Hallucinating (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

 ...Welsh rain, Welsh globo...

Because globo was post drum'n'bass, pre virtualsmooth, it had nothing of sinuous, aquatic software systems style but lots of thunking, hissing percussion. Nulight listens to a globo remix of an old Speech Musipediment track. It is quite good. The virtualsmooth remix is not so good.

But now in 2049 virtualsmooth is old and the new music is auton. Nulight is not into auton, despite the fact that it is sweeping across Europe like globo before it, like techno before that, like hippy stuff before that. And so on, back to Edgar Varese. Electrick music is humanity's soul, Nulight thinks, and we are a century old. Right on. He can put that on the next Voiceoftibet release.

The auton remix of the Speech Musipediment track is terrible, not helped by the strange tuning of auton music. Frustrated, Nulight chucks the CD and replaces it with some Steve Reich.

He is on a bullet train heading north.

At Chester Station he disembarks, stepping onto the permapaved platform, where dayglo crowds mill around him. The station clerk checks ID plastic and registers bookings with flicks of his laser scribe, but Nulight remains cool despite possible credit card hassle. He is wondering if he ought to convert Mueller's credit into cash. The fewer net transactions the better. Trouble is, he could then become the victim of dosh-jackers, kid patrols who look out for likely victims and mug them with narcotic syringes. Is Chester like that? He does not know.

He wanders into town. In fact the place seems pretty quiet, more oldsters than brats. Sort of olde worlde, pretty tatty, cheap, not helped by the Liverpool/Manchester effect, that black urban splash that sucks all into it. Sipping cappuchino on-street he watches the crowds, then decides what to do. It has got to be cash.

With the credit card emptied he throws it into a bin, then hires a taxi westward to the border. The driver is a Mexican slaphead wired for alpha waves. He drives his taxi like a gaucho, and Nulight half expects him to send a lassoo out of the window to capture some hapless cyclist. Fifteen minutes later they are at the border, where the driver chucks him out, saying, "Call another when you're on the other side."

It is evening dark. Nulight walks to the border post. This is made of concrete and steel, its cameras bristling like the spines of a porcupine tree, and inside the portacabin sit five Celtic hunks, all steroid muscle and patriotic fervour. Two stroll out.

"Passport?"

Nulight offers up his oblong of plastic and they insert it into a cardreader. The computer screen comes up with his picture, details, business, and so on. They read the whole damn thing, as if making a point.

"Nature of business?"

Nulight shrugs. "Happy Valley."

The pair glance at one another. "OK, muso, you can go."

"Can I call a taxi?"

"Use the booth just down the lane."

Nulight walks through the border post and spies a single telephone kiosk lit by a yellow lamp. It stands there like some obsolete robot hitchhiker waiting for the optical revolution to come its way. He notices that the road signs have been changed by hand, so that the Welsh is uppermost and in bolder writing. Well, it has only been a few years since the collapse of the EU, maybe they haven't had the time or the money to sort themselves out.

After a twenty minute wait the taxi arrives. Nulight is amazed. This is a pre-millennium vehicle, petrol guzzling, like something out of Nostalgia Time on cable, blowing out clouds of... what is that, exhaust fumes? Have these people not heard of omni-cats, or alky?

So they chug into the night. "Drive me to an internet caff," Nulight tells the driver.

They end up in Ruthin. In a pub run by zippies, Nulight logs on to the internet. As expected the tipi encampment he is after is in the same place, and he is sure he will find Kappa there. He tries a few old passwords and one works. Kappa is listed as present: yesterday's date, too. Excellent. Better not forewarn her, though, better make it a surprise.

Back in the taxi, he says, "The tipi place."

"You one of them, like?" asks the driver.

Nulight shakes his head. "Man, I'm the boss of a famous record company. Business trip."

"Lovely."

At midnight they arrive: Dyffryn Clwyd, by the River Alyn, nice wooded spot; a line of distant hills like the backbone of an immense dinosaur. Nulight offloads all his loose change and keeps the notes, pushing them down the sides of his boots. He looks out over the valley. By the light of the moon he sees about two hundred tipis, a phantasmagorical sight as many of them have lamps inside and the tents are in most cases tie-dyed. Folk wander about. Drifting up from the camp heart comes the sound of music, mandolin, bouzouki, violins doing strange things, very strange things, that reminds him of auton... must be something about those microtones. Elsewhere he sees windmills, solar panels on stalks, and huge enclosures with chickens and other animals. Around the encampment and to a certain extent inside it are permaculture plots just like those of the Tor People, except these are greener and leaner, based around hardy fruits and veggies. The place smells of chicken droppings, soup and coconut incense.

He wanders down. He asks a rasta, "Seen Kappa?"

"She down de musicville, mon. Jus' over dere."

Nulight carries on.

Then he sees her. He stops. She is only a few metres away, her back to him, listening with friends to a group of fiddlers; she is tall and elegant, her crimson dreads down to her bum, wearing a dress of black velvet. Big silver jewelry clinks as she moves. Nulight's heart thumps
loud.

He clears his throat. "Hey, Kappa."

She turns, and after a sec it's, "Sweets!"

They embrace. She is thrilled to see him. The friends and the fiddlers, who have stopped playing, are perplexed by her obvious joy.

"Nulight," Kappa says, "what are you
doing
here?"

"After you, lady."

"Quit the lady. There's got to be a reason."

"Of course..." Nulight grins. "So, pleased to see me?"

She hugs him again. "Yes! How did you know I was here?"

"Come up from Glasto."

"But why?"

"Aliens. Why else?"

Kappa laughs, then turns to face her friends. "This is Nulight of Voiceoftibet Records."

Murmured remarks: "Cool," and "Aren't Hedge Wine on that label?" and "Excellent festi gigs."

Nulight and Kappa depart hand in hand, making for a bench central in the encampment. Nulight begins his pitch. "Yeah, I'm choked to see you again, and, man, looking well. I really am—it's been years—but there was something else. Aliens. Met up with Partzephanaiah. You know him? Thought so. He showed me the spaceship tracks through the fresnel lens."

Kappa nods. "They're here, Nulight."

"We must stop them. Listen, I gotta mission and I ain't gonna buck it. We gotta stop them in their tracks before it's too late. I think they've taken over the semi-auton music at the Gesang Der Junglinge, but that's just the start. Invasion by stealth, yeah?"

Kappa nods. "Who else knows about this?"

Nulight grimaces. "Dieter thinks I'm paranoid. Me! I'll show him."

"What are you going to do?"

Nulight is trembling from the release of emotion, from the presence beside him of his ex-lover, and because of the plan that he is about to reveal. "I trust you, so I'll tell you. I'm gonna fly over to LA and see Marcia. I'm gonna take all the label funds and drop them back to me through a Swiss outfit. Those'll be the funds I use to get the investigation going. It's kinda... ethical, if you look at it from the right perspective."

Kappa is concerned. "But the label? Alot of people respect you and the label. You can't just ditch it. Even people here would lynch you. You're loved."

"They wouldn't lynch me, they're hippies."

Kappa scowls.

"Yeah, yeah."

"But what about the bands?" she insists. "No way are Mystery Trend going to let Voiceoftibet slide. They'd sue you. Maybe the other bands wouldn't, but they would. The last CD went platinum."

Nulight sits upright. "I can deal with them. It's only Chantal who gets stroppy, the bitch."

"And Marcia? She's in on this?"

"I'll bribe her. She's crooked when she wants to be. Man, I'll make her an offer she can't refuse. Most of Hollywood's sent funny money her way one time or another."

Kappa considers what she has heard. "Marcia's your accountant. You can't afford to lose her."

"There'd be others."

"Not like her."

Nulight knows he has lost that argument. "Maybe... we'll see what she says."

"Okay, but I'm coming with you."

Nulight's face lights up.

Kappa smiles. "Together we hit the aliens, all right?"

They slap palms, then kiss. Unexpectedly it lingers, and in Nulight's mind all those memories, fantastic days, sweaty nights, the drink, the shrooms, the hanging out together at free festivals... it all comes back. Man, he loved her. And maybe he still does.

He asks her, "How long you on sabbatical?'

"A season."

"How long's that?"

She is mock shocked. "You've been in cities too long. Three months."

"How long left?"

"Two. I go back in October."

Nulight nods, thinking, two months, that should be enough to prove the existence of the alien invasion. And then funds should roll in from other sources, media sources, maybe, or net jocks, and he can put the cash back into his label. Ain't nobody gonna notice. It's summer. Everybody will be high as a kite on an eight mile string, hopping from festi to festi.

Kappa and Nulight end up in her tipi. Nulight says, "Listen, we broke up bad, it was all wrong. It was only politics, right? You're a pragmatist and I'm an idealist—"

"Make that an almost fundamentalist."

"Whatever. But 'cos it was only politics we can compromise. What's more important is flesh and blood, and we had that good. I've missed you."

Kappa says, "I've missed you too."

"Let's screw, like old times, eh?"

Kappa grins. "I liked it when we did that."

"Sweets, I'm
glad
I'm back, and I need you to know that."

...weirdly fuelled accountancy...

In LA the Glasto pair stare up at the Smooth'N'Virtual Accountancy building, a golden column that looks like a stick of android lipstick. It vibrates, too. Nulight smiles; somewhere inside, a happygenerator is resonating. Music for the body, or so they said in 2005 when the faze scene swept Europe.

The lift is external and features couches, which they sit on. Nulight is dapper in a string vest, chinos and red boots. Kappa is her usual rainbow self, beaded dreadlocks swinging, patchouli exhaling, hairy armpit showing, translucent goth dress wearing; just Kappa. After a few minutes they arrive at the top floor, then walk across natural hemp rugs spread along the corridor to the suite at the end marked 'MARCIA E.'

"Ecstasy," Nulight quips.

"Let's hope so," responds Kappa.

It is a smart door so it welcomes them as it opens. They enter an ante-room done retro Stellar, all bells, pale turquoise walls adorned with moons, and luminous New Age fabrics. A two-metre ladymate stands and says, "Welcome, oh, you must be Nulight and Kappa Smythe. Go on through, the boss is awaiting you."

Marcia E's office is huge, twenty metres wall to wall, glass on two sides, brick, done natural like an English barn, on the others. Desks arranged Chinese style cover the floor, while Mac computers litter the area; ten of these beauties. A gigantic stereo stands in one corner, and Marcia, who is into virtualsmooth and nothing else, is playing an old Kosmik Jesters CD remixed ultra smooth by the scion of the chess champion Deep Thought computer. The music is totally sinuous. Nulight hears no sonic edges. No distortion. No percussion. Just aquatic tones and a dance beat throb overlaid with slowed-down vocals provided by dolphins.

Marcia herself is looking good, considering she is fifty nine. She could pass for twenty nine, and usually does at the shag-fest parties she attends. Virtualsmooth hit the world in 2030. Seduced by its sensations of drowning, Marcia had no option but to stall her age so that she perpetually lived 2030. Forever forty. Today she wears a cute canvas wrap and sandals, her exposed belly-button home to a massive emerald.

Stubbing out her smokeless cigarette she welcomes the pair, and the three sit on chairs by the window, looking out over smoggy LA. "Good flight?" Marcia asks.

"Excellent," they reply.

After tots of Japanese whiskey they settle down to business. Nulight explains his situation, then asks exactly how much Voiceoftibet are in the black.

"About nine million," Marcia replies. "But your idea would be, um, difficult."

"You'll do it?" Nulight presses.

She hesitates. Nulight expected instant acceptance. He is worried.

Marcia says slowly, "It's not just a matter of going Swiss. Even they've got the ethicals breathing down their necks. No, I need something... some kind of sweetener."

Nulight balks. He was hoping not to go in this direction, despite what he told Kappa. "Sweetener?" he asks.

Kappa nervously giggles. "You've got no saccharine cash in the kitty, Nulight?"

"Not a cent," he tells her.

It looks like Marcia does not want to do the deed. This is freaking Nulight out. Marcia used to be so helpful. Realistically, he can offer no bribe.

He says, "Man, what's the prob? I ain't done nothing wrong?"

Marcia oozes, "No, no, not at all, it's just that..."

"You gotta tell us!"

Marcia hesitates. Then, "All this alien talk weirds me out. You're not the only ones flirting with that particular scene."

"We know that. Got my first evidence from a rasta."

Marcia leans forward, to say, "I mean serious people. Like, dudes."

"What dudes?"

"A French dude in particular."

"Who?"

Marcia's face seems to have acquired a decade. "You aren't going to like it."

"
Who?
"

"Chantal."

Nulight is stunned. Chantal out of Mystery Trend? Chantal out of his label's biggest selling band? Who, basically, he doesn't get on with? That is incredible.