Castles Made of Sand (47 page)

‘The warning Fiorinda gave me,’ Mohammad went on, grimly, ‘and the evidence of my own eyes, told me your wife was the intimate hostage of a very evil man, and more. That we faced something more than human evil—’

‘This would be the Celtic secret weapon problem?’

‘They have grown fangs, Ax; the masters of those rabid primitives we were fighting on the streets of Amsterdam,’ said Alain. ‘We have known for some time that the Celtics were looking for a way to reduce the population of Europe, but
drastically
. They have spread cholera among the drop-outs, they have destroyed food stores, but it’s been small stuff. We’ve lived in fear of a major bioterrorist attack, but we knew there were ideological objections. An engineered plague was too ‘science’. It could even be they were restrained by commonsense, not wishing to include their own hides in the firesale… Last winter we learned, I speak for the French Counterculture, for the techno-greens, that the means had been found. It was in England, and it was not scientific, it was
magical
—’

Ax noticed the young American’s worried frown. Like the word dictator, he thought. They just won’t have it. Well, they’ll have to learn.

‘Well then, Fiorinda was passing information to us, but could tell us nothing about this “magical weapon”. Naturally we suspected Fergal was involved. Then Fergal died, in that spectacular way, and Fiorinda was accused. We learned, over here, that her friends were secretly convinced that she
was
a witch. We couldn’t believe it, of course, it seemed madness. So we took over where those two boys, Chip and Kevin, had left off, and tried to discover the truth. We traced a connection between the “Swedish clinic” you have heard of, and a certain Rufus O’Niall. We put this together with other information, disregarded information, strange tales of Rufus, his extremist affiliations, his power to destroy anyone who thwarts him… This is very hard to believe, but we are sure we are right. All this time, Fiorinda has been in the hands of her father, who was wearing the body of Fergal as a disguise; and it is Rufus O’Niall who is the Celtics’ super weapon.’

Ax nodded. He could not trust himself to speak.

‘You don’t look surprised, Ax. Did you
know
this, about her father?’

He thought of the dark exercise yard in which he had walked with Fiorinda, unable to speak to her, unable to touch her, knowing the horror his girl had hidden, and that he couldn’t save her. The wet heat of Central America fell on him like a shroud. How could he explain all that to Alain?

‘Just before I was kidnapped I’d realised Fergal had to be some kind of imposter. And Sage had tried to tell me, more than once, that there was something
weird
going on, something about Rufus, and that the bastard was still after her. I didn’t believe it. When I was stuck in the jungle I suppose my mind was more open. I finally put the clues together.’

‘Fathers obsessed with their daughters, kings who lock their daughters away, and try to possess them, it’s the fairytale of patriarchy,’ said Tamagotchi.

‘The worst crimes are family crimes,’ said Mohammad. ‘Always.’

‘You said it,’ said Lurch, child of stunning privilege, a princess of the empire.

In front of him, Ax had a blown-up detail from the latest GPS images of central London. They had GPS again, so civilisation returns, in time to monitor its own destruction. He was looking at the reason why he hadn’t been able to land at Heathrow. There was a bonfire piled on St Stephen’s Green, outside the House of Commons. He could see the raw wooden steps leading to a platform on top, a pole sticking up. A roped perimeter surrounded the pyre, mounted police standing guard. Obviously the stage set was meant to terrify, but it wasn’t a bluff. The bastards meant business. Any time, any day, they could switch on their rent-a-crowd lynch mob, and this was how she would die.

His skin crept. I think I dreamed of this.

Push wood on the fire, Jackie, Good wood on the fire, Jackie—

Our last stand, and I knew she was lost.

‘We don’t know
how
they mean to use Rufus,’ said Alain, ‘but as you may know, Ax, the Zen Self research, and our investigations, here is France, into
la féerie scientifique
, says the potential is there.’

‘We have found that magic is like telepathy,’ said Tam. ‘Like the telepathy artefacts of Zen Self experiments. Power of ancient legend that exists in reality, but it’s pitiful, like a vestigal limb. If Rufus O’Niall is what we think, he is like nothing on earth. He is like the wild, crazy version of some element that can only be created in a lab, for picosceonds, but that we know to be awesome.’

‘And he’s Fiorinda’s father,’ murmured Mohammad.

‘She has refused to confess that she is a witch,’ continued Alain, ‘But the people who are holding her know she’s O’Niall’s daughter, and perhaps they know for sure that she has inherited something. That’s good because it gives her value, but equally, it means they will never release her.’

‘But if she has, uh, magical powers,’ said Lurch, hopefully, ‘can’t she use them to escape? In some secret way, that wouldn’t be obviously weird—?’

Tam and Alain rolled their eyes. Americans!

‘I doubt she’d do that,’ said Mohammad kindly. ‘Not after all she’s suffered rather than take that road. She has her reasons. She won’t do it now.’

‘We must try and break her out,’ said Alain, after a silence. ‘Your return has made the situation highly volatile. We have a plan, but Rufus—who is still involved, we don’t doubt—will surely intervene, and what then? I won’t conceal from you, it’s a desperate situation. Our only hope is in the anti-Rufus, the White Rabbit, our Rambo—’

White Rabbit and Rambo were codenames. ‘Who
is
“Rambo”?’ asked Lurch. ‘Is it that a person, or what? A Hollywood human fighting machine?’

‘Tuh! Not Rambo,
Rimbaud
, proto-rockstar, alchemist of the mind. It means our blue-eyed madman, the champion of the quest.’

‘Sage is dead, Alain,’ said Ax. ‘I’m sorry, but
I know.
He died months ago.’

Alain put his head on one side. ‘You think so? I hope you’re wrong.’

‘So…we have to make a decision…’ Ax had lost the thread. He was trying to find Fiorinda’s presence in his mind, but she was not there, she was gone—

‘You’re worn out, lad,’ said Mohammad. ‘There’s nothing to decide right now. Let’s get you to bed.’

‘Me? No. I don’t think I’ll sleep.’ Ax searched around the table for the faces of his friends. Where’s Allie, and Rob and Dilip? Where’s everybody gone? He was startled to see the bandages on his wrists, where the cuffs had galled. Am I free, or is this another dream?

Alain went to him. He had noticed, in the barrage at the end of the meeting next door, that the astonishing Mr Preston did not like to be touched, so he didn’t touch. ‘You needn’t sleep. Just eat something, take a little soup, and lie down.’

‘Would someone stay with me? I’m afraid to wake up back there.’

‘I’ll stay with you, don’t you worry,’ said Mohammad.

George and Bill and Peter were hiding in a drop-outs’ hostel in Peckham. As returned emigrés they’d be arrested at once if they were spotted. For others it was less clear-cut. They got by from day to day, Rob lying low at Snake Eyes, Allie at the San. The club venue was closed, of course, and the Reich Office, but she was allowed to keep the Volunteer Initiative limping on. They met Dilip, who sofa-surfing, here, there and everywhere, in the back of a pub in Vauxhall. Not the old drinking hole made famous in Apokryfa, another place that they believed wasn’t under surveillance. Old habits die hard, they were still trying to spin the machine. Dilip was working on a poster campaign, he’d brought roughs along for them to look at. Fiorinda as Sita, the kidnapped princess at the heart of the
Ramayana;
Hindu myth of the Good State. Virtuous Sita, captured by demons, and rescued by an army of heroes… Dilip had drawn Fiorinda in a garden, walls as high as a prison yard, defying the advances of leering demons—who bore close resemblance to Benny, and other members of the Second Chamber Group.

The prisoner had been moved again, this time to Holloway, which was scary because of that piece of conceptual art at Westminster; good because the old dump was infested with
Myghter Arthur
, so they were getting news. She’s okay physically, was the latest word, but she’s in solitary, and very low.

‘She looks too
passive
,’ said Allie. ‘Couldn’t she be more energetic?’

‘I think we want her to look innocent and helpless.’

‘Maybe you’re right. Okay, let’s print it. Get it on the streets.’

‘Flyposting after dark, it makes me feel so young.’

Someone behind the bar pumped up the volume on ‘Not In Nottingham’, the song that had led to DARK’s hurried exit. Originally a cute tune from the Walt Disney cartoon of Robin Hood: the dike-rockers gave it hell.
Robin’s gone, Maid Marian’s in durance vile, everybody’s trampled by the bad guys…
The backroom clientèle exchanged knowing glances. We should find another pub, thought Dilip. Who turned up the sound? This is not safe.

‘What next?’ muttered Rob, under the music. ‘I don’t know the story of the Ramayana. The army of heroes and then what? The happy ending?’

‘Ah, not quite,’ Dilip frowned. ‘First she has to walk through fire.’

‘Ha! The demons make Sita walk through fire? You don’t say!’

‘Er, no. To prove herself untouched by the demons, to satisfy the people, she has to walk through fire—’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘
Dilip!’
hissed Allie. ‘For fuck’s sake—!’

‘No, no it’s good. We take the neo-feudalists on their own ground, legend. Sita is perfect. She’s the selfless protector, ideal womanhood.’

‘Fuckit, man, we don’t want Fio idealised and dead!’

They argued. Dilip agreed to think of another heroine, they left separately, crestfallen. Waiting for that knock on the door, you carry on like ghosts of yourselves, keeping busy: clinging to scraps old routines.

The Heads were using their Oltech phones as little as possible, waiting for the order that would set a desperate plan in motion. They stayed indoors a lot. Their natural faces had become too familiar in the Triumvirate’s reign, and you’d get stopped by the police for wearing a digital mask. The news of Ax’s deliverance came. Ax was flying into Heathrow, and elation gripped the secret resistance, but there wasn’t any excitement, hostile or positive, in the regular media. When the happy ending didn’t work out, the Heads weren’t surprised.

‘Occasionally,’ said Bill, dryly, ‘it niggles at the back of your mind that we are fucked. Done for in some mysterious way that can’t be beat, no matter what.’

Yeah, it niggles. The score keeps racking up against you. You know there’s no chance, no hope, you just keep on until the lights go out, that’s all. They knew the jailbreak had to be now, if ever; but instead of Paris they got a call from Olwen Devi. Olwen, who’d escaped with her Zen Selfers early in Fergal’s reign, was at Reading. She said to come and meet her there, in Travellers’ Meadow.

They took the train (in different carriages, and walking separately from the station to Richfield Avenue). Rivermead was in enemy hands, but the Meadow was so far untouched; mostly deserted. They’d parked the van on its old pitch when they came back from Caer Siddi. It was still there, plumes of seeding meadow grass grown halfway to the windows. They let themselves in and powered up the systems, from force of habit and for old sakes’ sake.

Olwen arrived a few minutes later with a couple of Zen Selfers. The Selfers were in drab civvies, not their uniform red and green. Olwen had compromised: a terracotta choli blouse and a grey-green sari.

‘What’s going on?’ asked George.

He couldn’t handle the expression in Olwen’s eyes. He wasn’t ready for it.

She sat at the kitchen table. ‘You know, George,’ she said, ‘if somebody managed to reach the Zen Self, they might have extraordinary powers. It’s possible someone like that might be able to manipulate this solid world as if it were the software of a fantasy game. We saw that possibility, you will remember, and made nothing of it. The goal was far off, and we were probably mistaken. But that was my quarrel with Caer Siddi, long ago. For them, reaching the Zen Self was everything, it was the end. I believed someone must go, and come back.’

‘Why bring this up now?’ said George. ‘What are you telling us?’

‘Go to Rivermead. Now, right away, all of you.’

So they went to Rivermead.

It would be harsh to say the staybehinds were collaborating. They were living with the situation. The Heads walked together through the campground, bare-faced. They knew they were recognised, but you have to rely on your instincts, and they felt safe. The long-familiar scenes, revisited, seemed extraordinarily vivid, full of detail: the faces like tiny portraits in a Bruegel, maybe. There was a sorrowful gaiety in the air, mirror image of the anger and the joy of Dissolution Summer. Now we are grown, we know how terrible life is and that there’s no way to fix it. But the sky is still blue, the grass is still green, and we stick by the choice we made. We’re staybehinds, we’ll stay.

The Rivermead complex was definitely enemy territory, occupied and run by Benny’s version of the Counterculture. But no one challenged them when they walked in. They went up to Fiorinda’s rooms, which felt like the first port of call, wondering what they would find. The door to the suite was open.

‘Anyone at home?’ called George, peering into the solar.

No answer. The room looked as if it hadn’t been used recently, but it was clean and the plants had been tended. A mass of living honeysuckle, trained over an arch, stood by the windows: flowers, foliage and green berries all together. Someone stepped from behind the flowers and stood looking at them, the living skull quiet and sombre.

‘Oh, fuck,’ said George. ‘I thought no one ever came out of Caer Siddi.’

‘No. Usually you can’t.’

The time when they would have been overjoyed to see the boss was long gone. They stared. ‘What happened?’ demanded George. ‘We’ve been trying to reach you since Ax was kidnapped, why the fuck didn’t you take any notice?’