thought Fiorinda. That's not for me. It's just an angry,
frightened noise. The whole area around the Arena was swarming. There were big screens up
in the Life museum concourse, and under the Redheugh Bridge, for the crowds
who hadn't been able to get inside. The Boat People had reached the Tyne
yesterday. There'd been clashes between soldiers and protestors at the docks,
looting and arson all though Tyne and Wear. . . The situation was not good at all,
and this concert had become a focus, nobody knew quite why: maybe some kind
of refuge, maybe a theatre of violence. The illustrious non-Few guest band
supposed to be headlining had pulled out on safety grounds. The police didn't
want anyone to go on. They wanted to send all these people home.
But that was obviously nonsense.
Charm, aggressively non-star in an eclipsed-sun teeshirt and baggy jeans,
mud-brown dreads tied back with string, stood propping up the dressing room
wall, while Fiorinda was buttoned into the silver and white cowgirl dress (which
had recovered from its experience on the night of the Mayday concert), and had
her hair brushed out. It was the first time Fio'd had a personal minder on tour,
but her dear bodyguards, backed by Allie Marlowe, had insisted. She suspected
the woman had been briefed to prevent her from thumping Charm.
'Your boyfriend's going to get us all killed.'
'He didn't know it would be like this. Anyway, I don't know what you're
complaining about. We're headlining now, and we'll be on the telly. Such telly as
there is. Sounds good to me.'
One of their own security guys put his head round and said, 'We're ready to take you down.' The opened door let in a blurred, thunderous rush of noise:
massed bodies charging the police horses, a rattle of gunfire. At least it sounded
as if it was back towards the station. Cafren's breath hissed through her teeth.
Tom mopped his brow. Sweat dripped from under the rim of the Potemkin cap.
'Jesus, Lenin and Trotsky,' he muttered. 'Is this England?'
Maybe they were being naïve: but surely even the Deconstruction Tour had
been nothing like this, nothing like so bad and poisoned and dangerous—
'This is England,' said Fiorinda. 'This is how it feels. Hey, Tom. Freedom to
flail?' They slapped hands, the six of them, united in scared, sweaty defiance.
Freedom to flail.
'Aw reet hinnies,' said Charm, grinning hard. 'Aw reet, princess. Let's go.'
Fiorinda walked on stage, and picked up her Strat from the piano stool. She
couldn't see much, but the atmosphere was thick with tension. They'd made the
crowd wait. Now she was making them wait again, and she could feel the band
getting uneasy. Ax not here, Sage not here. Rob and the Powerbabes not here.
Well, moral authority isn't something you can argue about. If they decide you've
got it, you've got it. She walked to the front, taking a mic from a stand, the guitar
clutched by the neck. (She looked, on the big screens, like a little girl dangling
her favourite doll by the hair). Thank god, at least no technical meltdowns
tonight. The yelling had stopped. There was almost silence, out in that seething,
spinning void'Hey,' shouted Fiorinda. 'I wasn't born here. I can't hardly speak your
language, Geordies. But it's a small world. I think I'm at least partly human. So
do I stay or do I go, and DO YOU GET THE MESSAGE?'
Without waiting for them to answer, (don't tempt fate) she swung around,
donning the guitar, grinned at Charm, and they plunged together into the
opening chords of „Wholesale?.
And DARK delivered it—
Newcastle Arena (and thereabouts), 7th July: NME reports from the Edge of DARKness
She made us wait, but we don't care. She came up front and gave us a sound telling-off,
and we loved it. She leaps into action, and the crowd explodes in sheer relief because it's
bad and nasty and violent out there, but we're going to be ALL RIGHT NOW. We're in
the engine room right next to the fire and we are fine, we are ecstatic, we are wonderful,
and she's hauling this whole fucking Titanic of a national emergency around by sheer
blackhole radiating female energy. Damn the torpedoes, damn the giant berg of human
flesh that just rammed our island. DARK are brilliant and inspired, all power to DARK,
but Fiorinda is magic tonight, and I'm going to fucking belt the next person that tries to
tell me its the Ax effect. This girl is the music... She shrieks, she wails, she whispers. She
leaps she whirls, she loses the plot and we don't care, we know she'll find it again. She
even, for a brief aberration, lets us know how gorgeous *that voice* can be. Fiorinda for
God! howls the mosh pit, Fiorinda for God! we all join them. She laughs like a hyena
and goes flying into the crowd, caught in a hundred arms, the airborne-cams following
her, she's dancing with us, if you've got tv that works you can see her doing it in your living room: down in our dirt, absolutely without fear, that hair on fire, flashing piston
arms and legs, nothing can harm us now. I swear to God we'd die for her, all fifty
thousand of us here tonight. We'd die for her.
Joe Muldur. On the road with DARK
Ax had been called back south. A huge old RoRo ferry had struggled into
Southampton Water with cholera aboard, in pretty bad conditions. He had to
walk around looking reassuring about that situation; and see how many could be
taken in at the campgrounds, because the government settlement provision
down here was seriously overbooked.
It was the eighteenth of July, and he hadn't managed to speak with Fiorinda
since Newcastle. Things kept happening too fast. The Rock the Boat Tour
(formerly, The Peace Tour) had fragmented, so many calls on them, travel so
difficult, weather abomniable. They were managing to put on some kind of gig
wherever a gig was demanded, or had been promised: best they could do. He
could only catch the reports from afar, awed and terrified by the stunts she was
pulling. Sage, meanwhile, was zooming around on a motorbike being a morale
booster for the barmy army and the real military: which meant zooming,
unarmed, into deadly dangerous fucked up confrontations. So those two were
both giving him sleepless nights, as well as the rest.
The next day he was in London, where the camp in the Park, (dismantled after
Pigsty died), was being put back together. The Armada's numbers were up to the worst estimates, it was a case of packing them in anyhow. He found himself
yelling furiously at Dilip, who had been ordered home from the Western tour
with nervous exhaustion, but had now decided he was fit enough to dig latrines
and run a concert party
'I lived in the Park all Dissolution summer,' the mixmaster protested, angrily.
'Yeah. Most of the time SO FAR OUT OF YOUR TREE you knew not where
you were. When you're half sober I expect you to have more sense. Give me
credit, I know you won't endanger anyone. I don't want you getting sick—'
'I've been seropositive for fifteen years, Ax. It's my problem. I have never
made it anyone else's problem. Just BACK OFF- '
Rain drummed on the canvas, barmies tramped to and fro humping stuff and
banging up partitions, pointless argument was the last thing Ax needed.
'Fuck's sake, give me a break. I?m not insulting you, I'm begging you. Please.
Be my Fiorinda substitute. I can't protect her. Let me keep someone I love safe.'
He collapsed, head in his hands, on a roll of heavy duty bubble wrap.
Dilip sighed, sat down next to him, and put an arm round his shoulders.
'Ax, you are a sneaky bastard. Okay, okay, you win. As always.'
The suits had wanted Ax's advice on whether they should keep quiet about
the cholera. He thought it hardly mattered. Too late now. They should have kept
quiet weeks ago, and let the country discover the size of the problem ship by
ship. People will stand amazing pressure if you increase it gradually.
The whole fucking situation almost made him wish he was a war lord again. But in a week, ten days at most, all the ships should be in. They?d have made
it to the other side without utter disaster, and they could start to shake down.
There was a flexible screen taped up on the canvas wall of the marquee,
showing crisis coverage. (Everyone who had access to working tv watched the
coverage, obsessively). Dilip and Ax sat staring, blank with exhaustion, at
Aoxomoxoa in a studio somewhere, in biker leathers and a black iridescent shirt,
looking like some great oil-mired seabird. A Settlement Centre on fire, bodies
being carried. Fiorinda on the stage at Newcastle, doing „Sparrow Child?, the
new single from Friction that Worm (formerly, lambtonworm.com) had released
this week. Haunting melody, insistent catch, Fiorinda's truly beautiful voice, as
different as possible from anything else on the album: something for the silent
majority. In a moment she'll leap into thrash again, she'll dive into that terrifying
pit, giving herself to the crowd with utter, don't care if I live or die abandon.
Something for the desperate.
The kid is being amazing. She's performing miracles.
Sleeping in doorways, I have been a sparrow child
I was hiding in your city, because your world out there's so wild—
Ax hated that song. He couldn't hear it without seeing a thirteen year old kid
adrift on the streets of London, a dead baby in her arms.But no question it
worked on the punters. We could still win.
If we can just get through this part— Fiorinda got mislaid after a gig DARK did in Scarborough. It was an accident
waiting to happen, so much confusion, someone was bound to get left behind
some time. When she extricated herself from the crowd, hours after the show, the
circus had left without her, and her Oltech phone was on the bus. She teamed up
with a German band called Konigen, from Munich. They?d signed for the tour
expecting something very different from this experience. They'd had the idea
that Ax's England was peace and love man, hippies with beads, but 'this is just like
home,' they said happily. 'This is so familiar!' They'd come over with Medecins
Sans Frontières, part of the Boat People's camp-following: aid workers, rock
bands, disaster-tourists, media folk, some sharing the conditions on the ships,
some using virus-free light aircraft. She drove north with them, drinking hard,
singing „Bohemian Rhapsody? and swapping CCM crisis stories while the sun
came up in bruised glory over the sea. They stopped in Whitby, where the
vampires come from, and couldn't get anything to eat; went on drinking instead.
Fiorinda was speaking German quite well by the time they reached Redcar,
where the gallant Bavarians had business at a reception camp.
They were acquiring hashish, (excellent hashish as it turned out). Fiorinda
walked about in her rainjacket, between rows of instant prefabs huddled in a
stark grey field, looking at the little families in their strange clothes, lot of hard
faced women. Blowing in here like thistledown—
She?d been on a PR visit to one of these places. She hadn't paid attention, the
celeb visitor role was too horrible. Now she was thinking silent majority thoughts, neither paranoid nor compassionate, just stupid: why on earth do you
want to come and live here? You must be out of your minds. But they had come from
places where things were much, much worse.
Who's going to drive them home? No one. This is home.
Before long one of the aid workers came up and said, er, are you Fiorinda?
She admitted she was, because it seemed daft to lie about it, and got them to
try and contact the tour. They couldn't get through, and she couldn't remember
where DARK was supposed to end up tonight. The Bavarians were no use,
they'd abandoned mobile telecoms as a thing of the past. She decided she'd better
get to Gateshead. Konigen were happy to drive her, but it took time: what with
getting lost, and trying to find a callbox that worked, running out of alco fuel (for
the van, not for themselves); and the roads being potholed by Deconstruction
Tour damage, and a couple of detours around trouble.
They reached the circus's camp in Beggar's Wood about seven in the evening.
Konigen took off to visit the Angel of the North. Fiorinda found DARK,
reclaimed her phone, had a stand up fight (verbal) with Charm about whose
fault that had been, and sat outdoors of the catering tent, dazed and miserable,
wondering why Ax didn't call her. The Festival hadn't kicked off yet, but there
were familiar faces and vans around: techies, road crews, Anansi's Jamaica
Kitchen. She'd told everyone to leave her the fuck alone, so everyone was doing
that, or else everyone was too busy anyway—
She was trying to summon up the energy to go and get a shower and change, when a motorbike roared up. Sage jumped off, grabbed her, shook her down for
the phone, switched it on, and started yelling at her furiously. Fiorinda hadn't
realised the phone was switched off, but she was too shattered to respond any
way except by yelling back. She did know how fucking serious things were, she
was not crazy, she knew what she was doing—
'You DO NOT! I only found out you were here because Rob called me, why
the fuck couldn't you call people yourself? You've been out of touch for eighteen
hours. You take off without telling anyone, you won't listen to anyone. Supposing
you run into a firefight, on one of these impromptu walkabouts? Supposing next
time you do one of those fucking stage dives, some overwrought bastard decides
he's going to do Fiorinda, how cool, gets you down and rapes you? Suppose he
starts a fashion-? How are you going to stop them, who's going to be able to reach
you to haul you out—'
'Doesn't sound like a bad idea!' shrieked Fiorinda. 'I'm just a valuable piece of
meat, fair game unless I'm locked away. Obviously you're thinking the same as
this overwrought bastard, and if that's what you think, what do I care who else— '
At this point Rob Nelson managed to get between them, literally holding them
apart, one hand reaching up and planted on Sage's chest, the other hauling on
Fiorinda's shoulder
'Hey, hey, hey! Stop this! Sage, you are being unbelievably tactless! And you-'
The right words failed him. 'You need to eat something. Come on indoors.'
When Sage followed them into the tent, few minutes later, Rob had a plate of chicken, rice and peas in front of her. His arm was around her, (all bones,
shaking with fatigue, it felt like an exhausted little bird he was holding); while
Rupert the White Van Man tried to get her to eat.
Sage sat at the table, big and awkward, skull looking very contrite indeed.
'I'm sorry, Fee. That was horrible. I've just been so scared.'
'You and Ax,' she said, balefully, 'were in Yorkshire for three months. I was as
scared as you've been today, every fucking moment. It's not nice, is it?'
'No, it's not nice.'
His barmy army pager started to bleep. He took it out, read the message.
'Shit. Have to go.'
It seemed as if Fiorinda was angry enough to let him zoom off unforgiven. But
no, she got up with him, biting her lip, saucer-shadowed eyes brimming with
tears, and hugged him fiercely. They stood, locked tight, Sage stooping so the
skull's grin was buried in her red curls, while their friends compassionately
looked elsewhere.
Sage left. Rupert took Fiorinda's spoon, and divided the rice and peas into two
portions. 'Now you eat your food, girl. You eat up that part.'
'I can leave the rest?'
'We'll see.'
Felice came up with a glass of warm milk.
'Rupert,' she said, contemptuously. 'You don' know the first thing. She can't
eat rice, her stomach is all closed up. Here you are, baby. Sip this, I put honey in it. Then I'm gonna sponge you down and put you to bed. No argument.'
Gateshead Festival kicked off the next day, daytrippers and weekenders
streaming in to join the small, hardy contingent of Tyne and Wear staybehinds.
An atmosphere of beleagured triumph prevailed, and a certain northeastern
smugness. Southerner Festival-goers were celebrating Rock the Boat in
contemptible comfort, nowhere near the action; and they didn't have the Few.
And it wasn't even raining. The Western tour arrived; Aoxomoxoa turned up
again. The only name missing was Ax himself, and he was due any time.
About six in the evening Sage was called to the main entrance, where he
found a tall, thirty something, upmarket Mrs Leisurewear waiting for him: firmly
outside of the gates. It was Kay, the younger of his two older sisters.
'Hello Stephen. Don't panic, no one's dead. I'm here because I brought
someone-'
An eleven year old boy stepped out from behind her: not very tall, glossy
black hair combed from a centre parting into two short, silver-bound braids
behind his ears; intricate celtic embroidery blue-inked around his left eye.
'I thought he ought to see you making history. I convinced Mary you'd have a
platoon of heavies to keep off the terrorists: so you'll back me up on that, if she
asks. I'll collect him tomorrow evening. No piercings, no more tattoos, and you'd
better be around when I turn up, and both of you reasonably sober.'
'I don't take drugs!' said the child. 'I—'
'You know I won't talk to that fucking mask. You owe me. See you tomorrow.'
Kay walked off. Marlon came through the gate, offering his wristie to be
tugged with a worldly air. They looked each other over.
The skull grinned sheepishly.
Marlon jumped into his dad's arms.
Gateshead Festival, Saltwell Park, Still Rocking the Boat, stardate 23rd July
text, Joe Muldur; photography, Jeff Scully
The weird thing about the far north is it doesn't get dark. The other weird thing is that
apparently and somewhat eccentrically none of the most famous native rock musicians
at this festival is going up on stage, they're all too tired or some pathetic excuse, and can
think of nothing better to do than wander around aimlessly, rubbernecking the crowd
like a bunch of poncey journalists. Well, we're tired too, but that's not going to stop us
waylaying England's darlings, asking them stupid questions and namedropping about
it. We are not fucking quitters. Encountering Aoxomoxoa in the backstage carpark, we
took him severely to task over the lack of any Few input: but (levitating about three
metres into the air and gently settling, cross-legged, on the shining bonnet of our rival
organ's arctic safari jeep) he would do nothing but kvetch about the price of some item
of personal decor that a certain Marlon Williams has been trying to chisel out of his
unspeakably stingy and puritanical dad. Fully expecting to be killed, skinned and eaten,
in no particular order, by big-biceped dikey DARK fans tanked up on newkie brown
and that bad old cannabis resin, we ventured into the arena, where we signally failed to score any of the legendary solids, but ran into Ax, and very politely asked him when we
could expect the Chosen to perform. 'I'm not talking to you fuckers,' sez the great man.
'You think I've forgotten the way you wankers always took the part of that shite
Aoxomoxoa and printed his bastard disgusting puerile letters well I have not and you
can go and fuck yourselves,' We pointed out, taking editorial responsibility, that 'we'
would have been happy to print Mr Preston's disgusting letters, were he not above such
things. 'Didn't you hear me,' he replied, 'I said fuck off and fuck yourselves. Oh, and
have you seen Sage anywhere. I need him to hold Fiorinda down, so I can brush her
hair. She hasn't let anyone touch it for a week and it is a disgrace.' Holding the nation's
glamour puss down while her boyfriend makes her scream and bite sounded like a good
gig to us, but we're a bit scared of Fiorinda, so we directed him to the carpark and off he
wended, clutching his little black Denman* (*a kind of hairbrush). About ten pm the sun
was still coyly refusing to go down on the horizon. Netherlander ladies Dalkon Shield
(or something?) offered matronising congratulations from the stage, in embarrassingly
good English, on us not having massacred too many Boat People, and got soundly
canned for their insolence. We gave up on the lineup and repaired to the dance tent,
where we discovered Fiorinda, lying around doing nothing in the company of some
strange Bavarians, and asked her does she think Ax will ever, *ever* forgive us for
calling him Captain Sensible that time. 'I shouldn't think so.' was her callous response.
'You could try giving him a whole lot of money. That sometimes works.'
'Hi rockstar.'
'Hi, other rockstar. Where's Marlon?' 'Asleep in the van. Where's Fio?'
'Asleep. . . They've got no stamina, the youth of today.'
It was about three am. The arena was still gently hopping, the cool northern
darkness laced with music and light, smoke and flame, colour and moving
bodies. They fell into step together. 'How was the Western Front?'
'Oooh, quiet. Dunno why you're asking me. I was hardly there, I spent the
whole time schmoozing with the generals. You'll have to ask my shadow.'
'Where are you heading now?'
'Nowhere special. You?'
'Somewhere where I don't have to talk fucking Desperanto no more.'
'They all speak English, Ax. It is de rigeur.'
'I know, but I am too proud to let 'em. I have to give them my useless rock
tour German, and worse Dutch, and have them be embarrassingly polite about it.
Let's see if the backstage bar's still open.'
The next day the weather cut up rough again. Two ancient car transporters failed
to make the mouth of the Tyne, and spent the day wallowing out at sea.
Attempts to helicopter-lift the most vulnerable passengers had to be abandoned.
The ships were foundering. It was decided (they'd given up their radio silence)
that they would try to beach themselves at South Shields.
Ax got a call from Tyne and Wear police. They believed that the British
Resistance Movement was planning some last-ditch violent protest against the Boat People. So Ax went with the cops to a house in Gateshead, a brick terraced
house painted all over with Union Jacks, arriving casually and unnanounced for
a chat with a bunch of suspected terrorists. He didn't suppose this would achieve
anything, but it?s always good to do the police a favour. The terrorists were a
couple of defeated middle-aged blokes and three male teenagers, likewise. He sat
with them in an upstairs room, a boy's bedroom full of football posters, instant
food cartons, model kits; smelling of socks and damp. They were thrilled, in their
but I'm as good as you, mind Northern way, to meet Ax Preston. But he could
hardly understand their accent, and getting them to talk would take a fuck of a
lot more than one surprise celebrity visit. He knew afterwards he'd seen
something in the room that bothered him, but he didn't know what.
Gateshead Festival fought bravely to its conclusion, through the foul weather.
The circus took off south, leaving Ax and the Chosen, Fiorinda and DARK
behind. They'd meet again on Humberside, where the big final Rock the Boat
event was due to be held in a few days' time. The car transporters had managed
to beach, with the help of the coastguard and the navy. DARK were booked to go
down in the morning with governement aid workers, and greet the refugees for
the media folk.
Everyone was staying in the Copthorne in Newcastle, clogging up the bathtub
drains with Gateshead mud and a month's accumulated general filth. The band
ate breakfast together in the restaurant at an early hour: Fiorinda back in DARK
mode, having left Ax warm, sleepy and just-fucked in that big soft bed. It had been very odd over the weekend, being with Ax and having DARK around at the
same time.
Tom Okopie the bassist, inveterately rounded, was getting teased because he
had managed to put on weight over the last weeks. Anxiety, said Tom. Nah,
Tom, said the band. Admit it, you like fetid ancient butties and coagulated pizza.
You are a tour-food perv. Cafren Free, rhythm guitar, with the limp blonde hair
and milky skin, our English rose. Gauri the keyboards queen, Filomena the
drummer. Tom and Cafren, Gauri and Fil, (this raw, rebel band is ludicrously
domestic); Fiorinda and Charm . . . the odd couple. Cafren had confessed, over
the weekend, that she thought she was pregnant. Charm was determined that
Cafren simply had an upset stomach, Fiorinda said why don't you do a test?
'I don't want to,' said Cafren. 'I want to be pregnant but I don't want to know.'
Well, this makes perfect sense.
Their drivers arrived. They crossed the estuary; reached the Boat People
welfare circus on the seafront at South Shields, and did some talking there for
camera. The storm had blown itself out. The sun was bright, the sea glittering
under a clear sky. The white strand looked magically empty, only missing the
coconut palms, hohoho. But for a change it was genuinely warm. Cafren and
Fiorinda got in the front of their vehicle, the coats and a heap of medical supplies
in the back. Tom was in the next jeep with a couple of reporters, Charm and
Gauri and Fil coming along behind. They bounced along track laid over the sand
to the car transporters: lying there like dead whales, tethered by taut cable. The regular army driver, ethnic Asian with a Midlands accent, wasn?t very
sympathetic towards Boat People. He said he didn't mind protecting them and
he didn't think they should have been turned away, but 'they're not immigrants,
Fiorinda. Immigrants are different. These muckers don't want to be here, they
have no ties here, no plans, they're just after—'
'Any port in a storm,' said Cafren, peeling windblown hair out of her mouth. It
was warm, but breezy for an open-topped jeep ride.
'Yeah, I hear you. They reckoned they got no choice. But— '
The Chosen and their manager, the crews, media folk, ate a later breakfast in the
Copthorne restaurant, a majestic view of the Tyne through the big windows
(which, being at the back of the building, had escaped street-fighting damage).
Ax, sitting with manager Kit Minnitt and the lovely Dian Buckley, noticed that
he had a definite entourage going on. Should make Jordan happy he thought,
without rancour. The brothers were getting on much better since Ax had been
forced to depend on Jordan to get the Chosen through this tour, scratch up a
guitarist when Ax was called away; generally run the band.
'What's your proudest achievement of the Rock the Boat tour?'
Ax did not approve of media folk at mealtimes, but it couldn't be helped
'I'm very proud I haven?t had my drummer vomit on me- '
'That's unjustified, Ax,' shouted Milly, from the next table. 'I haven't thrown
up for weeks. It?s your fucking nephew's fault anyway, not mine—' What had they achieved? Disaster had seemed hideously likely. Militarised
Islam on one side: Recalcitrant British Resistance on the other, in evil alliance
with the Counterculture's nihilists. The whole north country awash with leftover
armaments from the Islamic campaign, and a mass of have-nots, genuinely
threatened by the invasion, right on the spot. Had the country been about to
collapse into civil war, until the situation was saved by rock and roll? We?ll never
know, he thought. Like all of this, we?ll never know. Maybe we made a
difference, maybe we didn't.
It didn't hurt for the future of the project, however, that a heavy proportion of
the forty million seemed convinced that the so-called Rock and Roll Reich had
saved everyone's necks. Again.
But who was financing the British Resistance? Ax and Mohammad Zayid were
near to proving that certain Islamic Yorkshire businessmen were involved, men
who had access to those left over armaments, and no desire for a massive influx
of destitute co-religionists. What to do about that investigation? Pursue it? Drop
it? Sometimes the truth is going to do no one any good.
He poured himself another cup of coffee, and glanced at the tv screen showing
DARK on the beach. Thinking about those defeated blokes in their back
bedroom, pawns in the game. . . Suddenly he saw, the image jumping at him like
a shape in a nightmare, that room again, and the thing that had worried him. A
cracked plastic sports bag under the bed, glimpse of camo-cased hardware
inside, one of the blokes pokes the bag out of sight with his foot, hopeless little tidying-up gesture. . . Mouth dry, heart thumping, he tried to convince himself
he was mistaken. Okay, they're idiots and they didn't know the police were
coming but how could they be so insane as to have that gear in plain sight?
But he knew-
'Oh my God,' he whispered. Dropped the cup, coffee everywhere. Grabbed his
phone from his pocket—
'Ax!' cried Kit, 'What's the matter??'
'They've mined the beach.'
Fuck's sake, Fiorinda, answer me-
The Western circus was at Easton Friars, the derelict country house near
Harrogate that had been barmy army HQ since the Islamic campaign. They were
eating breakfast too, in a shabby salon overlooking the deer park. Rugrats all
over the place. The Western tour had been infested with them. Roxane was by
hirself in a corner, talking copy down the line: the insistent "you" in Sparrow
Child... "your city"; "your wind", "your walls", clearly stands for her father, Rufus
O'Niall as the man who owns the world, but also for the sick world, the world we’ve left
behind. . . Boat People prefabs formed a vista with the fake gothic ruins, the
beach at South Shields on the tv; Fiorinda getting into a jeep, smiling, tired and
hollow eyed—
'What was your best bit?' Chip asked Verlaine.
They knew how serious things were. But the sun was shining, and (okay, only on the local, high street scale of the post-internet. Okay, purely due to the Ax
effect), their album Correspondances was selling brilliantly.
'Carlisle,' decided Verlaine. 'The climber-technos in the welding masks—'
'What about Sage and the Irish persons at Platt Fields?'
In spite of Anne Marie and Smelly Hugh, the Western tour had been the one
for the intelligentsia: Sage and the Heads (and Dilip before he crashed out) able
to let their hair down for once, talking about Baudelaire and Brecht. Patroling the
curfewed streets of Lancaster and Preston with Aoxomoxoa in barmy army
officer mode, how cool. The thunderstorms for the two big outdoor gigs in
Manchester. Pearl, Anne-Marie's six year old, dumping her baby brother Jet in
the pig pen on Heaton Park urban farm, to see if pigs really eat humans. Two
hundred addled punters in a basement in Liverpool, getting the cortex-burn-out
concentrated version of Bleeding Heart. Smelly Hugh and Anne-Marie debuting
their new alt.folk band Rover at the other, massive, Liverpool gig—
Sage and George were playing with Sage's shadow, to annoy Pearl. The real
Aoxomoxoa eating toast, the hologram matching every gesture, mirror-image.
'I don't like it,' said the evil child uncertainly; glowering. 'It's stupid.'
'Oh well,' said Sage. 'If Pearl doesn't like him, we'll have to scrumple him up
and throw him away. George, Sistine— '
The shadow rose, did a very elegant twirl and dropped into his Adam pose,
reaching out a hand to the origin of his existence. Sage extended a masked finger,
the shadow doubled over, writhed like a punctured balloon, and withered into nothing
'I DON'T LIKE THAT!' yelled Ruby the toddler.
Pearl gave Sage a glare of disgust, and ran off through the french windows.
'Sage,' said Anne-Marie, 'If you frighten my kids into nightmares again—'
'Hahaha-'
'How much do lemons cost?' wondered Silver Wing, the eight year old.
'I don't think you can buy them up here, sweetheart,' said her mother. 'Why?'
'I'm going to make traditional english lemonade and sell it to the refus.'
'Silver, you can't do that,' Chip was shocked. 'One gives things to refugees.'
'Why not? They?ve got money. They've sold tons of Afghani shit.'
On the tv, three jeeps rolled across the sand—
BLAM!
Everyone jumped up—
As if they could run to help, as if they could pull out burning bodies.
Cafren was saying, lots of places in the United States are worse, more violent,
more guns: and that's the heart of empire, that's where everything still works—
Fiorinda was saying, Caf, can you reach my jacket, I think I can hear my—
Then she was flying through the air, in an envelope of violent sound. She was
tumbling, head over heels, sand driven into her eyes, in a ringing, singing
whiteness. Landing, winded, something warm and sticky falling, spattering her,
in her mouth, tasted like raw meat— She was lying at the foot of a grassy dune. The jeep she'd been in was on its
side, the one behind it was in smoking pieces. Cafren and the driver were
sprawled, right out in the open. She jumped up and ran back to them, painful
stitch in her side. She had not grasped, in her spinning head, what was going on.
She thought they were under attack from the air. She grabbed Cafren and yelled
Can you get up! Caf's mouth working without a sound, the driver trying to yell
something but no sound from him either. Cafren was able to stand. The driver
had a big slice out of his leg which was bleeding like mad, but they could have
helped him between them if he would stop struggling. Finally, she got it. Oh, we
hit a mine. Big mine, maybe there's more. Well, okay, we'll do it on physical,
back the way I came in. I didn't blow up. Stop thinking, do it on physical, what Ax
and Sage said, in circumstances that would often sound mad and scary unless
you were in the habit of performing on stage—
So they got back to the grassy part. A roaring in her ears, she crouched in the
brilliant sunshine with Cafren in her arms, staring at the wrecked jeeps, the third
one behind, stranded out there motionless, with the rest of DARK: but where's
Tom??? Cafren sobbing without a sound, people come running, what is this foul
sticky goop all over me?
Oh shit, she thought. This is bad. We fucked up, we didn't make it.
Then she was in a trailer hospital, in a cot bed in a little room with metal walls.
She'd had her bruises dressed, and the bits of Tom washed off. It hurt to breathe, she'd cracked some ribs. She was wearing a hateful hospital gown, wishing she
could pass out but the sedative they'd given her wasn't working. Ax was there,
she was telling him (it weighed on her terribly) about when she'd fucked Tom,
back at the beginning with DARK, because it was her policy not to make a fuss,
she would do it with anyone that saw the ribbon and still wanted sex, and she
hadn't known Cafren would mind. Why would anyone mind, it was only
Fiorinda, stupid worthless kid. But Cafren had minded, and it had been between
them ever since. Oh, why can't I go back and not have done that? And where's
Sage? Why isn't he here? She couldn't understand why Ax wasn't talking, not
that she cared, she was too dizzy to care, as long as he would hold her.
The driver of the second jeep, and one of the reporters, had been thrown clear
and had survived, badly hurt.
Bits of Tom in my mouth, oh dear, oh dear, can't get rid of that—
'Sage.'
'Ax! Is she okay?'
'She's okay. She's hurt but she's okay. Tom Okopie's dead—'
'Yeah, and that reporter. We saw.'
'Sage I have to go to fucking Cleethorpes, right now. Got to leave her. Can you
get up here, soon as humanly possible-'
'Ax, what is it you're not telling me?'
'Nothing serious.' 'Then let me I talk to her.'
'She. . . she can't hear you, temporarily deafened by the blast. She's sleeping.
Just be here when she wakes up. Don't leave her. She's not in a good state.'
Gone. Sage had walked away from the table where barmy army officers were
urgently discussing what had happened. He stared out through mullioned
windows: relief still mixed with terror. He'd been waiting for Richard Kent to
show up, ex British infantry major who was the barmies' Chief of Staff. No way
he was waiting any longer. Someone knocked on the Victorian-Gothic door: a
timid sound, like one of the kids. Except that any of the kids in this circus would
have marched straight in, knocking on doors a lost, archaic concept, Sanskrit to
the lot of them. Along with the words no, and bedtime, and all stuff like that.
Someone went to open it. Smelly Hugh stood there, diffident.
''Scuse me fer interupting. Has any of you guys seen Silver?'
They established that the child had been missing for four hours. Forced to give
up the lemonade idea, she'd taken advantage of the upset this morning, half
inched a litre of vodka and a shot glass, and set out to sell tots in the prefab
village. Which was supposed to be out of bounds, but some other tour kids,
who'd been playing with refugee kids on sanctioned, neutral territory, had seen
her over there. The vodka story they?d extracted from Pearl, Silver's usual
business partner. But Pearl had come back alone. When Fiorinda woke up she was in a different bed. Charm Dudley was there,
red-eyed, furious. But fury, in Charm, had to stand in for several other emotions,
permanently missing from the repertoire. To get on with her at all you had to
accept that. She sat up, ribs twinging hard. 'Where's Ax?'
Charm picked up a notepad from the bed table, and scrawled on it.
He's gone to Cleethorpes.
'Oh. . . Oh yeah, I remember, I'm deaf. . . Hey, me Beethoven.'
'You fucking self obsessed little prima donna! The fucking country is about to
explode, Ax has gone off to get himself killed by the mob and TOM IS DEAD!
You're unbelievable! How can you think of yourself at a time like this?'
'You're wasting your breath,' said Fiorinda (getting most of this from context,
as Charm was not remembering to write it down). 'I'm not kidding, Charm. I
really can't hear you, and I don't know how to lipread. Oh, I suppose I'll have to
learn. What about Caf? Is she okay?'
Not pregnant any more, Charm wrote. And her lover is dead. Otherwise fine.
'What about me getting out of here? Where is here? Is this a hospital?'
You're under guard. Sage was supposed to come back and babysit, but he got
held up.
Fiorinda stared ahead of her, thinking what to do. Every breath she took was
painful. 'Where's Ingrid? I need clothes, a corset. Oh, and I need to talk to a
doctor. Not this lot. Get me someone who deals in extreme sports.' There were two hundred and fifty-odd Boat People housed in Easton Friars
deerpark, about two thousand more in emergency-requisitioned caravan parks
and tourist campsites in the area. The Easton Friars spokesperson insisted no one
in the prefabs had seen Silver, or her vodka bottle. The refugees' social workers
were understandably on the defensive: but if this wasn't an infuriating prank
(which still might be) the worst conclusion was probably the right one. Easton
Friars was a sink estate, in Boat People terms, quietly arranged that way with the
idea that the barmy army could handle any trouble. And obviously, now this had
happened, a very stupid place to bring lawless, fearless Countercultural infants.
There were some bad bastards from bad places, lurking among the dispossessed.
They?d found her dress and cardigan stuffed in a hole in a wall in the mock
monastic ruins. No shoes (Silver rarely wore shoes); no underwear. Her Oltech
tag was in her dress. Was that smart kidnappers, rapists, or Silver being wild and
free? The search of the grounds continued. Sage and others moved out to the
satellite camps.
He'd talked to Ax and to the people at the hospital, got some reassurance
about Fiorinda and left messages for her. Best he could do. In the grey dawn of
the day after Silver had disappeared he was completing a circuit around Easton
Friars, looking for a beaten-up white panel van, that possibly didn't have a
number plate. Pearl had eventually revealed she'd seen her sister getting into a
van, and the social workers had reluctantly agreed they knew a vehicle like the
one she described; so it might be true, although kids will say anything under pressure. Gate control was not tight, refugees went in and out, some of them had
wheels, a van could be anywhere. What do we do if we cannot put a cap on this
thing? Shall we try to make light of it? Hey, one little rockstar hippie kid, we
have several more, no worries, see, we're smiling—
Another caravan park, government Boat People Welfare trailers at the
entrance. A run-down looking place, weird idea for a holiday spot, next to a
breaker's yard. Ilkley moors off to the west, with Yap Moss somewhere beyond.
He left the bike a few hundred metres up the road and headed back. No dogs
about, thank God. He spoke quietly to the night security, went to have a look
around alone. They were trying very hard to be discreet. The van was on the
grass by one of the permanent trailers. It had an unreadable license plate,
hammered by gunfire. There was also a large dark BMW, a hire-firm sticker in
the back window. He touched his wrist. 'George. Think I have something.'
Walking softly, he went right to the trailer and looked in. The interior was
brightly lit. There were six men around a small table, drinking. Four of them
were better dressed than the average Boat Person, the two others younger, no
more than teenagers, maybe he'd seen them at Easton Friars, hard to be sure. The
little girl was tied to a chair: she was naked. There were three handguns lying on
the table, two well-used assault rifles propped against a wall. If there was
another weapon, it was out of sight. As he watched, the six men took cards from
a pack, each turning up his choice among muttering and uneasy laughter.
It looked as if they were drawing lots. He turned away. 'She's here. There are six of them, armed. Get to me soon as
you can.'
The light was changing, as the red limb of the sun rose over the Vale of York.
Should he wait? A few minutes could mean a lot to Silver Wing. Many times in
the past few weeks being big, weird and welcome to at least some of the crowd
had allowed him to get away with non-violence. But he did not think there were
any Aoxomoxoa fans in that van. Better just go for it.
The door shattered like matchwood. The kidnappers jumped to their feet and
he piled in, making best use of the confined space. He had them too busy to go
for the guns, but he should have immobilised their transport: what Ax would have
done, but Ax had two good hands and a fucking unholy knowledge of how to
make a motor go or not go. Sage would just have to make sure no one here got
the slightest chance to grab the kid and escape. This thought, along with the
memory of Pigsty's video diaries, instilling a ruthless and brutal determination
not to fuck up. . . he was surprised how quickly it was over. Three of them down
and out, the fourth nursing a broken arm, two of them out the door. The sound
of the van's engine: too bad. He cut the child free with his pocket knife, stripped
off his jacket and his shirt, dressed her in the shirt. She hadn't made a sound.
'Well, Silver, did you get raped?'
There were wheels and engines outside, doors slamming, footsteps.
She shook her head violently.
'What the fuck have you been doing, Sage?' George and Bill stood in the broken doorway, surveying the wreckage, the
skull masks grinning in disbelief.
'Um. . . I was in a hurry.'
North Yorks police, who had been discreetly supporting the search, took over.
Sage had not killed any of the bad guys: the teenagers who had caught Silver and
sold her on were picked up without further mayhem. But too many people had
been involved. The story of the child's abduction was out, on the air and in
newsprint, forming a vicious symmetry with the explosion on South Shields
beach. Angry crowds gathered again. The final gig of the Rock the Boat Tour
suddenly looked like a ready-made flashpoint.
They'd originally planned to hold the grand finale in Bradford Civic Centre.
Before setting out they'd switched the venue to Humberside, the date to coincide
with the estimated arrival time of the final ships; and left Allie's team to fix it all
up. The venue was at Cleethorpes: a former amusement park called Pleasure
Island, where a CCM campground had come into being in Dissolution Year.
The 'Festival' had been a local affair, the campground little more than a few
long-term tents planted among the rides; and the seaside-fun karaoke bar turned
into a Countercultural rock venue. All that had changed. The boating lake in the
middle of the site, drained as a health hazard when the park fell into disrepair,
was now the centre of the arena. Big screens had been erected, marquees and
pavilions, and a towered stage. Some of the white knuckle rides had been fixed up and set running (irresistible, but NOT A GOOD IDEA). On the morning of the
concert, with the crowds already pouring in, and an ugly mix of adrenalin,
criminal intent and punters in their thousands ready to ignite, Fiorinda and
DARK were in the Olde England section, in conference with Doug Hutton, chief
of tour security, in an impromptu dressing room decorated with fragments of
defunct kiddie-rides. A giant teacup, the huge head of a plastic caterpillar with a
very sinister grin; when Ax arrived.
Fiorinda and Cafren had discharged themselves from hospital, regrouped
with DARK and persuaded Fiorinda's guards to escort them to Humberside
overnight, in the good old tourbus. Everyone had been drinking hard, and they
were determined to go on.
'What the fuck are you doing here!' yelled Ax.
'We have a gig,' said Fiorinda. 'Like it says in the programme.'
Doug and his lieutenants, caught between two awesome fires, muttered
excuses and left—
'Fiorinda, I'm still in two minds whether to cancel. This place is a fucking
death trap, I wish I'd seen it before. . . Don't you understand what's happened,
the past two days?'
'Yes I do. That's why I'm here.'
'Shit. Are you crazy? Listen, they meant to kill you. We don't know when
those mines were planted, but we know when the bastards switched them on. They
were watching the tv, they saw you on the beach, and then they sent the signal-' Fiorinda shrugged. 'Ouch. Yes, I spotted that. It isn't relevant, Ax. What's
relevant is that the punters need a shot of theatre, now, before anything else bad
happens and shifts the balance further. And we're the ones to give it to them,
because we got blown up—'
'In football terms,' said Gauri, earnestly, 'wor side's a goal down. We have to
regain possession. We canna let the sad bastards take the advantage off us—'
'I want to play,' said Cafren Free, speaking low. 'I want to do this, for Tom.'
'It's not your decision, Ax,' said Charm, belligerently.
„You're fucking out of your heads!'
'You could be right,' agreed Fiorinda, grinning fiercely. 'So WHAT?'
'We've talked to Doug,' said Fil, attempting to sound rational. 'He reckons the
risk is rickable, I mean manangerable.'
'Yeah, he says that, because Fiorinda has the security crew hypnotised. The
site is full of dangerous lunatics, real bad guys, a lot of them planning to be in the
mosh. . . Fuck, I don't believe this. How can you sing with broken ribs?'
'They're not broken, only cracked. Anyway, I've got that sorted. Miracles of
modern medicine.'
Suddenly he was distracted, staring at her. 'You can hear me.'
'Er, yeah.'
'Then why didn't you CALL me, TELL me about this plan.'
'It comes and goes. I think the alcohol helps. Ax, trust me. I know what I'm
doing. Me, cynical manipulative crowd pleaser.' She saw him weaken, and held out her arms. He hugged her carefully, kissing
her hair, her bruised face. 'My lovely girl, you'll drive me crazy, okay, go ahead,
not that I could stop you.'
'One other thing,' said Fiorinda, smiling up at him sweetly, pissed as a pickled
pack rat. 'Charm can be Tom. She's an okay bassist. But we?ll need a lead guitar.'
'Doesn't have to be any good,' said Cafren, reassuringly. 'Anyone can be wor'
Charmain. Three chords and a horrible attitude: that's all you need.'
Fiorinda and Ax on stage together. It made sense, if anything was going to
work. He couldn't believe DARK's frontwoman would stand for it.
'Is that okay with you, Charm?'
Charm glared at him. 'Don't fucking take it as a precedent.'
Fiorinda and Cafren went back to bus to rest. When they came out again (having
spent their time drinking instead of resting) the Olde Englishe Theme Park street,
that had become the backstage of this thing, was a mill of strangers, mainly
male, many of them openly carrying weapons. Fiorinda, walking among her
guards, saw Ax with a couple of barmy army officers, talking to some big guys in
digital masks. Ax in that rather wonderful dark red suit with the nehru jacket,
smiling easily. He was unarmed, of course, but he had a guitar slung over his
shoulder, (his Flying Vee, not the Les Paul), none too subtle reminder of a
different sign of mastery: the British Army assault rifle Ax Preston had used in
the Islamic Campaign. The guitar-man as warlord. Follow me. Keep the peace. Or take on me and my army.
Their eyes met.
So this is where we're at. This is your role, and this is mine.
'Better get on, Fio,' said one of the security men, respectful but uneasy: not
happy about her being out in the open.
In a hotel suite in York, Allie present only as a wandering voice, the Few had
discussed the stage effects for this gig, which they'd decided to call the Armada
Concert. Verlaine had been distressed about the lack of logic: Elizabethan
Armada bad thing, bad invasion of foreigners. Surely that was the opposite—?
'No, no, Ver,' Fiorinda had explained to him. 'Armada good because we won,
and romantic historical thing. This Armada therefore also good. D?you get it?'
'But we, er, whoever 'we' was, I'm a Papist myself, we didn't win. They got
blown off course by a storm and ended up wrecked in Ireland and places-'
'This is the British-I'm-sorry-I-mean-English public,' said Sage. 'Logic?You are
kidding.'
'A lot of the punters won't get off on Elizabeth the First,' pointed out Anne
Marie, worriedly. 'They're not re-enactment nuts—'
'Doesn't matter. She?s been on tv. A lot of folks will get off: and feel included.'
'There'll be big screens in the Park,' said Allie's voice. 'At Leeds, and at
Reading. We're working on the rest, we should have reasonable coverage-'
And Fiorinda, the Crisis Sweetheart, will be dressed up as the Virgin Queen. The red and gold dress, long tight sleeves and small waist, full skirts below the
knee. The square neck was cut high enough to hide most of the bruises; the
boned bodice would keep her back straight, and help her breathing. The
sporting-injuries doctor had injected some kind of jelly into her back, that would
float around her cracked bones and render them more or less innocuous. He'd
warned her it would have to be sucked out again, or the ribs wouldn't heal, and
this would be painful: but fuck tomorrow. Fiorinda sat in front of the dressing
room mirror, drinking tequila and thinking of her lovely moonstone, opaline
organza, spattered with blood and human flesh. Definitely an ex-dress, that one.
'Ouch,' she said, 'I know why you're here, Ingrid. There's no way I could have
dressed myself tonight. But is there anything you can do about my face?'
Ingrid slipped a make-up bandeau around her hair. 'It's gonna to hurt a bit.'
'Hahaha. Never mind. I will try not to squeal.'
She waited for the band to get settled: Cafren wearing the Battleship Potemkin
sailor cap at a jaunty angle, Charm looking furiously out of it, scaring the stage
crew. . . I guarantee we're going to screw up, hope we don't wreck everything.
Such a hissing and whooshing in her ears, wish that would go away. What a lot
of faces. So many people, here and in the Park, and at Leeds, at Reading, at
Wembley, wherever else anyone had tv. She'd reached the stage where she didn't
feel drunk, she could just barely remember that there was something called normal and this was different. Borne up, shattered, spread like a thin Fiorinda
film over all those screens. . . She walked on stage, took a mic from a stand and
went right to the front. The huge triumphant roar that had greeted DARK's
appearence died away. Calm little grin—
The Fiorinda Appreciation Society had convened with fervent attention in the
wings. Allie was there, and Roxane: all the Chosen, most of the Few.
'She's smashed,' murmured Dilip anxiously. He'd just arrived from London.
'Fraid so,' agreed Ax. 'They all are. Completely hammered. It's okay, they've
er, reached a plateau. I wouldn't care to try it myself, but DARK have done this
before, you know.'
'All too often,' muttered one of the music press types, insinuating pair, who'd
been adopted by DARK on the tour. 'True fanatics reckon they can tell the
difference. Most people can?t.'
The onstage screens were showing Spanish galleons and the Virgin Queen,
blown up and intercut with the people-stuffed hulks of the present, and the
refugees coming ashore, from the grey thankless waters of that bad old North
Sea. No laser beams, no fabulous fx. If they'd been available, it wouldn't have
been the right message.
'History lesson,' shouted Fiorinda. 'Listen to this. 'Bout four hundred and
thirty years ago, another Armada set out to invade our country. They never
made it. It was a stormy summer, like this one: they got blown away. The
weather's not going to save us now. We have to save ourselves, and four hundred thousand desperate neighbours of ours. But we can do it. We can face
the challenge, and this Armada will not destroy us either- '
She broke off, and stared at the crowd for a long moment. The Fiorinda
Appreciation Society held its breath. Has she dried? What shall we do, why
doesn't she—
'You know, that summer, people told the queen of England she should stay
indoors, hide behind bodyguards, for fear of the mob. People have been saying
the same to me. I think you know why. I'm not the queen of England, I'm just a
singer with a rock and roll band, but I feel the same way as she did. Fuck that.
Hey, Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that under God I have
placed my chiefest strength in the goodwill of my faithful and loving people—'
'She's quoting. What's she quoting?' demanded the other music press type,
wide-eyed.
'She's taking a riff from Elizabeth the First's speech to the troops at Tilbury,'
said Roxane Smith, 'If I remember rightly.You might want to note the date, Joe. It
was August the fifth, 1588. Of course, the speech was written for publication and
much later. What Elizbeth actually said, how she looked, her mood, we?ll never
know. Ax, was this planned? Did you know about this?'
Ax shook his head. 'Not until just now.'
Smelly Hugh looked bemused. 'Uh, is it bad? Is there a copyright issue?'
Fiorinda, on stage, was yelling, (more or less in the words attributed to that
other consummate performer, great lady), that she would rather be dead than distrust the crowd, that she was here to live or die with them, to lay down her
honor and her blood, even in the dust—
'Don't worry about it, Hugh,' said Ax. 'She can get away with anything.'
'And I THINK FOUL SCORN that any prince of Europe should dare to
imagine we can't hack this thing because we can. Without violence, without
shame. We?ll get through it.'
She had to wait, grinning, a long time before they'd let her speak again.
'Hey, I forgot. There was something about being a weak and feeble woman.'
Renewed shouting, louder than ever: Fiorinda! Fiorinda!
'Okay, okay, I'll get on with it. So you know, we're missing a guitarist. I've
asked someone to help us out. Be nice. He hasn't had much chance to rehearse.'
''Scuse me,' said Ax, 'think I'm on.'
After the Armada concert the barmy army was winding down, getting ready to
leave the remaining problems (the British Resistance and their mines, residual
crowd control) to the conventional authorities. Sage went to say goodbye to
Richard, and found him in the operations room with Corny, his long-time
partner, presiding over a barmy staff officers? debriefing. His entrance caused a
stir, something new and different from the usual, hey, look, it's Aoxomoxoa! It was
going to take him a while to live down that stunt in the trailer park.
'We're off, Richard, okay? I mean, permission to quit, Sah.'
'Of course,' said Richard, 'Oh, Sage, wait a moment, there is just one thing.' The vision in biker leathers turned back, that fearsomely beautiful mask
frowning a little.
'What?'
'We think you look lovely in your fascist uniform.'
DARK went to Teesside, the tour circus headed for London. Ax and Fiorinda
stayed behind, in the Pleasure Island campground. Continentals, and Boat
People counterculturals from as far away as Central Asia and the Sub-Sahara,
had converged on the last concert site, all wanting to talk to Ax. . . About dam
busting, coastal erosion, volcanoes going off in the Ring of Fire; what this year
without a summer would mean to CCM Crisis Europe. Fiorinda didn't take
much part in these conversations. Desperation control, she would do. Foreign
policy, no. On the fifth night after the concert, as the last ships were trying to
dock at Immingham, another storm arrived. It was short but fierce. There wasn't
much lo-impact accommodation left standing. They spent the next day visiting
the afflicted and helping out at hippie soup-kitchens, ending up bivouaced in an
army-surplus ridge tent, two fields back from the shore. Ax was fast asleep.
Fiorinda sat beside him, leaning against a slippery, prickly straw bale, wrapped
in a blanket. She'd had the jelly sucked out. Her ribs were aching madly, she
couldn't get comfortable lying down. Recumbent bodies lay around her, dimly lit
by ATP patches taped to the canvas walls. She could hear the sea, sullenly
roaring. She was thinking of the last Boat People, in their Friday-afternoon prefabs. The first batches of instant housing had been wonderful, but things had
gone steadily downhill—
'Hey, brat.'
She must have closed her eyes. A tall shadow stood in front of her.
'Sage!' She turned to Ax.
'Nah, don't wake him. I don't suppose he's slept much over the past month.'
'How did you find us? I didn't think anyone knew where we were.'
'Oltech.' He folded down beside her. 'Oooh, I shouldn't have said that, should
I? Trust me, Fiorinda. You are not revealing your whereabouts to the Russkies, or
the NSA, or anyone else you might not want to know it. Only to your friends.'
It was the first time they'd been together since they had their fight outside the
catering tent at Gateshead. They smiled at each other, hold the thought of that
embrace. Don't think about the implications, just be glad. It will always be there.
'What have you been doing with yourself?'
'Ha. My life among the bib people. Directing traffic, rescuing kittens. Nothing
compared to your stunts, you crazy mixed up kid. How was the hangover?'
'Not too bad, considering. I heard about the kitten. How are your hands?'
'Fine.' he said crossly.
'Give.'
Reluctantly he unearthed the hands, which were burrowed deep in his jacket
pockets. The masks gave nothing away, but she could feel the two lumpy real
fingers on the right seized-up and locked. She rubbed them until she'd transfered a little warmth. 'Idiot. How can you ride a motorbike with only one hand
working?'
'Fuck off. God, I am tired.'
'You can sleep here if you like. I'm afraid this is it, for rockstar luxury.'
'Seems okay to me.'
Stretched full length, head pillowed on one arm, he looked up in the dim light,
the skull doing lop-sided grin, and somehow conjuring a sleepy sparkle around its
eyesockets. 'Hey, Fiorinda. Are we through to the next level? What d'you think?'
'Maybe we are through to the next level.'
'Good. G'night.' His hand slipped from hers, and he was gone. Instantly, like
switching off a light: nothing left but this warm, breathing rock. Amazing. How
does he do that?
Ah, Sage.
She drew up her knees and set her chin on her folded arms. Sage. We never
thought, did we, what might happen if the brat grew up? Or maybe you did
think. Maybe you realised the risk you were taking, and gave me all that
unconditional love anyway. She watched him for a while, then settled back
against her straw bale: wishing she still smoked, because it was one of those
occasions when she didn't mind being awake, but she'd have loved the little
comfort-hit of a cigarette. She decided that Sage's Anandas didn't count, frisked
him, found a pack, and had just sparked up when another shadow came looming
urgently towards her. 'I'm sorry Fiorinda, you can't smoke in here.'
'Oh. Oh, shit, of course not. Sorry.'
'You could come outside. We got a fire. Got a brew on, too.'
She left the two of them sleeping, and went out.
The field was very dark. There was no moon, and only a few faint stars
struggled through the overcast. The nightwatchmen had a fire in a ring of heavy
chunks of driftwood, it smelled of iodine and gave out blue salt flashes amid the
orange veils of flame. Shadowy figures clustered around it, men and women of
the Counterculture, drawn by the warmth. They made room for her. She smoked
her cigarette, half-listening to the talk: thinking about how outrageously
smashed the band had been. How it had felt to be on stage without Tom. That
was why they'd had to be smashed, of course. Had to play, but they'd known
how bad it was going to be, up there without him. Knowing they would never
see him again, not even to lay him in his grave.
She couldn't remember a thing about her performance. When she'd seen
herself on the tv afterwards, she?d been mortified: but it had worked. Something
had worked. So here we are, she thought. Not a-looting and a-shooting —much.
Not collapsed into anarchy. Not beaten yet. And the night was sweet, purely
sweet to be outdoors, in the dark cool air—
'D'you take sugar, Fiorinda?'
'If there's no milk, yeah, please. Two.'
She should have known better. The tea was good old Rosie Lee but the sugar was beet molasses. The brew was undrinkable. Ah, well. 9: Rivermead
Five Years? Is That All We've Got?
They are both twenty eight years old. Ax Preston was brought up on a Council
estate in Taunton, the son of an unemployed baker; his mother worked (and still
does, from choice, although she's no longer the financial support of the family) as
a care assistant in a geriatric nursing home. Sage Pender's father is Joss Pender of
eks.photonics, his mother is the novelist Beth Loern —but in Sage's childhood,
the future software baron and his partner were living out the lo-impact, self
sufficiency dream in an oddly similar council house in Padstow. Until three years
ago, Ax was fronting a West Country guitar band called the Chosen Few. He had
a formidable personal reputation, but the band was not well known. In the
summer of Dissolution Year, this soft-spoken instrumentalist was recruited by
the then Home Secretary, Paul Javert, to join a half-baked conception called the
Counter Cultural Think Tank. After the 6th of December Massacre in Hyde Park,
Ax took control of that terrifying cascade of events now universally known as the
Deconstruction Tour. . . and the rest, as they say, is history.
Sage Pender of course was and is Aoxomoxoa, of Aoxomoxoa and the Heads.
Rumoured to be one of our few music eurobillionaires, the techno-wizard with
the bad-boy reputation, idolized by his global fans, was also recruited by Paul
Javert. While it's hard to unearth even a slightly grubby rumour about Ax
Preston's private life, Sage has missed few of the pitfalls of rock success: heroin
addict with a record of public and domestic violence, an ugly legal battle over
custody of his son; more messy litigation with a major entertainment group. But that's all in the past. Now he's Ax Preston's right-hand man, and behind the
deliberate weirdness of that digital mask, we find we have a genuine hero.
'They're both very brave men and very good officers,' says Richard Kent, the ex
regular CCM army commander, with whom they served in that little English
pocket-war in Yorkshire last year. 'And that's what counts today: leadership and
compassion. I don't know where the rock music comes in.'
The vision and integrity, the will and sheer energy of these two young men
are, beyond doubt, at the heart of the phenomenon —part supergroup, part
Alternative Cabinet— we call "the Few". Yet the third member of the Triumvirate
is perhaps the most extraordinary. A rock and roll princess by birth (her father is
Rufus O'Niall of the Wild Geese, her mother was Suzy Slater, a legendary music
journalist), at thirteen she was lost on the streets of London, after family
problems around a tragic early pregnancy. Fiorinda's talent won out. She was
sixteen when she joined the Counter Cultural Think Tank as a rising star. She's
the brains behind the Volunteer Initiative, she became our national sweetheart
and our inspiration; and after the astonishing courage of her Rock the Boat tour
performances (not all of them on stage), she's something like our uncrowned
queen.
You have to seek a long way back in English history to find any parallel to the
events of the last three years. It's appropriate that the title Ax has insisted upon
is older still. The office of dictator was instituted around 501BC to meet a crisis in
the state of Ancient Rome that was beyond the control of the two consuls. It was a short term extraconstitutional appointment, primarily military; and populist.
Modern usage finds the name tarnished and sinister. We all wish that he'd let us
call him something nice, something anodyne and comfortable like “President”.
But these are not anodyne, nice or comfortable times. Ax is right to make us face
the reality of our situation. We've come closer to the brink of anarchy than the
other nations of Britain. We're in trouble, and we need to remember that. But we
have the right to congratulate ourselves. We've held our ground, (history will
say, thanks in very great part to Ax and the Few); and the Boat People crisis has
earned us the gratitude and the respect of our Mainland Britain partners. We
even have the makings of a mini-Utopian revolution somewhere under the
debris, like spring flowers hidden under snow. Truly, the only bad thing about
that 'dictator' word, is that Ax seems to be telling us he regards his appointment
as temporary. Without any idea of perpetuating the crisis, and with every hope
for the long term future of this young country, we think he may be mistaken. . .
'Family problems around a tragic early pregnancy,' remarked Fiorinda, 'Very
tactful. Why do journos always obsess about how old people are? It is creepy.'
'I don't mind being a junkie what beats up half-starved refugees,' said
Aoxomoxoa. 'But do I have to be a billionaire?'
'Long as my obscure little band gets a namecheck,' said Ax, 'I suppose I must
be grateful. I don't like "Alternative Cabinet". Could we lose that?'
'Cheesy headline. D'you think they know what the Bowie song is about?'
'Doubt it.' 'I like the "spring flowers under the snow",' put in Rob, kindly. 'That's nice.'
'Shit,' said Allie Marlowe, scowling at the Triumvirate across that irregular
circle of tables. 'Fucking artists. No one cares about this. It's a leader for a
newsstand broadsheet. Just say yes and forget about it, why can't you?'
'Ah, okay.'
Yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Vetting deferential-yet-patronising newspaper articles
was a minor irritation. They'd come back from Rock The Boat feeling that they
needed to lie down and die. Instead it was straight into preparations for Ax's
inauguration, including the big gig at Reading. Last thing anyone felt like
thinking about, but it had to be done. The Counterculture must run this
celebration, the Few couldn't let the suits take over.
'But will the punters behave themselves?' Fiorinda wanted to know. The ribs
were healing, the bruises fading, but she was still exhausted. 'Dear manager, I
don't want to be the awkward bugger, but I have had it with fascist rallies.'
'Don't worry,' said the Minister for Gigs. 'These will be tame punters.'
The Zen Selfers at Reading had never stopped, through the Pigsty crisis, the
collapse of the Internet, and the turmoil of the Boat People disaster. They were
still adding to the mysterious and bizarre repertoire of activities in the geodesic
tent. One morning in August, in a small lab partitioned off from the main space,
Sage was the guinea pig for a new game. Dilip and the Heads, with Chip and
Verlaine, were the audience. Sage lay on a cot, taped to a cardiograph, electroencephalograph, PET; emergency resuscitation standing by. The body lay
there, lax and still. Its double —looking like a free-standing hologram, familiar
tech for a decade— stood in the middle of a clear patch of polymer floor. It was
dressed the same as the body on the cot, in white cotton drawstring trousers:
barefoot, and semi-transparent. The Selfers, who treated all their experiments
with religious intensity, were very keyed-up. Sage's friends kept quiet. Olwen
stood at a desk of control toggles and winking telltales. The shadow looked
around, blue eyes very wide.
'Sage?'
'I'm here.'
The voice came from a speaker on the desk, but the shadow's lips had moved.
'What's it feel like?' said Chip.
'Very, very, weird.'
'What can you do?'
'Just a moment. Lemme see.' The shadow raised one arm, turned the wrist; let
it fall, tried the other. The movements were dislocated, awkward and slow.
'Hmm. Like drawing in a mirror. . .Wooo. God, this is weird. This feels so'
His voice faded. The Zen Selfer watching the body monitors looked less than
happy. 'Twenty seconds,' said Olwen, watching her own telltales. 'Time to stop.'
'No, no, no. I'm getting useder to it by the moment. Gimme longer.'
What they were looking at was the legendary yogi trick, bilocation,
technologically mediated: Sage as a mirrored site, copied in real time. It took, at present, some heavy brain-chemistry medication to achieve coherence —without
which the body image projected in this way would revert to the one held in the
somatosensory cortex, an extremely grotesque apparition. What Olwen and the
Zen-selfers feared was loss of this coherence, which would not be good for the
real (the physical? the material?) subject. This was the longest trip so far, and
incoherence a hairsbreadth away. Bill and George weren't clear on the dangers,
but they picked up mortal anxiety from the Zen team; and because they knew
Sage. They also knew that Sage could twist Olwen Devi around his little finger.
So to speak.
'Lissen to what the doctor says, boss,' said George. 'Back in the box, right now.'
'No, no, it's good, really good. Not yet. I'm fine, I'm. Augh!'
'Sage! What is it?'
The shadow had been experimenting, moving more smoothly, freeing
shoulders, twisting at the waist; like a dancer warming up. Now it had its arms
wrapped round itself, as if terrified—
'Augh! I just realised! I have no mask! Everybody will be able to see what I'm
thinking!'
'Quit clowning,' said Bill. 'We always know what you're thinking, you poor
sap.'
'Yeah, but I've never been quite this transparent before, hahaha- '
One of the Zen Selfers murmured urgently. Sage's mouth and (weirdly, this
wasn't in the manual) his eyes, had started to swell. The perfect, naked, gymnast's shoulders were shrinking and twisting. 'Shit,' muttered Olwen. 'Sage,
I'm stopping this now.'
The doppelganger vanished. The Zen Selfers checked that their guinea pig
seemed to have come to no harm, and proceeded to unhook him. Dilip, Chip and
Ver interrogated Olwen Devi, wanting to know what real-world applications she
saw for the mirroring, what did it mean in Zen Self terms, how long before both
mirror and original could be functioning at once. . . and what would that feel
like? Their eyes were shining. The question each really wanted to ask, middle
aged mixmaster as eager as the kids, was, when can I have a turn? 'The obvious
applications would be medical,' said Olwen. 'If we could make the procedure
safe enough.'
Three skull-headed idiots went into a huddle, off in a geodesic corner.
'I don't like it,' said George. 'Did you see his hands?'
'Sage fucking did,' said Bill. 'And didn't say a word. I don't like that.'
'We got to watch this. Something here smells like a shit of an addictive drug.'
Silence, while they thought up psycho-Luddite contingency plans. George had
the answer. 'Okay, if it looks like trouble we play the smack card. Tell him
fucking with this stuff makes 'im behave unpleasant.'
'Tell 'im it's makin' him be unpleasant to Fiorinda!' Peter added triumphantly.
George and Bill looked at him, forbearance for the afflicted. He can't help it.
Peter, although he never really deserved to be called Cack, is, in fact, an alien
lifeform. 'Nah,' said Bill. 'I couldn't do that to the boss. Not the way things stand.' They were absorbed, like this: the Heads in their concern for Sage, Dilip and
Chip and Ver in their longing for that eternal one step beyond, when something
entered the lab, which was still permeated by the energy field that had contained
the mirroring. It entered the space and entered them all: an astonishing
sweetness, without limit, inclusive, penetrating, bathing all perception and every
memory, every facet of time and being. . . Dilip saw that Sage was sitting up on
the cot, still unmasked, eyes deeply intent and lips a little parted—
Then it was gone, it had passed.
'Wow!' breathed Chip. 'What was that?'
The Zen Selfers kept their cool. They knew about these rare, tantalising
visitations. Sage and his friends stared at each other, grinning in open
amazement and delight. And these seven, Olwen Devi noticed, had passed the
first test without even realising that it was there.
'That was the Zen Self,' she said, smiling faintly. 'So now you know.'
The weather changed, the sun began to shine. Reading Festival site, more
crowded than ever with the extra campers from far away, dried out and started
to have a Summer of Love: non-stop partying, drug-fueled political discussions,
random acts of senseless beauty. The Heads were back in Travellers' Meadow.
Anne-Marie Wing —who?d moved to Reading to be near Sage, her hero since he
rescued Silver Wing— set up house with her kids in a hospitality bender: had
failed to get a Meadow pitch, to the Heads? immense relief. Sage worked on his plans for the concert, at one point managing to get all the Few together for a day
long rehearsal in the Blue Lagoon. This turned out to be a gruelling experience,
and a convincing demonstration of why the Heads called their drunken giant
toddler genius the boss. Suppose anyone had still been wondering.
'Again, again,' grumbled Chip. 'Who does he think we are? Teletubbies?'
'I am disillusioned,' said Ver. 'Surely slavedriving is against the Ideology.'
Bill Trevor, with the tech crew, was not sympathetic. 'Hard fun is the Ideology,
dickless. You thought our stage act was innate or somethin'? We work like shit
for him so we can get out there and do it, chainsaws an' all, whatever state we
are in,' (And deal with whatever fuckups the boss throws at us, he might have
added. But never let the truth get in the way of a good wind-up).
Back on the tiered seats, Allie was going over merchandising orders with Ax.
The red It's The Ecology, Stupid singlet, a favourite because Ax often wore it, was
causing problems. 'It'd help if you'd wear something else.?
'I don't want to. I will not do that kind of crap. Thin end of the wedge. Whyn't
you get them to do a faded one. Then you'd have two versions.'
'What we need is for you to be seen around in one, or maybe a couple, of the
other shirts. Even a different colour would help.'
'Okay, pretend we discussed it, and then I said no. Let's move on.'
Ramadan was not exactly making Ax impossible, not yet. Just tetchy.
They both looked up to watch Fiorinda, as she hooked her safety harness and
launched herself in a swallow dive from the scaffolding —caught by Sage and held, effortlessly, arm's length above his head. 'Shit,' he said, spinning her
around. 'Hollow bones, she must have!'
'She shouldn't be doing that,' complained Allie. 'Her ribs.'
'Hey, George! Catch!'
Allie gave a yelp. 'Ax! Stop them!'
'You break my girlfriend, maestro,' called Ax, 'You buy me a new one.'
'Understood! Sah!'
'Sage we really don't get this. Is it Oltech—'
'Or is it secret, old-techno-geezers code? Where's the Transporter room?'
'Is it going to be under the stage?'
'We don't mind being dissolved into particles. We just want to be told.'
Chip and Verlaine were at the stage, aggrieved and determined. Sage set
Fiorinda on her feet and came to the front. 'What the fuck are you talking about?
Pass me your notes.' The scribbled-over, sellotaped sheets of print out were
handed up. Sage looked at them, and the skull mask got mean, 'I don't see any
problem. Hey, if you two don't want to play, it's very simple. You can piss off
and stop wasting my time. Nothing is compulsory.'
'It's after Under My Thumb,' Chip persisted bravely, 'and Allie and Fiorinda
with the firehoses. Where we get beamed up. '
'What?'
Chip and Verlaine backed off, looking scared. Sage walked away, studying
the ragged sheets, all intimidating bigness and dangerously tested self-control. People retreated out of his path.
'Ah!'
He jumped down, held up a masked left hand. 'Pen? Anybody?'; took the pen,
and added a few swift lines to the musical notation. 'There. You see the quavers?
I wasn't sure how I wanted them joined up in beats here. Which we call beamed
up. Now it's done, fuck it. You happy?'
'Er, yeah,' said Verlaine. 'Yeah,' agreed Chip, faintly.
'Good.' The boss levitated back onto the stage. 'Serves you right for being able
to read my writing, what insolence. Allie, c'mon. Your turn.'
'When I first met him,' said Ax. 'He had me convinced he couldn't read music.'
'When I first met him,' said Allie, 'he had me convinced he couldn't read.'
'Well, you better get up there. We'll finish this later.'
At dusk he let them go. They changed their clothes, took food and walked out
towards the boneyard, following the same path as Fiorinda and Sage had taken
on the day of Luke's memorial service: over the stile, through the hedge, into the
other world. The south bank of the Thames was common ground, amicably (for
the most part) shared by townsfolk and campers. There was very little artificial
light. The town itself was much darker than it would have been three years ago;
the festival site's lo-impact twinkling lost in deep blue twilight. They strolled
downstream to where the bank was wide, and settled around a big poplar tree.
Passers-by studiously paid no special attention to the picnicers: Stone Age Fame.
Ax watched Fiorinda and Silver Wing having a crabwalking competition, the littler kids trying to copy them, flopping about like stranded mudskippers.
George and Sage joined him.
'Did you guys teach her this stuff?'
'Nah,' said Sage.
'We taught her a spot 'er tumbling,' said George. 'She could walk on her hands
and shit when we met her, says she always could.'
''She's a fuckin' dream compared to most of this shower,' said Sage. 'But a few
more sessions of vicious bullying should do it. How's Ramadan going?'
'Slowly.'
It was the sixth night of the holy month, and the white young moon was high
in the sky. Something had come up at Reading: they'd been offered the Leisure
Centre buildings. Some green-is-good business persons had agreed to bankroll a
new facility for the townspeople. On a brownfield site, of course. The problem
was the Few would have to find some money, without robbing the Volunteer
Initiative or any of their other concerns.
'What we could do,' said Anne-Marie, grinning shyly at her hero, 'is we could
bottle Sage an' Ax's come and sell it to rich Americans, by snail mail order, for
designer babies.'
'Don't think they'd be impressed. There's nothen in it.'
'Same here,' said Ax. 'I'm not an active member of the gene pool.'
'What about, er, cheek-scrapings?? suggested Verlaine. „They don't need
sperm, all they need is DNA isn't it?' Neither of the candidates had an answer to this, except to look disgusted.
'We'll stick with teeshirts,' said Allie. 'Think of the lawsuits.'
'Imagine if the customer got a normal sized, quiet and retiring Sage—'
'We could git Anne-Marie to cast a spell,' suggested Smelly Hugh. Hugh
wasn't allowed to share Anne-Marie's bender, he wasn't house-trained. But he'd
come down for a conjugal, in the funky tourbus belonging to their new band. 'To
fetch the money.'
'Do you think you could do that, AM?' asked Milly, curiously. 'I mean, really?'
Anne-Marie Wing, Merseyside Chinese-Irish, dedicated Countercultural,
seemed to believe in everything, from Daoist-Tantric ritual to Crustified
Anarcho-Syndicalism, a source of fascination to the others, how did she keep
track? At this she looked wise and superior. 'Maybe I could, but I don't do that
stuff. I never would. It turns on you.'
'But she?s got the gift,' insisted Hugh. 'She can see auras. She's bin teaching
me, but I 'avn't quite got it yet.'
'So tell us our auras?' suggested Allie. 'It?s colours, isn?t it? Sage ought to be
red. All that aggression.'
'I am not aggressive. Just watch it, you—'
'Oh no,' said Anne Marie seriously. 'Sage is mainly blue. Ax is red.'
That got a laugh. No prizes for spotting Ax's favourite colour. Or knowing
that lazy-dressing Aoxomoxoa, if he strayed from the black or white he wore on
stage (for obvious reasons), never got further than grey, or occasionally blue. 'What about Fiorinda?' wondered Verlaine. 'Let me guess. She's green, huh?'
They all looked at Fiorinda, sitting by the water, the green silk of her dress (that
beloved dress, a collection of tatters over her yellow choli blouse and yellow
underskirt) darkly shadowed in the twilight.
'Oh, Fiorinda—' said Anne Marie: and for some reason broke off, shrugging.
'Doesn't need me to tell her,' she finished, looking away.
It was here, thought Fiorinda. Just here, the day I arrived for the Festival of
Dissolution. I took off my boots, I heard the three witches talking about the man
who would be king. And now this is where we're at. Back where it all began,
another battle won. Still in a disaster movie, things still getting worse (the
refugee crisis was nothing like solved, it had simply joined the rest of the ongoing
crises). But we reach pools of equilibrium and this is one. Suddenly her heart
thumped. Where's Ax? Where is the master of all this, the rock-lord enthroned?
But if there was a centre to the group it was in the roots of the poplar tree,
where someone had planted an Oltech campers' lantern. Silver Wing and her
sister Pearl sat there giggling, grabbing at the insects that blundered into the
light. Ax was out on the margins with Rob, collecting the kids' picnic debris: and
trying to stay clear of the cannabis and tobacco smoke. It was nicotine starvation
that hit him worst. She went and slipped her arm around him, leaned her head
on his shoulder.
'What's the matter? Something wrong, little cat?'
'Nothing's wrong. Nothing at all.' Always be my Ax. If I dared to wish for anything, that would be my wish.
Strange how things you thought would last forever can slip away while you are
too occupied to notice; and you don't know what you've got 'til its gone. In the
van, one warm evening, George and Aoxomoxoa sat at that cluttered kitchen
table. Bill and Peter separately off on their own business. Sage having come back
after spending the night and day elsewhere on site to find George in a morose
and valedictory mood, shot glass and a whisky bottle in front of him. They were
both masked, of course.
'I always knew,' said George, 'that one day you'd be over Mary, and then I'd
lose you, some way. I never thought, never, it would be to another guy.'
For more than a decade they'd been playing this elaborate game together,
since the boss was seventeen and George Merrick twenty one years' old. How
many hours of fun is that?
'Can't you both be my best mate?' said the giant toddler, bewildered. Then
(commonsense kicking in). 'George, what is this? What are you on about?'
'Ah, nothin' boss. Getting maudlin.'
'Thas' from drinking alone. C'mon, on your feet. Let's go find some company.'
Dilip, in his tower block eyrie, was preparing artwork for the concert, Let It Bleed
in his ears very loud. He'd moved out of the Insanitude after Allie left, chiefly
because he was buggered if was going to be the only member of the Few on permanent call there. No fixed abode since. The life he'd left behind, when he
came down to London for Dissolution summer, felt like old clothes. He'd tried to
go back and he couldn't do it. Ax would not let him camp in the Park: so here he
was camping out in a room walled in windows, the City spread below, in a flat
that belonged to a woman who'd been a lover long, long ago.
Good to be so high up. Dilip loved being high.
He worked in gouache on board: always painted his pictures before scanning
them and applying the digital arts. Three faces rose from the sweeping curves of
the trimurti. Can't let those broadsheet assholes steal our babies, we must have
eclectic, beads-and-sitars Countercultural hagiography. Now which is which of
this she and he and he? No prizes for assigning the patronage of the Lord
Protector. He bent to the board, applying his own Vaisnavite mark to
Aoxomoxoa's skull. He'd have liked to depict Sage without the mask, but that
would not be true to life. 'Ram Ram, Ram Ram. . . and not afraid of the sight of
blood, either,' he murmured, (thinking of goats with their throats cut, in the heat
of Madurai). 'A trait that may yet be useful again.' Sage's sign is Capricorn,
stonefish, goatfish. His birthday is January 8th, his elements are water and earth,
his patron deity is Visnu.
Fiorinda's element is fire, she was born on 5th April, and now I realise her
patron is obviously Lord Shiva. If you insist on a female aspect that should be
Kali, but I see no necessity. Gender in a god is symbolic: and then, for all her
girlishness, she is one of those girls who is little different from a supple boy. She does not bleed, for instance. Many young women in the normal world do not
bleed nowadays, and mean nothing by it. But in the Counterculture and the
music biz, among our powerbabes and earthmothers and rockchicks, this signals
that she secretly disdains the Great Divide. The ancient music jiving him around,
he added the caste-mark to her pure brow, astrological signs of the ram
(stubborn, daring, sure-footed) to the green shawl cast lightly over her hair; and
the flame-tongued wheel of Shiva—
And now for Ax. Who is an Aquarian (surprise!). Born on the 18th February,
in the same year as Sage, which interestingly makes Aoxomoxoa the older, and
by the way makes Ax a Dragon whereas the Beast of Bodmin is a Rabbit (but
what do those Chinese know?). Ax's element is air, the breath. His patron is
Brahma, tainted with monotheism, the deity we Hindus neglect and quite right
too, God is in all things, there is no god of the gods; but for this purpose he suits.
See how it all fits in. . . And you are the waterbearer, bhisti, the singer not the
song, the teacher not the lesson, lover of the world, and you are al-Amin, the
trusted one, though no way am I putting anything Islamic into this painted
image I take no risks, I have more sense than that. He added the appropriate
symbols to Ax's portrait and stepped back.
Very good. Like the apotheosis of a movie poster, exactly to rights, just what
the spindoctor (that means Allie) ordered. I've had them both, and they were both
marvellous. . . He cocked a wry eye at the skull. But not you, my lord, (in his mind
he was speaking in Hindi, so my lord didn't sound too weird). I don't believe that's because of the virus. Is it true that you never, ever have sexual feeling for
another guy? How strange, but maybe so. So there they are, our royal family. He
grinned, envisaging Sage as the big strong mother of the tribe, Ax the father of
his people, Fiorinda their shining prince. But any permutation would be equally
valid. Where do we go from here? Who knows? The world is our oyster. How
extraordinary it is, this second Spring, the flame rekindled, and how many
second Springs does that make, so far? How many times have I come back to
life? Ah, who cares. Let them roll. The hard times and the good.
The full moon of August passed, with a homegrown staybehind lineup on Red
Stage, and revellry in the arena. There were reports of another group of storms,
coming in from the south west this time. One of the stranger losses of Ivan/Lara
had been accurate weather forecasting. Information was being gathered in old
fashioned ways: radio messages from ships at sea, watching to see if the cows
were lying down, that sort of thing. But people took any storm warnings
seriously. In Reading town the sandbags came out. On the Festival site the camp
council laid more chicken wire, and citizens still clinging to real estate in the
worst boggy bits were exhorted to move into the Leisure Centre. Some of the
Travellers' Meadow vans left the site. On the morning of the twenty sixth, Sage
stood looking at the sky and chewing the stump of his right thumb. The
barometer had dropped hard. There was an overcast and a gusting breeze,
tugging at the ramshackle canvas walls of the annexe: sending one of those black polythene bundles, spooks of the campgrounds, flapping into the branches of the
oak tree in the hedge.
'Think we should move the van?' said George.
'I think we should move the camp,' said Sage. 'In a perfect world.'
A water meadow would have been a stupid place to put a permanent neo
mediaeval Third World township, even in what used to be the normal English
climate. But these temporary, fucked up things happen, and set down roots, and
you get attached to them.
'Nah, we'll stay. We've seen storms before.' He looked at the oak again; and
temporized. 'Maybe we'll move across the field. And take down the annexe.'
So they did that. It was a sad moment. The annexe had been left standing all
the times they'd been away, it had been up without a break since the very
beginning. Fiorinda used to sleep in there.
The twenty sixth was dance night in the Blue Lagoon, an event traditionally held
the weekend after the full moon, and open to the favoured public, with invitation
tickets like gold dust. It was bigger than the full moon fest itself this month.
Aoxomoxoa and George were going to do a set, and everyone knew the Few
would be down. Sage met Ax and Fiorinda at the station. They walked through
town together.
'How's it going?'
'Fine. Could you stop asking me that? The fast would be no trouble, it's not meant to be penitential. It would be good, if I could share it with people doing the
same thing.'
'Then why don't you?' said Fiorinda. Without rancour, but clearly not for the
first time.
'I can't because that's not my situation. I can't disappear into the Islamic
community, totally the wrong message. I have to face it, I'm on my own and I
always will be, things like this.'
The two of them rolled their eyes and sighed. Ax set his teeth, and changed
the subject. 'So, did you get your shirt back?'
'Nah,' said Sage, 'I think I've given up. Every time I ask her she has some new
excuse. I bet the kids have sold it.' This was the black iridescent shirt Sage had
lent to Silver Wing when he rescued her, a favourite of his; which had never
come back.
'Either that,' said Fiorinda. 'Or AM's been using it as a fertility charm. She
looked very worried, I noticed, when you told her you don't make babies.'
At Blue Gate there was a mill of wannabe guests trying to finesse themselves
into the party. Someone came up to Ax and said, 'Hey, Ax, you got a moment to
get me past your fuckin' private police force?'
'Yeah, okay,' said Ax.
Ax talked to site security; and they passed on.
'Who's that?' asked Sage, without much interest.
'Does he come from Taunton?' wondered Fiorinda. 'Sounded like it.' 'No, he's from Bridgwater. A much hipper burg.You didn't recognise him?'
They shook their heads.
„Fuck, another nail in my coffin. That was Faz Hassim.?
„Oh yeah, now you mention it, I vaguely did recognise him—„
„Who?s Faz Hassim?? asked Fiorinda.
„Fronts a no-talent guitar band called the Assassins. Woolly-anarchist
Counterculturals, useter get some media attention, before your time babe.'
'That's one way of looking at it,' said Ax gloomily. 'I wonder why he's here. He
hates the Few. Oh well, it's a free country. Whatever that stupid expression is
supposed to mean—'
The Assassins had been hard to miss in the West Country, when the Chosen
Few were starting out. At first there'd been a bond, both bands being basically
non-white, rare enough in the West; and because of Ax's politics. But the Chosen
had got successful, in their modest way, while Islam's original Countercultural
rockers had stayed hungry. It was the usual thing. Any kind of success means
you've sold out, and people who claim they've no fucking interest in being
commercial still manage to hate you for it. Sad, but inevitable.
'Assassins means the crusties are in town,' mused Sage. 'Could mean trouble
with our lot.'
'Not necessarily. There's plenty of crusty-tendencies among the Reading
staybehinds.'
A hippie is a Countercultural with political rationale. A crusty is an aggressively or else helplessly unhygienic ditto: with extra righteousness or extra
nuisance value, depending on your point of view. Fiorinda thought her own
thoughts while they went a few rounds on crusty versus hippie rock bands,
behaviour of, relative derangement and combustibility, swopped sides a couple
of times. A pleasant background noise, amazing how many factoids men store.
In the Blue Lagoon a group of distinguished staybehinds were supervising the
inauguration of a huge chunk of quartz; before the partygoers were let in. It was
being hoist into the apex of the marquee, roped like a calf.
'It's gonna soak up all the negative ions and protons and stuff,' explained
Smelly Hugh, proudly. „We brought it down in the bus.?
'Vibes, Hugh,' said Sage, 'The scientific term is vibes.'
'Oh, right. It give us some weird dreams, I'm telling you. Like visions. No
fuckin word of a lie. And the dogs wouldn't shut up.'
'I have a vision in which I see that bastard dropping on someone's head,' said
Ax.
'What is a bastard?' asked Silver Wing, toying idly with a stanley knife she'd
lifted from a hoister's gadget belt. 'Exactly, in this context?'
'Useter mean, someone whose parents weren't married,' Sage explained,
'That's become obsolete. Nowadays, means any shit you don't like. Give the guy
his knife back.'
„I see. Like fucker doesn't mean sex. No, I need this knife.'
'I wouldn't do that if I were you,' said Fiorinda, apparently referring to the quartz getting hoisted; and walked away before anyone could ask her to explain.
Allie wasn't coming, nor was Roxane. Everyone else was in the backstage bar.
Shane and Jordan and Milly had heard that the Assassins planned on being here,
and were full of this bad news. Jordan was very unhappy indeed when he found
out what Ax had done. He wanted Faz and his compadres chucked off the site.
'For crimes they might commit?' said Ax. 'Oh fuck off. They'd have got in
anyway, they're not exactly outsiders around here. He did that door-police
number to wind me up.'
'It's the fasting month, though,' said Chip wisely. 'So they won't make trouble.'
'Not so,' Ax told him. 'If you fight in a good cause, it?s fine. Better the day,
better the deed, is the Islamic attitude. Not that Faz was ever conventionally
devout. But I don't think it'll come to anything.'
Party night at the Blue Lagoon. The traditional shake-down for weapons slowing
the queue to get in, as outside guests got argumentative: brisk traffic at the
drugs-testing. There were about a hundred licensed brands of mild
hallucinogens, serotonin-boosters, cannabis cigarettes and rolling grass available
at any off-licence. Not to mention the doom-warning, sultry-packaged hard
stuffs. Naturally the Counterculturals preferred dodgy contraband: but they
loved getting their gear checked. Made them feel all sensible.
George was setting up in the DJs' box. The Few had moved onto the stage.
'Hey, Silver, wanna mind Sage's boards for me?' 'Oh yay!' squealed the little girl, leaping to her feet.
'George!' yelled Anne-Marie, 'Don't you DARE! She's eight years old, what the
fuck do you think you're doing, she can't handle Sage's stuff!'
'Yeah,' sez George, malignly. 'Kid ought to be in bed, couldn't agree more.
Since she's not, she may as well make 'erself useful.'
Heads fans staking claim to space at the front were regaled by the sight of a
little girl wearing a patchwork smock and butterfly wings perched up behind
Aoxomoxoa's desk, a wrap around her head and every appearence of being in
charge: until Sage came along from his shift on former-Class A testing.
'Hard drugs are the kind that make you hard hearted,' remarked the child.
'You should be in bed. Go away.'
'You never take any of those sort of drugs anymore, do you Sage?'
'Maybe not. What's it to you?' Her black, Chinese eyes gazed up at him: dead
inscrutable. 'Hmm. No need go shouting about that to my public, Silver.'
'Your secret is safe with me,' said the imp, and darted away.
Leaving him to consider, until the set began and performance took over, his
personal situation: hard fun indeed, maybe never going to get any easier, and yet
he would stay with this thing, wherever it might lead. That was certain.
Fiorinda was right next to the trouble when it began. She'd been talking to a
big leather-clad woman with a tattooed face, a staybehind poet: hoping to fill in
some gaps on the Assassins thing. She was unimpressed by factoids, but she
found the expression before your time, babe, annoying. She'd had an earful about Glastonbury versus Reading, and the merits of the openly meaningless populist
rock vibe, like your stuff Fiorinda; as opposed to the crypto-corporate hippies. . .
It was not an easy conversation to follow, in the midst of Aoxomoxoa and
George. She'd suggested they dance, then suddenly there was a stumbling wave,
barging into them. Another surge and they could see the fight, lurching through
Sage's visuals, spreading fast. The big staybehind was built like a truck. She
grabbed Fiorinda, without a word, and barged her way through to the stage:
planted a kiss on Fio's lips, boosted her up into safety; and plunged into the
affray.
Fiorinda put on her dark glasses, losing the huge sound and wild illusions too
abruptly for comfort. 'Shit, what?s got into them? I wanted to dance.What's the
use in coming to a party and not dancing?'
Everyone was wearing IMMix blocking glasses up here, and looking like
vampires' night out. But the fight on the floor was rapidly turning not funny.
„It's the wind,' said Anne-Marie. 'It always makes my kids crazy-'
Finally the demon DJs noticed something, put on a relatively soothing loop
and left the desks, to examine the situation.
It shouldn't have been the Few's business, but from their vantage point they
could see that the resident peacekeepers were not doing much peacekeeping.
Many site security persons, in their lilac and yellow flashed teeshirts, were
getting very unprofessionally involved. The lights came up, the IMMix system
cut out. The Lagoon's current manager, a skinny thirty-something from Brighton with ginger dreadlocks, appeared; and stood there looking depressed.
'Shit is right,' said Felice, senior powerbabe: disgusted. 'They're anarchists,
aren't they? This is their idea of fun, we should just leave.'
'But if there's women and kids, guys too, that don't want to be fighting—'
protested Dora, the tender-hearted responsible citizen.
'It's pissing with rain,' Dilip pointed out. 'Roll up the walls. That'll do it.'
'Try rolling up the walls in this wind, the whole fucking thing probly' go,' said
the manager. 'Anyway, how're you gonna? There's no button you can press,
we're lo-tech, got to crank them up mechanically. We have difficult situation, Ax.
Don't know where this is coming from. We don?t have fights!'
'I do,' growled Jordan. 'I told you Ax, but you wouldn't fucking listen.'
'So much for tame punters,' sighed Roxane.
'Why not blast them with some really heavy IMMix. Blow their fuses?'
George and Bill's grinning masks managed to look alarmed. 'Better not, Fio.'
'The effect of that could be unpredictable,' said Peter.
The rain drummed and the wind howled, the sounds of battle rose in violence.
Could they possibly have run into trouble, on a dance night in their own Blue
Lagoon? But the Blue Lagoon was not their own. This was their weak spot,
always had been. They did not belong here, they had no natural authority. Bunch
of rockstars, media creations. . . „We should leave,? repeated Felice, urgently. th
„We shouldn?t be here, it looks like we?re powerless—„
The frenzied mass parted, four bearded, wild-haired figures emerged from of it. One of them was the guy Ax had spoken to at Blue Gate, wearing a
bloodstained white scarf as a dishevelled turban, his eyes huge and crazy.
An uneasy quiet spread.
'I'm Faud Hassim,' he bellowed. 'I'm here for you, Ax. You're gonna fight me,
barre-knuckled. You son of a pig, you uncut blashempous faker. Show us who's
the boss. Like you did in Yorkshire.'
His companions started a slow hand-clap.
The crowd waited to see what would happen, nearly all of it quieted now.
Ax just shook his head, and turned away.
Faz Hassim roared with laughter, launched himself at the nearest staybehind:
grabbed the guy's shoulders, nutted him savagely, and kicked him in the balls as
he recoiled. The Assassins leapt back into the crowd, the melee recommenced,
more rabid than ever
Jordan glared at his brother. 'I'm getting Milly out of this.'
Milly, who was now visibly pregnant, said, ' You?re not getting me anywhere,
Jor. We?ll do what?s best.' But she looked worried.
'Call Thames Valley,' said Dora, 'We need the cops.'
'She could right,' said the manager. 'This never happens, this is out of order.
We could rack up casualties.'
'Those wankers!' snapped Ax. 'They'll either not turn up, or they'll arrive with
a fleet of Apaches and strafe the site. Shit, I suppose they do their best. But the
police won't want to mess with us, and I don't blame them.' 'Who's us?' muttered Verlaine. 'That?s the trouble, isn?t it?'
Aoxomoxoa was saying nothing, leaning against a partition, hands in his
pockets, the skull gazing mildly into space. Ax glanced at him with annoyance,
took a turn up and down the stage; looked at Fiorinda. Apparently these three
were in conference.
Fiorinda shrugged. 'I think it's just that kind of night, Ax.'
Sage went on silently looking as if he was waiting for someone to press the
switch. 'Oh, okay,' said Ax. 'Go on, my recovering gunslinger. Sort 'em.'
The skull produced a rabid and beautiful grin. 'DK. Give us a happy beat—'
The manager gave them some power back, Dilip took over the sound. The
Heads and their chief came off the stage in one predatory rush, and went into the
ruck like tigers, irresistible and glorious. Dora and Milly stayed well back.
Fiorinda, Felice and Cherry stood up front, dodging missiles, and cheered.
'You going down there?' Rob asked Ax, his tone making it clear Rob was not.
'Not unless it's a matter of life and death,' said Ax firmly. 'Which it won't be.'
Four Heads, plus another four skull-masked Heads crew-members, moved
through the crowd, the peacekeepers rallying to them: breaking up fistfights,
disarming bottle wielders, treating the home team and the aggressors (when
these could be distinguished) with impartial ferocity. The obvious thing was to
open the place up, give folks a chance to disperse. Sage reached the marquee
wall. Another skull headed idiot, couldn't tell who, had shinned up a scaffold
pole to signal he was at the opposite side. They needed a through draught, or the tent would rip itself apart. He struggled with tackle, fending off a large and
trolleyed black Assassin fan who wouldn't give up—
'I saw you on that tv without the mask!' shrieked the overwrought black guy,
pummelling wildly. 'Hey, you an albino African, innit?'
'Yeah, right, few million years back. Knock it off, huh, I'm trying to—'
'Don?t mess with me. You?re a brother, or how come you got that flat nose?
How come you got that yellow nappy hair?'
'Lost tribes of Israel. Shit, KNOCK IT OFF—'
A wall-section came free, the storm burst in. Overwrought black guy grabbed
some scaffold. A mass of heavy marquee fabric slammed into them, with such
violence both men went flying, black guy still hanging on his scaffold. Sage,
crashing onto his back, drenched as if he'd fallen in the river, saw that lump of
quartz, flailing up in the apex like a huge, blunt bolas weight: swinging, catching,
hauling on the shifted frame, propelled by the force of the wind. . . ah, shit. . .
'SHIT. FUCK. I am trying to give up doing stuff like this-'
'Don't blame yourself man,' said the black guy, as everything around them
went sideways, in wet, howling, roc-wing flapping chaos. 'These things happen.'
Ax left the wreckage of the Festival site in the morning. He had a gig he couldn't
miss. He took the train to London but drove to Hastings, storm damage having
disrupted the railways. Got back late in the afternoon, and went straight to a tv
studio to record for the Laylat al Qadr broadcast. The spiel more polished than it had been two years ago in the Garden Room at Pigsty's hotel, but sounding to
him even less convincing.
Stick together, be good to each other. If we can just get through this part
Fiorinda was at Reading. That was okay, he'd always planned to spend this
night alone. Laylat al Qadr, Night of Power, commemorates the night the Qur'an
descended into the soul of the Prophet: an occasion for wakeful prayer and
meditation. The scholars say no one can tell exactly when it should fall in
Ramadan. Traditionally it was celebrated on the twenty seventh night, which
was when Ax's recorded spiel would be broadcast. But he'd decided to make his
own private vigil also, and this seemed like the time. He cooked for himself and
ate, sitting on the floor in the living room of the Brixton flat, watching tv: Elsie
the cat in turn watching him attentively, ready to sneak onto his lap soon as she
saw half a chance.
He was thinking it was a pity he disliked dates, it took the romance out of
breaking the fast on this desert-arab food; when his phone rang. It was the
nursing home. Laura Preston, the old lady he'd visited faithfully —except when
utterly prevented— since he came back from the Deconstruction Tour, had died
about two hours after he'd left. Not unexpected. She still took an interest and had
a smile for him, but she'd been saying she was very tired; and she'd kept getting
these chest infections. She'd been just on a hundred years' old.
Yeah, he told himself, responding politely to the matron, It was time, she was
ready. That was a good connection, and it's over. . . But the loss shook him. The smell of a geriatric home was one of his early memories. Must have been
somewhere his mother had been working. Shrunken creatures lying under
knitted blankets, a little boy stares in through the half-open door. Maybe I
learned compassion there. Or maybe I just learned about trying to hold back the
tide. That some people instinctively do this, and you fail in the end, whatever
you do: but somehow it seems worthwhile.
Making the best of things, my mum would say.
He switched off the tv. Cleared away his meal, put Op 130 on the sound
system, took out his India stone and brought it to the rug which he seemed to
have adopted as the locus for his meditations. Fingernails on the left, and on the
thumb and index finger of the right hand, kept invisibly short. The nails on the
other three fingers must be exactly square and buffed smooth to perfection.
Thinking about the government's plan to hand over the Upper House to the
CCM, launched so long ago, in another world. Which was still moving along,
and which he couldn't openly resist, but he didn?t like it. Pack the former House
of Lords with self-important, quarrelsome Green Nazis, and make Ax
accountable to them. Oh, terrific. . . And Benny Prem wanted watching, though
any conspiracy against Ax looked toothless just at the moment.
Hadn't yet thought of a way to get the punters to take the ATP treatment. And
what about the ATP 'batteries'? Difficult to resist, but they were a trap, just more
of the same. Green power that gets made in a factory and you buy it from a shop;
or a service provider. The radical change was lost. Ax was having megalomaniac thoughts about suppressing the things (because the market never will).
But that was stupid.
There ought to be a saying, to match if you're in a hole stop digging. If the
engine's turning over, stop pushing. It's time to jump on board and let yourself
be carried, you're no longer the motive force. Horrible feeling though. That was
why he loved the Volvo. It had a stick and gears, and a mechanical engine; and
he felt in charge. Ah well. As the music biz teaches us, lack of control is the chief
misery of the struggle; loss of control the first price of success.
Unless your name's Aoxomoxoa.
Poor Faz. Something so heartbreaking about the way he'd stood there, crazy
drunk, uttering his ridiculous challenge. Yet though the incident seemed nothing
now, completely upstaged by the weather, it had been dangerous: the
unbridgeable gap between Ax and his friends, and the real Counterculture,
suddenly, shockingly visible. Is there a solution? Maybe not. Lucky that Sage and
Fiorinda had known how to turn it around. Yeah, there's such a thing as good
violence, exhilerating, face-saving, cathartic: but Ax would never understand
that code. He paused in his finicky work with the oilstone, thinking of Sage. So
fucking wise, sometimes. Yet still capable of insisting you come and admire the
impressively large turd he has just laid. And Fiorinda: stubborn, secretive little
cat, with that brain, that voice; that cool, steely integrity.
It was strange to look back and see how quickly the triple alliance had been
formed. Almost from the first meeting of the Counter Cultural Think Tank they'd been together, running rings round Paul Javert, their friends occasionally
catching up. Ax Preston and Aoxomoxoa, and that extraordinary little girl,
exercising faculties the music biz had left to atrophy. None of them, not even Ax,
having any idea where this was heading. Sage at those sessions frequently so
hammered you wondered how he could see straight, but it never shut him up:
while Fiorinda was quietly stealing Ax's heart away—
Like something out of a fairytale. I fucked her when I didn't know I loved her,
and now look at my darling. Her beautiful smile, her graceful body, glimpses of
Fiorinda, rising through the frost and snow. He could almost wish to have that
time back, only to know how much he was going to love her; though God knows
it hadn't been easy. To touch her hair again, as on that first night. To hold her
naked in his arms, and kiss her little breasts, for the first time again.
Perhaps he shouldn't be thinking about his girlfriend's breasts. Even if it was
with pure affection and no carnality, much. Theoretically he should be praying.
Keep me on the straight path.
But he could not recover the mindset of Ax-in-Yorkshire, struggling towards
Islam. Things had happened so thick and fast, tonight accept seemed like just a
word. He had never prayed for the success of his enterprise, it didn't seem right.
Insha'llah. In the end he just sat: listening to the Beethoven and wishing he could
have his nice life back, a pretty-good guitarist with a pretty-good, non
commercial little band. The cat on his lap curled tight and purring hard. Oh well,
he thought. I have two best friends who don't stand no shit. As long as they'll put up with me, I'll know I haven't turned into a complete monster.
Later, he went and fetched the Qur'an and began to recite. He didn't need the
printed Arabic, he had it all in memory, but he took comfort in the ritual.
When he got back to Reading he left the car up the road, to avoid the inevitable
personal transport hypocrisy flak. On the south bank, at Caversham Bridge,
people were miserably watching fallen trees getting hauled out of the water, that
lovely big poplar among them. But the flood had subsided. Every storm is
different. This one seemed to have had a short-lived, vindictive interest in one
particular reach of the Thames —as if it had been planning revenge, while Ax
and his friends were off on the east coast, scoring points against its buddies. He
walked into the site through the main entrance, Storm Damage PA coming to
meet him across the devastated camping fields: Fiorinda singing, in duet with
someone, that they came across a child of god, he was walking along the road. . .
Interupts herself to respond to remarks that can't be made out; rueful laughter,
messages (is Evan Curran of California on site? Evan, if you come over here,
someone wants to wish you a happy birthday). Who's that harmonising with
her? Not Sage. Oh, it's George. Good work getting the PA functional again so
quickly. Stardust, golden. . .
PLEASE, No more wet gear to the Leisure Centre, FUCK IT.
We've run out of space.
On the fence at the gates to the arena, someone had created an installation of dead birds: glittering speckled starlings; chaffinches, a blackbird, a pitiful yellow
and slate smear that had been a bluetit; and here's a swan, huge wings
outspread, like a murdered angel.
Lot of damage. Only the Zen Self tent seemed untouched. Red Stage was okay
but looking strangely lopsided, oh, one of the towers gone. Near the site of the
Blue Lagoon, where Storm Damage PA had its outdoor headquarters, he found
Dilip, Chip and Verlaine and the Heads: sitting around a bonfire with some
ZenSelfers and others. He arrived just as George and Fiorinda returned from
their PA slot; and joined the atmosphere of shocked, bereft and weary people —
whose own home has been wrecked this time; who had finally become the
victims, not the audience, not the defenders.
'Oh well,' said Chip. 'We'll have to put on the show right here in the barn.'
„Very poor,? said Verlaine. „It?s not funny, Chip. The campground?s gone.?
Something felt wrong to Ax, besides the obvious. 'Where's Sage?'
Dilip shrugged glumly. Chip and Ver winced. 'Sage fucked up his hands,' said
Fiorinda, 'humping things, and punching heads the other night.'
'Fucked up—? Oh yeah, I know.'
Sage's ruined hands could give him hell, Ax'd found out about that in
Yorkshire. Though you?d never, ever know it from the way he behaved, or from
that stage act.
'He's gone away by himself,' Fiorinda went on, clipped vowels sharp with
rage 'to think about how stupid he is, not to use normal painkillers.' 'No use getting pissed off with 'im Fio,' said George. 'It does no good.'
'Doesn't he have his NDogs?'
'They were in the van,' explained Bill.
Sage's van had been in a sorry state after the storm. It had escaped the fall of
the oak tree, but the Heads had let it to be used as an emergency shelter, and it
had taken a battering from unscrupulous campers
'Peter?s tracked down most of the nicked stuff and got it back.'
'But he won't have anyone going after him, when he's like this.'
Oh, he's got you well trained, thought Ax. All four of you. The stupid bugger.
'Gimme the gear,' he said. 'I'll find him.'
A foreign film crew came and filmed the destruction, and wanted to know if
this was the end of the staybehind dream. Dogs, usually excluded from the
arena, trotted aimlessly. The Few took it in turns to go over and do live spots on
the PA, with staybehind talent. A highly articulate naked hippie turned up and
ranted. He'd worn nothing but mud since Dissolution Summer, and if others
would follow his example, the hole in the ozone layer would heal up. A couple
of hours before sunset the Dictator-elect and his Minister appeared, ambling
slowly across the littered waste. What had they been talking about? The heat
death of the universe. Why worry about a few pretty trees? It'll all be the same in
fifty billion years' time.
'Was that fifty billion, or five hundred billion?'
'Don't know as it makes much odds to you an' me, Ax.' As they sat down Fiorinda muttered sorry, from behind a barricade of
corkscrew red curls. Sage gently tugged one of them, smiling. 'Thas' okay.'
Some councillors came along to see Ax. 'You going to yell at us about the fire?'
Fires, like dogs, were forbidden in the sacred precinct.
'I'm amazed you got it started,' said one of the tribal elders, looking
suspiciously at Aoxomoxoa. 'With everything fucking totally soaked. You
haven't been using chemicals?'
'Mmm, not for firelighting,' said Sage, dreamily.
'Oh, that was Fiorinda,' explained Verlaine, 'With her brilliant little tinderbox.'
The councillors reported on the structural damage, and said the things such
people have to say in the circumstances: everything's fixable, we're not beaten,
our game plan allows for disasters. But they were wounded and it showed, and
the Few (their own tower of strength lost in spooky, synthetic-neurochemical
induced calm) didn't have much comfort to offer. Not right now.
'We were plannin' to start a Nature Studies class,' said Peter Stannen sadly.
'We found out, on the Western tour, none of these Counterculture kiddies knows
ash from oak. It?s a scandal.'
'Yeah, weird. AM's kids know absolutely fuck.'
'We'll have to educate them for a treeless future,' said Chip. 'Get used to it.
Like Ax says: the natural environment of people, is people.'
'ISpy Rock Festivals,' murmured Verlaine. 'Five points for a comatose crusty.'
'Five points for a naked hippy, ten for naked hippy wearing mud.' 'Septic piercing, ten.'
'Alfresco sex, five. Fifteen if involving vegetables, or pets.'
'How many of these kinds of vomit can you spot?'
'Ax Preston committing Personal Transport Hypocrisy, nul points—'
And so on, as the sky grew dark and the bonfire crackled.
But the reality of the inauguration loomed close. The publicity was everywhere,
especially that Trimurti poster; and everywhere, in every relevant or irrelevant
context, the catchphrases lifted from Ax's speeches: Be good to each other, It's the
ecology, stupid. Positive interference, start from where we are, the natural envirnoment
of people is people, if we can just get through this part. Allie had nothing to do with
this viral advertising, but Ax began to hate her for it anyway. He wasn't going to
be able to protect his girlfriend from any of the horrors of the civil ceremony
(that ride down the Mall, oh God, how she would hate that); and though reports
were optimistic, the Reading celebration plans were obviously a mess. Nothing
had been done, nothing had been decided.
Just before the Eid, he called them to the Office and met them armed with a
check list, determined to get through some stuff. The day was fine, golden
sunlight pouring through the balcony windows, gleaming on all the insufferably
gaudy decor. Ax sat with Allie for a change, and powered his agenda along.
Trying not to be sidetracked by people making difficulties, about ridiculous
distractions. They didn't like the winelist. Sage, who couldn't tell Beaune from alcoholic Ribena.
'But Ax, even I know English red wine is junk.'
'Well, obviously it'll go on being junk if nobody drinks it. This is a flagship
occasion, of course we fly the flag. There's no reason why it shouldn't be good.?
'Okay,' says Aoxomoxoa, 'Fine.' Exchanging a glance with George Merrick that
spelled, Ax knew, an agreement to sabotage.
'This would be the Sage “okay”, meaning, I'm going to do what the fuck I like?'
'Tha?s right.'
'Shit,' muttered Ax, but took it no further. 'Now, the concert. Look, I don't
understand why we haven't agreed on any kind of order in this line-up, except
for Sage's extravaganza being last.'
'We didn't know if DARK were coming down,' said Fiorinda.
'Yeah, but you know that now. You've known since Monday.'
'And we've had trouble getting hold of one other person, who's supposed to
be closely involved.'
Despite his complaints of noble isolation, Ax had often been drawn into the
Islamic community during the fasting month. He hadn't been available all the
time. 'Oh. Well, okay. I'm here. Tell me what I've been missing.'
'Will he be able to handle it?' Fiorinda asked Sage. 'He hasn't rehearsed much.'
'Oh yeah. I'm not asking for any backflips, an' he's a lot fitter than he was.'
'That's good. These wussy, non-camping, indoor-plant types—'
'Think it was the constant humiliation, up in Yorkshire, got him down the gym.'
The Few, already unhappy about the seating arrangement, the Triumvirate
divided, flashed nervous glances. Muscle knotted in Ax?s jaw. 'Can we move on?'
'Have you decided whether or not you're going to play “Jerusalem”?'
'No. I mean, no I am not going to play “Jerusalem”. It's not appropriate. This is
an overcrowded liferaft, not the City of God.'
'If Ax isn't doing “Jerusalem”,' said Fiorinda. 'I'm not doing “Sparrow Child”.'
'But Fio, you have to!' protested Cherry. „It?s the Rock The Boat Tour song, we
can?t do without it—?
'Yeah, but I hate the fucking thing and I wish I'd never written it—'
'Children, children—' sighed Roxane.
Dilip leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.
'We're all feeling the strain,' said Rob diplomatically. 'Look, it's lunchtime,
why don't we leave this, we've been working hard, let's get something to eat.'
'Go ahead,' snapped Ax. 'I'll wait here.'
'Okay. Ax isn't doing “Jerusalem”, the nation's sweetheart isn't doing her loss
of-habitat number. Do we have a supergroup decision on “Oats and Beans”?'
'NO!' yelled several people. Everyone detested the no-brain Barmy Army
marching song.
'That's unanimous, is it? Well done. Too bad, we're doing it. Can't hurt the
army's feelings, we may need them again. This brings us to the “Ode to Joy”.'
'What about the “Ode to Joy”?' inquired Ax. 'That's not a problem on my list.' 'There's no problem,' said Fiorinda. 'We just need to tell you we won't sing it.'
'What are you talking about? You have to sing the anthem, this is a state
occasion, we'll have EU guests. What's wrong with the “Ode to Joy”? Good tune.'
'I think what's wrong,' said Rob, slowly, 'is that those dipped-in-shit bastards
aspiring to be the European government didn't do a fucking thing to help us or
anyone with the Boat People. They haven't achieved a fucking thing, on any crisis
issue.'
'I can't sing,' said Allie, 'I'm only going on stage to please the rest of you, but I
won't pretend to sing that.'
There was a general murmur of assent. Ax stared at them, robbed of speech.
His friends stared back, obdurate.
'What do you want instead, then?' he snarled, 'Fucking“Rule Britannia”?'
'Nah,' said Sage calmly. 'The national anthem will be fine.'
'My God. What a bunch of fucking self-centred Little England FASCISTS—'
Ax slammed his chair back, jumped up and stormed out of the room.
Silence. 'Aren't you going after him?' asked Allie at last.
Fiorinda shook her head.
'No. We're going to let him alone,' said Sage, skull mask doing between tough
love and callous amusement. 'It may seem cruel, but it's the best way.'
They reconvened in the gardens, with food and wine from the canteen:
Roxane in a canvas director's chair that Verlaine had carried out for hir, the rest
of them lying about on the grass. Sun burnished the late summer foliage, waterbirds cackled on the lake; the occasional rumble of some passing vehicle
reached them from Grosvenor Place. They hadn't been there long before Ax came
up, looking ashamed of himself, and sat down by Sage and Fiorinda. The tale of
legendary rock-bad-behaviour that Roxane was telling halted; and went
smoothly on. George Merrick, who was rolling fat joints of resin and tobacco for
the company, glanced at the Triumvirate, and maybe sighed.
'Hey, boss. Remember Near Miss year?'
'The summer we got rich and famous?' said Bill, ''Course 'e does. Some of it,
anyhow.'
'We were on the Lizard,' said George. 'In Bill's auntie's field, hopin' to get
vaporised or some such thrill. Not involved in that Rock Festival. Weren't you on
there, Ax?'
'Yeah,' said the Dictator-elect, 'It was before the Chosen. I was with Mulan.'
'D'jever get paid?'
'Can't remember. As I recall, the punters stayed away in droves.'
'Yeah. Anyway, 'course the so-called Near Miss was a wash out. But that
night. . . Sky had cleared, load of stars, comet like a whacking big frame-freezed
firework. We were sitting around drinking, me and Bill and Cack and Eval
Jackson, this was before Luke's time. Sage'd wandered off to commune with
mother nature.'
'Or anythin' else female he could lay his hands on.'
'He'd got involved wif one of the Jerseys in the next field,' Peter recalled. 'Yeah, we was worried for her. But it was just a fling. She came to 'er senses.'
'Realised she was too good for him—'
'So anyway, he'd gone off—'
'What happened to Mulan?' inquired Sage. Who had spotted where this
anecdote was heading, but couldn't quite believe such utter perfidy—
'I could tell you, but it's boring,' said Ax, intrigued by his Minister's evident
unease. 'Go on, George. What happened then?'
'Boss comes back, all excited. On yer feet, he says, c'mon, you gotta hear this.
This guy from Taunton, playing out of the back of a panel van, best guitarist you
ever heard in your—'
'YOUR DEAD!'
Sage erupted, and came flying through the air. Everyone scattered as best they
could, laughing and shrieking, grabbing wine bottles, too bad about that hashish,
out of the way of the ferocious wrestling match which ensued, the outcome by no
means a sure thing. Sage had the advantage in height, and flexibility, and
outrage. But George Merrick was a big guy, with a lot of broad, full-grown
muscle and two good hands—
It ended, before Dora felt impelled to call the cops, with both lying on their
backs, laughing and gasping. 'Who won?' asked Fiorinda, bending over them.
'He did,' said Sage, coming effortlessly to his feet and reaching a hand for his
brother Head, 'Always does, unless I can punch him out.'
'You gotta plan ahead boss. I've told you a fuckin' million times-' 'Shit,' said Ax, looking at his watch. 'I have to go. Lissen, folks, I'm sorry.'
'For what?' said Sage. 'For yelling at us? That was nothing.'
'For everything. For being a shit, for dragging you into this.'
'As I remember,' said Fiorinda, 'We were volunteers. Don't worry Ax.
Everything's going to be fine. Nobody will disgrace you.' She grinned with sweet
malice. 'If we can just get through this part—'
Chip and Verlaine had handed everyone a cup or a bottle. Silently, they
toasted him. Ax tried to laugh, choked up, and had to walk away.
DARK came down to Reading, where they were booked in at the Holiday Inn,
(for old sakes' sake). Fiorinda went and stayed with them. They rehearsed, sober
by unspoken agreement; a guy from one of the Few associate bands as temporary
bassist. It would be a while before they could think about replacing Tom. Charm
and Fiorinda didn't have a single fight.
Sage disappeared for two days just before it, and refused to say where he'd
gone or why. The civil ceremony otherwise passed off without incident.
How typical of their career, how fitting, that they would spend most of their own
celebration waiting to go on or else up there. 'Like my mum, washing the kitchen
floor last thing on Christmas Eve,' said Kevin Hanlon, aka Verlaine. And yes, it
was a lot like like Christmas, or Divali or something, one of those hybrid
traditional events, half party, half excruciating familial obligation (much like life
in Ax's idea of the Good State, indeed); because everyone's mum had a backstage pass. Including Sayyid Muhammad Zayid and his entourage, Ax's family, Sage's
family; Marlon Williams (Mary had decided to stay away, thank God). Plus
assorted VIPs, celebs and illustrious Counterculturals from Westminster, the
Celtic nations and the continent. Exhausting stuff.
Fiorinda stared at herself in the mirror. No dresser tonight. She really didn't
need anyone like that; except possibly on tour. She'd just escaped from Alain de
Corlay, the political artist formerly known as Alain Jupette, who was here with
Tamagotchi, musclebound kooky-girl from Alain's band Movie Sucré. Alain in
white tie and tails, Tam in fishscale silver from head to toe: like a big scary Joan
of Arc, with her Dauphin on her arm. Both of them talking like suits. God, is this
where we're at? Are we doomed to become suits?
She had a moment's vertigo: saw Allie Marlowe coming towards her, in the
arena at twilight, a world's end ago. Is politics really the new rock and roll?
'Alain's getting very grown up,' she complained. 'Have you seen him in his
white tie? If he gets any older, I'm not going to like him anymore.'
'Don't worry,' said Sage, reaching over to take the spliff she held out. 'I have a
plan, for after this. I'll have old Smash-The-State Alain dressing up in girl's
clothes and acting like a six year old again in no time.'
They were alone in the dressing room, a welcome interlude of calm. Sage was
basically ready, in slick black trousers and a white singlet. Fiorinda wore the
silver and white lace cowgirl dress. She would change, after DARK's set, for the
athletic part of the show. 'You never used to wear make up on stage.'
'I was sure I'd mess it up. Didn't want to end up looking like Courtney Love.'
She applied eyeliner, and grinned at the skull in her mirror. 'Go on, tell me I look
better without. I dare you.'
'To me you look wonderful either way, baby. As you well know.'
She wondered where remarks of that kind were leading. Not to anything that
would hurt Ax, she was certain. 'At least I'm trying to look wonderful, rather
than scaring people. I'm sure poor Chip has nightmares about you, after those
rehearsals. Verlaine too.'
'Hahaha—' said the skull, acting tough but looking worried. 'Nah, I wasn't that
bad?'
'Hideous wake up sweating nightmares about were-skulled giants biting their
throats out. You were horrible to those poor kids. Bill was winding them up too.'
'Fuck off. Chip is five years older than you, Fee. And Ver is twenty one.?
'I know. How do they do it? I don't think I was ever that young. Another
spliff?'
'Yeah.'
Fiorinda looked for her smokes tin. Sage was occupying several palsied plastic
chairs, (backstage not very palatial in these regions) long legs stretched out over
three of them, leaning on the back of another, the skull's cheekbone propped on a
skeletal hand. The mask's blank gaze passed idly over the dressing room clutter.
'What d'you think of Ax's Dad? D'you like him?' 'Since you ask—' Fiorinda pulled a guilty face at the mirror. 'Sort of yes.'
'Funny you should say that. So do I.'
Ax's father was a disgrace. Untrustworthy and shiftless, and a dead weight on
Ax's gentle mother. But alas, he had that flashing smile, that gleam in his eye
'Ax must never know,' said Fiorinda solemnly: and they laughed together.
'I'm fucking glad Ramadan is over,' she went on, sparking up the new spliff. 'I
see why fasting is such a popular sport in many hardnosed traditional cultures. It
concentrated his ideas wonderful. I tell you, if he does that again next year, he's
going to invade Poland—'
'We should do it with him. So he doesn't feel so alone and misunderstood.'
'Huh. I practically have been. . . But you could be right. Only we'd have to get
equally as narky, or we'd just make things worse.'
He wanted to ask her about the magic. Fiorinda?s saltbox that never needs to
be refilled. Fiorinda?s tinderbox, that never fails. Fiorinda invaded by demons.
Maybe he should warn her that Anne Marie was onto her. Salt and fire. Well, the
world is getting stranger. But why are you so terrified, Fee?
He wanted to tell her she needn?t be afraid. That the Zen Self quest, height of
technoscience, was rewriting a few crucial rules, suggesting some very bizarre
possibilities. You?re not alone. But the fear in the back of her eyes went too deep.
Wait until there's a good time. Wait until you can deliver some protection,
before you ask her to trust you.
And what, Sage wondered, watching her paint her lovely face, would be the mentality of someone who could decide, at this point, I've had enough.. It’s crazy
and it hurts. I'm gonna jump ship and go and live in Alaska. So much mystery, so
much danger and promise. The adventure has only just begun.
Someone knocked on the door. Peter Stannen put his skull-head around it,
gave them the thumbs up. 'Right,' said Fiorinda, 'Just a minute.'
The others, including Ax, were waiting in a bar upstairs, normally the sanctum of
off-duty site security, a dartsboard and gruesome calendar haven, which no one
had prettified for the celebrations. In the home straight now, and everyone at last
beginning to get excited. As Fiorinda came in, Verlaine was saying, 'We can mint
our own money, with Ax's head on it!'
'Bring back sacred measure, pounds shillings and pence.'
'And get hated forever,' said Ax, 'by anyone who has to make change-'
Fiorinda went to Ax and hugged him. 'No one makes change anymore,' she
said. 'They press buttons. Only an esoteric minor clan of Counterculturals can
count. Shouldn't you be out there collecting autographs, Mr Dictator, Sir?'
'Oh God, I suppose you're right- '
Obediently, Ax made for the door, but he found Sage in his way.
'Not so fast. Go and sit down again. We've got something to say to you.'
Ax went and sat down, on a palsied plastic chair. He looked worried.
'What's going on?'
'Ssh. Just sit quietly.' They gathered in a semicircle: DK the DJ, Roxane Smith, Chip and Verlaine,
Rob and the Babes; Allie, Fiorinda and three skull headed idiots; Anne-Marie and
Smelly Hugh. Jordan and Shane and Milly hanging back a little. All dressed in
their best, a rainbow of silks and velvets, lace and leather, tech-infused polymers.
Sage came through the arc they made, holding something wrapped in peat
brown homespun. He went down on one knee, and put this parcel in Ax's hands.
'Open it,' said Fiorinda. 'It's a present. From us.'
Ax unfolded the cloth and found a perfect, slender, unpolished blade of
greenish stone, the length of a man's hand; the cutting edge unblemished, as if it
had never been used—
'What's this?'
'It's an axe, Ax.'
'I know what it is. This is the Sweet Track Jade. There aren't two ceremonial
stone axes like this in the country. What, is it a replica?'
'No, it's the original. I had to go to Cambridge to find it. It belongs, belonged,
to the university because they funded the dig that turned it up.'
'A jadeite axe of uncommon perfection and provenance.' said Roxane, 'Found
by an archaeology student beside the causewayed road called The Sweet Track
that leads from Taunton to Glastonbury. Where someone dropped it, or possibly
placed it as a sacrifice, five thousand odd years ago.'
'We asked Jordan,' said Fiorinda, 'What we could get for you. He said the
stone axe that's the Chosen's logo was because of the Sweet Track Jade: and you loved it, you used to take him to see the replica in Taunton museum, and drool
over it— '
Tough guy Jordan shrugged, grimaced, and tried to look as if he couldn't
remember this conversation. Ax stared in amazement at his brother, and then in
wonder at the ancient treasure, this beautiful, precious thing—
'Wait a minute. How did you get hold of this?'
Everyone laughed.
'I asked,' said Sage. „How could you doubt me? I told them who it was for, and
they reckoned that was okay. There's a letter goes with it, I'll give it to you later,
which you may want to frame.'
DARK and Fiorinda were on first, with some of their already-legendary Rock
The Boat set: and the crowd went crazy. In „Stonecold?, that rageous, paradoxical
anthem, (singalong and we'll kill you—) Fiorinda felt the huge response coming
back at her, caught Charm's eye and saw her on the edge of panic. Oh no, she
thought. You don't run scared on me now, we're for the Big Time: and then the
vertigo as she remembered, that world is gone. Then it was the end of the set,
and they were singing „Dark Eyed Sailor?, but differently tonight: holding down
the jangly guitars, pulling out the melody and the lyrics, unashamed tears on
their faces, sometimes a cloudy morning, a cloudy morning, brings on a sunshine day
Traditional music, immemorial loss: but we go on.
DARK were joined by Snake Eyes, the whole big band: a short set of this unlikely fusion, next the Heads come on, Aoxomoxoa duetting with Rob, singing
Bob Marley, the way they did at Gateshead, this honeyed interlude segueing into
a STRICTLY NO HORROR sound and vision set from the techno-wizards.
Thence to the Adjuvants with DK guesting, lending his turbodrive to the kids'
fragile, clever ideas; Anne-Marie and Smelly Hugh's Rover joins them. PoMo
thrash techno-IMMix-funk folk-punk; and last but not least, a classic little guitar
band. Sage had said he was looking for positive interference: amazingly, or not
so amazingly, they did have a fairly sympathetic crowd, it all seemed to work. At
the end of the Chosen's set they took a break. Nearly at the end of it, Fiorinda
had to scoot off in a panic to change.
She scurried back in time to knock back another glass of vintage champagne,
flowing in industrial quantities and damn the crisis (Ax better never find out
what George and Sage spent on this lot). Allie Marlowe rushed up to plonk a
wreath of silky traveller's joy on her head, pinned it down, grinned at her
sweetly, muttering shit, what a lot of hair; gave her a hug and a kiss. Then
they're on stage together, Fiorinda and her bodyguards. She in a green tunic and
footless dance tights, missing her skirts terribly, flowers of the wayside for her
crown: meeting their glances full of love and pride, her tiger and her wolf; and
isn't this great? Isn't this our life's blood? They faced the roaring ocean and
launched into „Wonderwall?, close harmony, a capella.
The secret of the Battle of the Sexes masque had been kept so well, most of us delirious masses really genuinely didn't know what was going on at the end of that storming set
by the three rulers of the Rock and Roll Reich, when Ax and Sage apparently unilaterally
decided to do Under My Thumb, and Fiorinda went ballistic. Could have been a nasty
stage invasion by Barmy Army commandos in defence of our queen, but luckily the
firehoses and the foam made things clear: and who'd have thought the big bruiser had
such a hidden talent for family entertainment? Well, he always was a crowd pleaser.
We didn't really like the masque, it wasn't to our taste, and if you're going to take-off
Andrew Lloyd Webber you have to be slicker than that, Sage. But who that saw it will
ever forget Aoxomoxoa as the Don, hitting on Fiorinda with that Mozart? Or Allie
Marlowe, Queenpin of the Countercultural Administration, as Polly Peachum in the
Beggar's Opera riff? Or Mr Dictator Preston as the Pirate King? None too soon,
however, Ax doffed the fake tache and donned a guitar, walked over to Sage and said
something —exactly what, will be fuel for endless speculation. Then he started to play,
and everything went quiet. We have to admit that we went quiet too, it's not a new idea
but we think a country's national anthem has never been given such a spine-tingling
epiphany of rock-redemption since Jimi Hendrix played. Maybe not then. We forgot to
breathe, we hardened hacks in the media corral. And everybody on stage, by this time a
cast of thousands: bands, crews, techies, hangers on, rock-muppets, infants in arms,
listened as if they were hearing it for the first time too
I vow to thee my country all earthly things above
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love
Whole arena teary-eyed, when he started over and it was time to sing. We were
frankly sobbing into our organic recycled backstage serviettes. Forgive us if this sounds
mawkish. It's been a long, strange, three years on the winding road that led us here. Joe Muldur and Jeff Scully
What Ax said was 'I still resent this-': and then into the solo, completely
unplanned, that no one had ever heard before, which Sage thought he might
actually be playing for the first time. He had that air of casual, intuitive grace, Ax
improvising: maybe having given the chords a few moments' thought, while he
was pissing around being the Pirate King. Nice one, Ax.
The cast of thousands, caught off balance, recovered and formed up, tall folks
at the back, Sage next to Roxane Smith. 'Makes me think of Tolstoy,' s/he
muttered. 'Something he says in War and Peace. You may go to war like a
duellist with a rapier. But when you're massively outgunned and the situation's
desperate you throw away the rules, forget good taste and pick up any brutal
blunt instrument. We're going to regret this. We're invoking demons here—'
In the dawn of this day, Sage and George had flown to Helston to the Air
Marine base, and been taken on a helicopter trip to Lizard Point, to light the first
beacon. As they sailed over Goonhilly Down they'd seen the great dish aerials of
the earth station, Arthur and Uther, Guinevere and Lancelot, Geraint and Merlin,
staring up at them, mute and dead. Signs of that global consciousness, brief peak
of civilisation which for us is in the past. They had looked at each other, unmasked
in respect. The nav marks on the Lizard's flank painted bright, after years of
disuse. Hard times, hard times, and it's going to get worse, no doubt of that. So
that's how we hepcats end up on stage, at what was formerly the site of a carefree, global consumerism, yoof culture annual knees-up, singing the fucking
national anthem. Sorry Rox, this is an emergency
The love that asks no questions, the love that pays the price
That lays upon the altar the final sacrifice
I've seen him do that. I've seen Ax lay down his life, no joke, unreservedly, not
once but over and over, to get us all out of a jam. Still don't know what makes
him do it. He's just the Ax.
'You talking to me? Do I look as if I read Tolstoy? Shut up and sing.'
Some time after the show Ax and Sage came across each other in the melee.
Later, they were holed up together in a disabled toilet in the Leisure Centre, for
reasons already lost in the mists. Sage was sitting on the cistern, Ax was on the
floor, propped against the wall, rolling spliff: both of them very relaxed. Running
water, sanitation, dry underfoot, nice roomy cubicle. Light's too bright, but by
rock festival standards, an excellent gaff. Quite likely they were hiding from the
barmy army. Who were milling around in large numbers, getting emotional, and
having Ax and Sage in sight only encouraged them.
'What are you going to do,' sez Ax, 'when your fans finally work out that the
drug-addled drunken oaf they adore, is acutally a very fuckin' clever bloke who
works very fuckin' hard?'
'No problem. They all think that is what they are secretly like themselves.'
'Modest, too.' Sage stared dreamily at the tiles on the wall, 'Ax. I made, still making, absolute
shitload of money out of Bleeding Heart. Me personally I mean, not talking of the
band. Do you want it?'
I'm happier than I have ever been in my life, thought Ax. God, this is perfect,
this is paradise. There's nothing else I could possibly want. 'Ah, but can you get
at it? In't your financial empire tied up in knots since Ivan/Lara?'
'I can get at plenty. I said, Do you want it.'
Perhaps he'd been a tad ungracious. 'Uh, yeah. Yes I want it. Thank you very
much.'
Sage laughed, but the skull's blank sockets were considering Ax's pinned
pupils with disapproval. 'Then it's yours. An' I'll tell you what all else, my dear.
You ever touch that stuff again, I'm going to beat the fuckin' shit out of you.'
The mask had vanished. It penetrated Ax's happy world that Sage had a right
to be angry, meant what he said; and Ax was going to get seriously hurt—
'Hey, come back to the party. I said if. And you're not going to.?
'I won't,' said Ax, drug clean left him. 'I'm a fool. I will not do smack again.
Never.'
He was looking up at Sage's natural face, and somehow kept on looking,
seeing as if never before the blue eyes and golden brows, the wide cheekbones
and blunt, wedge shaped, almost animal muzzle, all centred on that overblown
mouth. . . Verging on grotesque, yeah. But in some lights, and if you're in the
mood, the guy can look like several billion dollars. Sage looking back at him, with a little smile—
Someone thumped on the door. Fiorinda came in, and stepped over Ax's legs.
'Ah, the lovebirds. I knew I'd find you two tucked away together somewhere
romantic.'
Sage clambered precariously to the floor, lost his footing, sat down by Ax and
held out his arms. Fiorinda settled herself against his chest, sighed contentedly,
and gave her boyfriend a dirty look. She knew what he'd been up to.
'I'm not speaking to you.'
'Ah, don't be hard on him Fee,' said Sage, kissing her hair. 'Not tonight.'
'He's already given me a bollocking— '
'Oh all right. Come here.' She tugged at him until he was arranged to her
liking, and they settled together, Ax with his head on her lap, Sage's arms around
them both.
Wrong again, Ax thought. I