Band of Gypsys (15 page)

She asked him how he felt about having his work elevated to such heights.

‘It’s okay, I suppose.’

‘Oh, come on, Sage. That’s the kind of provocative thing you’d have said a decade ago. You’re a grown up now.’

A decade ago, he thought my language would have been con-fucking-siderably more colourful. He was tempted to explain that his triumph was soured by the way the RA had ‘acquired for the nation’ notepad material that had gone missing in the Green Nazi occupation. Sage had not made a gift, nor seen any money.

Waste of time. I’d just sound like a stingy bastard.

‘This is not the way I’d have done it, see. You can display cells live: so anyone lookin’ at them gets a dose of the direct cortical, the sensory percept code I built into the light waves. The way they are here, they’re stone dead.’

‘But immix perceptions are
fake
. These, er, drawings are real art.’

‘Why, thank you…’ He addressed the cameramann. ‘Is that a digital cam?’

Dian’s crewperson looked alarmed. ‘Uh, yeah, er, Sage—’

‘Shame. You aren’t storing analog record of light on colours, angles, surfaces, like the back of Dian’s lovely head. You’re storing
bits
. But if you was using your bare eyes, it would still be code, everything is. We live in a virtual world.’

But it’s a shame to tease the crewpersons. Soon he dropped out, dissatisfied with himself and knowing he was safer on auto: answering nicely while he thought about other things. Dilip’s health, still okay, thank God. Fiorinda, whose period was late again, just barely, and this must not be mentioned. Will I ever do anything new? Or is that all over, fit only to be pinned on walls like dead insects? And it’s bullshit, Anne-Marie: summer is awful because summer is festival hell. Terrible things have happened to us any time of year. He was even thinking of Dian, whose eyes were greener, her tits more peach-perfect, upright and splendid than ever. Amazing the way trash goods like boob jobs are still available. Wonder what’s under her clothes; and what’s she going to do when she gets
really
rich? Have the lot chopped off?

Still, a woman he could near enough look in the eye, he’d always liked her for that. He had once fucked the lovely idiot Dian, mainly for the charm of her height. George had taken him to task, he remembered.
Do not
fuck the mediababes, boss. Everybody does it, everybody regrets it. You think she knows she’s a sandwich, does she fuck, you’re gonna hurt her feelings and that’s—

Dangerous
?

Where did that flick of alarm come from? How could Dian Buckley be dangerous? Now she was asking him when had he realised he was gay.

‘I’m not.’

‘Oooh, I’m not allowed to say that, am I? When did you realise you were—’ Dian smiled indulgently. ‘Bisexual?’

‘I’m not… Dian, if you’re gay nation by birth, I b’lieve you know it before you are five. But anyone can have a same sex lover, or vice-versa, that’s just normal. I can’t believe you’ve never tried it. You should.’

‘Sage, I don’t know. I remember the one night stands, the macho posing. You were a textbook case. But okay, how do you feel about being in an unorthodox sexual relationship that’s a national obsession? A religious icon, to many people.’

They’d left the exhibition. They were in the coffee shop, still with the team in attendance, facing some teeny patisserie, a bottle of dry white wine and another of fancy water. Something had snapped him to attention. What was it?

‘Religious? Like, Pagan religious?’

‘O come on, you know you’re sacred. Look, I have you on my key-chain.’

‘Ah, well that proves it.’

She showed him, laughing merrily. She had one of those silver charms on her chain (no keys), depicting tiny Ax ’n Sage ’n Fiorinda in a three-way fuck.

‘Will you touch it for me? That’d increase the potency fantastically.’

Damn. It had been a crime against Heads Ideology to vet interview questions. Let them print what they like, stupid fuckers, was the only attitude. But maybe Ax and Fiorinda’s lover ought to change that policy, because his mood was spinning away from him. I can’t do this. I can’t remember how irreverent and outspoken I’m allowed to be about the appropriation of my sex-life by brain-dead so-called “Pagans” and the trinket industry. Let’s change the subject? Lets talk about how the government takes every cent I earn, gives me pocket money and spends the rest on razor wire—

But he had never (not since the hell of his own making he’d endured over what he did to Mary Williams) let an inteviewer get to him. He grinned at the green-eyed babe, took the charm, and handed it back with a smile.

‘There, rub that on your struggling petunias. I can’t promise anything.’

He was still wondering what had given him the jolt, when the silver charm, glinting on Dian’s well-turned hip, returned it to him and sent him to another place. Darkness, a smell of ooze and smoke. He was looking for something he didn’t want to find, a tightening net, something heavy—

‘Are you saying, in a snidey way, you don’t believe in magic? But Sage, you’re the Zen Self Champion! You went beyond death, you fought an occult duel with Rufus O’Niall that saved the world. For many people, intelligent sceptical people, you’re the reason why
we’ve
all come to believe in magic!’

The champion poured himself a glass of wine, eyes down. He needed to concentrate on what had just happened to him, but it would have to wait.

‘I never went beyond death, Dian. Tha’s a misconception.’

Dian recalled the physical magnificence of Aoxomoxoa, the fabulous young bull he had been, when she was the Reich’s favorite interpreter, the only one who understood. The sweet dream she’d had, and the morning when she’d found out it was over, that he’d just spent the night with Fiorinda. She’d had to deal with that betrayal in public, without warning, a humiliation she would never forget—

He’s still got to be one of the most beautiful men in the world, she thought. But he’ll never be what he was when I had him.

‘Hey, wow, when did you start drinking again? Isn’t that terribly irresponsible, when you’ve had a liver transplant?’

‘Not a transplant, it’s a regen. Livers are easy, they grow like—’

‘It was an intensive care bed. Okay, you won’t talk about magic. I suppose that means you won’t do any yogi tricks for me, oh bodhisattva?’

‘You’d be right. Well, we’ve done art, an’ rock and roll is beneath us. How about Paris? Let me tell you how I loved that so-called protest. I want to live like a refugee, except with a dry place to sleep an’ futuristic tech, the rest of my life. That’s what it was about, do you remember? You were there. Treading lightly on the earth, down by the river at Reading, in the mud and blood and beer?’

Dian shook her head. ‘I can’t think of anything to ask you about Paris. What’s your opinion about the Grey Lady in Amsterdam, or ooh,
werewolves
. Can human beings really transform into wild beasts?’

‘Hahaha, oh yeah. For sure. Now we’re talking cocktail hour.’

And Sage waxed lyrical, relieved to have found a safe subject, on the new drugs, sadly forbidden to him, being far more demanding on a regenerate liver than alcohol, that had such
weird
effects—

‘What was it,’ asked Dian, with an impish twinkle, when he paused for breath. ‘That happened when you were five, that made you realise you were gay?’

Fiorinda came home, after a masterclass session at Battersea Arts Centre; where she was teaching a rock guitar course. She didn’t really approve of these sessions, for if you could pass the audition, then you surely ought to be
teaching yourself
, with a broom handle and a piece of string if that was all you had. You ought to be too proud to go to school. But students in the Reich’s Hedgeschool Education Scheme had to learn to read and write and figure before they signed up for anything glamorous: so she was achieving something useful. Close your eyes to the fact that our rescued drop-out kids are now the privileged few—

Doug Hutton, supremo of the Reich’s personal security, was in the tiny guardhouse that had once been a broom closet, making an inspection that involved a jug from the Monkey’s Paw and wreathes of fragrant smoke.

‘Of course you guys would leap up, fully in control, if I needed defending.’

‘Course we would, but you don’t need us. Sage is up there.’

‘Oh, good.’

How hateful to have armed guards living in the house. What happened to being wild and free, citizens of Utopia…? Hard to test, and put an end to hoping. Hard to resist testing. Not pregnant again, but harmlessly this time, just an irregular period, she climbed the naked stairwell (they still hadn’t finished unpacking) chasing a tail of memory. Same naked stair, same weary mood. She knew the dress she’d been wearing, the blue taffeta with the emerald sparkles, she could hear the sound of Ax’s guitar, sad and lonely. Which of our disasters? It wouldn’t take shape.

Sage was on the brick terrace, outside the french doors in the living room; where Fiorinda’s orange trees had stood. He sat crosslegged with his back to the wall, and smiled when she appeared, but his open eyes were so still she knew he was far away—studying a process of conversion, once mediated by neurolab machinery, that now continued without the tech. Studying to solve the equation of himself. She watched him, feeling a little frightened. It was dangerous work. Olwen had said he shouldn’t do it without life support. He could get lost and die in those mazes.

Slowly, his presence returned to the surface.

‘Hi, sweetheart.’

‘Hey, my pilgrim. How did the interview go?’

Sage grinned. ‘Badly.’

‘Well, fuck her,’ said Fiorinda, automatically: but she was taken aback. Sage and Dian Buckley never goes badly!

Except possibly from Fiorinda’s point of view.

‘How do you mean? What did she do?’

‘Nothing, she was just bog standard Dian. It was me, I was annoyed about the notebooks, an’ it put me off. I was listening to myself, talking about
my work
and how it should be displayed only a special way, I sounded like David Bowie.’

‘How awful for you.’ Fiorinda affected to take alarm. ‘Did you
hit
her?’

‘Ha. Those days are gone. I should’ve done, Aoxomoxoa lives! Nah, the violence didn’t get beyond mild sarcasm. But she’s going to tear me to shreds: I’m not invulnerable any more.’ He sighed. ‘Something else. They know about the video.’

‘What?’ She stared at him, electrified. ‘
Dian
told you that?’

‘Give me credit. I’d be makin’ more fuss if a mediababe had jus’ announced I was due for extradition… No, something stranger. I had a snapshot flashback.’

‘Oh.’

Sage had taken so much snapshot, the vicious neural aligner they’d used on the Zen Self quest, that he would never be free of it. He had lapses, like tiny epileptic fits, from which he returned (
returned
, though no time had passed) with a glimpse of his brainstate at another place and time: and he would know things, sometimes things that clearly hadn’t yet happened. Usually negative. Call it his share of the Drumbeg fallout—

‘Somewhere down the line, I’m in the dark, dank sort of smell, I’m wading thigh deep in cold water, and in my head is the memory that the Lavoisier video
did
go public, the suits had known almost as long as we had, an’ we were screwed—’

‘Screwed how?’

‘Nothing fatal, obviously. Acute existential nausea, for all I can tell you.’

She knew about the existential nausea. That outrageous tampered record had torn things open in her boyfriends, shaken them beyond reason—

‘Anything else?’

Toby Starborn
. But he’d keep that to himself. Toby had probably popped into his head for no reason, except he was in the RA, talking arse about art. So now we both dread that name, he thought. Wonder what “
Toby Starborn
” means as a coded message from the future? Something I don’t want to be found…

Yeah, thanks for that, Mr Snap. Most helpful.

‘Not really.’

‘So this is what it’s like,’ said Fiorinda, bitterly. ‘We break the mind/matter barrier, and our reward is useless oracles, no better than if we were talking to a python in a cave. I suppose it’s reassuring, really… You’re going to tell Ax?’

‘Of course. For what it’s worth.’

She sat beside him against the wall, took his hand and felt its grip, warm and strong. The bogey man didn’t get us. The past is a defeated foe. Sunlight fell through the dusty urban air, quiet neighbourhood sounds reached them. The afternoon gardeners were busy, in Brixton’s vivid backyard strip farms.

‘Fiorinda? Is it my imagination… Or do you also suspect we are in deeper shit that we have ever been before?’

‘Deep shit,’ said Fiorinda, instantly. ‘Deep,
deep
shit.’

‘Finally time to cut and run?’

Fiorinda thought, stubbornly, of her masterclasses. ‘Fuck that. Nothing’s happened yet. We have committments, and you won the Wallingham round. Besides, you know Ax can’t bear to give up. He just can’t.’

‘I know, I know.’

Once before, they had rebelled against Ax Preston’s desperate need to save England. They weren’t going to make that mistake again. She touched the sickle-shaped indentation at the left corner of his mouth, which used to need a trick of the light to make it visible. ‘And I’m buggered if I’m going to be chased off my patch by
Dian Buckley
… How do you mean, she’s going to tear you to shreds?’

‘I’d rather not dwell on it. You’ll find out soon enough… Augh.’

‘What?’

‘I left our yuppie box at the Royal Academy.’

‘What was in it?’

He screwed his face up. ‘Can’t remember. A manky cardie. Old hair grips.’

‘Oh well, never mind. They’re sold off to the Saatchi Rooms by now.’

Sometimes there is no warning. Other times, you know exactly what you should do. You don’t do it, simply because it’s an option that’s been open too long. You’ve turned it down too often, you just turn it down again, out of pure habit.