Band of Gypsys (17 page)

He wasn’t too concerned about Sage’s flashback, but the Royal Academy interview made him feel vulnerable. Did she pick up a hint that it was open season, or was she actually given instructions?
That’s
a nasty idea… We’d never get away with smuggling those beasts out of the country, might have to destroy them. How would you do that? Do they require to be chucked in a volcano? Would a sledgehammer just bounce off? He could believe it. The feats those things had made possible were so utterly supernatural—

Correction, not supernatural. A part of natural we didn’t know about before—

A whoop from George, a burst of applause, a babble of jargon. Grinning and clapping along with the rest, Ax gathered the space cadets were
straight with Goddard again
, all systems go. Sage looked round, at last, with a sweet and dazzling grin.

‘Hi there, werewolf—’

‘Hi, other werewolf.’

‘I didn’t know Ax was a werewolf too,’ remarked Chip, cheerily.

‘Hahaha. Look at him, blatantly he’s a werewolf. He can raise
either
of his eyebrows, independently. Hey, Ax. If immix brings out the beast in people, aren’t I leading my audience back to a state of primal innocence. Shouldn’t Pagans reckon that’s a
good
thing?’

‘Oh, a Daniel come to judgement!’ crowed
Gwyn y gwr
.

‘You can shoot a rabid dog,’ said big George, eyes on the screen in front of him, where the cross-stitching had been replaced by outer-space tv: very clear, you could almost feel the cold. ‘Without accusin’ it of moral error. You won’t be laughing if the fucking Second Chamber makes our code illegal.’

‘They won’t do that. It’s their money.’

According to Sage, Dian had asked him about the new “South American” cocktail drugs that made you hallucinate being an animal, and were rumoured to produce actual, physical symptoms in some cases. Dian’s cut n’ paste had Sage claiming that immix had often turned him into a shaggy throat-tearing Alsatian at the full moon, and he’d found the experience great fun. Dian making out she
hoped
it was a joke. Sternly telling him it was a joke in poor taste, in these days of real magic… Sage was (on the record) refusing to take the assault seriously. You say one thing, they print what they damn’ well please. It’s not worth worrying about.

Aoxomoxoa can’t sue a mediababe for calling him a big bad wolf—

‘—no, Chez, you can’t give it to me here—’ DK passed his ethereal hands through each other. ‘Have to give it to me over there. Can’t hold it.’

‘Sorry.’

Sage bounced off his stool, took the spliff and bore it off to the body on the gurney. ‘You ready for the off, DK?’

‘
Not yet, my lord
,’ whispered DK-in-the-flesh, a ghost of a voice, adamant. ‘
This short trip will do for now… But soon, yes.’

Ouch. Last summer in California, when DK thought AIDS had got him at last, he’d wanted to go out Aldous Huxley style, pumped full of snapshot, under a scanner. He’d used emotional blackmail to get Sage to promise he’d set this up with Olwen. Sage had hated the idea, dreaded trying to sell it to Olwen Devi.

Fucker’s going to hold me to it. He’s a hard bastard, in his way—

‘Hey,’ said
Gwyn y gwreig
, minding the telltales. ‘He can’t
smoke
. No major muscle effort!’

‘
Sorry
—’ breathed DK. Then it was time. Affirmations bouncing round the secret lab.
Nearly there, DK’s locked down, a-okay, Confirmed
—’

Sage had returned to his place. Chez suddenly darted over to the cot. She’d wanted to be the one taking the flight, she had a hunger for that leap into nothingness, but she was only an apprentice, the newest recruit. She’d envied DK passionately, but now she realised he might die.
DK
might die, right now, be gone forever—

‘Let’s have the sound, Chez.’ She held his hand, it was limp like paper and twigs. His liquid dark eyes, huge in his hollowed face, were fixed on the taped-up screen. ‘Let her sing me out there, my oceanic Fiorinda.’

‘You’re
sure
you won’t fuck up something scientific?’ Ax was asking, last minute concern. ‘And piss off the people who own this space junk?’

‘They encourage amateurs,’ said Verlaine, as to an annoying toddler.

‘It’s okay,’ said Sage, more kindly. ‘The Goddard AI won’t let us screw up. All we’re doing is sending out a signal, an’ getting some free pictures back.’

Fiorinda, time-displaced (the Hartlepool tent-show had been yesterday) stood up to a mic on a stick, guitar slung on her hip, singing an old favourite, “Rest Harrow”, low and tender—

Then she belts out the punk-goes-Country catch—

Dilip-in-body, on his narrow bed, was run into the realtime cognitive scanner, the cowl swallowed his head and shoulders. B-loc DK vanished. The data took off, on its piggyback relay ride. The big old satellite they had importuned, which had been keeping its steady vigil on the X-ray universe for more years than Dissolution could count, opened to their input; generous as the earth to the plough. The massively rich signal that was Dilip Krishnachandran flew, and he was there. If he had not been paralysed by amazement he could have danced like thistledown on the six-metre-square counter array, in the microgravity and the cold blazing darkness.

Seconds later, under Battersea Reach, they
saw
him, standing on the array, snapped by the satellite’s exterior cameras: fuzzy as Neil Armstrong on a ladder.

YES!, howled the weird scientists, and the chamber exploded in joy.

Then they held their breath, because DK still had to get home. If something went wrong with the b-loc, the scanner would have a snapshot of his last normal brainstate, and restore at once. If something major went wrong physically, which might happen, no specific reason why, that would be different—

The Zen Selfers ran him out of the scanner. He opened his eyes.

‘Oooh, that was
high
! The blue earth, the coloured stars—’

The cramped space erupted again.

We’ve done it! We can do it!

Hey, hey, what else can we try? Pity the International Space Station is a hulk, can’t place a call when there’s no one home. Hey, the Chinese have stuff on Mars! It’s a long way. For the signal to travel so far, slinging it around, how would we—

Maybe a short moratorium, thought Ax, helplessly. And just hope my big cat leaves the really mental stuff to others… I can’t stop
this
. This is why the Reich exists. To hold the pass, to keep the future alive, until a relief force arrives.

Sage was so gloriously happy. The endless pointless duties, the endless
faking
that was Ax’s daily grind, what was the use of it if there were no moments like this?

The Innovative Food Production Group met in the President’s office in the Railham Building, the address for Reich affairs in Whitehall for a very long time. This particular day Lucy Wasserman was there, Member of Parliament for North Stoke, (House of Commons, not the Second Chamber): the woman Whitehall favoured as Greg Mursal’s replacement. She was a member of the Countercultural Movement, but not a known Rebel. Not a public figure, no Cabinet in waiting, an all round better bet than the candidates the Rebels favoured, but they could accept her. The meeting discussed the application of very high tech to very small mixed-arable farming units, while the President and the prospective PM checked each other out. Lucy was forty-something, looked younger, dark short hair, clear skin, what seemed like natural calm and gravitas: and if she’d worked for it, all the better.

Slowly, slowly. Non-violent regime change is a delicate project.

‘We should call this approach Gold Beach,’ suggested one civil servant.

‘Oh?’ said Sage. ‘Why a beach, what’s gold?’

‘Before D Day,’ explained the speaker, a young white guy in a retro suit and tie, ‘A British Major General called Hobart invented an array of tank-accessories, for getting the troops through the Germans’ awesome beach defences. US commanders rejected the lot because they looked strange and ridiculous. The 50
^th
, using Hobart’s funnies, landed 25,000 men on Gold Beach, with 400 casualties. The US landing on Omaha was a slaughterhouse. Such is the legend.’

WWII references were a tradition, possibly founded by Fred Eiffrich and his ‘Fat Boy’ coining. They’d come to signal a wide network of those who had cut through the crap of polticial self-interest, and grasped that the Crisis was global war. A war with no human enemy, an all-out battle for survival.

‘Okay,’ said Ax. ‘Partial solutions. Patchwork, temporary, mixed techniques, Hobart’s Funnies, and I like that idea about growing ethanol crops in obsolete underground car parks. Let’s see how it appeals to the public. Gold Beach it is.’

Lucy Wasserman smiled.

The meeting over, Ax and Sage walked a corridor. Fiorinda was due home: they were miserable about her possible fooling around with Charm Dudley, DARK’s frontwoman, queen of Northern Dyke Rock. So, we say
nothing
about Charm? No, wrong message, we say a few, casual, normal things. How was she, did you fight—

A figure appeared on a crossing passage in front of them. It was Jack Vries. The Wiccan scholar stared, as if affronted by the sight of two grown men holding hands, bowed slightly without a word and passed out of sight.

‘What’s he doing around here?’ mumured Sage.

‘Let’s find out.’

Vries could only have been visiting the Countercultural Adviser’s office, there was nowhere else to go on the corridor they’d seen him leave. Mr Preston and his Minister breezed in there, and found Faud Hassim alone: a little startled at the sudden visit, but seeming pleased to see them both, and pass the time of day—

‘Was Jack Vries just in here?’ asked Ax.

‘Vries? Er, yes. Yes he was. Wanting to look over your inventory, in fact. I don’t know why that’s any of his business, and that’s what I told him.’

‘He’ll just come back with the proper paperwork,’ said Ax, resignedly.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Sage. ‘We’ve nothing to hide.’

The three men laughed. Sage and Ax went on their way: but they were alarmed. The IFP meetings were not
secret
, but Jack Vries had no reason to be in this building. One thing you learn, in politics, is to take notice of a warning shot.

’Reeka Azziz woke up in hot sunlight with a talking-heads tv studio pasted on her eyeballs: she rolled over, groaning mildly, and pressed her fingertips to the wall. A tug of cell metabolism energy and the window turned to shade, the air cooled. But the tv wouldn’t switch off. Overnight she’d forgotten the nerve-impulse tweak she’d just learned. She had to fall out of bed, whimpering, blunder to the washstand, rinse her fingers in saline and excavate the button from behind her eye.

Fuck
, she muttered.
Shit.

She’d been warned not to sleep with a new eye-socket gadget in place, but she’d just forgotten. Completely sober, just
forgotten
. Nobody had told her it would be so comfortable. Now her left eye felt as if someone had been gouging at it with a blunt penknife, and she wouldn’t be able to wear her new toy for a week: fuck fuck fuck. Dad had said she should hold out until the tiny permanent-wear kind came down in price, but he was living in the past. Things don’t get cheaper. Things vanish.

She found a clean sock, dipped it in cold water and held it to her aching face, while turning on her ordinary tv with another ATP impulse. She wanted to watch the rest of the Channel Seven breakfast show. This fucking house! She hadn’t pre-programmed her button, the house computer must have detected new hardware, and helpfully switched on the show because it was one of Areeka’s favourites.

Her parents had moved into Tower Hamlets New Model Housing before she was six, flooded-out refugees, Ax Preston’s guinea-pigs, and she loved the whole fucked-up futuristic thing, she was proud of her address, but it had a fucking mind of its own. Good, it was still Fiorinda, in some field, having a breakfast picnic and talking about the old days. How angry they’d all been, helplessly angry, because the world was falling apart and they felt so dis-empowered, but then Ax Preston came along and said
we can do something about this
… We can fight for our lives, not with violence but by doing practical stuff, everyday stuff. Your own hell, you can’t change, but you can do something about the hell that’s engulfing the world—

I want to have my hair like that, thought Areeka. Her mum said Asian hair would fall out if you kept bleaching it and curling it, and gene-treatment, if you had the money, made your scalp wrinkly…

But she was listening hard. Not to the familiar words: to the message Fiorinda was sending to the Reich’s faithful. On the surface Ax’s return had been everything they’d hoped for, but recently the message was not good. The warning, defensive way the leaders talked on shows like this; the way Dian Buckley had dared to treat Sage. The way that fucking traitor Roxane Smith could be detected sneakily
dumping
Ax Preston, taking the government line that he was just a figurehead President. Never was the dictator, never brought peace to English Islam or fought the Green Nazis, never really been anything but a pretty-good guitarist with terrific PR—

She was about to take to the road. Anti-ag-camp protests, volunteer work, tent-shows,
samizdat
tech fairs, would fill the summer weeks. Her parents were terrified she’d get arrested, but it was their own fault, they’d brought her up to be an Ax Preston baby. Friends reproached her for being a half and half, but she had to think of her career. London calls, you can’t be the new Fiorinda and live in Norfolk.

Downstairs, Mum was haranguing the drinking-water-man, telling him his cans were short measure and smelled of sick. Inertia rules the over-thirties. Mum and Dad hated and feared what was happening as much as Reeka did, but the nearest they came to protest was buying dodgy free-enterprise water from the Roms.