Hallucinating (9 page)
"Dean, nobody can get near."
They are walking the street and suddenly Kappa finds herself on her back, shivering. "Unhhhh."
"You hit the edge early."
"Edge?" Kappa feels a nameless fear in her mind, as if assailed by Satan's own stench. Her limbs are weak, her bowels loose, her throat tight. She tries to get up, but it is difficult. "Edge of what?"
"Force field."
Kappa stands up. "I don't believe in force fields. That's bollocks SF stuff." She smells the air. The fear returns. "I know what this is."
"What?"
"Manipulation." She glances at each of the folks who have followed her: Djo and Slim Ciggie and DJ Human. She turns away from them and with both hands at her mouth makes a megaphone, to yell, "Robin Hood, I know you're in there! Turn your stuff off! Give me pine!"
Nothing. She yells again. Suddenly a clean forest smell takes Satan's whiff away, and she smiles, and turns around. Just to check her theory is right, she asks the others if they can smell the pine. Their puzzled looks prove her correct. Good.
Then a man approaches; she doesn't recognise him, she's never seen him before. Confidently she strides up to him, and by his smell she knows he is Master Sengel, so she shakes his hand and it is all smiles. He is blonde today, and chubby about the cheeks. She gestures the other three to approach.
"This is Robin Hood," she tells them, knowing Master Sengel will not want his ID divulged. "Britain's saviour, eh?" she ribs him, with a wink.
"Britain's saviour is Arthur, the second incarnation," Master Sengel loftily replies, "who has already been born to save this country as was foretold in legend."
A few things click together in Kappa's mind, like the last pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. "So that's why you came to live down here."
He gestures for them to follow him. "Who can say?" he remarks, looking up and down the street as if suspicious.
Kappa stays put. "Yeah, that's something I wanted to talk to you about, in my capacity as Dean of the Faculty of Avalon. You can't just come here, make a den and then scare all the locals. Have you made a deputation to the town parliament? No, thought not. This secrecy has got to stop. I'm not having my friends and colleagues scared of coming this way because of some fancy limbic system manipulation—"
"All right, all right," Master Sengel says, frowning. "Our initial work is just about over, so I suppose we could..."
"You'd better. Well, now the difficult stuff is over, it's nice to see you! Do you know my friends?"
"No."
"This is DJ Orgasm—"
"Out of Hanging Gardens Of Fungus?"
"Yeah! And these are my good good friends DJ Human and Slim Ciggie."
Awkwardly, Master Sengel says, "Nice to meet you."
"I think they might quite like a wine gum."
Master Sengel indicates that they should walk on, then replies, "Don't push it, Kappa Smythe. You may be Dean, but the Fac has rather lost its voice around here."
"Don't be ridiculous. By the time I return we'll be in Parliament. Things are changing now I'm back."
"You're back for good?"
"That's my affair." Kappa considers what she has just said, then adds, "To be fair to you, and since you squared with me, I'm still living with the Nulight posse down in Boscastle. But I am still Dean."
"Just so long as we understand one another."
Master Sengel leads them towards the Chalice Well area, which is in places ivy overgrown and a little sad. Here, they pause. They can see the millennium oak of John Pendragon in the old nursery, and they can see John's rowan tree in the wild and vibrant meadow of the old gardens. There are a few moments of private reflection before Master Sengel leads them towards a tunnel that has been cut into the Chalice Hill. He pauses, speaks a word, and then they are led underground into a big hall, off which many corridors lead. It's all high tech, glossy, glassy, with an aura of disinfected floors and air conditioning. Quite an apartment, if you don't mind living hobbit style.
"So what's going on down here?" Kappa asks.
"This is stage one of the fight back," Master Sengel replies.
"Huh?"
Seeing the astonished expressions on the faces of Djo and the Glasto couple, Master Sengel continues, "Don't worry, ladies and gentleman, I'm not King Arthur... though my lord is in Briain somewhere. Anyway, this is where we brought the most important find of the year. Do you want to see it?"
"Sure."
He leads them through an air-lock safe-type door into an echoing circular cave, the centrepiece of which is—
"The parentship!" Kappa says, amazed.
"Yes indeed."
"But how did it get here?"
A voice behind her remarks, "I brought it up on the back of my Harley."
Kappa turns to see the leather dude.
"Let me explain," Master Sengel says, though first he asides to the leather dude, "Oh, three teas, please, two herbal, one caffeine-free. Now, Kappa, to explain in full. This is the first and only parentship that we have been able to capture. Of course, you know how it was done, but for the benefit of the others, we have discovered that the aliens are sensitive to bass vibes. With enhanced djembes and utilising feedback, the Boscastle troupe downed this ship. The second part of the operation is about to start. We will go inside the alien ship and try to fathom its systems. Ultimately, we hope to begin the human rebellion. Of course, we will need Arthur at our helm to do that."
Kappa is getting worried by these Arthurian references, but she bites her tongue. No point rubbing Master Sengel up the wrong way just now, when he clearly has an organisation behind him and the germ of a plan.
She asks him, "What computing power do you have here?"
"Not as much as I would like, regrettably—"
"I might have guessed! We've only got our
entire
SubNet up and running. If only you'd come out of your shell."
DJ Human adds, "The Faculty's resources are at your disposal, Mr. Hood."
Master Sengel smiles at that name. "I had not realised," he says, abashed. Then the tea appears. He hands out the cups, thoughtfully watching them drink. Kappa, alert to the scene, understands that they are becoming initiates.
"What's the ultimate plan?" she asks him.
"The aliens made nuggets of their own music and implanted them into the Berlin Underground, centred at the Gesang Der Junglinge club. We knew those nuggets as auton music. When they expanded to fill the European networks, and then the Internet and the Western economic system, they imposed their alien patterns upon our own. So it was a melodic invasion. You'll have heard the old cliche, 'the best form of defence is attack'. We hope to use that strategy. When we have understood the alien knowledge systems, we will create a magick bullet composed of what we consider to be the seven most mysterious, beautiful and yet ineffable melodies that have been written. Seven is a significant number, as you know. The magick bullet will inject these seven melodies into the alien master systems, and, we hope, disable their networks as they disabled ours."
Kappa's breath is taken away by this plan, which has a grandness appropriate to rebellion. "But will it work?" she asks.
"We don't know, of course, but we hope it will."
Kappa sighs. "We can only hope. What are the aliens doing now?"
"Resting, or so it seems. They still orbit the Earth. They have left humanity to scrabble about in the ruins, but they have not departed. There is more to come, I am sure. If we raise ourselves once more to civilisation, will they invade us again? Nobody can tell. We still know nothing of the consciousness of these aliens, of their societies."
"S'pose so. We'll send you a message if we come up with any ideas—"
"No. Don't do that. Why do you think I sent you a coded CD? Anybody could be out there. Chantal, for instance."
"She's still around?"
Master Sengel pauses, looks at Kappa, then says, "She was used by the aliens to help begin the invasion, distracting Nulight while they implanted the instigator device into his right hand. All over in an eyeblink, no doubt, despite the cunning symbolism. They are wise enough to utilise human beings, Kappa. We must be careful."
Scared, Kappa nods.
"Who exactly is down in Boscastle with you?"
"Nulight, my parents, Sperm, Zhaman, and Djo here. Why d'you ask?"
"Boscastle is near Tintagel. It is likely that Arthur will appear in Tintagel, so the chances are very high that your group will be involved in the final phase of our plan. You should be prepared for that."
Kappa nods. She doesn't know what this final phase might be, but something in the tone of Master Sengel's voice makes her knees go weak.
CHAPTER EIGHT
...an extraordinarily vibrant music scene...
Nulight is worried about the new Arthurian ethos that Master Sengel has acquired, and out of curiosity he decides to make a trip to Tintagel five miles down the coast, Kappa and Djo accompanying him. (Sperm is riffing on his guitar, while Zhaman is planting potatoes.) Tintagel Island is the legendary birthplace of King Arthur, he reasons, and therefore of interest. They have heard nothing about who might live there now.
The coastal path is dangerous and reknowned as being the launching pad for local suicide bids. The sea roars, the gulls wail, and the wind gusts in from the west. They stroll along. They start late morning and arrive late afternoon.
They find that Tintagel, long known as the home of tacky tourist souvenirs, has changed in a rather unexpected way. It is not a big place—one main street and some coastline—and a decade ago looked so run down it could easily have qualified for a European Renewal Grant. Not so now. The main street is covered over with transparent plastic, like a souk, and it is home to a pulsating music. There are fifty or more longhair punters in the street, dancing, drinking, smoking, eating seafood morsels off bone china plates. Nulight looks on. The dancers are all ages. It is a riot of colour. The house frontages have been painted psychedelic and there is greenery everywhere. There is a startling absence of plastic swords and rude postcards.
And that music! Like nothing Nulight has ever heard.
For ten minutes he listens. This is a mesmeric music in three-four time, made, it seems, from simple, almost analogue sounds and natural noises such as sea and bird and stream. It exudes purity but is cranked up to 135 bpm or so, and there is a strong melodic aspect rippling over softly changing chords. Nothing is sampled; in fact there seems to be no evidence of the computer at all. Drums and percussion are supplied, sure, but they seem to have been played by real people—they do not loop.
Bouncing lightly in time to the pulse, the trio enter the high street, where Nulight asks a snoozing local, "What's going on, man? Used to be a dive 'round here."
"New scene," he is told. "Tru-Rah. Starts proper at sundown, in the old Victorian house."
For an hour they wander the outskirts of Tintagel, to find a well organised system of permaculture plots, forest gardens, chicken runs, and all the rest of it. Could this place be self-sufficient? Seems unlikely, but...
The night's music starts at dusk in the old Victorian hall. Nulight considers this Tru-Rah to be a suspiciously vibrant music scene, given the isolation of Tintagel and the small number of people who actually live here (he estimates the population at a few hundred). Inside, they see what must be eighty percent of Tintagel bouncing around to the music of a sixpiece who are set up at the far end of the hall. Nulight leaves Kappa and Djo to jig, and checks out their gear. It is all analogue synths, tape loops, and even a few real instruments, all hooked up to a 256 track mixer that looks like the console of a racing car. Weirded out, Nulight returns to the back of the hall, where he corners a skinny thirtysomething dude who looks as if he might talk.
"What's going down?" he asks. "That band..."
"The Pouncing Grapefruits," the dude supplies.
"Local band?"
"Tintagel born and bred. You coming tomorrow night? We've got Rainbow Junk Pattern Synthesis."
"Another local band?" asks Nulight.
"Sure."
"How many are there?"
"Sixty seven."
Nulight understands. Everybody in Tintagel is in a band. "Man, this seems just a tad unlikely."
"Yeah?"
Nulight jests, "You're gonna tell me next they take it in strict rotation to play this hall."
"That's right! You live here? I don't recognise your face."
Nulight shakes his head. "Boscastle. I couldn't help noticing it's all analogue stuff. No samplers, no computers, no digital keys, no FM synthesis."
"Of course. Tru-Rah is an analogue scene, totally egalitarian. No leaders. Just good music, throbbing away, changing, mutating, loving us. You know what I mean?"
"Who started it? Local DJ?"
"It started itself."
Nulight considers this reply. "It certainly is very catchy. Very pretty music. Changing chords—man, I haven't heard music with changing chords for, like,
years.
"
"You should come join our community. You'd like it here."
"Who runs it?"
The dude laughs. "I told you, we're egalitarian. There's no leader. We're all equal, all three hundred and twenty of us."
Nulight nods, then turns to Kappa, who is swaying like a goth goddess a few metres away. He speaks with her. "This is freaking me out, sweets."
"It's very catchy, isn't it?"
"That's what I just said. A bit
too
catchy, maybe. What's doing my head in is how it got here. Bearing in mind what Master Sengel told you. I was looking for a leader, a visionary DJ. 'Stead we get bloody egalitarians."
"Better that than fascists."
"Yeah, yeah. It's way too spooky for me. I'm going."
"You go on alone. Me and Djo are staying a bit longer, maybe find a reefer merchant or summat."
Nulight looks to the door, shrugs, accepts a smoke and sits down to enjoy the ever-rippling melodies.
...and another heated discussion...
Back at the farmhouse, Nulight asks the MaxNeefers, "So who'll we recommend as our seven most melodious melodies? Anything from Voiceoftibet, y'reckon?"
They laugh at him. Djo says, "Master Sengel was specific... in a vague way. Mysterious, ineffable, beautiful. We're not talking trance or virtualsmooth or anything like that, we're talking songs."
"Songs!" Nulight scoffs. "Songs died out at the beginning of the century."
Kappa nods. "I bet the final seven choices all come from pre-millennium years. Betcha anything."
Nulight is unconvinced. "Any suggestions then? Obviously I'd better keep my mouth shut as this ain't my field."
"Don't be bitter," Djo remarks. "Well, I've always loved the Beatles—"
"The Beatles! Ha!" Nulight regrets this interruption after a look from Kappa.
"Yes, the Beatles," Djo continues. "I suppose it's a choice between Eleanor Rigby, Let It Be and With A Little Help From My Friends."
"What, no Day In The Life?"
Kappa snaps, "Why don't you shut up, Nulight, you're putting us off."
"Bloody Master Sengel's lost his marbles," Nulight mutters, in a pathetic attempt to get the last word.
"I'd like to nominate Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries," Kappa's father says.
"Yeah," says Zhaman, "and I'd like to nominate something by Debussy. Maybe... maybe..." But Zhaman can't quite make the thought. He will write it down later. He mumbles, "Don't forget Cole Porter."
Nulight is unable to keep himself from uttering a scornful, "Cole Porter!"
"What about that classical choon called Nimrod?" Zhaman asks.
Kappa stands up. "I'm going to Tintagel on a lotus. Anybody coming?"
Nulight also stands, saying, "Tintagel? Why?"
"I like the scene. Tru-Rah's cool."
"But..."
Kappa asks Sperm, "Can I borrow a guitar? I might play along with tonight's band."
"But you can't play the guitar," Nulight says.
"Yes I can."
That's true. She can.
"Why don't you come?" Kappa asks him in a concilliatory tone. "Dad's got a trumpet. You could bring that."
"I can't play the trumpet."
"Yes you can. You used to play Tibetan horns. And I've seen you play trumpet."
That's true. She has. But savagely he replies, "You've been seduced by that Tintagel crowd. Can't you see what's going on? When he meets you, Master Sengel drops massive hints about Arthurian stuff, and then, hey presto! there's a suspicious, ready formed music scene where Arthur was born. Coincidence? I don't fucking think so. It's all part of his plan, and
you
fell for it. It's his music probably. Kappa, it's just as bad as being manipulated by the aliens."
Kappa's face is cold when she replies, "Cut the paranoia. It doesn't work on me."
She leaves on lotuses with Djo and Zhaman.
"Go then," Nulight impotently calls after them. "See if I care."
...Elephant Fayre...
To everybody's amazement, considering there has been an alien invasion, news comes of this year's Elephant Fayre, which will be held near the site of the wind farm at Delabole. Nulight is suspicious because nobody knows who organised it. Rumour suggests it will feature the best six bands of the Tru-Rah scene, so everybody else is keen to go. Nulight begins to feel left out. Maybe the old paranoia is returning. He doesn't know. Maybe it's the sea air. Maybe it's alien rays. (The blue bastards are still here, after all.) Nulight trips on down to the Wellington Inn to question the minstrels who brought the news, and, yeah, it seems genuine. A fayre. Next week. There are a few other collectives and smallholdings in the area, and they all know about it. Nulight considers the news. This will be the first meeting of locals since the invasion and subsequent collapse. A chance to hear how others are doing. A chance to trade. Sourly: a chance to hear new music.
So the day of the Elephant Fayre arrives. Nulight walks across moorish hills to Delabole; the others ride lotuses, which they promise to park well away from the site of the Fayre. Nulight scowls all the way. Even sleeping with Kappa is getting on his nerves; she smells less of woman and more of blue-skin every single day. Yeah, it's getting tense, like it did before. Bad scene, bad karma.
Like some greybeard cynic washed up in a sea of nostalgia, Nulight questions Tintagel representatives about the Tru-Rah scene. "What's so bloody great about it?" he demands.
They miss or ignore his anger. "It's so true," they say. "That's its beauty. Truth and beauty, y'know? Plato. Or some such dude. Anyway, it's the best. Get down to it, man, feel the analogue—"
But Nulight has walked away. He is suspicious, and, worse, he is certain this is Master Sengel's doing. He feels manipulated.
The Fayre is as roisterous as ever. Half a decade has not blunted its cider-fuelled, mushie-directed, total freakout caravan dog on a string pleasure binge. And there are stalls, but instead of Indian boxes and dodgy Moroccan wares they are selling fruit and seeds, and pamphlets on companion planting reprinted from the originals. Books by Robert de Hart and James Lovelock and piles upon piles of musty, brown-at-the-edges copies of Resurgence Magazine. Sure, good stuff, but to Nulight it is all seen through a haze of suspicion.
He checks out the band list. The Pouncing Grapefruits are there, and Rainbow Junk Pattern Synthesis, plus others he is not familiar with. Top billing is given to the Kernow Dream, Ale & Melody Collective. "Ho bloody ho," he mutters as he stomps away.
A dude stops him. "Hail and well met!" says this tall bloke with a floppy Dali-type moustache.
"Who the hell are you, baldy?"
There is a twinkle in the man's eyes as he glances up to Nulight's bonce and ripostes, "Who are you calling baldy?"
"D'you wanna taste of fist, buddy?"
"Somebody got out of bed awry this kind morn," replies the man. He puts out his hand as if for a shake. "I am Sir Trance-alot of the House of Roland." Shyly, he adds, "We merged with the House of Korg a few months back, you know."
"You're wrecked, man. Get lost." Nulight makes to leave the punter, despite the fact that ol' fake-o-knight here seems to know him.
"Halt, sirrah! I have words to say to you."
Nulight mutters, "Speak English then, for Buddah's sake."
"Very well. I am a messenger—what is the matter?"
Nulight has taken a few steps backwards. No way does Master Sengel use flunkeys to send his messages. No way! Or does he? With paranoia in top gear, Nulight turns and runs for the nearest beer tent, where he loses himself in pissed punters, mangy dogs and tie-dyed freakos smelling of patchouli. Then he spies Kappa.
"Kappa! Some nutter after me. Man, we gotta get outa this place."
Kappa frowns. "Nutter?"
Nulight describes Sir Trance-alot.
"That's just
some
body," she hisses, an angry look in her eyes. "From—"
"But he said he brought a message—"
"Did you smell him?"
Nulight thinks back. Now he is really scared, because there should have been a smell, and there wasn't, so it wasn't Master Sengel. "No, I didn't get a whiff of anything."
"Exactly. So leave him alone. Stop bugging him."
"Why?"
Kappa continues, "Will you stop interfering with the plan—"
It is the word interfering that blows Nulight's top. "I'm
not!
I'm sick of you. Do your own festi, I'm
outa
here."
Nulight grabs stone jars of scrumpy and a few sandwiches, then chills out behind a caravan, where he plays chuck-and-fetch with a tennis ball and the dogs of some travelling tribe fresh out of St Austell. Evening comes. Night falls. The hippy trancey analogue mish-mash that is Tru-Rah booms and twinkles out of a couple of NeoOrange stacks, and despite his foul mood, Nulight is into the music. It's so damned catchy!
Suddenly he is aware of himself. Is this music monkeying with his brain? Is that what it's about?
He's got it! Something
bad
about this music. It's just too melodic. Mass hypnosis, or worse!
Under cover of darkness he creeps towards the main stage, where the Kernow Dream, Ale & Melody Collective are doing their thang, and it is all analogue synths (the Real McCoy, not digital geekware from the Far East) plus djembes and percussion, and even a dreadlocked gal playing a saz tuned to the even tempered scale. He wonders if Master Sengel is down here. Perhaps the message of Kappa's anger was that the Dali moustache dude was Master Sengel himself, somehow de-whiffed. But surely not. He peeks out from under a gypsy caravan. Lines of internally-illuminated stalls make a gorgeous wheel across the moor, the main stage their hub, winding away to the boundary of the Elephant Fayre, and in the evening gloom the alleys of psychedelic lamps and big church candles bring a lump to Nulight's festi-loving throat.