Bold as Love (44 page)

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.

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—’