Bold as Love (33 page)

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.