Bold as Love 
      a short story by Gwyneth Jones 

      Note 

      "Bold As Love" was written for Paul McAuley and Kim Newman's anthology In 
      Dreams (Gollancz 1992; see also Greg Egan's Worthless from the same 
      anthology). This story is heavily based on a factual account of a night in 
      Brighton's clubland in the eighties that appeared in Fuck The Tories 
      (September 1989, edited by Judith Hanna and Joseph Nicholas) and is also 
      republished in the nonfiction area of infinity plus. 

      Bold as Love

      At midnight there was someone in a coma, vomiting into the toilet floor. I 
      watched her for a while, but her boyfriend seemed a capable type for a 
      deathshead. He said his Dad was a psychiatric nurse, and he'd got her into 
      the unconscious position all right. A boy in a black basque, tattered 
      fishnets and stilletoed ankle boots came in, staggered to the basins and 
      clung there, white arms braced and oversized hands gripping the porcelain. 
      He stared at himself in the mirror. Through the spots and a starburst of 
      diamond lines around an impact crater, his face was beautiful: carven 
      chalk white cheekbones, enormous purple pits under his eyes, a soft, full 
      bruise-coloured mouth. On his bone flat breast his nipples, lifting out of 
      the torn lace and boning, were like brownish coins. He was shaking from 
      head to foot. "I'm experiencing this," he repeated, madly earnest. "I'm 
      experiencing this I'm experiencing this." I saw a split in the satin, 
      across his ribs on the left. It was crusted with something like dark brown 
      mud (in this light); there was more of the stuff moving thickly out of the 
      slit. It was blood. Blood had been pouring out of him, until it slowed of 
      its own accord. 
      I'd been about to leave, but I didn't know what to do now. Maybe I should 
      make him lie down? The sensible young deathshead looked up and said: "It's 
      okay Fio, he's just done a bit of stig." 
      More people know Jill fool than Jill fool knows. "Oh yes. Of course. Silly 
      of me." 
      My mother is a WASP. My father is of perfectly cool Afro-Irish descent, 
      but I take after her. I might be tempted to lie about my ethnic 
      background: but there's no point. I give myself away all the time; and not 
      just by the shape of my nose. Contrary to popular belief, however, the 
      hipcats are no bigots. If I really want to be here, that's enough. 
      The Ladies toilet at the San is a heroic monument. No one would change or 
      hide its raddled beauty. Outside, I walked into a duchess's drawing room: 
      a warehouse full of looted poshery and finery, some of it piled as if the 
      removers had dumped it there; some of it arranged in impromptu tableaux. 
      Some nights, there would be riotous behaviour in here. Spiked rings would 
      scour the glowing mahogany and walnut, toecaps ram through oil-crusted 
      canvas; snot boogers get smeared on the brocades. Blood from broken heads 
      and noses would pour over the slippery silk rugs. Righteous fanatics and 
      helpless gonzos would defecate into the massive silverware. Tonight the 
      punters were being fairly sedate. I saw someone mashing chocolate mousse 
      into a patch of carpet with his face and hands and bum; that was about 
      all. 
      Around the drawing room there was a jungle. The trees, I imagined, must be 
      rooted through the floor into hydroponic vats. There must be some system 
      of shifting flats to let daylight or gro-lamps through the ceiling; and 
      the rain. It must be so, because the management at the San would never 
      hurt a living thing and the trees were certainly alive. There were 
      half-tame olive green birds with orange heads fluttering in the 
      undergrowth. Black and gold monkeys shifted about in the branches. I stood 
      and tried to coax a bird from a creeper onto my wrist. At my eye level a 
      tiny russet creature stood on the wet open palm of a leaf. Its slender 
      trunk was weaving a delicate dance, following not the beat of the music 
      but the rhythm of heated bodies, the riff of salt sweat... I jumped a 
      mile. It was the WASP in me coming out again. What's disgusting about a 
      leech? Nothing is disgusting, to the truly cool. The chocolate mousse 
      bloke was sitting up and paying attention, from across the floor. He had 
      seen this little error of mine, and laughed ­­ a horribly sane and party 
      line laugh. 
      I felt annoyed with myself and put on my dark glasses. It's easy to get 
      carried away. But I wasn't in the mood. 
      The jungle bar was lined with knobby young shave-headed girls in latex and 
      gauze and monster boots, arm in arm and eyeing up the talent. They checked 
      my hair and my painted skirts pityingly. I wasn't worried by that: you 
      can't please everyone. I saw a dead ringer for Ralph Churchill on the TV, 
      talking to a skinny bloke in gilded leather. My boy from the toilet, 
      looking green from his taste of near-death, was talking to a group of 
      friends. The hit doesn't last long and (those who like it say­­) you 
      always have to have more. He'd probably be back in the toilet with one eye 
      dangling on his cheek in an hour. I got myself another drink and heard 
      someone whisper "Ax is going to get stigged ". 
      I had my glasses on, but I hadn't tuned them. The bar's sound track had 
      retreated to a distant brawling noise and my head was full of echoes of 
      conversations from all over the San. The Insanitude is a big place, I've 
      rarely seen it packed out. The halls upon halls of under-the-hill fantasy 
      rising up around the Snake Pit are for some only the anterooms. There are 
      ratty stairways, if you know which door to open, leading to the booths 
      where blackcan things are organised. Further up still there are cold and 
      desolate ballrooms, where ska bands ram on with their infectious beat in 
      front of a handful of flailing drunks; where punters huddle in twos and 
      threes on dirty torn vinyl furniture in chill corners. Bad things happen 
      there. No one imposes any sanctions on the deals that are made, it's 
      tradition that makes them hide away. Certain transactions are only at home 
      in some kind of outer darkness. 
      I knew my whisper came from up there, from somewhere very far from the 
      heat and the beat. I pulled my glasses off: like a true WASP, I didn't 
      want the dirt near me. The lad next to me at the bar was blond, plump and 
      narrow eyed, with Rorschach butterflies of sweat spreading over his raggy 
      Marlon. He had a peaked black leather cap with an SS badge. His friend was 
      black, taller and unremarkable. 
      Blondie had a long pomander sachet. (The fact is, it stinks in here, no 
      matter what the lightshow does: old beer, old vomit, traces of piss and 
      red wine; the usual bouquet). It didn't look right for him as an 
      accessory. But they check their weapons at the door. The lads ­­ and the 
      girls ­­ love doing that, it's a ceremony. You see them come in and spread 
      open the blj, and there are flick-knives, clasp-knives, bowie-knives, 
      knuckledusters, ranked in little custom-made pockets like a toolkit. You 
      very rarely see a firearm. Guns are not... not meaty enough. However, 
      after he's turned in the armoury a boy often feels the need of a 
      substitute; a symbol of the symbol. Blondie swung his tool between his 
      knees, and leered at me. 
      I caught a glint of something bright, probably some illicit kind of 
      fractional gear. I pretended not to notice, much to his annoyance. 
      "Hallo darling, gimme mind?" 
      Mind? 
      "Trashy track," I said. "If they're going to recreate the Stones, why 
      can't they do good Stones. Like High Tide and Green Grass. Like Beggar's 
      Banquet. They never did anything but shit after. " 
      "You're true, you're true." 
      Hooking the sachet on his belt, he lurched an arm around my shoulders, 
      fumbled a nipple through my pearl satin blouse. Nipples never lie (mine 
      don't, anyhow). He pulled back, affronted. 
      "Fuck off, then. Frigid." 
      So I fucked off, with my drink, wondering what kind of sociopath riffraff 
      this was, that didn't even know when he was listening to the totally 
      sacred original Exile On Main Street. 
      The jungle was milling with astral bodies, strangers from far away who'd 
      been queuing for hours to log on. Fractionals are all right but you can't 
      talk to them. Essentially they're fans, religious fanatics. They're with 
      the bands, they're with the friends who logged on with them. Otherwise 
      it's doo-wop-a-lula. I saw Ax, before he saw me: solid as a rock. He was 
      wearing, as usual, far too many clothes, and carrying a worn plastic bag 
      that bulged with paper. I remembered that there was something I ought to 
      tell him, but forgot what it was. I stood and watched and half wished he 
      wouldn't look round. But I didn't walk away. 
      "Hi, Fiorinda." 
      His mouth brushing my lips was genuinely cold, though when I came in (how 
      long ago was that?) it had been a hot summer night outside. I wondered 
      where he'd been. I didn't ask. Ax has few stigmata: but an invincible urge 
      to obfuscate is one of the unholy relics he carries around. 
      We were in the middle of a fight. It was about a singer called Sam Cheng, 
      who had stayed at my house while passing through on tour: a skinny boy 
      with hair like seaweed and a mouth that tasted of the air on a mountain 
      top. It was one of those fights that starts with something rational and 
      limited like: you fucked him in our bed; Excuse me, that's my bed... and 
      then the little rip in the surface begins to unravel the whole fabric. All 
      chaos; all the anger and the grievance in the world pours through. 
      Ax and I tend to have fights of that kind. 
      He wanted to leave a coat or two. We joined the line at the cloakroom 
      hatch, which was already long. I considered my half-murdered, bleeding 
      boy. He wasn't so crazy, compared to these characters. I do feel that 
      taking the fashionable pretence of real presence so far as handing in an 
      imaginary overcoat is well out of order. But why not, if it amuses them. 
      Ax grumbled, wondering why nobody had work that required, at least 
      fractionally, their presence elsewhere. "The country's going to the 
      dogs..." Ax is genuinely hopeless. He cannot tell unless he touches 
      things, or people. 
      He used the time, industriously, to thrust his archaic handbills at 
      certain passers by. Most of the papers fell to the jungle floor, caught on 
      creepers and crawled upon by giant glossy maroon millipedes. A few were 
      carried off. 
      We didn't talk. By the time we reached the hatch Ax had decided to shed 
      three or four layers of his carapace, but he was unsure about the 
      handouts. 
      "Are they state documents? Of world-shattering importance?" 
      He gave me a look that said, oh, I see. Cool but civil. He was wearing 
      glasses at this point. I could see his eyes, pleading with me out of the 
      clear, blood-brown depths. Maybe mine were pleading too, but not on 
      Fiorinda's orders. Let these two pairs of eyes get on with it, I thought. 
      I'm not playing. 
      "It's about the Free Danube." 
      That's what I thought he said. I put my glasses on again, losing the 
      jungle too abruptly for comfort. I wish someone would invent something 
      that brought on these changes gradually. (Must ask Ax). 
      "Is this more of the Balkan Psychobabble I'm supposed to get excited 
      about?" 
      "It's freeing the Danube." 
      He told me about these Romanian heavy metal operators, and how their 
      astounding rendition of Unchained Melody on giant earthmoving equipment 
      would knock my socks off and permanently improve my life, my health, and 
      the state of major global weather systems... I wasn't hearing every word, 
      but I caught the guarded enthusiasm of Ax onto a good act. 
      "I'd like to give them a booking." He frowned, that totally inward, 
      unselfconscious ponder which I love in him. Ax can concentrate like a 
      three year old child with a chocolate ice. But he can do it for weeks. 
      "Got to build them up a bit, first. Got to educate the punters..." 
      "Anything you say, Ax." 
      He began to tell me about another good act, from the Seychelles... or it 
      could have been Sheffield. I wasn't listening. That's why we need someone 
      like Ax, so we won't have to listen to everything. You don't have to sort 
      the enormous wash and weight of information that comes throbbing in, 
      beating up through your breastbone, vibrating in your molars. You can 
      trust him. He is technically capable of knowing what is going on: all we 
      have to do is be there or be square. 
      "If I can get the trendy buggers going, leaders of society. Like you, Fio. 
      A solid piece of paper, people appreciate that. It's a free gift, it turns 
      them on. Then it spreads like... like..." He gazed into space. 
      "Jam?" 
      "Snot." 
      He delved in a pocket, blew his nose ferociously, and opened the grimy 
      tissue to see what he'd brought down. "When your snot turns green, you 
      know you're in trouble... I've got this cold you see. Suddenly I'm full of 
      snot, every cavity. There was nothing there yesterday. That's what made me 
      think of it." So he kept the state documents, after cautiously and 
      earnestly laying one on the cloakroom attendant ­­ along with his rambling 
      spiel about the heavy metal Romanians. 
      "She's a machine, Ax." 
      "She's still a human being." He considered the queue: but had a glimmer of 
      intuition. "They're not in a receptive mode." 
      The San serves enormous measures. Why not? No one is going to cripple 
      their liver, or even get a hangover, unless that is something they really 
      want to do. As I watched Ax moseying diffidently through the crowd at the 
      service bar, a friend of mine passed by. She looked twice, and glared. 
      "You don't know you're born, Fiorinda. If I could find myself a 
      babysitter, I don't know where I'd find the energy..." She has two 
      children under five, poor sod. "Come on, I'll buy you a drink. You can 
      tell me what it tastes like." Allie was wearing some great light effects, 
      she looked like a dragonfly with a human head. She saw Ax coming back: Ax 
      ineffably nondescript in the tumult of fractional finery, with his brown 
      fringed leather-look jacket, broken kneed jeans and raggy mousebrown 
      pigtail. Allie is a revered local stylist. She couldn't afford to be seen 
      near someone like that. She gave me a mildly amazed glance ­­ a very 
      clubby glance ­­ from her faceted eyes. 
      "Catch you later, Fi. " 
      We went to sit with Smelly and The Older Generation of Hipsters: Smelly's 
      old lady Ann Marie, Aoxamaxoa with the deathshead skull, Smelly in the 
      claymatted vintage dreadlocks and the tiedye, Beef the black leather, Chip 
      the S&M buckles and weals. Snake, an outfit of incredibly shiny blue, with 
      cufflinks and a hot white shirtfront. Verlaine, with his ringlets and 
      velvet ­­ like a Velasquez cavalier who is not ashamed to be beautiful. 
      Candroid, as drab as Ax and very tongue-tied. 
      Usually, I feel wonderful when I'm with these people. We're sitting in the 
      jungle clearing at a scuffed and grease layered table, wearing our dark 
      glasses and talking low, leaving the music and the floorshow to the kids. 
      Allie is a crass snob (in my WASP dialectic). The knobby little girls up 
      at the bar are infants who can't yet live without rules. We're different. 
      No one around this table judges me, wants me to change the way I dress, 
      the way I think, the way I dance. I'm part of the rich tapestry. I'm a 
      voice in the harmony. 
      But I was sickening for another round of my fight with Ax, and I'd been 
      drinking too much because I didn't trust myself with anything more 
      imaginative. So tonight, even without my glasses, I was seeing things that 
      aren't supposed to be seen. The only other woman at the table was Smelly's 
      old lady, and she wasn't contributing much to the conversation, or the 
      consumption. She was listening for occult baby voices. (Smelly, to be 
      fair, says bring them, why not? Anne-Marie won't consider it. People have 
      been known to smoke tobacco cigarettes in here. And besides, Smelly thinks 
      he would sit cuddling the baby, one hour on, one hour off. But he 
      wouldn't. It was AM's choice, after all. They're her kids. She accepts 
      that). 
      Roxane, Chip's off and on dominatrix, doesn't count. She spends too much 
      time with the boot girls. But her weight (and there's plenty of it) never 
      shifts the balance even when she's here. 
      Smelly's eldest daughter, Para, (short for Paralytic, which is what Smelly 
      was the night she was born), wanted to leave home and join the Pelham 
      Square People. They're extremists of squalor. They've given up clothes. 
      They don't wash. If you wash, you get cold. 
      "Let her go," someone ordered him earnestly. "If she's not serious, if 
      she's not ready for their life, she'll soon be back." 
      "As long as they cover their shit ­­" said Chip, curling a lip. He 
      believes in civilisation. 
      Ghost Shirt began to rant. 
      "It's all so fucking false. Fucking naked hermits. Why do we never do 
      anything real? What's happened to the death and the pain? Peace sucks. We 
      write songs about sex and violence and never do it You see blokes going 
      round with skulls instead of heads on their shoulders, you hear about 
      street fighting and gang violence but it doesn't mean anything. What's 
      happened to the rumble? I mean the Big Rumble. What's happened to 
      organised violence? I want to see death in large numbers. I want to hear 
      the tank crews screaming as they burn. You can't have art without pain! 
      You can't have art without... hatred ... Without macro violence..." 
      "You can take downers when you're drunk a-and forget and take some more, 
      so you barf and sleep through it and choke on your own vomit," suggested 
      Aoxa, in his serious little voice. 
      "You can eat nothing but your own turds til your guts can't cope and you 
      die of peritonitis. That would be very pure." 
      "You can fuck with my girlfriend," offered Snake, magnanimously. "We still 
      got murder around here." 
      Ghost Shirt tried to break a beer bottle on the edge of the table, but 
      failed because he wasn't drunk enough. 
      "I'm telling the truth and you are full of shit." He began to weep and 
      staggered off, muttering. 
      "It's funny," remarked Ax, "the knobby-looking people are always the 
      stupid buggers. Have you noticed that?" 
      The others didn't respond. Ax can be cruel sometimes. He doesn't get any 
      encouragement. Poor Ghost Shirt probably had something on his mind. 
      Everyone gets raving bitter occasionally. It's not a crime. If its a 
      friend of yours you let it rip, and protect him from the worst ideas he 
      gets. 
      Once, I visited Aoxa's house, and I started to do the washing up. Yes. I 
      did the washing up. Have you ever seen that Japanese anime, where the boy 
      and girl spacejocks find themselves in a ruined city? It's post-holocaust, 
      and there's a deserted house, Marie Celeste sort of thing. The girl-wonder 
      sees some ancient washing up piled in a sink. She tries to resist, but the 
      pull is too strong. She goes sidling across the screen, succumbing to the 
      forces of evolution. That was me. I ploughed through the grease and the 
      filth and the stink, feeling like Wendy in Never Never Land. About three 
      weeks down I found the pathetic corpse of a baby mouse. What a triumph. I 
      knew I had them. "Look at this, boys. Look what you've done!" The 
      deathshead community was totally devastated. They vowed there and then to 
      give up running water in the kitchen. 
      Sometimes they go crazy. Sometimes they beat up their girlfriends when 
      they're drunk. But these boys are seriously gentle people. 
      Ax was banging on about the Danube act. Smelly was resisting. He reckons 
      all this activity Ax plans for us is blocking our emergent paranormal 
      powers... But Ax would win. He knows more ways of making people do what he 
      wants them to do, than any mass-market dictator in history. Basically, he 
      says, it comes down to nagging. You just keep at it, for longer than they 
      can believe possible... I watched Hugh's old lady, the girl with the 
      faraway eyes, and got angrier. They're all such nice blokes. Ax is such a 
      simple soul. I could feel him, while he argued, giving off whipped 
      puppydog vibrations in my direction. His dumb, personal interpretation of 
      what was going on between us made me want to smash his sweet little head 
      in. 
      Ax touched my hand. "Gimme mind. You look pissed off." 
      "Squalor," I said, berating myself. "It gets me down. I want to clean up 
      in here. I want to scrub floors and open windows." 
      "Like a hurricane." He nodded. "Hurricane Fio, yeah. I always liked that 
      skirt. Not many women your age could wear a skirt like that." Dear Ax, 
      what an idiot. This was supposed to soften me up. "But what's wrong. 
      You're so angry. It's not just us..." 
      No one should ever ask me what's wrong? when I'm half drunk. I forget how 
      to make conversation. 
      "For one thing," I began, very seriously. "For one thing, you're a man." 
      Ax cracked up. He laughed and snorted until they all got started... even 
      Anne Marie. 

      He followed me into the starlite ballroom, above the hall of plundered 
      furniture. An Elvis rig was on the stage. There were couples dancing, 
      slowly, under a twirling mirror ball. Ax gets misty eyed over this sort of 
      thing. 
      "You're right, Fio. My Fiorinda, you don't belong indoors. When I think of 
      you, I see a rainbow. I see the colour of the sky before a thunderstorm, 
      trees all the different shades of green in July. I see a steel blue river, 
      winding through flat brown fields. Snow, earth, fire..." 
      He tried to ease me onto the floor. I threw him off. 
      "I know it's irrational." I yelled. "No one asked me to do the washing up. 
      No one has to get pregnant. No one has to play mother. The lost girls and 
      the lost boys can eat beans cold out of the can together. No one has to be 
      the breadwinner, no one has to wait at home. There's no pressure... 
      Sometimes, I go off to the toilet and leave you, and I don't powder my 
      nose and I don't talk girltalk and I don't retire ritualistically to 
      ingest something that's no longer illegal. I stare in the mirror and I say 
      to myself non sum non sum non sum. This is not my world, Ax." 
      "Oh," he said. "You want to have a baby." 
      "Aarrgh. You can't fucking do this, Ax. Forget about me, think about your 
      brothers. It's not possible. The Insanitude is a knife-edge. You want to 
      live like animals? You can. But you can't stop the clock. You can't build 
      a world around the self-destructive momentum of young male animals in rut. 
      That piston beat, the noise, the rush of animal beauty and energy: it only 
      has one meaning. Once the young bucks start strutting, then most of them 
      have to die. That's nature. That's what's always going to happen, if it 
      gets half a chance. And then what will you do? I'll tell you what you'll 
      do. You'll try to be the one who comes out on top, the cock and bull who 
      survives, and wins the right to order the women and children around until 
      he gets old..." 
      My eyes were swimming. Ax was coming apart and shrinking, little dit-dots 
      of that terribly banal light trailing through him, scissoring him up. I 
      heard him wailing faintly "I'll do the night feeds..." I started laughing 
      hysterically. The male mind. Why do they always take things so personally? 

      "That's not the point! You and me, however we behave, we don't make any 
      difference. You're an anachronism, Ax. You're trying to hold things 
      together that have to be allowed to fall apart..." 
      This relationship, for one. 

      I prowled the Insanitude, ankle high to misty kaleidoscope giants, 
      brooding on solutions. 
      I could become a separatist. 
      I could have six kids, and get to know Ann Marie really well. 
      I could have my brain removed, and get to know Allie really well. 
      I could have the other operation, and get to know Roxane. 
      I ain't got no boyfriends, I ain't got no girlfriends... Nobody 
      understands. 

      Ax has no taste in music. He once told me rock and roll is like sex. Prior 
      enthusiasm isn't essential, in fact it often messes things up with 
      disappointment. You don't have to be on fire. You can make something of 
      the act from a standing start. It doesn't matter if you don't know what's 
      going on inside the machine. The machine works. You only have to plug 
      yourself in. 
      In the duchess's drawing room, there was a Candroid experience. It had 
      been advertised on the wrong boards. Handfuls of puzzled swine wandered 
      about, scratching their leather armpits while a cerebral aura of 
      scientific sound floated overhead. In the Glass Hall, a Tamla Motown 
      gamelan orchestra called Behind A Painted Smile was doublebooked with 
      Mamelles de Dieu. The cult-famous Eurothrash outfit was badly outnumbered, 
      but Mama Mamelle (a big muscular woman in a beetle suit) wasn't going to 
      give up without a fight. She spread her legs and squirted some foul 
      smelling orange goop, from her embroidered orifice. The punters had 
      started to take sides. 
      The main event was warming up in the Rubbish Dump. The Dump is a big 
      floor, with a stage at one end and spreading from the other a senseless 
      collection of junk: bits of rusted car body with the paint still clinging, 
      disembodied engines, piles of old tyres. 
      I let myself be pulled in, through the thickening crowd. The sound was 
      stunning. The bass came up through my feet and thrummed in my solar 
      plexus. I slid between a skull-headed boy and a woman in purple lace, who 
      was swaying with a toddler asleep in her arms. Movement all around me now, 
      and my anger changed. 
      Darkness isn't passive, it isn't female. It belongs to everyone. The way 
      we live, when It wells up inside, you can't fucking escape from It into 
      normality, into routine, into the limits of your daily disguise. You have 
      to find some other way. Unappeasable fury ran into the piston pumping of 
      my arms and legs. I felt the sweat begin to run. I pushed on, insensibly, 
      needing full communion tonight. 
      I reached The Edge. There was nothing between me and the stage but a 
      churning agape of glistening young male bodies. They dance naked from the 
      waist down. The Marlons stay on, to sop up sweat. Sex and violence, 
      screamed the singer. Sex and violence sex and violence sex and violence 
      sex... Occasionally you see an upright prick sticking out like a washing 
      pole. But mainly the naked genitals stay soft as the bodies grapple. 
      Fucking goes on in a dancing crowd at the San, and wanking, but it's 
      further back. It's something deeper than sex makes the boys lose 
      themselves and form this heaving mat of flesh. 
      Ax hates the Rubbish Dump. I love it. When I'm in here, I stop thinking. I 
      know that this is why we overturned the world: to rediscover this magical 
      potion. And anytime you need it you can have it, even if you're a girl. I 
      stumbled and was hauled to my feet by gentle, anonymous hands. I already 
      began to count the bruises that would flower, but inside my pounding body, 
      inside the pounding beat, I was at peace. 
      I saw the plump blond boy in the SS cap, on his mate's shoulders. They 
      were right up at the stage. The band, known as DOG NOISE, were unknown to 
      me except for the singer, a likeable kid called Nick Arthur. He was using 
      a mouth-projector. A skein of silvery tinsel strands taped to his bottom 
      lip converted his singing into a streaming chord of light and colour; 
      bursting round his head or spilling out into space as Nick tongued his 
      controls. 
      The SS cap pair weren't dancing. I noticed that, because something told me 
      they needed the agape. I pumped away, thinking I have a bad feeling about 
      those two. 
      Blondie got hold of a handful of projector strands, and would not let go. 
      When I glimpsed Ax at the edge of the agape, I knew Nick must have called 
      for help. I pushed off from the human wave, went under and fought my way 
      back. I arrived in the front row at the moment when DOG NOISE's current 
      number ceased with a screaming protest from the sound system. 
      Three naked dancers were struggling to hold the black bloke (who was still 
      fully clothed; a bad sign). The rest of DOG NOISE were trying to haul Nick 
      Arthur and the blond apart. They succeeded and threw the blond in the SS 
      cap off the stage. Nick's mouth was bleeding. Blondie got to his feet 
      clutching the projector, it looked as if he had a silver jellyfish 
      struggling in his fist. 
      He pulled a knife. 
      I was looking right into his eyes. He was in that state when nothing can 
      be done: when the only treatment is an anaesthetic dart from half a mile 
      away. The dancers parted in waves and scuffled backwards from around the 
      Ax. There wasn't one of them who hadn't tried to smuggle a frax-simile 
      weapon in here at some time, but tonight they were all being good boys. 
      There was silence in the jungle. The crimson and purple giants stood like 
      guardian spirits. It was fragile, but the peace was holding: the all 
      important gentleness of this violence we've created. Ax moved in. I 
      couldn't hear what he was saying but he looked in control, soothing and 
      confident. I'd seen the Insanitude coming quietly unravelled tonight: Ax 
      is not infallible. But I saw another shape of things to come, in the way 
      the dancers stood and watched. Win or lose, I thought. Who cares? He's 
      lost to me. 
      I got that far. Then, I don't remember how I crossed the leaf and creeper 
      tangled space between. I jumped on blondie's back, slammed an arm round 
      his throat and hauled. I got a glimpse of Ax's expression, gaping in 
      disbelief at my betrayal. Behind me, of course the boys broke loose. The 
      ranks behind surged forward. The dancers, drunk and crazy and naked, were 
      hitting out in all directions. The real mud, in which Nick wallows in one 
      number, started flying along with the blood and the beer. A giant kicked 
      me in the face, I saw a boy next to me go down grappling with a leopard. 
      The monkeys screamed, the birds shot about in panic, their wings rattling 
      like gunfire. The whole vast floor of the Rubbish Dump was one archaic 
      melee, the Rumble of the year. 
      Finally, Candroid's people upstairs had the brilliant idea of turning on 
      the sprinklers. 
      The blond boy left, a struggling starfish, with four or five punters 
      holding up each limb. It is amazing how many people it takes to subdue one 
      smallish bloke: if weapons aren't allowed, and nobody is to get hurt. 
      Ax and I were sitting on the floor. Belatedly, I put on my glasses. 
      Between us lay a bowie knife. We looked at it for a while, then I reached 
      out and touched it. The metal was real. 
      "Holy shit," said Ax. "How did you know?" 
      Blondie's friend had come back. He was wandering around the dispersing 
      crowd, complaining. "He's lost his hat. My mate's lost his hat... Have you 
      seen it?" A couple of dancers pulled on their pants and tried to help, 
      kicking around in the rags of torn clothing and mud and trampled plastic 
      beermugs. 
      I could still see Blondie's eyes. The look in them, of terrible, utter 
      desolation: beyond hope, beyond help, beyond reason. Mon semblable, mon 
      frere... 
      "Female intuition." 
      We handed in the knife, and went up to the Glass Hall. Behind A Painted 
      Smile had won the stage. They were utterly fab. We sat on the floor like 
      hippies, leaning against each other; and listened to the 
      moonlight-on-water chiming of the gamelan until the sky above the glass 
      grew pink and gold with the dawn. 

      Outside in the grey morning, the punters were departing. In an hour or so 
      the San would take on its daytime persona, in which it is a real asylum. 
      We need a lot of those. With all these millions of full blown human 
      personalities suddenly bursting out in pampered profusion, out of the 
      quiet desperation of the past: tending the crazies is our one growth 
      industry. I stood outside on the broken pavement awash with summer 
      wildflowers, and thrust Free the Danube handouts at the crowd. It's going 
      to be a great show, better than Deconstructing The Severn Bridge, a gig I 
      greatly enjoyed. In time we'll break down all the dams, dismantle all the 
      steel girdered constrictions, let all the rivers run free. 
      There is no reason why we shouldn't have the time. The way we live doesn't 
      place much of a burden on the earth's resources. We've discovered how to 
      get rid of the starvation camps: simply, we've joined them. We don't have 
      to live like refugees, we do it because we like it. We're so wild and 
      free, we need so little in the way of washing machines and fridges and 
      detergents and carpets and three piece suites and this year's model 
      executive car. All we ask is a grimy bowl of vegetable stew or deeply 
      dubious curry. The only technology we still breed, the sound and vision 
      magic, costs hardly anything. The rock and roll Reich could last for a 
      thousand years. 
      Chip and Verlaine appeared, arm in arm. "Ah, Fiorinda..." Ver swept me a 
      bow. "J'aime de vos longs yeux la lumiere verdatre..." 
      They envied my handouts. We'd all hate to be wage slaves, but there's 
      status in a little job that requires your physical presence. Lending your 
      head and a few muscle twitches to a distant Russ-production plant isn't 
      the same. 
      "Where's the Ax?" 
      I shrugged. 
      He was in the crowd somewhere. There's a tradition among us that none of 
      the punters knows who the Ax is, nor cares. I'm not sure. I remember once, 
      I was standing at a takeaway booth with him. The people waiting to be 
      served were the usual rich crop of loonies, ranters, amateur 
      levitationists. An old bloke ­­ a perfect stranger ­­ started grumbling, 
      saying he thought he was the only normal person left on earth. Ax, 
      modestly, silently pointed to himself. "Yeah," said the old chap. "You're 
      okay. But your foreign policy is pure fruit and nutcase." 
      In the Glass Hall, he had said, only half joking, "Why did you do it? You 
      could have been rid of me." 
      "Your enemies are my enemies," I told him. "I'm not stupid. I know that. " 

      Ax gazed at me dolefully, and sighed right down to his toes. 
      "But nothing's changed." 
      "Some things have improved. But nothing's changed." 
      That was the way it ended. I ought to be glad, because at last I'd managed 
      to get some glimmer of understanding out of him. But in the cold light of 
      day, the political becomes the personal. I wasn't an outraged cosmic 
      archetype now; or the leader of the opposition. I was just Fiorinda. Oh 
      well. Maybe next year, when I'm twenty five, I'll be wiser. 
      Maybe next time, I'll get him drunk and take him dancing. My kind of 
      dancing, not that cissy walking-backwards number. 
      I split my pile of handouts, gave the boys half each and walked home 
      alone. 

      © Gwyneth Jones 1992, 1999. 
      This story first appeared in Paul McAuley and Kim Newman's anthology In 
      Dreams (Gollancz 1992).