Bold as Love (38 page)

‘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 d
o 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.