Castles Made of Sand (7 page)

It was just as well the public didn’t know their sacred icons were in trouble. The Few themselves knew only that a trip to Cornwall had been cut short, and that suddenly there was something badly wrong. The three were professional about it, no open rift, but everyone was scared. If the Triumvirate collapsed, how long could anything in this fragile house of cards survive?

The anniversary of Dissolution came and went, with bio-degradable bunting in the streets, cheering crowds and all the trimmings; Fiorinda’s nineteenth birthday slipped by. The Triumvirate attended their monthly meeting Benny Preminder, Parlimentary Secretary for CounterCultural Liaison. Arguably, this post was obsolete now that the official Leader of the Counterculture was Head of State: but Benny was the type that hangs on. He’d been implicated up to his neck in Paul Javert’s bloody coup—but unlike his boss he’d survived the faked “terrorist attack” that changed the world. Benny had managed to be somewhere else when the gunmen opened fire at a government reception in Hyde Park, one December evening. The so-called investigation hadn’t touched him, either: and here he still was.

Ax said it was just too bad. Until he knew exactly what made the slimeball so bulletproof, he wasn’t going to mess with him. Plus, whatever his motives, Benny the Liasion was a prime source of insider information. Given that Ax was determined to keep the Westminster Government at arm’s length, they needed all the dirt they could get on that nest of vipers—

So here they sat in Benny’s nicely-appointed, over-warm office, discussing public surveillance. Most of the old England’s staggering CCTV network had been wrecked in the Deconstruction Tour—the countrywide rampage of Green Violence that Ax had managed (to an extent); though none of it had been his idea… Control of what remained was an asset, however: and Benny knew some people who’d like to take it on. If Benny could broker a deal?

Such spyware as the Tour had spared was run by the police, in righteous partnership with ranking barmy army officers: militarised hippy heroes of the Islamic Campaign. Ax said Benny should be talking to the Home Office.

‘I wouldn’t try it, if I were you,’ drawled Sage, the skull doing between scary great oaf and bored stupid. ‘
We
never argue with the barmy army, tha’s not how it works. They get on okay with the police, seems like. Better leave it.’

Benny dimpled. He was very sleek, these days. Not a trace of the style-free Government puppy, so annoying and clueless in the Think Tank days.

‘Come on, you guys. This is Benny you’re talking to. The barmy army is your obedient servant, you can do what you like with those mad dogs. You and I both know that you could take over the bureaucracy any time.’

‘I don’t want to,’ said Ax. ‘I like legitimate government.’

Luckily I hate birthdays, thought Fiorinda, bare feet tucked up in one of Benny’s armchairs, staring out of the window. She rarely spoke in these sessions, and got away with it because Benny was convinced her function was purely decorative. She could not stand the bastard: he choked her breath, she saw him through a mist of other people’s blood. The sky over Whitehall was sullen and low, weighed down by the fumes of wood and coal fires. Benny’s eyes slid over her: recalling hideous meetings when Benny Prem had been right-hand slime to Pigsty Liver, Paul Javert’s monster protégé, the first Green President. And now it’s Ax. Is this an
improvement
? Blitz spirit in the streets, on Dissolution Day. Celebrating what? God, what a waste of time. Civilisation is over. Why can’t we just let go?

Benny had accepted his rebuff calmly, evidently he was paid to ask the questions: not on results. Now he was marvelling over the latest Drop-Out figures, the prediction that the plague of nomadism was likely to affect thrity per cent of the population of Western Europe. That’s bigger than the Black Death! I mean, wow, fucking weird!’

He gazed at the three with his wistful, uneasy smile.

‘But who’s counting?’ said Sage, studying the ceiling.

‘Not weird at all,’ said Fiorinda, still looking out of the window. ‘It’s the climax vegetation of global capitalism. The peat bog of economic growth. People think of forests as climax vegetation, because the trees look big and successful. But the final result of all the explosive boom and bust has to be a flatline. Stands to thermodynamics, really.’

‘Thermodynamics? Peat bogs? I’m afraid I don’t follow.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Just nonsense’

Benny attempts at being matey fell very flat with Sage and Fiorinda, and he always seemed genuinely bewildered. You’d swear he
didn’t remember
that he’d helped to organise that killing spree in which several of their friends had perished. And Benny was right, it really didn’t matter anymore. New world, new rules… At last the allotted twenty minutes were up. Fiorinda, who had been watching the clock when she wasn’t staring out of the window, put her boots on. Benny made his usual attempt to prolong the chat, gave up in the face of more than usual resistance: buzzed his secretary and stood to usher them out.

‘I’ll see you all at Beltane, then.’

They stared at him.

‘Beltane?’ repeated Benny, carefully, as if wondering if he’d pronounced it right…‘At Reading? You famous rockstars will be on stage, but I’ll be there!’

‘Oh,’ said Ax, ‘you mean the Mayday Concert. Sorry, Benny. I don’t do the Ancient British calendar. It’s not my style.’

‘Shit, Ax,’ said Fiorinda, out in the corridor (and oblivious of bugs, because she didn’t care). ‘How could you turn him down? I bet there was a timeshare in a villa in Tuscany in that CCTV thing.’

‘I read the small print.’

‘
Beltane
,’ said Sage. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’

Trust Benny to have caught the Celtic bug.

‘That’s exactly why it’s good to have him around. Benny tells us more than he ever realises about what’s going on around here. I’ll explain to him about avoiding neo-primitive buzzwords. He’ll understand. He’s committed to our solution, in his weird way—’

Fiorinda sighed in exasperation. ‘Benny Prem is committed to the main chance. Someday soon he won’t be subtly letting us know about the latest plot against the Reich, he’ll be telling the coup-merchants how to get rid of
us
.’

‘Well,’ said Sage, ‘I got code to write. Talk to you later.’

Lengthening that deliberate stride he zoomed away, leaving them standing.

This was Sage’s idea of ‘back to normal’. He did what had to be done, he turned up for all his gigs: and never came near them otherwise.

Someone peeked out of an office door, and quickly closed it again. There was a hiss of whispering, suddenly cut off. His neighbours measured the time the Triumvirate spent in Benny’s office by the second: they were madly envious. The dim-lit Whitehall corridor was a wild wood, alive with feral eyes and stealthy movement. Ax and Fiorinda looked at each other, personal heartbreak and appalling responsibility merging.

Without Sage, the burden of what they had become was impossible.

In reality, the Education Scheme was nothing new or startling. The Few had been giving masterclasses, and the Volunteer Initiative had been running hedgeschool kindergartens since before the Inauguration. But it was colourful, it was inclusive, and at least it gave the media something else to talk about, besides shocking ‘Celtic’ animal sacrifice at Stonehenge, and the spirituality of head-to-toe tattooing.

Rob and Ax attended a musicology seminar at Goldsmiths and returned, by the vagaries of Crisis Conditions public transport, to the Snake Eyes urban commune on Lambeth Road—hotbed of music radicalism since Dissolution Summer. It was a noisy place, usually, but the basement was quiet that evening. They settled with beers and spliff and reminiscence, and spent awhile chewing over the absurdities of Rock and Roll academia.

‘
Snake Eyes
means losers,’ grumbled Rob. ‘We were the beautiful losers, that was our thing. Righteous, non-star, never-going-to-sell-out Black music. And now look. You’ve made us into the establishment, Ax.’

‘Sorry,’ said Mr Preston, gloomily. ‘It just happened.’

Inspired by beer and nostalgia, feeling close to the days when it was Ax and Rob who’d been best mates, Rob felt inspired to take a hand. Ax bottles things up, that’s his problem. When he found out about Milly and Jordan he never confided in anyone, never lost his temper. He just carried on, because the band must come first. But the Chosen Few were never the same after that.

‘You know, Ax, Sage is a great guy, and I love him—’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘But he’s
white
. There’s nothing wrong with being white, but there’s a cultural difference, a different attitude to life, and, er, relationships. You can’t handle him the way you would a brother—’

‘Milly’s white,’ said Ax, narrow-eyed.
Sage is a great guy and I love him
was not Rob’s normal conversational style. ‘So is Verlaine, so’s Rox. Fiorinda
looks
white, as long as you keep her out of the sun. Where’s this going?’

‘Huh? No offence—’

‘I’m sure you’d prefer it if I didn’t do guys at all. That would be more politically correct, wouldn’t it? For a
brother
.’

Rob was staggered. He’d
never
worried about Ax’s occasional prelediction. Why the hell would he, given his own home life? He was about to protest he’d rather be called a fascist than homophobic, when he realised what he’d just been told. Oh, fuck—

‘Hey, I’m sorry. Uh, I didn’t know it was like that. Shit, the Babes
told
me, but I didn’t believe it, I mean, uh, not that we’ve been
talkingbehindyour
—’

Ax was thinking of the nights he’d slept in this basement in Dissolution Summern his first nights with Fiorinda, and now he couldn’t even treasure the memories. Rob, chunky and dark and earnest in his sharp green suit, sat there all gob-smacke concern, and Ax, who hated violence, had difficulty refraining from punching the bastard out—

‘Rob, fuck’s sake, take foot out of mouth.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I never thought I’d have to say this to you.’

Rob braced himself. He was in deep shit. ‘Yeah?’

‘Mind your own business.’

Olwen Devi, the Rock and Roll Reich’s chief scientist, was ready to white-label her latest invention. Ax went down to Reading to talk about it, on an April day when he knew that Sage would be on the Rivermead site. If he could catch his friend alone, off guard (and, let it be said, without Fiorinda), he knew he’d be able to turn this hateful situation around.

The Zen Self tent, eau-de-Nil geodesic dome that seemed curiously larger on the inside than on the outside, had its usual crowd of staybehinds and day-trippers, trying out the neuroscience rides. Zen Selfers in Welsh red and green moved among them, offering help and advice. He passed through and found Olwen Devi in one of the inner labs: immaculate lab coat over a festive sari of gleaming emerald silk, a scarlet tilka mark on her smooth, ageless brow, and flowers in her hair. She looked as if she’d been called from a wedding to attend some kind of medical emergency: she was probably getting ready for a workshop. Olwen was a performer, in her way. She knew the value of looking the part, and Ax liked that. No use having the big idea if you’re not prepared to go out and sell it.

She had been running her experiments in human consciousness in Reading arena since Dissolution summer, and lately providing Ax Preston with alt.tech spin-offs from the Zen Self quest, in return for his protection from the anti-science mob. He did not fully understand why she had decided to work for him, or why she had left Wales, where her parent company was still based. But she had believed in his vision of the future, when his career was at a very low ebb, and he counted her among his most trusted allies.

They discussed the ATP situation. Cell-metabolism energy sourcing was a success. The punters, Countercultural and otherwise, were lining up to find out if they had the right genes for the treatment. (For a percentage of the population the gene-manipulation didn’t work in its present form.) But they must not move too fast. The aim was to get these new and strange developments
out into the world
, but do it quietly. Take no risks. They agreed they would pull back. No more new treatment centres, no more high-profile projects like the Brighton street lighting: not right now.

Moving on to Olwen’s new baby, the bi-location phone, which thankfully involved no transgenic tissue infusions. Ax—who had never taken the ATP treatment and never would—had his demo, and enjoyed the bizarre experience of being in two places at once: slightly like looking into a mirror, and also being the person looking out… In the long term, he was dreaming of industrial-scale applications for this one. Your muscle power and part of your conscious attention can be in one place, doing some kind of necessary work, while you are somewhere else, having fun. (His imagination baulked at the idea of more than one dopplegänger, though Olwen said there was theoretically no limit.) But that was far in the future. In the meantime they had a medical application, and an intriguing novelty mobile phone.

Olwen had a handful of severely disabled people (whose health otherwise checked out A1, a rare breed) signed up for the trials. Other white labels would go to influential hippies, mainstream opinion-formers with the right sympathies, and trusted media folk. She advised against the term ‘living ghost’. No ‘clones’ either. Definitely not!

‘Okay, so what are we calling it? Bi-location presence is a mouthful.’

She showed him her right hand, and the ring with a large milky-golden stone that she wore on the middle finger. It looked like a jewel; in fact it was the Zen Self
mainframe computer. ‘Serendip can make copies of herself—apparently physically separate copies—that remain entangled with her so there is still just one Serendip. We call that a facet. Something logically similar is happening in the bi-location phenomenon. It’s a possibility that’s long been implied in the theory of memory transcription, where we know that in effect a different virtual self is created for every moment—’

‘Right,’ said Ax, cutting it short before she lost him completely. ‘Facets it is. Nice and neutral.’