Copyright © Gwyneth Jones 2005, 2009

Frontispiece © Bryan Talbot

All rights reserved

The right of Gwyneth Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act I988.

First published in Great Britain in 2005 by

Gollancz

An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group

Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,

London WC2H 9EA

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

ISBN 0575070439 (cased)

ISBN 0575070447 (trade paperback)

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Typeset by Deltatype Ltd, Birkenhead, Merseyside

Printed in Great Britain by

Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

Thanks, as always, to my editor, Jo Fletcher, my agent, Anthony Goff, my illustrator Bryan Talbot, and my home team, Peter Gwilliam and Gabriel Jones, for invaluable support. Special thanks to Gabriel Jones for helping me with my guitar masterclass, and to Peter Gwilliam and the insiders for research assistance on the Montmartre, Parliamentary and Metropolitan Police fronts. Thanks to the Insane Stupid Behaviour Crew, (Newman chapter) for the loan of their name, and Skin Candy of Baker Street for advice. There’s an account of Paul Thompson’s 2001 study of the “forest fire effect” in early onset schizophrenia at http://www.loni.ucla.edu/~thompson/thompson.html: needless to say my use of this clinical study is entirely fictional. 50 Berkeley Square has the reputation of being “the most haunted house in London”, and was the house that inspired Bulwer-Lytton’s classic story ‘The Haunters and the Haunted’, “Wallingham”, although entirely a fictional creation and used fictionally, bears some debt to Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire: many thanks to the Rothschild Archive for their assistance. ‘Ruin is the devil’s work’ from Emily Dickinson, 997 ‘Crumbling is not an instant’s act’; ‘Is My Team Ploughing?’ AE Housman, from A Shropshire Lad. ‘For I dipt into the future…’ from ‘Some Day’, Alfred, Lord Tennyson; ‘Out of this nettle, danger…’ Wm Shakespeare, Henry IV Pt One. The curious cardgame described in Chapter 7 is called poo-head, and was devised by Jon and Pat Mayes; used with permission. More sources, bibliography, discography, picture archive, in the Band of Gypsys scrapbook, www.boldaslove.co.uk

The location for the frontispiece is the Oscar Wilde Memorial, Père Lachaise cemetery, Paris: Lachaise cemetery, Paris: original photo, Bryan Talbot

’Tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.

Henry IV Pt 1;II;iii

Contents

PROLOGUE

The Watchtower

PART ONE

Rue Morgue Avenue

The Doors Of Perception

Small Ax

Careless Love

The Way It Is

PART TWO

Insanity

The Walls

Wood Court

The Ploughshare And The Harrow

PROLOGUE

The Watchtower

In a bar in Washington DC, not far from Capitol Hill, two smart young fellows met one evening for a little status display and a few drinks: covertly rating each other’s tailoring and accessories while the snow fell thick and fast outdoors, turning all the mighty public buildings into bridal confectionery. Conversation became pleasantly indiscreet. They were both in positions to be indiscreet about great affairs, but Frank could see that tonight the other guy had the good story. Without haste, he drew his friend to speak. Businessmen came and went, beautiful women sashayed by; the neat, discreet waitresses plied refills, and in due course it came out. Lavoisier. Something about that awful secret bubo on the body politic that the Pres had been revealing to the select behind closed doors, audiences from which Fred Eiffrich’s friends and enemies alike, emerged grey in the face and shaken.

These two, along with a few other smart folks around the citadel by now, were savvy on Lavoisier, without benefit of one of those solemn need-to-know sessions. A desert nest of terrorists. Manson familyoids caught on the edge of going critical with the new, weird, occult superweapon. And the raid, how about that raid! The FBI and the National Guard were going in with a Division of Infantry, in their chemical suits and their breathing apparatus, Deep Stealth, Full Metal Jacket, you betcha Bob—

‘—meanwhile these two English guys dress up as cowboys, ride over there on horseback, and shoot up the town—’

‘It’s hilarious,’ agreed Frank: waiting to be told something he didn’t know.

‘It’s a scream. It gets better, bro. We have live coverage.’

Frank stared, truly impressed at last. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘I’m not kidding.’ The man with the story leaned forward, into the safe space that every one who talks in bars around Capitol Hill believes can be found, directly above the mid point between their two drinks on the polished mahogany tabletop. ‘This Baal guy, the Black Dragon, had the town wired, hidden cameras everywhere, and he has the true-life movie of what went down… He’s dickering with our acquisitions guys right now, from his undisclosed place of detention.’

‘Protective custody, mister.’

‘Whatever, he’s open for business. Detainees’ rights are a wonderful thing.’

‘What, he had the stuff when they brought him in? On an eyesocket chip or what? And our great Homeland Security experts let him keep it?’

‘Naw… He knows where it is, though. This is the real deal, Frankismo. I’ve personally seen the trailer. You want to see Mr Ax Preston garroting a poor misguided Gaia-loving martyr? You want to see the expression on our rockstar peacemaker’s pretty face, when the kid’s windpipe cracks?’

‘Jesus.’

‘You want to see holier-than-God reformed bad boy Sage Pender dealing with the soft-bellied little geeks at the hideout’s back gate? Some of them women?’

‘You have to be shitting me—!’

They contemplated the potential mayhem. It was nice.

‘You know, Jude,’ said Frank, measuring his words. ‘Joking apart, this could be a serious bummer for that Kill The Evil Research, Ban The NeuroBomb program. This sounds like bad doody for Mr Fred Eiffrich alltogether.’

‘Yeah, well. Don’t know about you Frankie, but I voted for the other ticket.’

They laughed, immoderately. Then they had one more drink and went their separate ways, as the hour was getting late.

PART ONE

ONE

Rue Morgue Avenue

Sage had fallen asleep with Fiorinda tucked against him, his chin on her shoulder, his arm around them both. A good place to be: in many ways, the best place the world can hold—but they’d moved away from him in the night. Had to have their fucking personal space, he couldn’t cure them of the habit. It hurt his feelings. Slighted, and also cold, he lay with the morning light seeping through his lashes, frosting his eyeballs: thinking about his great-coat, which was on the floor on the other side of the room. In the end it was the pressure of a full bladder, slowly becoming insistent, that forced him to make a move.

‘Was’matter?’ mumbled Ax.

‘Need a piss.’

‘Me too.’

The chemical toilet was behind a screen, in one of the garret room’s slope-ceilinged corners. They hunkered down on either side of the pot, grinning at each other. They liked pissing together.

‘We could make tea with that much,’ said Sage proudly.

It would be quite a coup to wake her with a cup of hot tea, which they could not otherwise provide until somebody went to fetch the drinking water. Ten minutes in the treatment jug would do it: but Ax was secretly squeamish, and preferred a little distance from the details. Let the arondissement do the instant recycling.

‘It could be read as cheating, unless we knock it off our fifteen litres.’

‘Oooh, no cheating, we can’t have that.’

The cold in the room was intense, but somehow pleasurable once you were out in it. It had been storage space, the conversion for human occupation was minimal. They moved to the window, which had a sheet of solar insulation taped over it but no curtain, and sat on dusty boards. Slate roofs, tumbled together, pigeon-breast shades all crusted in frozen white, rose into a grey, laden sky above Montmartre.

‘Looks like more snow on the way.’

‘Nah, it’s too cold.’

Like London, Paris was shrinking and compacting as the outer sprawl fell apart. The artists’ hill was crowded. Though no traffic murmur reached them, only stillness like a doubtful blessing, and the rumble of a single car traversing the cobbles of the Rue Des Dames, Ax could feel the weight of numbers out there. So many people huddling together in these doomed inner cities, in Europe and in all the world beyond: waiting and wondering, what the hell’s going to happen to next?

He turned from their roofscape—for which they’d developed a profound affection—to the greater beauty beside him. Ax had always loved human bodies, and loved this particular human body more intensely every day: a feat he would not have thought possible before this strange winter. Indigo muscle-shadows on white skin, yellow curls like a helmet of coiled gold. The blue-eyed idiot savant, the big mouthed clown, verging on caricature, unbelievably perfect. He reached out—asking permission with a glance—and slipped his hand under Sage’s shabby tee to trace the ropes of scar, where the magician had torn up his friend’s liver. Sage smiled, accepting the caress with the forebearance of a kindly pet tiger. He hated those scars, but he’d come to like the way Ax touched them

They hold your life inside, thought Ax. They tell me we came through.

‘This is a good time.’

‘Weirdly good, yeah. You do realise, babe, we are starving in a fereezing foreign garret, in daily danger of being deported, nothen’ to look forward to but a tedious, annoying career of bein’ the greenwash for a bunch of gangsters—’

‘Details. We’re in excellent shape.’

‘Plus I hate trying to talk french, an’ our girlfriend is pregnant?’

Ax stopped laughing, suddenly focused. ‘You think she’s pregnant?’

‘Yes. Forty five days: no, forty-six. I think she could well be pregnant.’

They looked to the bed, where their girl was sleeping.

‘We need to plan for the future,’ said Ax. ‘It’s on my mind. We are not condemned to a life in public office, I never said I’d do that. One day we’ll be free. But I don’t see us making a comeback as rockstars.’

‘Fuck, no. Codgers’ Cabaret, I hate that.’

‘I want to live like this here, forever, but kids needs security.’

‘Hm. I veto white collar applications.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and make you work for your dad.’

‘Tha’s a relief, Sah.’ Sage stretched and refolded himself. ‘Okay, what are our skills? We could be drug dealers, but we’d need start-up capital. We could be mercenaries. We have experience, an’ God knows there’s plenty of openings—’

‘No.’

‘All right, don’t panic. Well, then, sex. We’re good at sex, I do b’lieve.’

‘You’re not taking this seriously.’

‘Yes I am. I was a crowd-fucking entertainment industry whore for years, why not get honest about it?’

‘I think that’s harsh. I may have said it, and worse, but I now think it’s harsh.’ But Ax was intrigued. ‘Could you get into doing sex for money? Really?’

Sage considered, thick stubby blond lashes downcast. ‘Lemme see. You would be there? With me the whole time?’

‘Not on the face of it, big cat. I’d take the money and wait round the corner. I think that’s the more usual arrangement.’

‘I was imagining you’d be right there watching, Sah. Dunno about otherwise.’

Silence. As a fantasy scenario the proposal had merits, but there were doors that opened onto ugly memory—

‘Maybe I’ll just earn our bread busking,’ suggested Ax, at last. ‘I like busking, except, this weather, my hands get so fucking cold.’

He checked the white-laced quilt of roofs again. The frozen silence of Paris.

‘Is there any way we could sneakily get her to take a test?’

‘Don’t see how, if she doesn’t want.’

‘Couldn’t we, er, slip it to her, in her food or something?’

‘You have to piss on them, Ax.’

‘I knew that.’

Fiorinda sat up, rubbing her eyes. ‘What are you two sniggering about?’

‘We were discussing my new career.’ They leapt across the room, bringing Sage’s coat (Ax and Fiorinda’s coats were already enhancing the bedding).

‘He’s going to sell his arse under the bridges of Paris,’ explained Ax, burrowing into warmth. ‘It could work, he has ex-celebrity cachêt. But I have to be there, holding his hand throughout. The punters will think we’re nuts.’

‘They already know that,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Don’t be stupid. If we’re selling sex, obviously that’s my job. I’m the girl.’

Sage wrapped himself around her back, kissing the nape of her neck through silky tendrils of red curls. ‘No, no no, not you. Never, never never.’

‘Not even in jest, sweetheart. You’ve done your share.’ Ax took her face between his hands, and gazed. Her eyes, the curve of her mouth, her strong brows, her stubborn jaw. As the song says, he could not get enough. All he wanted to do forever was this, drink them up, immerse himself, fill himself with them—

Sage and Fiorinda had never felt the weight of Ax Preston’s undivided attention before. There’d always been some little task like saving the world to take the pressure off. They were agreed it was quite a rush; a little scary.

‘You were ganging up on me,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I can tell. What’s it about?’

‘Hm.’

Both the men withdrew. ‘Fiorinda’ began Sage, propped on one elbow, addressing his remarks mainly to the shabby pillows. ‘We don’t want to crowd you, nothing further from our thoughts, but it’s forty six days. Could we talk about that?’

‘It’s your business, woman business, we just, we can’t help it—’

Fiorinda sat up, and folded her arms tight around her knees.

‘My period’s about two weeks late, big deal. Can’t I have any private life?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Okay, let’s look at this. I was de-sterilised six months ago, tested fertile and had my first no-kidding ovulation three months ago. You two have been shooting live ammunition for how long?’

‘We tested good in London six weeks ago,’ said Sage.

‘So be reasonable. Is it likely?’

‘We’re sure you’re probably not pregnant,’ agreed Ax, hurriedly. ‘But what if we quietly bought an old fashioned pregnancy test, and brought it back here?’

‘Just for the hell of it, nothing serious.’

‘Oh, right. Mr ex-dictator virtuoso busker and his giant Zen Master bodyguard, in Paris on a publicity stunt. So hard to recognise. What are you going to say? We’re a couple of tourists, making this intriguing purchase for a friend—’

‘Ax looks normal. I wouldn’t go in. I would hide around the corner.’

‘I wouldn’t take a guitar into the shop, Fiorinda.’

‘I see you have it all worked out.’ She sighed and lay down again, disarmed inspite of herself. ‘You know how people say, you can’t be a little bit pregnant? It’s totally the opposite. People get a little bit pregnant all the time, and something or other goes wrong before they even notice. Three months and morning sickness, that would be worth talking about. Oh, okay. I’ll think about it.’

They swiftly changed the subject, before she thought too much, and carried her away with them, into the whispering, giggling sweetness of sex in this winter bed.

Ax had tried hard to run away from being the funky rockstar President of post-civilised England. After his first flight he’d ended up having to invade the country, and distract a Green Fascist junta while Fiorinda and Sage destroyed an occult monster. The second time there’d been, arguably, even stranger consequences. Nothing had improved while they’d been in California. The Second Chamber Coalition Government were a bunch of shites, possibly the most lawless, rapacious adminstration since Dissolution—just more cunning and sustainable about it. Yet here he was again, coaxed back into the snake pit by emotional blackmail from his friend Fred Eiffrich. Persuaded by himself, because this time he would get it right. This time he would not stumble over his own ego. He had leverage in Europe of the kind that can’t be measured easily. He had the mandate of the so-called Leader of the Free World: which impressed the so-called Greens in Westminster, oddly enough. He had no great faith in Fred’s Righteous Global Recovery, but he could tackle a few gross abuses, claw back a few civil rights for the people. And he was happy, all three of them were happy. It felt right, it felt good to be doing this, while the world burned and froze and fell apart.

They were in Paris now, staging a 21st century Lennonist bed-in, to raise awareness of conditions in the Second Chamber’s agricultural labour camps: where life ranged from vile to just grim and miserable, and the lucky people on the outside didn’t want to think about it. Because hey, it works, and we have to feed ourselves somehow, without machinery or fertiliser—

Admittedly, there were wrinkles in the contract. While they’d been gone Ax’s brother Jordan—along with Ax’s whole family, including his mother—had left the old homestead in Taunton and moved into a Government-selected stately home. Allegedly so they could be protected as befitted their status. Ax had been furious when he found out Jordan had accepted such a gift. At close quarters it was worse than that. The stately home was an isolated fortress, the Prestons were ‘protected’ by razor wire, constant surveillance and troops of heavily armed goons, over whom they had no control. Even Jor, who had argued that all top celebrities live like this, had finally spotted there was something wrong. The rest of the family were terrified. Except for Ax’s mum, of course. Sunny Preston took everything well.

It was okay. They weren’t in immediate danger, and Ax knew his value to the bastards in power. He could do business with a hostile government. Even now, being a Lennonist in Paris, he was working on his family’s release.

When Ax and Sage arrived on the Ile St Louis, the ironbound sky had given up none of its burden. They had a borrowed office, in the Seventeenth century mansion where Alain de Corlay, leader of the French Techno-Greens, kept his headquarters. Here they amused themselves by entertaining the proposals of various lunatic emigrées, while Alain’s merry crew prowled around dressed up as spacemen, or Apaches, or whatever currently took their absurdiste fancy. M. de Corlay himself sat in on the meetings when they needed a witness, smoking his horrible marijuana bidis and looking disgusted. Fiorinda stayed at home, working a different crowd.

Today it was the Restore The Thames Party (main platform, massive slave-labour engineering to return the Thames to its pre-iceage route, thus persuading Gaia to reverse the collapse of the thermohaline circulation and restore the North Atlantic Drift). Then a few minor suppliants, and a genuinely fascinating presentation from the Devon couple who could make wind turbines invisible.

The delegates from the New Plantagenet Society had been left until last, sent off to get nervous in the brown and gold salon next door. These lunatics had been holed-up in Paris since Ax’s dictatorship—when the French had provided asylum (out of sheer cussedness) for a hotbed of dodgy former-UK opposition groups. The “Plantagenets” were not the harmless kind. The two delegates were in full reenactment regalia, jewelled badges pinning sprigs of broom pinned to their velvet caps; velvet robes over formal business suits. Mr Red, sallow and middle-aged, thin mousy-grey hair in a long bob, bore an eerie resemblance to a famous portrait of Henry Tudor; suitably enough. Mr White, a much younger, rosy-cheeked and hearty rosbif, didn’t look much like Richard Crookback, but he did have a Yorkshire accent

There goes your project, thought Ax, with mordant amusement, frowning at the sprigs of hothouse planta genista. Don’t you know we’re soldiers of the queen, and Fiorinda hates cut flowers?

Nah, the New Plantagenets knew nothing.

The Reds and the Whites had buried their differences, and were ready share power. They’d approached Ax with a plan whereby he would marry—purely for legitimacy—the Yorkist heir, a young Greek woman: but it was fine if he preferred to be adopted by the Lancastrian heir (and elderly Canadian) instead. Their hopes were high. They had quasi-legal documents, including a ‘writ’ declaring Ax’s Islamic faith was not an impediment, and a ‘writ of perpetual abdication’ from the Hastings family, living Plantagenets who didn’t want anything to do with these nuts. They had fanfold genealogies in oak-gall, scarlet and gilt; they had a recorded video message from the elderly Canadian. They had detailed plans for the ceremony where Ax would simultaneously be adopted, by video-proxy, and consecrated king. He would take the dynastic name Richard Henry the First.

The conference room was bitterly cold, heated only by a trash-eater stove in the back of a cavernous baroque fireplace, where its heat went straight up the mighty chimney. The former Dictator of England and his Minister did not remove their coats. Mr Preston wore Dickensian, fingerless dark mittens that looked none too clean. He smoked one of the expensive cigarettes that were proffered (but declined the carton); showed an interest in the ornate paperwork, and asked gentle questions about the dirty business of actually taking over a country. Tall Mr Pender, with the intimidating good looks, never spoke except in an undertone, to his chief—murmured asides that won Mr Preston’s flashing smile, and made the negotiators envious.

Alain sat at the end of the table, chain-smoking, and followed the proceedings with exasperated disbelief. Sage stared at curling satellite image print-outs of London and the south coast of England, thumb-tacked to the panelled walls. Must have been there since this was the nerve centre of Ax’s Velvet Invasion. He wondered why Alain kept any relics of that hellish time. Poor housekeeping? A phalanx of landline phones stood on a side-table, gathering dust.

The stove hissed. At last Ax squared the documents, slipped an ancient vellum into its silk-lined folder, and swept the lot across the board.

‘Mr Red, Mr White, thank you. That’s all I have time for: you may go.’

The delegates looked at each other, nonplussed.

‘You could move that stove out into the room,’ said Sage to Alain, in English. ‘It would be slightly more fuckin’ use than where it is.’

‘Certainly not. It would mark the parquet.’

‘Welsh sovreignty wouldn’t be a deal-breaker,’ announced Mr Red, after a sub-vocal consultation, on a throat mike, with confederates elsewhere. (The New Plantagenets were not fanatical about appropriate Renaissance tech). ‘We believe in political union between England and Wales, but we can live with separation.’

‘Well, that’s good,’ said Ax, smiling; and raised an eyebrow.

They didn’t take the hint. The pinch-faced older man steepled his hands and leaned forward. His “real” name was Woodville, and he had form, racketeering and violent crime: a background of which Ax was well aware.

‘Mr Preston, Sir, having come this far, can we assume that we have Fred Eiffrich on board? Or are we, er, is Your Majesty waiting for that assurance?’

Mr White (Henry Lovell, close associate of the British Resistance Movement, a body formerly known as the BNP), glowed like a rose, already tasting glory.

In practice, Ax knew he would never have Fred ‘on board’. The friendship of the mighty is a fickle thing, you can never tell when their priorities are going to change. But Mr Eiffrich in theory made a very good stick to poke at monsters.

‘I could be. Or I could be mulling over my chances of waking up one morning in some draughty Norman tower, with a red hot poker up my bum. Or else starving to death in chains when you folks get tired of your new toy.’

The Plantagenets looked shocked, the stove hissed. Ax grinned like a friendly wolf, and leant forward himself; becoming affable and confidential. ‘I don’t have to tell you this, but fact is, we’re getting head-hunted all over the shop. We’ve been looking at a rather nice package from the Sealed Knot.’

The Plantagents bristled like startled cats at the hated name. ‘They’re lying!’ cried Mr White. ‘Whatever they said, it’s a crock of shit! Those bastards have no money and no credibility!’

‘They speak highly of you, too… And the Irish are putting out feelers, about Fiorinda for High Queen. They’re looking at the idea of having a decorative Head of State, like a lot of countries, and she’s an O’Niall you know. The Tyrone branch, the legitimate family, are cool about it. We’re thinking that might suit us very well.’

Sage nodded in confirmation. ‘Nicer climate in Ireland.’

‘So, what can I say? It’s all up in the air. Why don’t you try the Mountbatten-Windsors? They’ve a posse of children, they might let you have one, for the right offer. Feel free. I don’t mind where you take your pitch, as long as you don’t try this game on any other member of my family, or any connection of mine.’

Briefly, the mischief vanished from Mr Preston’s pretty brown eyes.

M. de Corlay sighed, and pressed a banana-shaped yellow buzzer. At its discordant summons some Techno-Green muscle appeared, bizarrely costumed but convincingly armed, or packing heat, as they preferred to put it. The delegates stood, disconsolate, and donned their velvet with dignity.

‘Edward II wasn’t killed like that because he was a homosexual,’ exclaimed Mr White. ‘The homophobic element has been unfairly exaggerated.’ (‘Unbelievable’ muttered Alain, lighting another bidi.) ‘The issue is to leave an unmarked corpse—’

‘Tha’s our kinda meme,’ said beautiful Mr Pender: with such tigerish affection that the White Rose took a sharp step backwards. ‘Hey, compagnero You must be one of us.’

When the lunatics had left the room, Alain delivered a small item of secure mail to His Majesty: who glanced at it and stowed it away, still falling about and cackling like a fool with his Minister. ‘You two are abusing my hospitality,’ said the little Breton. ‘This hôtel is a serious centre of techno-green utopian excellence.’

‘If you say so, Monsewer Jupette (snarf, snarf—)’

‘Oh yes, very amusing. Mr. Preston, who needs nobody to crown him, gets the rabid dogs to come to him, so he knows exactly where they are and what they are up to, and can deal with them at leisure once he’s whipped his bureaucrats into line.’

‘Nah. I’m just pissing around.’

‘What are you doing, in God’s name? What are you achieving with this infantile, John Lennon, doll’s house game about concentration camps?’

‘My job, Alain. The job I was hired to do. I’m making the suits look cool, working the margins, and getting something done for my own agenda.’

‘Now you’re talking like a toothless human rights activist,’ snapped Alain, and then stared. ‘Mon Dieu. You’re reporting back to those devils in Westminster?’

‘Of course.’ Ax retrieved his guitar case from under a chair, and shrugged it onto his shoulders. ‘What else? I’m a Lennonist, not a Marxist, Alain.’

‘You’re an imbecile. They’ll make you sorry.’

‘I’ve been sorry. Now I’m trying what I always knew I should: the art of the possible. C’mon, Sage. Got to get the beer-money in before dark.’

‘Thanks fer the room, and the heavies,’ called Sage, over his shoulder.

In the courtyard, under naked chestnut trees that stood gleaming in the frost like giant, funereal candlebra, Ax stopped dead, transfixed.

‘What’s up, babe?’

‘Sage. Could she be pregnant? Tell me, truly… So quickly?’

Fiorinda had been chemically sterilised when she was thirteen, and had just given birth to Rufus O’Niall’s baby—O’Niall the sinister rockstar lord with a taste for young girls: who was her own father, though she didn’t know it. As long as he’d loved her, Ax had dreamed of her having a child, and been afraid it was impossible. Now it was possible, but he hadn’t expected anything more than hope. You can live on hope for years… It was dizzying. Fiorinda having a baby!

‘I don’t know,’ said Sage, with equal urgency. ‘But it does sometimes happen like that, straight off. There’s reasons why—’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know—’

Naturally they’d been researching the topic.

Alain stared at the walls of the conference room: which was for him a shrine, a time-capsule of the last days of rational materialism. Here we laid our desperate plans, while that lanky blue-eyed alchemist who has just left was turning himself into the New Prometheus, breaking the barrier between Mind and Matter. And how little we understood, then, what that would mean to the future of the world!

What annoyed him most was that Ax Preston, of all people, the Captain Sensible of Pre-Dissolution UK radical rock, had become a perfect character in this farce. While he, “Alain Jupette” (Alain Miniskirt had been Alain’s stage name, when he fronted a politically motivated Eurotrash band called Movie Sucré), found himself unable to mock a situation that was beyond ludicrous. A world where fossil fuel reserves had been conjured out of existence. Where so-called governments scrabbled to own the new occult superweapon, a magic planet destroyer in human form—

Thank God for Fiorinda. She, at least, still believed in reason.

A knot of Techno-Greens stood at the windows, looking down. He joined them and saw Ax and Sage: stalled under the sweeping branches of the chestnuts and the first difficult flakes of snow. You would stare at those two if you knew nothing, you would follow them down the street. They shone like golden armour.

‘What can they be talking about?’ muttered someone beside him.

‘Obviously, the exquisite shape of Fiorinda’s left earlobe,’ said Alain sourly.

‘Is it true they’re on the oxy again?’ asked the other, hopefully.

The speaker was a government spook, here by agreement, to keep an eye on the Plantagent delegates: and on Ax Preston. Everyone wants to know how Ax is going to jump. The Techno-Greens had differences, but no major quarrel, with the current French government, a faction of their own movement. There’d been a time when Ax and Sage had been addicts of oxytocin, shoring up the famous love affair with brain-wrecking quantities of the intimacy drug. But they were clean now—thankfully (since Alain was genuinely fond of the fools, and that potion is a brain-wrecker). There was nothing fake about the besotted trefoil infatuation.

‘Drowning in it. But it won’t help you to nail him.’

All real megastars must have crap sex lives, thought Fiorinda; left alone in the nest. It has to be true, because which of us rock musicians, performers, hardwired from birth to be continually starving for love and pleasure, forced by the working conditions to be addicts of excess… Which of us would strut on stage, or fret in a recording studio, a moment longer than we had to, if we were getting what we needed at home? It would be: make the money, take your bow and quit.

And how often does that happen? How often does any of us get clean away?

See, I’m not really trapped. I’d be worse off if I was having a brilliant career.

Comforted by this thought, she jumped out of bed as a vicious alarm sounded. Brushed her teeth and dressed briskly and chastely (sorry mates, not going to roll around in sexy underwear, this is not one of those videos). The global stats that ran along the bottom of her out-of-shot monitor screen were gratifying: and here we go. Cribs of the certifiably insane. “Hi everybody, and special hi to anyone who’s looking in for the first time. Welcome to Montmartre, and the rooftops of Paris. This is our garret, acres of space, which is not exactly realistic, but hey, we’re dilletantes, what do you expect? This is our bed, with the personalised coat-bedspread—

Question, is there any heating?

‘Hi, Ian in Rotherham. Yeah, there is, sometimes. We have heating from the arondissement Renewables Grid, this is our dear little radiator. We’re allowing ourselves the same units of energy per day, per person, counting power, heat and sanitation, as we’d get in a camp. If we were getting the statutory ration, which a lot of inmates don’t. But it’s Thursday and we’re on a three day week here in Paris…

Question, do you get fleas?

‘We have no personal vermin, Alice in Queens, which is great, and as unrealistic as the wide open spaces, by the way. The lice powder is just in case.

‘Let me show you round. These are my clothes, all hung up on my piece of string. These are my boots. These are Ax’s clothes; and Ax’s other hat, his Ned Kelly hat. I love this old hat, as long as he doesn’t wear it. The mess is Sage’s stuff. I kick it out of the way, oh, I trod on his board, it’s okay, they’re tough. Et voila our tasty tins, the ATP battery micro-ondes and that’s the drinking water. My boyfriends fetch the water. Isn’t that sweet of them. You’re wondering if the ag.labour campers really feed on out of date tins. They do. Fresh produce goes straight out the gates.

‘Here behind this screen, yes, do come in! Is our very green chemical toilet, which we don’t have to share with a hundred other people, unlike most of the folks who grow your veg for you. The brown stuff is a big problem in the camps, it spreads diseases: I hope you’re remembering to wash everything before you eat it. The cold winters have helped, tho’ it’s also a problem that the camps are not built for our evil share of climate change, which as you’ll have noticed is a colder climate… I’m now going to empty it downstairs. Come along, please.

Do you always get landed with that job?

‘Hey, Sejer in Sweden. Nah, just often. They do fetch the water.’

(Oh, Hi, M. Jouffroy, Il fait encore froid, eh?)

‘That’s our concierge. He doesn’t like the English, but he’s okay.’

Sploosh, sploosh. Swill, scrub—

‘There, that wasn’t too bad. I’m used to it, I don’t even mind the smell of disinfected shit when it’s fresh, after about a million post-civilised rock festivals.

‘Hi, Adinike, not sure where you are? No, I didn’t. We don’t wash much. Yeah, well spotted, we’re wired in here, we have interactive digital connections. So do the inmates of course, in that they’re under constant CCTV surveillance. But we do have more control: it’d be a bit of a dumb protest otherwise. No entertainment however: we make our own fun. And no, you can’t watch. Don’t be so pitiful, what did Gaia give you imaginations for?’

Fiona Ward, EB Breakfast News dolly, had booked an interview: for which a portion of the garret would be specially captured, and pasted into the EB Breakfast set. Fiorinda sat demurely on her mark, in the midst of the frowsty bed, grubby hands clasped, thinking of studio interviews in days gone by. Funny how it’s just a different kind of annoying. Funny how often these News-type dollies are called Fiona—

‘Yes, Fiona, of course there were agricultural camps in Ax’s dictatorship. But they weren’t locked, there were no guards, and the labourers were volunteers.’

‘Yes, Fiona, the “drop out hordes”, I’m sorry, “elective homeless” were a problem for us, too, right from the start. I just don’t think rounding them up and sticking them in brutal concentration camps is really the decent answer.’

‘Oh, absolutely. Human labour must take the place of agricultural machinery for a while, until techno-green Utopia’s solutions are up and running. That doesn’t require slavery. Did you ever think of joining the Volunteer Initiative? You should. It’s great exercise, excellent for body-tone. Communion with nature, very Green and a social bonding experience. I could email you an application form?’

Laughter.

At the end of the live session ‘Sparrow Child’ played her out: one of her own, oldest songs. (a recording: Fiorinda didn’t sing a note, for contractual reasons). She’d have prefered ‘Stonecold’, but punk aggression was not the message. We must not accuse, we must smile, and just keep on nagging… Oh my darling Ax, have you turned me? Stonecold for years to your vision of Techno-Green Utopia by stealth, your puny plans for improving the situation when the situation has blatantly gone to hell and is not coming back, suddenly I’m believing in it all, what’s come over me?

And so to her desk, remote-accessed at the Volunteer Initiative Office in London; still housed, for a while longer, in the building once known as Buckingham Palace. Here the Volunteer Initiative managed supplies for the drop out hordes, as far as they were still allowed. Scraping the barrels of over-production, tracking down strange customers for strange lost wares; with a view to ending up with five clean litres of water and fifteen hundred calories a day for every man, woman and child, where and when it was needed. Or near as they could make it. They also supplied the camps, as far as they were allowed. Thus Fiorinda, like any starry-eyed high-earning radical rockstar in the past, helps the evil system to function; while protesting against its existence. Nice to know she was keeping up all the old traditions.

Obsolete Sanitary-ware mountain in Bulgaria, I have a customer, powdered porcelain is a soil-cleanser, powdering can be done by hand, doesn’t need machines. More Libyan military apricot jam? Ooh, I’ll have some of that… Oh NO, it’s already gone! So unfair, this was our idea, now everybody’s doing it, and can’t complain about other aid agencies, but private brokers, scrabbling for futures in grey-bloomed chocolate bar hoards, have they no fucking shame?

Once, Fiorinda had believed that the end of the world was an event. A spray of bullets at a political reception, red flowers blooming on swanky evening clothes, the smoke of cordite. The Hyde Park Massacre, which she had survived. For years she had looked back on that night as the lethal blow: death was instantaneous.

No, no, not at all.

>Ruin is the devil’s work, consecutive and slow.

Fail in a moment no man did—

We fell into dark water, now we go on swimming across the river, into which the modern world stumbled way back then. Getting weaker, getting chilled, long ago lost our footing. Tasting the salt on our lips, guessing the awful truth but keeping on, as if we still believe in the other shore, because what else is there to do?

Europe is going to starve. Not this year, not next year; but soon.

Dread grew as she worked, the dry mouth, hollow stomach, the tingling of nerves demanding emergency action, fight or flight: and she wondered why. This was a good time. They had made their peace with the Burning World, the Freezing World: someone had to live in times like these, turns out it’s us. You balance like a dancer en pointe, and hell dimensions have no power, all is well. Things had been good, despite all disasters, since that other night, under desert stars, after the Lavoisier Raid. The chill of the air, the red rocks beating out the furnace heat of the day; Fiorinda reunited with her lovers. The charged, miraculous sex, sweeping them up into a nameless immensity: no answers, no promises, no duration, only the white-out, luminous complexity of what is, that opens and opens, and draws you into itself—

She was glad when her token (but functional) hours at her VI desk were over. Maybe it was the callous market-manipulation of capitalism’s leftovers that was stressing her. So this is how I spend my days, while the tiger and the wolf patrol our boundaries. Showing-off and shopping, just like a real airhead girly-rockstar. How shall I spend the afternoon? Well, it’s very cold in here, and I don’t want to go out. I have nothing to do out there. I do b’lieve I’ll go back to bed. You’re supposed to rest.

Fiorinda knew she was pregnant. One of the emergency luxuries they’d allowed themselves was Sage’s First Aid kit, with all its futuristic resources (from a time when the future wasn’t a black chute back to the Stone Age). She’d secretly given herself a blood and urine test a week ago, and she was pregnant. She was even planning to give her pregnancy a DNA test, soon as it was viable: just out of curiosity. But Ax and Sage would not think of the white box. It could be taken as cheating, and besides they were blokes, bless them, entranced by the mystery of women’s business.

(What do you say, when you go in to the chemists?)

She’d have known she was pregnant anyway. She could feel the changes in her body and mind, subtle but commanding. This lethargy, her unwillingness to leave the den. She’d meant to stay in denial for a while (denial is safer). But they were onto it, and now the secret was burning a hole in her belly too, a tiny wormhole to another universe. How long were you planning for us to annoy the suits like this, Ax?

Weeks? Months? It could become more of a statement than we planned.

Maybe she’d tell them this evening.

She retired under the covers with her camp-ration lunch, a small lump of cheese and two aged, sticky, dried bananas. Plus Peter Straub’s Koko, from a box of English storybooks donated by a thoughtful Parisian secondhand bookseller. The gruesome, maybe-supernatural, plot was right up Fiorinda’s street; the setting was so alien and entrancing that she started to imagine an alternate reality for herself. Where the world had not ended, and she was someone with a loft in SoHo. She had two boyfriends, (call them Richard and Stephen, hahaha). They dated her separately, except occasionally they would turn up together, as if by accident. Then they’d all end up in bed, but nobody would say anything about it afterwards. Frances (the normal person: Fiorinda was the rockstar) was never sure what was going on, and tormented herself over the relationship between the two men. They pretended not to know each other, but did they have a complete life together, that she knew nothing about? Was it all a cruel game? Or were they as confused as she was? She would not dare to ask. She’d try to find out, playing detective, uncovering disquieting secrets, but saying nothing; and still fucking them both, separately and together, mmm—

How great, what a blessed respite, to have sexual fantasies. And how different from the sexual fantasies of her loved ones! Once it had been handcuffs. They’d liked the idea of being handcuffed together in bed (as indeed they were, in a sense). That one seemed to have permanently retired, since Ax’s grim experience as a hostage. Then they were galley-slaves; still a favourite. What’s this about Ax the pimp, Sage the rentboy? Creepy. Although she could see where it was coming from—

They never seemed to want to act out their ideas. (Probably as well, what’s the betting some ingenious pap would have caught them dressed up, acting like idiots on camera). They liked to talk, mulling over the details, elaborating the scenario. And keeping score, of course, on who’s the first to break and make an actual move. The tiger and the wolf, they always keep score.

If I ever find that little black book—

The endless conversation of those two soft, West Country voices, reeling out for years, right back to that sacred water meadow by the Thames at Reading, in the Year of Dissolution: it was the ground under her feet. The rush of Main Stage, the raging crowd, the smell of rain, a stubborn, self-obssessed, oblivious little girl: looking for her father, finding instead these compadres, these brothers—

Someday, she thought, I want to go back. They’ve finished with being rockstars, I haven’t. No industrial-sized arenas, no nazi-type rallies, but I’m only twenty three! How would she break this news to her lovers, her friends? She could hear them wailing, oh, but Fiorinda, you’re so fragile, you won’t be able to take it. The risk, the terrible risks… Started a bad train of thought. Dread buckled her stomach, Koko slipped from her hands. The room was very still. There was ice in the air, and her belly was cramping. She drew her knees to her chin, her eyes wide and wary: where are you, what are you, go away, go away, leave my baby alone—

Why is this happening? This is a good time—

Outside the pharmacist on the Avenue de Clichy, Sage bent over Ax’s hands, blowing warmth onto the busker’s fingers. ‘Good luck—’

‘You’re really not coming into the shop with me?’

‘N-no,’ said Sage. ‘I don’t need to. Gimme the guitar, I’ll be out here.’

He walked away, immediately bewildered and bereft without Ax by his side, but that’s the price you pay for being madly in love, and he didn’t want to lose the feeling. The beaten copper of Ax’s naked shoulders, the sweet column of her throat, the safety of her, the electric shock when he reaches out to touch me. The thrill of permission. The moment when the world says yes!, to something they told you was impossible, was forbidden. Will I ever get used to having them both? I hope not.

He almost walked into the first little bar he passed, before he remembered he had no money, not a cent. Ax was holding the beer-money. Besides, sitting in a bar could be regarded as cheating. He stood in a shop doorway, reading placards, watching the snow clear the foot-traffic, thinking of the mysterious way Fiorinda’s grey eyes changed colour when her skin turned winter-pale.

Shattered gold and green striations.

Re-ignite the Nuclear Stations—

But nobody would dare, not now. He tried to remember what Paris had been like when he was young. There were cars, cars stacked everywhere, and the air was poison. He couldn’t picture it. Is it snowing today in Cornwall? Is my little river frozen between its granite boulders, except for that deep pool under the hollies? Sometimes he felt like a little boy, pining for home. But they would be back in England soon, he had no doubt: what worried him was the effect of the Second Chamber on Ax. He thinks he can hack it, but he’s promising himself he can escape, and he can’t. How can he ever quit? The world won’t let him, there’ll always be another turn of the screw. The dancing flakes and the shadowed air said, you too. You will never be free, you’re in this for the cold and dark duration. He smiled, Ax’s guitar on his shoulder; thinking of her eyes. I knew that.

Ax waited, lurking around the shelves with his woolly cap pulled well down, while other people were served. The closer you get to someone, the more you know the child in them. Sage is scared, and so am I. I feel about twelve years old. Shampoo, soap, herbal extracts, food supplements. All bio, but of course. All claiming to have been hand-milled by virgins with the moon in Aries, or some such nonsense: but only the packaging had changed. All else was reassuringly the same.

It would have been more discreet to look further afield, but there was only one duty chemist open for miles. And the place seemed friendly, just because they’d often walked past the door. He fingered the coins in his pocket: slim pickings, hope it’s enough. Trouble is, the punters don’t believe it. They think we’re making a video. Or so he told himself… He was on. Something for the weekend?

He swallowed laughter, fright griping his belly, and advanced. The woman wore a proper white coat, which he liked; not young, dark hair pulled back into a twist. Touched by his errand, she tried to convince him he wanted a greener, more Gaian product. Ax stood firm. He wanted something old school.

‘There are better ways to divine a pregnancy now,’ she sighed, fetching the goods from a drawer. ‘Your girlfriend might prefer something more harmonious.’

‘Thanks. This’ll do fine.’

Suddenly she frowned. He turned to see Sage, his face beautifully framed in the snow-speckled collar of his coat, in the glass door. The pharmacist looked from rockstar-features out there to Ax: from Ax to Sage, strangely amazed. In a flash he understood that she recognised them, not as celebrity protesters, but as that English busker guy-couple, the tall blond and the mixed-race one with the guitar—

‘But, excuse me, this is for you two?’

‘Miracles of modern medicine,’ choked Ax, cracking up; and fled.

They came into the garret laughing, brushing snow from each other. Fiorinda was waiting for them: a covered dish in the microwave, their bowls and spoons laid out on the plastic pallet they used for a table. All in public, it was the evening live session. They had to go through with it, the stunned, blank look in the back of her eyes would have to wait. What are we eating? It’s tomato soup, the genuine Heinz, how about that, and only a decade or so past its best-by date. For dessert, steamed jam pudding with powdered-milk custard; neither item quite so fresh.

Is this really what they eat in the farm camps?

‘Yes it is, I keep telling you. The fresh produce goes straight out the gates. The custard’s so old the yellow has worn out, but hey, it’s genuine Birds—’

The jam on the jam pudding was a kind of jellified glue, on top of a shrunken thing like a chunk of old loofah. Not much of it either, between three. But it was sugar and other quick-release carbs, which is the right stuff for manual labour.

‘This stylish food is sent to us under guard, in a diplomatic bag. Only joking, but would you believe there’s now a black market in slave-camp supplies? Which definitely does not help—’

When they’d eaten, they had to look at the collection plate. If nothing else, their stunt was generating useful and generous donations. They read gems from the daily print-out, keeping up the banter. Fiorinda laughing and joking, the men paralysed, nobody able to say switch the fucking cams off. What had gone wrong? Was she in fugue again, horrors crawling out of the walls?

At last, thank God, the ceremony was over. They were off the air.

Fiorinda went to kneel by the window, looking out. Snow was falling fast, you could hear big flakes tapping on the glass, though all you could see was the room reflected, lit by their single ATP battery lamp; dimly painted on the blackness.

‘I was pregnant,’ she said. ‘I was a little bit pregnant. I did a test last week, with the First Aid kit. I’m not any more, I started to bleed this afternoon. I’m sorry, but I did warn you. Leave me alone for a minute or two, please.’

Sage went and sat on the floor by his belongings: stared at nothing.

Ax decided, his head ringing, shocked and gutted beyond reason, he might as well look at the courriel Alain de Corlay had passed him. There was nothing he could do for Fiorinda until he’d swallowed his own distess. The envelope looked like a short stick of liquorice, or a scrap of black, narrow-gauge cable sheathing. It was a shape-memory polymer. You could pulverise this, reduce it to its component atoms: it would reveal nothing. Match it with the right male partner, it would remember its former state, and the message would reassemble. Alain hadn’t said, but no secret where it was from. The overdetermined gadgetry had Internet Commission written all over it… Must be something unpleasant. Ever since Data Quarantine—when Europe had been cut off from the digital world, to contain a killer virus—the all-powerful Commissioners had made sure Ax knew anything that was going to depress him.

Oh well, it couldn’t spoil the mood.

He dug out a tiny baggie of cypher-jacks, from the toolbox in the base of his phone, screwed one into the tube and jacked the stick into a port. Only good for one use, but cryptographers love that kind of thing. His password went to work, decoding.

I’ll have to get rid of that stupid pregnancy test, he thought, tucking a sound bead into his ear and staring at the blank, virtual screen that blossomed on the air. The message was a big fucker, and heavily encrypted: what the hell could it be? Oh, here it comes. An email on the virtual screen and a movie clip attachment. He read the letter, without taking it in: watched a little of the clip and froze.

So this is it, he thought, intuition working faster than his understanding.

This is what they did—

Just a year after Sage Pender’s brief success in breaking the mind/matter barrier, a team of US military neuronauts had reached fusion consciousness by a different route. Their project had involved a tank of raw petroleum buried under the desert. They were supposed to be attempting to disrupt its chemisty, by mind-power. Instead,—having achieved, it seemed, a state perilously far beyond the experiment’s limits—they had willed the destruction of the world’s fossil fuel reserves: and died in the act. Later, a suicide note (which they had planted where it must be found and could not be suppressed) had explained why they’d done it, and urged that all further development of the so-called Neurobomb should be abandoned.

The A-Team’s motives had been pure, their sacrifice selfless. They’d put an end to the Oil Wars, all right. Caused severe disruption to the Water Wars, and all the other ongoing scrabble of climate change wars: but they’d also caused the death of millions. Hospital lights had gone out, schools collapsed, industries foundered. World energy supplies, just about recovering from the Crisis, had fallen into chaos.

But all that was nothing. Nothing compared to the fear that had hovered over the world, through this long strange winter, while the future circled darkly above.

Not a single reaction to the Neurobomb, not a single countermove…

Ax had a feeling like talons thumping, bang into the back of his neck. This is it, he thought, while the bodies of Gaian martyrs tumbled in the ghost-glow of his screen. This is what the A Team achieved… Losing the oil was nothing, this is what they did. We had a chance of escape, but now those occult lunatics in the desert have joined hands with the bastards in the mainstream, and God help us all.

And he remembered, now when it was far too late, how part of him had leapt for joy when he’d heard that the black gold was gone. He’d been appalled, seen the awful cost of turning off that tap at once. Still part of him had cried Yay! Death to the Evil Empire! The Living World strikes back…! He understood (now when it was far too late) that every time, in his sorry career, when he had picked up the blunt instrument of violence, because it was quick and it worked, he had been part of this. The world is a palimpsest of minds, all bending each other, and Ax had been one of the hell-makers—

He’d broken eye-contact for too long. Lavoisier had vanished, replaced by his screensaver, Sage in a white singlet and tight jeans, from the “Heart On My Sleeve” video, the Mr Muscle gymnast he used to be, before his duel with O’Niall, Unmasked, smiling, crippled hands open by his sides, and clearly very pleased to see someone.

Those Glory Days.

Oh well, that’s the end of Paris in the the Springtime.

I’ll have to get the folks out of that fortress, right now.

“Hey, Sage? Fee? You’d better come and look at this.”

They came over, read the letter, and looked at the movie clip. “Let’s see the letter again,” said Fiorinda, calmly. Ax turned back, thinking: the implications are appalling, but with luck nobody else in Europe knows, not yet. We’re ahead of the game, there’s time for a spot of insider-trading.

‘Shit, it’s breaking up. Fuck those ubergeeks. Sage, can you rescue this—?’

TWO

The Doors Of Perception

Sage and Fiorinda had a rehearsal, at Collette House Piccadilly: where the artist who’d won the Reading Masque Prize (the “New Turner” as the mediafolk were calling it), had his studios. The Masque would debut, as was now traditional, at the Mayday Concert at Reading; one of the biggest events in Second Chamber England’s calendar. The artist was Toby Starborn, famous for his Faux-PreRaphaelite portrait of Fiorinda, back in the Reich’s glory days. A hologram copy of this masterpiece stood in the midst of Toby’s “torn out office space”—fake shards of cubicle partition sticking up from the floor, like some kind of Great Crash designer stubble.

Toby and his assistants greeted the demigods of the Old Guard with solemn indifference. The assistants wore clean-room attire, down to white caps and bootees. Toby wore a green velvet cutaway coat over a yellow waistcoat and slick, buff, cellulose breeches with a moulded crotch—an effect as if he were naked from the waist down, the way the wild lads danced in the mosh in the days of Dissolution. His springy hair was combed back, Mr Preston style, and tied with a black ribbon; he had a faun’s eyes, amber-yellow, tip-tilted. He looked (he wasn’t very tall) like a dissolute hobbit with Winnie the Pooh’s dress sense.

Fiorinda remembered meeting Starborn once before, at an artshow opening. He hadn’t had a lot to say to her then, he was no more communicative now. Subject matter should be seen and not heard. But his faun’s eyes never left her face, except to fix on some other element of her appearance: her left boot, her wrist, her elbow. Probably he was snapping her up on an eye-socket camera—

‘It’s an oratorio,’ he uttered, reluctantly. ‘Called The World Turned Upside Down. That’s all you need to know, just sing the notes, and keep still, no, er, moves. Fiorinda, you have no implants or eye-socket tech. Can you read sheet music?’

‘I’ll give it a try.’

They stood together on a flatbed scanner stage, the same kind of tech they’d met in Hollywood, where the virtual movies were made. Orchestral and chorus tracks played in their ears; the assistants chivvied around, making adjustments. The solo parts weren’t difficult, nor unpleasant. It was a strange kind of work for a rock concert, but Sage’s original masques had been strange confections, after all. Mozart opera, Gilbert and Sullivan, any old scraps. They couldn’t complain.

No friends, no hangers-on, and no refreshments, intoxicant or otherwise. After about two hours the soloists were allowed to get down. Nobody in the huge room cracked a smile, but Toby muttered that he thought that had gone all right. Sage and Fiorinda glanced at each other, wondering how to exit. They were being let know they were old meat, uninteresting, only dragged in for their curiosity value. Anyone who stays the course long enough has to face moments like this.

Fiorinda went to look at the hologram of “She Feeds And Clothes Her Demons”. Did I really dress like that? She touched the back of her head, reflexively checking that the old mass of draggled curls had gone. The Lavoisiens had shaved it off, and she felt grateful to them. The sallow, beleagured redhead in her ragged green dress stared out into the room, while the goblins she was feeding crept closer. Too many, too hungry, the nursemaid herself will be torn to pieces, to keep them alive—

If that was a prediction of my future, it nearly turned out true enough.

‘How many of these copies are there?’

‘It’s an iteration, not a copy,’ Toby corrected, still without cracking a smile. ‘Would you like to see my work in progress?’

“She Feeds And Clothes Her Demons” disappeared. It was replaced, in the shrine-like gilded frame, by a quivering mass of colour: a struggle to resolve, then oh, a blue woman, swirled with green and white, curled over so she was almost a sphere, and something bursting out of her side. Was that meant to be a child? It had the oversized eyes and naked head of a baby. It clutched something: an electric guitar.

‘Very impressive,’ said Sage, with solemn indifference.

‘Knock out,’ agreed Fiorinda, taking care not to catch her boyfriend’s eye.

‘It needs work,’ muttered Toby, head down, but seeming a little defrosted. The Earth giving birth vanished, the goblins’ nursemaid by the fallen oak returned.

Fiorinda smiled brightly. ‘What about the composer, er, Flora Morris? I know choral music is very big now. Can you tell us about her, can we meet her?’

The dissolute hobbit unbent at last, his faun’s eyes coming to life. ‘You might meet her at the opening. She’s not into, er, Rock. I knew her stuff, of course, and then I saw Sacrificial live at Wethamcote last summer, at the Festival of the Ponds. The soloists were in tiger cages, hanging over the site of the pit itself. It was immense. I knew I had to work with her after that, so I got Tim Bowery to introduce me, the impressario, you know, she’s a friend of his. What did you think of Sacrificial, Sage? I found it flawed but very honest, very moving—’

Wethamcote, in South Derbyshire, was one of the places where the Extreme Celtics had held their blood rites, in secret, before they actually took over. The Triumvirate had busted a human sacrifice rave network there. Sage shook his head.

‘Fraid I missed out.’

‘Me too,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I think we were in the US.’

‘If you didn’t see Sacrificial live, you’ll never understand it.’

‘We sort of saw the trailer live,’ said Fiorinda, straightfaced ‘I can’t claim that I understood it. Sage, we must be going. Let these people get on with their work.’

‘Fancy a quick pint?’

‘Ha. You’re incapable of having “a quick pint”.’

‘All right, a quick six, then.’

They took their leave, bestowing bland grins of goodwill.

It was the beginning of April: Fiorinda had just had a birthday, she was twenty-four. The freeze was over, replaced by a dry, chill, grey-skied Spring. Outdoors, central London was a hell’s kitchen of dust, rubble and low-tech clamour; muscular labour and fashionable passers-by: oddly recalling the Victorian Hampstead in Ford Madox Brown’s real Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece, “Work”. Everything unbeautiful was being torn down, to create a mosaic of new green spaces around what was worth preserving: Inns of Court, Baroque churches, post-modern giants in the City, heritage buildings in Westminster. Every city in England was going to get the same treatment, eventually. The ancient centres cleansed and beautified, then rings of concentrated Green housing and amenities, interspersed with intensive (but Green!) market gardening. Industry would live alongside the people, profits strictly audited for sustainability; constraints enforced by lucrative government licensing.

Draconian laws would limit private car ownership, and allow no proliferation of horse-drawn vehicles. Public Transport for the less-well-connected. What about the millions who gave up and took to the roads, in the Great Crash and after? Don’t worry, that’s taken care of. The elective homeless are safely contained, and usefully occupied.

Thank God they’d as yet escaped the ignominy of ever-present minders; and thank God for the sacred immunity of licensed premises. They found a pub, not one of their old safe houses, but nobody molested them.

Fiorinda downed most of her first pint at speed. “How weird it all is. Like Ax’s dreams come true, with a Dickensian twist. Are you sure we were only away for a few months? Sure it wasn’t a hundred years?’

‘Longer than that. We haven’t been payin’ attention since before Ax’s Velvet Invasion, not hardly. Plenty of time for a quantum leap.’

‘The blue woman representing Planet Earth had my face?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And she was giving birth, by Caesar section, to an alien wiv guitar? Did he stop to think I might have human feelings?’ Fiorinda glowered. ‘I don’t care. I’ll take the Small Grey if I have to. Any kind of baby’s better than none.’

‘You can’t blame the kid. He’s trying to be avant garde, and stay in fashion, when the fashion is beyond retro. Tha’s bound to lead to pompous affectation.’

‘You weren’t going to hit him, were you? I detected a twitch—’

‘Nah. I was thinking of bouncing him like a little yoyo. Seriously, no. He’s not doing it on purpose. He prob’ly doesn’t even know you want to have a baby.’

Her eyes said I’m glad you didn’t punch Toby out. I’m being an idiot…but I’m glad you thought about it. Telepathy artefacts: Sage laughed, and went to get his round in, brushing her cheek with his fingertips as he passed. My brat.

They’d returned to England immediately after the bombshell courriel, and were living again in the Triumvirate’s modest maisonette in Brixton: though how long the government would allow them to stay there was another question. Ax had told the media he felt the protest had done its work, he could now serve the camp inmates best by close consultation with Westminster. The Press had made their own cheery versions of this statement, TIRED OF DRINKING FRENCH PISS SAYS AX, and so far there was no sign of the courriel story surfacing.

It was surprisingly okay living in those rooms again, where terrible things had been said and done. The past that haunted Brixton was a defeated foe, and they don’t make bad company. Other aspects of the return were not so great. They could live with a hostile, venal government, done that trick before: but they kept falling over hints of something worse. Recalcitrant, intolerable evil that had survived, behind the Second Chamber’s “moderate” façade.

Wethamcote, being used as a place of ritual assembly again—

They drank in near silence, pondering these things. Plus the dreadful fate of all senior pop-idols: corpses in the mouths of the bourgeoisie—

‘It’s not going to work, Sage. They’re not the right next generation.’

‘They never are, sweetheart. Mm. I wish, if this Morris babe likes Elgar so much, she’d just figured out new lyrics to the actual Dream of Gerontius—’

‘Heeheehee. Tiny bit derivative?’

‘Tiny bit.’

‘The immersion effects are going to drown us, anyway.’

Sage looked into his beer. ‘You know, I take his point: Oratorio, dignified, no one jumps around. But I need to grok the idea. I wonder if Toby would give me his code to look at. Just a rough cut?’

‘Not if he has any sense, Aoxomoxoa—’

‘Who he? Oxo what? Never heard of him. I’m a harmless ignr’ant old codger. Wouldn’t know a dirty stage coup if it jumped up an’ bit me.’

They laughed, white-water fishes, alight with the joy of battle. ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ suggested Fiorinda. ‘You can coach me in your wicked ways.’

In St James’s Park, the blossom trees shed petals on steely waters, the Pelicans shivered on Duck Island. It’s April and we live on the same latitude as Moscow, same as we always did. No big deal, but haven’t we done enough? Say what you will about our whacky adventures, surely the world’s carbon emissons have gone through the floor? Not so, say the scientists (as far as they can be heard, through all the rest of the clamour of bad news). Global indicators, where science gets through the NeoFeudal curtain, show no respite. Climate chaos continues and the seas are still rising. You can’t turn an aircraft carrier on a sixpence, but not to worry, the real freeze is unlikely to hit the UK this century.

‘Sage,’ said Fiorinda. ‘If I go loopy again—‘

‘You won’t.’

‘I don’t believe I will, but if… Get me away from here. And keep people like that away from me. Don’t let Toby Starborn anywhere near me.’

‘Sure thing.’

The Triumvirate resumed the quiet talks they’d begun before they left for Paris—with people in the Permanent Civil Service who’d served Ax’s cause for a long time, with Techno-Utopian campsite luminaries of the Permanent Festival; with a group of Countercultural MPs, known as “the Rebels”, who were openly at odds with NeoFeudal government policy. Meetings were hidden under the useful heading of Volunteer Initiative business, and most of the discussion genuinely was about how to feed the masses, without fossil fuel and preferably without slave labour—the same topic that was dreadfully occupying governments of good will everywhere. Much more quietly, Ax and Sage had resumed contact with the Pan-Asian Techno-Green-Utopians who’d once helped Ax to bust the Data Quarantine, on a secret remote-access trip to Hiroshima. As if overnight, the Chinese had a hugely expanded sphere of influence, known as the “Great Peace”. What was going on there? The great unknown of post-Crisis global politics, the story that Westminster didn’t seem to want the country to know, was puzzling work. Suddenly it’s brought home to you can’t take a plane-ride and find out. You have no idea what’s really out there, no idea what might be hidden. No idea, no matter how you safeguard yourselves, who that is, claiming to be an old friend, on the other end of the line.

Closer to home there was ominously named Neurobomb Working Party. The government wanted to know the truth about what had happened last summer, around the A Team event; and exactly what part the Triumvirate had played, the year before, in the assassination of the so-called “occult monster”, Rufus O’Niall. Their wish must be granted, they could not be put off forever.

The Working Party came to Buckingham Palace, and were escorted to the upper floor of the North Wing by a young man with floppy, paint-box crimson hair, wearing the dress uniform of the Barmy Army. Ax’s militarised hippies had been disbanded, but he was allowed, for the time being, to maintain a token, ceremonial force in the old Palace; otherwise known as “The Insanitude”. The ruling classes of Second Chamber England viewed the survival of the Barmy Army with horror, but in this case the visitors were relieved to see that their guide carried a holstered sidearm. The North Wing had served as emergency secure accommodation for the most dangerous ‘refugees’, in Boat People summer. The criminal refuse were still in occupation, like rats in a sewer.

The meeting room was not generously proportioned. It barely held an oval hardwood table, polished but shabby, a smart screen and a random assortment of chairs. The walls were hung in faded blue paper, with a narrow stripe; naked windows looked out on yellow coping stones and grey corners of roof slope. Oltech slates and earbeads were laid out at each place; water jugs and glasses arrayed down the centre, with small plates of macrobiotic oatcakes. Standalone imaging hardware stood beside the screen, on a trolley. Three people faced the Working Party: Fiorinda, and two of the most puzzling members of Ax’s inner circle: Chip Desmond in a crumpled metallic grey flying suit, cherub-cheeks glowing, nappy hair twisted into a golly-forest of little tails, a red silk scarf at his throat; and Kevin Hanlon, aka “Verlaine”, piratical in loose purple linen breeches, a ragged My Favourite Molecule tee, silky brown curls fringing a tight-wrapped skull and crossbones bandana. These were The Adjuvants, young “Indie” pop-stars from the original CounterCultural ThinkTank, swept into bizarre prominence beside their friend Ax Preston.

Verlaine got down from his perch on the table and took a seat, like a mildly naughty undergraduate at the start of a seminar. The visitors disposed themselves: the table was large enough, and there were sufficient chairs, for them to keep their distance. Silence prevailed. At last a voice rose from the government ranks.

‘Are the President and Mr Pender delayed?’

‘No,’ said Fiorinda. ‘They can’t make it, I’m sorry. Don’t worry, Chip and Verlaine are experts, and I’m well briefed. We’ll be able to answer your questions.’

She used no implants, no eye-socket tech, but she had a retentive memory, and could put the right names to all the faces. Wendy Carter, media-star neurologist: an obvious instant authority on the new science of “Mind/Matter Physics”. Ardhal Fitzgerald, expatriate Cambridge computer scientist, also a spy for Dublin. (cead mile failte, little brother, and you’re welcome to take good notes). Boris Anathaswamy, high energy physicist from Culham. Guilty by association presumably. Mairead Culper of Glastonbury Council; Official CounterCultural Party. Jack Vries, the Wiccan Scholar, vaguely titled Consultant to the Home Office. A Bishop, a Buddhist, and an Immam, all public figures, from the Standing Bio-Ethics Committee. Tony Burnside-Khan and Rasheeda Townsend, both from the weapons industry: and that’s a statement of intent.

Not a single actual fusion consciousness specialist, but you couldn’t blame them for that. There weren’t many experts in what Sage had done in the entire world, and none at all in England, except for a tiny handful of dilettante rockstars and lowly Welsh postdocs. Olwen Devi, genius of the Zen Self project in Reading Arena, had returned to Caer Siddi, the Company headquarters; her best people with her.

‘We can reschedule, if you wish, but it’s going to mean some delay. There are the preparations for Mayday at Reading, and then almost immediately they have several important early summer events—’

It was Jack Vries who answered, betraying himself as the leader of the group (on paper that was Mairead Culper, sharing power with the Bishop of Oxford)

‘I’m afraid some of our questions will be very sensitive for you, Fiorinda, but by all means, let’s go ahead. We can make a start at least.’

The extremist junta is cast out by force of arms. The smoke clears, you look around, and several of the worst bastards have sneaked right back into office. The last time Fiorinda had seen Jack Vries, pastel-blond dandy with the colourless, secretive eyes, he’d been a guest at Rivermead when Rufus O’Niall was reigning there, in the body of a dead man. Fiorinda, on display as “Fergal Kearney’s whore”, had found out plenty, while the bad guys let their hair down. She had saved a few lives, and she’d known which of the insiders were secretly, fearfully, friends to her cause. Jack Vries had not been among them… But a lot of people had been forced to accept invitations to Rivermead that winter; most of them ignorant of the full horrific truth. She had no damning evidence against Vries, though she was damn’ sure it existed. It’s the way of the world, there are always villains who can’t be rooted out, and at least he was being kept out of office. So far. (Though what was he doing here?)

There’d been nasty cans of worms the Rock and Roll Reich had never dared to open, in their day. Live with it.

‘Good. So, let’s begin at the beginning.’

The smartboard was suddenly flooded with colour and movement: psychedelic roses blooming. The same images repeated, in smaller scale, on the slates.

‘These are cognitive brainscans. There’s a brief annotation on your earbeads. I’ll give you a moment, for those who need to listen.’

The party apparently didn’t need notes. Green hardliners frowned in distaste.

‘Magic is a real force,’ began Fiorinda coolly. ‘Or rather, there is a real force, of which we’ve been dimly aware as long as there’ve been modern humans around, a leakage through the barrier between mind and matter. It’s been called by various names: magic will do for our purposes. In the last decade before Dissolution new theories were being matched by new technology, allowing lab scientists to approach the threshold where the barrier can be broken. It was believed, by some, that under certain conditions this breakthrough, also known as “fusion” might unleash extraordinarily powerful “occult” powers—’

She paused. The false-coloured scans disappeared. An equation (not yet condensed into anything as recognisable as e=mc2) Powerpointed sedately into place, line by line. ‘I’m sure you’ve all seen that before. We won’t trouble to decipher it in detail. As you know, science currently favours a model of the universe as being “made of information”. Anything you care to mention can be expressed in binary code. Zebras, genes, neutrinos, hatred, can all be seen, equally, as objects in information space. This implies a fundamental level where the material 0s and 1s “outside our heads” are continuous with the immaterial 0s and 1s “in our minds”. When we speak of “breaking the barrier”, we mean finding a means to access this continuity, and to manipulate the material world as if it were a set of ideas. The theory of Mind/Matter physics states that all mind/brains—a poor description, suggesting dualism where actually we’re supposing an integrated system, but it seems to have taken root—have a vestigial, infinitesimal interaction with the code “outside our heads”, and therefore an infinitesimal abilty to affect the arrangement of this vast body of information: not only our perception of the world out there, but the material universe itself. That’s been the implicit desire of all magical practice, in every occult tradition.’

‘To shift the whole fifteen dimensional kaleidoscope,’ put in Chip, gravely.

Some faces betrayed confusion. Kaleidoscope? What kaleidoscope?

Most remained attentively blank, waiting for the keywords.

‘The theory goes on to propose that tiny “fusion consciousness events” tunnelling through the barrier between mind and matter, happen all the time: often unnoticed, sometimes perceived as “psychic experiences”; or providing frustrating unrepeatable data in parapsychology experiments. It suggests that successful stage magicians, and powerful shamen, have always been people with a natural, slightly elevated interaction with information space. This advantage allows them to draw on the vestigal abilities of a group of believers; or even a group of passionate sceptics, and add to the their own power. Strong arousal is an adjuvant: and it’s a positive loop. The more the “magician” can steal, the more he can steal.

‘Yet magic is still a very weak force. A stage magician can “mess with our minds”. To rearrange a small set of actual events is a huge leap beyond: to make a global change, as the A team did, is a far greater leap beyond that. My father, Rufus O’Niall, seems to have been born with an astounding level of mind/matter interaction, which became dangerous when it was ramped-up by his success. There’s convincing evidence, however, that the neurological mechanism is always the same. Plenipotent natural magicians (my late father is the only known example), and phenomenally altered mind/matter agents like the “A team” work in the same way, and that’s what we need to talk about today.’

There had been a stir of recoil when Fiorinda said my father.

‘Bear with me,’ said the monster’s daughter, candidate for being burned at the stake, in the last mad phase of Green Nazi rule. ‘This is relevant. My father may have been the first and only creature of his kind, created by a historical situation—’

‘Synchronicity,’ exclaimed Verlaine. ‘The population explosion gave us mass-market entertainment idols, and drove the development of number crunching machines that could model cognition. Cognitive scanners powered the Zen Self quest. Consumer-slave mega-crowds powered Rufus O’Niall. We got the occult monster and the Neurobomb in the same frame. It seems like a weird coincidence but it isn’t.’

‘It’s two sides of the same coin!’ cried Chip.

Fiorinda smiled, apologetically. The scans returned to the whiteboard.

‘Now, these scans. To recap on the earbead notes, what you see on your slates is a time-lapse sequence for early-onset schizophrenia. In all adolescent brains there’s a sorting-out process, involving a net loss of tissue. In some young people, for reasons that aren’t yet entirely clear, this goes off the rails and they develop schizophrenic symptoms. Clinicians call what you see the forest fire effect. See how destruction starts in the parietal cortex, and speeds through the frontal lobes? Five years on, there’s a loss of up to 25% of the grey matter, crucially in areas called the loci of convergence, where the “binding” of consciousness is mainly handled.’

The Working Party went on waiting for words. Bomb. Weapon.

‘Classically, there’s an unmistakable breakdown in late adolescence, but by then, the damage is done. Once things have gone as far as you see in the last scan here, the subject will no longer feel in control of their own body; will have great difficulty construing a single reality; will have lost their sense of time, and may be experiencing unbroken, terrifying hallucinations. Even today, a one way ticket to Catatonia is probably the patient’s best hope.’

‘Extensive neuronal tissue seeding,’ murmured Wendy Carter, studying the forest fire with an experienced eye. ‘Might help her—’

‘I doubt if you’d have got close enough to try it on my father. But you’re thinking of normal schizophrenia, Wendy. In a “magical” brain, the carnage shows up in the material locii, but it’s the gushing leak, the open pipe to information space that does the mischief, and you can’t fix that by surgery. It’s not a material thing.’

Dr Carter nodded, cautiously.

‘Schizophrenia can have many causes. Infective disease, genetic accident, drug abuse, prolonged psychological stress; torture. I’ve shown you this version because it most closely resembles what we know happens in the brain of a natural magician, enhanced to plenipotence in human information space. There is the same pattern of destruction, only faster; in the same locii.’

They didn’t get it, not yet. One of the industry consultants found his voice. ‘I, thought Rufus O’Niall’s brain was never examined.’

The young lecturer nodded, approvingly. ‘You’re absolutely right. The way Rufus behaved, in the years of his fame, would’ve had him sectioned, if he’d been a homeless black man, as a danger to society. As he was a ruthless, powerful megastar, he passed for normal, and, as you say, we can’t be a hundred per cent sure about the state of his grey matter. But we have time-lapse scans of the A team’s brains, taken automatically until they were clinically dead. They show what was happening, how the “forest fire” damage erupted, and how swiftly it spread. There is no room for dispute. The team reached fusion, as a single entity, became plenipotent and, at the same time, irreversibly as crazy as a bedbug.’

No response, except a few of them reached for the earbeads.

‘The belief that using black magic drives people crazy is well attested in tradition. Investigators have assumed the effect was psychological: the evil magician becomes deranged by the horror of his acts. Not so. Morality doesn’t come into it. Become the Neurobomb, this is what will happen to your brain, and you will suffer all the agonizing and highly dangerous symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.’

The scans looked like colourful wreckage, that shuddered and squirmed.

‘It’s addictive, too.’

Mairead Culper gathered herself: a small woman, simply dressed in a brown homespun tunic, a double line of tension, or possibly eyestrain, ploughed between her brows. Every visible inch of her pale skin was tattooed.

‘Fiorinda! I am a practitioner of Wiccan magic and I will not tolerate this. The powers we summon are beyond our understanding, we give ourselves blindly into their hands, and we fear them. But Rufus O’Niall was the hellish personification of global consumerism. He is gone, with all he stood for. Our unknowing is not evil, nor insane, and none of your, your vile labscience will convince me—’

‘Mairead,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Don’t upset yourself. I’m sure anything you and your people do is perfectly harmless. You don’t have to be criminally insane to lay a mean Tarot. I’m talking about the Neurobomb.’

Rasheeda had snapped to attention. ‘You’ve seen those scans, ma’am?’

Fiorinda raised her brows. ‘Of course. Anyone with a public library PIN can see them. They’re in the open access section on the International Investigation Site. Along with routine scans from before the fatal experiment, for comparison.’

A pause for embarrassment. The Adjuvants grinned at the tabletop.

Rasheeda scribbled a note (lo-tech secure communication) and passed it to Jack Vries: is she saying we don’t have a Neurobomb? Jack put the slip of paper in his pocket, nodded slightly and spoke—

‘Ms Slater, ah, ma’am. We’re aware of the “International Investigation Site”. Some may say its usefulness it limited. It can only reveal what the US military wish to make known, about what happened at “Vireo Lake”’. The Vireo Lake Lab, in the Anza-Borrego Desert, had been the site of the A-Team experiment. ‘Your exposition has been interesting, but I’m sure you’ll understand we came here to talk about our own, English, Neurobomb: I mean Sage Pender. The so-called “A team” were chosen for “psychic potential”, despite the inevitable instability, and subjected to a regime of harmful drugs. The Zen Self route to plenitpotence works with normal, healthy brains, does it not? And “Zen Self” fusion leaves no permanent damage to brain tissue? Still, we share your reservations. One issue we wished to raise was the need for Sage to take new psyschiatric scans—’

‘That won’t be possible. Sage has given up being a lab rat.’

Jack Vries was a tall man, and very blonde, white blonde rather than vulgar Sage-like yellow. His skin had a painful, ruddy delicacy, as if protective outer layers had been peeled away. His light eyes were intent, yet she felt that he only saw the National Sweetheart, who must be handled with care. A secondary figure.

Be careful, she told herself. Don’t make the same mistake—

‘I see!’ said Jack, at last. ‘Well, Sage is a big star who writes his own er, rider, is it? We’ll have to find the right inducement to get him on the program!’

The Working Party recoiled again: Jack’s faux pas this time. You don’t sneer at the Zen Self Champion, the perfect knight who saved England in single combat.

‘I detect a misunderstanding,’ Fiorinda remarked placidly, taking no offence. ‘The Zen Self route uses heroic doses of neurosteroids to reconfigure a normal brain directly to the state of fusion, without destroying a personality and without hijacking increments of connection from a mass of other minds. That much is true—’

(The Adjuvants looked modest, they’d been among the heroic labrats on the way to Sage’s achievement. No one noticed.)

‘But breaking the barrier between mind and matter the Zen Self way is a brief event. Either you quickly return to normal, or you remain permanently—so to speak, where there is no duration—in a state of non-being, non-intent, non-action. Which some see as the goal of all endeavour, but it’s not very useful in a weapon.’

The Buddhist rep, a prim-looking middle-aged white woman, acknowledged the description with a faint smile, and resumed her air of distant disapproval.

‘“No damage”, Jack, means no Neurobomb either. The Zen Self route will never get you there. That’s why the Vireo Lake scientists set out to weaponise natural psychic ability, although such experiments had already been outlawed in Europe.’

Lord Vries accepted defeat, by means of a slight bow.

‘I was there when he fought Rufus, you know.’ Fiorinda had lectured standing. She sat down now, between her bodyguards: propped her chin on her hand and gazed into the past, her voice changing; off her guard.

The disappointed suits perked up—

‘The Extreme Celtics had enlisted my father to reduce population of Europe, drastically, by an act of magic. I’d been condemned to death, allegedly for witchcraft: really because I’d been helping human sacrifices to escape from the people we call the “Green Nazis”. Though of course they were as English as anyone here. Sage found out what was going on, and came back from Caer Siddi—’

‘Having achieved the Grail,’ murmured Verlaine.

‘He rescued me from the fire. I followed him to Ireland, to plead with him not to take on Rufus, because I knew what my father was. I was too late… They fought with swords, in the courtyard of Drumbeg Castle. My father liked archaic things. They were competing to see which of them had more power over the information: but the fight was part of it, the physicality. Embodiment and mind are equally important, in all magic. They say that when perfect “fusion” is reached, when a coherent, solved, human self becomes one with the state of all states, then the state of all states becomes a conscious mind. Or else, depending on your point of view, the mind in fusion meets a Consciousness that was always there—’

She made a slight acknowledgment of the Bio-Ethics contingent. The Bishop of Oxford, a slim, elderly gentleman with his collar on backwards over a little fuschia bib, smiled nervously in return.

‘Who knows? It’s hard to distinguish cause from effect, where there’s no time. But anyway, if Rufus had won, eighty or ninety percent of the people of Europe would have died at a stroke, and that’s not the half of it. He would have added Sage’s stake, so to speak, to his own. He could have reached perfect fusion, and human information space, our reality, would have become a mirror of that nightmare up there.’

She glanced behind her, at the smartboard.

‘Rufus would have been the Fat Boy,’ explained Chip. ‘And we’d all be living in a Hieronymous Bosch nightmare-dimension.’

“Fat Boy” was the runaway chain reaction of fusion consciousness, a magic pyschopath with limitless powers. The Lavoisiens had been trying to build one.

‘They say Rufus could, could put his enemies living into hell,’ ventured Dr Jones, in the fuschia bib. ‘Is it true, Ms Slater? Could that be allowed?’

The Islamic consultant smiled, enigmatically, into his beard.

‘I don’t know about allowed, but I know about that one. It’s an Aleister Crowley spell, that my father liked. Crowley couldn’t begin to do it: Rufus made it work. You die, but subjectively you stay conscious in your body while it rots, for all eternity. I think that’s where the real Fergal Kearney was, when Rufus inhabited his shell. There may have been others. I hope, I believe, they were freed, that night.’

The abyss between what she and Sage had done at Drumbeg, and these disconcerted, sulky suits, was threatening to unhinge her. ‘I didn’t explain that very well,’ she added, limpidly. ‘I could try again, see if I can help you all to understand?’

One of Fiorinda’s beardless counsellors kicked her under the table.

Okay, okay. Only joking.

She glanced at her slate, and stood again, for her closing remarks.

‘Well, that seems to be it. Perhaps you now realise, if you didn’t before, why the US Neurobomb research has been abandoned. A schizophrenic human weapon of mass destruction is untenable, there are logical constraints that mean you can’t have any other kind, and that’s the end of that. The term “Fat Boy” is a reference to the early nuclear devices, and the analogy seems apt. The weapon of all weapons has twice been demonstrated in anger. I predict it will now sink into a long, uneasy retirement. Perhaps Global Thermonuclear War wouldn’t be so bad after all, but who would like to try? The known cost is too high, even for the winners: the risk of truly awful unplanned consequences too impressive. Perhaps tactical, limited “occult” weaponry could be developed, but who would dare? My recommendation, and I speak for the Triumvirate, is that we join our neighbour nations, and support President Eiffrich’s call for a total ban.’

Wales, Ireland and Scotland supported Eiffrich, as did the Nordic countries. The EU as a body had as yet no official stance.

‘Ms Slater,’ Jack Vries stood out, in the subdued shades of the other faces, as if he drew the light. ‘With respect, isn’t there, in everything you’ve recounted, an equally strong argument for a deterrent? Though we all deeply admire—’

‘Get a grip,’ cried Chip, bouncing in his seat. ‘What are you thinking of, man? The oil’s gone. Doesn’t that convince you? The Hell Dimension scenario isn’t bleeding heart loony tunes. It’s hard science, a threat with teeth and hair!’

They just went on looking mildly affronted, annoyed that they’d wasted their time. The token Doves were not going to cheep, and no Hawk had been swayed by Fiorinda’s deposition. Boris the Culham physicist had been making careful notes (a flicker in the back of his eyes).

‘Ms Slater, one last couple of questions, would that be okay?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘The Reich collected data on a steep rise in reports of paranormal activity, during Ax’s so-called “dictatorship”. Is it possible to have access?’

‘I’m sorry. The records were destroyed in a police raid.’

‘Okay, but… As I understand it, Neurophysics theory says the incidence of “leaky minds” is likely to have been constant, a normal Bell curve, since soon after modern consciousness emerged. Rufus was an anomaly, the ‘A’ team was a construction, impossible in nature. I’m interested in the nuclear device analogy, in relation to a non-time-bound event. Could the rise you tracked have been objective, a “fall out” effect from the two, nominally anterior, fusion events?’

Not just a pretty face.

‘What a scary thought! I’m sorry Boris, that’s beyond me. For what it’s worth, I think cultural change accounts for the apparent increase. We did investigate, though we couldn’t keep up with it all, and never found anything in England that would stand up to scrutiny. But there’s something—’

The physicist nodded, waiting.

‘I was close to the event in Ireland. My brain is normal, what my father was doesn’t seem to be hereditary: but I was affected. Afterward I had awful waking nightmares, aftershocks.’

Only Fiorinda’s closest friends knew the extent of those “aftershocks”. She looked around, from face to face, not trying to address the obdurate, speaking to the ones who could be reached. ‘I get flashbacks, still. I see people dead, for instance—who would have died if there’d been a different outcome, I think. It was very disturbing, nothing so harmless as hallucinations, because these glimpses came from a place where the difference between “unreal” and “real” doesn’t mean anything. And it’s a living hell. Believe me, our information space, the world we live in and create every moment, cannot afford another of those detonations.’

Fear touched them then, or some of them. Fear not of hippie magic but of chaos: the bottomless terror implicit in those colourful images, an insane universe—

The National Sweetheart smiled bravely. Reinvented since Dissolution days: shorn of that wild cascade of hair, severely neat in a grey tailored jacket, plum shirt with a little string tie: was she beautiful? Or barely pretty? She was an icon, a legend, a beloved survivor, it would be senseless to try and bully her.

‘If this could…could be the end of it?’ suggested Wendy Carter slowly. ‘A self-correcting mechanism? Aberrant minds with this horrible potential for effective “magic”’ (Mairead glared), ‘are vanishingly rare, and can’t reach critical mass without the global audience? Which no longer exists, and may never recover in the same form? If that’s the case, perhaps the so-called Neurobomb—’

‘You’re missing the point, Wendy,’ said the arms trade man. ‘This is not about “a new Rufus”. The ‘A’ team died, sure: but now everyone knows what can be done with this new science. How far behind do you think China is, right now?’

The door opened. The session was over: Zip Crimson, their barmy dress guard, stood waiting. The Working Party rose. ‘I would very much like to know more about the theory,’ said His Grace Dr Jones. ‘Would…could Mr Pender himself talk to the Bio-Ethics Committee?’

‘He could,’ said Chip. ‘But I think you’ll find he won’t.’

‘He’d only advise you to chop wood and draw water,’ warned Verlaine.

‘Or tell you to eat your hat.’

‘Should you be wearing a hat.’

Fiorinda propped her head on both hands. Not bad. Told them nothing that isn’t public domaint, and didn’t answer a single dodgy question. Not that she could take much credit for the latter: the suits seemed to have forgotten they wanted answers, as soon as they saw that they hadn’t got Ax or Sage. I’m just the girlfriend. They have alpha females on their own team, but I’m obviously not one of those. Noted only for charity work; and getting rescued. They dismiss me, and long may that continue.

The brain in the scans was not her own, it was a textbook simulation. But it could well have been, the state she’d been in when Ax and Sage took her to Mexico last spring. Truth be known, she owed a great deal to those lunatics at Lavoisier. Shame I want to be a rockstar, she thought. There’s this angel with a fiery sword in the way, damn it. Was that the right image? Angels and fiery swords seemed associated, but she had no idea why. Have to ask the Bishop.

Chip and Verlaine watched her, and waited until she looked up.

‘They could have asked us for a briefing on fusion theory,’ complained Chip.

‘Nah,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I mean, look at you. D’you think they got the message?’

‘About the big nasty Black Hole nibbling at our toes? Wendy Carter, yeah, and maybe Boris,’ said Chip. ‘But they won’t be making the decisions. That weapons trade pair were scary. They don’t give a toss.’

‘What if they want you to take a scan?,’ wondered Verlaine

‘No problem. They won’t ask, but it wouldn’t matter.’ Fiorinda sat back, pulled out a springy red curl and picked at the end of it.

Chip surveyed the empty table. ‘This Crisis. We thought we knew what a Global Crisis was, but then you get magic psychopaths, you get concentration camps in Norfolk, Paranormal Thermonuclear war, you get… Well, you see what I mean?’

‘There’ll be no Paranormal Thermonuclear war,’ said Verlaine, gloomily. ‘No Techno-Magical Utopia either. The bad guys will turn the weirdness into field guns and nerve gas, same as they always do. People like us will be suppressed out of existence, and the doors of perception will be slammed shut, same as it ever was.’

Fiorinda laughed. ‘You’re probably right. We’ve consistently been afraid of the wrong thing, every time: I’ve noticed that. We won’t get no Hell dimension, something much worse and totally unexpected will come along instead.’

There were snow flurries in Berkshire on the eve, but Mayday itself dawned chilly, bright and fair. To the Second Chamber’s chagrin, President Ax and his inner circle—the radical rockstars known as “The Few”—would not be appearing live on Main Stage at Reading. Instead they converged on Brixton: Allie Marlowe and Dilip Krishnachandran by taxi, from their amicable separation at the Insanitude; Chip and Verlaine on their bikes from Notting Hill; Rob Nelson and the Powerbabes from Lambeth, in the Snake Eyes’ Big Band’s minibus—bringing with them Anne-Marie Wing, Smelly Hugh and their kids, who’d all come up from the Rivermead Permanent Festival site, the day before. Ironically, considering the Second Chamber’s Green pretensions, there was no public transport on the public holiday.

By nine am everyone was in Fiorinda’s music room, watching State Event prelims with the helpless fascination of long habit, while a crew of Aoxomoxoa and the Heads techies set the place up as a b-loc studio. Countless street party committees were setting out chairs, crowds in sleeping bags huddled at Big Screen locations. Church bells were swinging, the ropes pumped by hearty and broad-minded Christian-Pagans. Hawthorn blossom unfurled in the hedgerows (CGI, because the flowers were being sulky). Maypole ribbons whirled and wove, last year’s organic bunting fluttered again. In Reading town the route of the motorcade was thronged, although the public knew that Ax and his courtiers weren’t actually going to pass by in the flesh.

Here they were again, back to where it all began! The Festival Site by the Thames at Rivermead, where thirty thousand “staybehinds” were still encamped, faithful to the wild ideals of Dissolution summer—

The children had been banished downstairs, with a posse of babysitters: except for Sage’s teenage son from a long defunct relationship, who had an exeat from his boarding school for the holiday weekend. The b-loc techies communed in Geekish with Sage; and with George Merrick, Sage’s second in command, who was running the remote site at Reading. The Few gazed at their former selves in old news footage, with the inevitable feelings of psychic dislocation and style-related distress. The stats on the sidebar were impressive. Apparently this State Event was already being watched by 96% of those people who could get to a screen, and who couldn’t get to Reading.

Wow. Joe Stalin couldn’t have bettered those figures, with a sky-hook.

‘I hope the Stonehenge ceremony comes on again,’ said Anne-Marie. ‘I’ve kept missing it. I was up at six, but it was already over.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Felice, senior Powerbabe, assured her. ‘it’ll be back.’

—known as the Few, to discriminate them from Ax’s original group, the Chosen Few, they followed his star to fame and fortune, as the social leaders of the Revolution’s youth culture—

Fame of a kind, okay, but fortune? Now that is a JOKE.

Jeers and groans fell silent when the cameras turned to Reading Arena: the lost heartland. ‘The old home town looks the same,’ crooned Chip, soulfully sotto voce. ‘As they step down from the train…” His friends advised him to shut up.

“Okay, okay, I didn’t mean anything…Will we step down from the train?’

‘Nope,’ said Sage. ‘Too complicated.’

‘Time is a helix of semi-precious stages,’ sighed Kevin Verlaine. ‘We’re not even going to be there, but we still keep going back. It’s like Groundhog Day.’

‘I wish someone would tell me what we have to do to escape,’ muttered Dora, the middle Babe. ‘Does anyone get the feeling we should have stayed in California?’

‘Something would’ve stopped us. We can’t break out of this attractor.’

Smelly Hugh frowned, working hard. ‘It oughter be July, shouldn’ it?’ It had been a wet and muddy July, in the last year of the United Kingdom’s existence, when the festival that ignited a revolution had gathered by that riverside, and a handful of young Indie hopefuls had stumbled into the maw of history.

‘Ah, the slip from July back to May, that’s the tachyon shift, Hugh.’

‘You have to watch out for those.’

‘It’s an instance of rock-sidereal precession.’

Hugh joined the Adjuvants’ laughter, pleased that he’d said something funny. He’d been trying for clever, but you could never tell. Funny was good, anyway.

‘Of course this is ass-backwards,’ said Rob. ‘Physically we should be in Reading, where the work is, bi-locating back here to have fun. Isn’t that the idea?’

‘Hey, I have fun on stage, mister,’ Felice protested. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Figure of speech, I was thinking of grunt work.’

‘In principle,’ agreed Ax. ‘When we have b-loc factories, b-loc farm labour. Right now, it’s our flesh they want: and they are not going to get. We are not their indentured labour.’

Greg Mursal’s financial lawyers had admitted that the charges on the Few’s professional earnings, imposed by the Green Nazi regime, were illegal (Ax and Sage were not so lucky): but nothing further had happened yet. No payouts.

The Few glanced at each other. Much as they’d like to see their money, they didn’t like the way Ax seemed set on confronting the Second Chamber.

‘It’s the way to go with novel tech,’ Ax added, responding to the atmosphere. ‘I might have done this stunt anyway. We make b-loc famous, we won’t need the government to pitch in. Private sector support for industrial applications will follow.’

The techies grinned at each other, appreciating Ax Preston’s famous bloody-mindedness. They were happy because they were putting on a huge, weird, never-tried-before spectacle with Sage again. The boss had been away too fucking long.

‘Except who needs mass b-loc,’ mused Fiorinda, ‘when labour camps are so much more organic. I’m with F’lice. I hate modern drugs.’

‘B-loc’s not a drug, Fee,’ corrected Sage, his attention on the the 10^28 closure figures for the superposition. ‘Wash your mouth. Absolutely nothen’ scary, unnatural or invasive goin’ on here.’ Bi-location was a Zen Self spin-off. In the experimental stages it’d needed nasty spinal injections, and heavy neurosteroids. The set-up they were using today was third generation, and Scottish, which was galling, but too bad—

‘Don’t listen to him. He loves his altered states,’ crowed Marlon. ‘He lies about it, ’cos he’s an addict, and he can’t help it.’

This pallid, sarcastic youth, barely recognisable as the teenage form of a sweet little boy called Marlon Williams, wanted to quit school and continue his education (if his estranged parents insisted) in London. He didn’t seem to realise that needling his dad was not the way forward: Sage was amazingly patient with him.

The caterers arrived. The Few gazed at the giant screen: an oddly Californian feeling, as if the Austerity-living Triumvirate had suddenly decided they needed a private cinema. A buzz like headphone-leak emitted from Smelly Hugh, hair of gold and lips like cherries… Dilip sighed and stretched. In golden California, nearly a year ago, he’d been sure he was developing AIDS. Here he was still, in reasonable health: and single again, to his regret but it was something he couldn’t explain to her. Half a life spent dedicated to the fun, and waiting to die. You glimpse, in a moment of weakness maybe, the fun of taking control of your own death, and the idea won’t go away…He lives alone, thought Allie, across the room. Everybody’s wondering, but nothing went wrong. DK’s a good friend, great in bed, but he lives alone, end of story. She was becoming someone she hated, the well-groomed woman who gets middle-aged giving her life to an organisation. I want to be loved.

Out of old habit she reviewed everything that could go wrong with this day, and shuddered. With this day, or with this return to England?

Rob, Felice and Dora were glad to be home. Things had settled down. The long-running Radical Rock commune on the Lambeth Road had lost its scuzz of White-Refugee desperanto violence. They were sure Ax could do business with the CounterCultural Rebel MPs, and a workable future could be hammered out. But the old fault-lines re-asserted themselves. This b-loc stunt, bound to upset the moderates, the element we should be wooing, was it really a good ploy? Ax was always too much influenced by the weird scientists, DK, Chip and Verlaine, Sage and his band. They exchanged a sad and furtive grin, because Cherry Dawkins, junior Babe, was with Chip and Ver again: not sitting with us. She’s turning into Geek-Girl, crossing the divide, over there rubbernecking the tech operation.

Chip missed Fiorinda’s favourite party frocks, always previously displayed on the music room walls. In fact none of her totems were visible, not the sacred scruffy secondhand Martin, or her red boots. Even her piano was shrouded in midnight velvet.

‘Fiorinda-space has stripped down and gone public.’

‘But we’re not allowed to access her secret keys,’ noted Cherry. ‘The message is conflicted. She lets us common folk in, yet she denies us access.’

‘Idiots. The semiotics will change when I unpack.’

Ax sat crosslegged on a rug that belonged elsewhere, the music room carpet hadn’t come out of storage, rolling up Bristol Bud. He’d never get used to buying marijuana cigarettes in a packet, with mild government health warning attached. He lined up the neat spliffs in his smokes tin: and sighed. Can’t put this off any longer.

‘Can we leave you guys to it for a while?’

‘Yeah, fine Ax,’ said the b-loc gaffer. ‘We won’t need you for another two hours.’ They never do. They just like to make you get out of bed.

Everyone stood up, including Marlon. ‘No,’ said Sage. ‘Not you, Mar.’

‘But Dad—’

‘You heard me. Stay here and keep an eye on the fest tv for us.’

The boy subsided, muttering don’t talk to me as if I was a fucking pet animal. But he said this in Welsh, a language his father (allegedly) did not understand.

Marlon cruised, while the caterers plated up and the technicians did whatever they did at desks and boards. Every choice just bounced him back to the four EB channels: English Broadcasting, Government tv. He lingered a while with a programme on the history of the Rock and Roll Reich. It was one long rock festival, apparently. Ax, Fiorinda, his dad and their mates rocking and rolling in various fields and ramshackle venues: far away from anything like civil unrest. Usually it was pissing down. Some bad guys called ‘the green nazis’ were defeated in a voiceover, ‘in the last days of the chaotic years of transition’. Then the Second Chamber, religious and natural leaders of the native English Counterculture restored England to peace and plenty, and elected ‘rockstar radical Ax Preston’ as funky President, because they were in touch with the people, for whom Ax was a popular romantic figure—

Unbelievable, muttered the boy.

Reading Arena coverage was a bunch of old hippies, sounding off. Glasto, once the stronghold of the Extreme Celtics, now totally respectable, held his attention briefly. The Permanent Festival there had begun to host a rival Mayday event, with the Pagan bonfires and sky-clad things that weren’t allowed at Reading. But he couldn’t find any live sex… Still nobody came back. The caterers took a break, the techs were in their own world. Marlon ate some buffet, (but it was all ugly-looking, and nothing tasted right), and remembered how to find a twisted English public tv station he’d heard about from a friend. He got a Happy Beltane smiley, and the news that he would swiftly be redirected to an EB channel. Diawl y’ myto i.

Sheep in human clothing, that’s what the English are.

Across the hall the Few were crowded round the flat screen of a pre-Dissolution tv. They had some idea of what they were about to see, and that it was potentially very bad news, but they hadn’t been told much. Here it comes.

Twilight in the desert, in the red waste between the Inyo and the Panamint ranges, some two hundred miles north east of LA. Two men in dusty range clothes hunkered down in the opening of a tunnel: to check their weapons and discuss mass-murder. ‘I never thought that violence was going to be phased out,’ said the tall, skinny blond. ‘I was just surprised when I got a chance to play.’

‘The killing makes me feel real,’ said the other, with a flashing smile—

They slipped from their lair and set off, bent double, towards a huddle of shanty town buildings, like some quake-struck Third World village. Frequent close-ups were lit to catch the flat eyes, the tight, blunt muzzles of two conscienceless predators. In the next shot, the men had penetrated a humble schoolroom. They rifled children’s copybooks, while speaking coldly of the numbers they would have to ‘reduce’: then whirled and fired, without a moment’s hesitation—on a quartet of wide-eyed, goth and hippie types who seemed to be unarmed.

The images and dialogue had been left to speak for themselves, in a silence broken only by gunshot, crunching bootheels, choking breath: but here commentary intervened. Over a rough search of the bodies outside the school, a mature, female voice came up. ‘Do you see any heroes here, Dan?’

‘No Ma’am,’ replied a male voice, sober and kindly, ‘I see a couple of burned-out young men, far from home, running around like psychopaths.’

‘This shouldn’t have been allowed to happen,’ declared his partner.

‘I think we can all agree on that, whatever our politics.’

‘The Lavoisier kids were misguided, sure, and they had strange beliefs, but they were trying to save the world. They didn’t deserve to be slaughtered!’

No faces but the voices were distinctive, two high-profile mass-market tv anchorpersons. Although probably that only went for the US audience, or recent visitors. The Few watched, silent and riveted, until the picture faded to grey.

‘That’s why you came home from Paris?’ said Rob after a pause.

‘Yep,’ said Ax.

‘There was a letter,’ said Fiorinda, from her place in the back row, on one of the rust-red couches. ‘Which we can’t show you because we failed to stop it from shredding itself, saying if this breaks at a bad moment, it could lose Fred Eiffrich the election. He’s been looking rock solid for a second term since the A Team event and the LA quake. But he has powerful enemies, and specifically certain media barons, because of that stuff he did to them, ages ago. You’ve seen the trailer. We were told there’s a lot more.’

‘You saw this in March, but you’re only telling us now?’

‘We’re showing it to you now,’ explained Ax, patiently, ‘because today, due to the b-loc, the flat is a fortress, impenetrable to surveillance. We are not supposed to know about this. We couldn’t take the chance of being responsible for a leak.’

Rob nodded slowly. ‘Okay, okay…’

Covert surveillance in their personal space, a novel annoyance in California, had become a hazard at home while they were away. They’d been informed that “unobtrusive security” had been installed at the Insanitude—for their protection, of course. They didn’t know if it went any further, but that was warning enough. No use taking counter-measures either, because then you’d be detected trying to detect the bugs, and that would bring on a fight Ax wasn’t ready for—

‘But, but it’ll be easy to prove it’s been edited and tampered to shit!’ cried Chip. ‘You could never get that quality from outdoor secret cameras!’

‘No reason why not,’ said Sage. ‘The Lavoisiens were part geek with money to burn, an’ low-light digital video isn’t the cutting edge of spy-tech. Yeah, of course it’s tampered, thank you very much, but it looks to us as if it’s based on genuine footage. We just never thought of this, it never crossed our tiny minds. Okay, you probably need a second look.’

‘No!’ wailed Allie, horrified. ‘We do not! My God, that was awful!’

‘Ooh, I dunno. I like the bit where he calls us “young”.’

Allie, down on the floor in the front row, looked up and caught the bleak set of Sage’s beautiful mouth. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I was just shocked.’

‘’S okay.’

‘It’s shocking,’ agreed Ax. ‘Can’t fault them on that.’

‘Did you fire on anybody that was unarmed?’ asked Anne-Marie, seriously.

Thanks, AM. That’s an excellent illustration of the problem.

‘It was a combat situation, Ammy, and we were insanely outnumbered. I think not, but I wouldn’t swear we always stopped to ask.’

‘Imagine,’ remarked Verlaine, in hollow tones of awe. ‘Imagine it’s the year 2003, and two righteous moral high ground international rockstars have been videoed live, wasting Greenpeace activists on an Natural Born Killas murder spree. Words can’t express the dynamite.’

‘Ideally it would be Bono and the Edge,’ added Chip, getting into the idea. ‘For the fullest outrage. And maybe they should desecrate a church—’

From the microglance that flashed between Ax and Sage, this last ridiculous suggestion was a terrible thing to say. So terrible it almost cracked them up.

Silence fell.

Fiorinda broke it. ‘Proving it’s tampered won’t help, Chip. They get their shocking movie into every American home, no problem there because it’s media folk who are running this. Our side protests, the opposition admits there may have been some enhancement: and it’s immaterial, because the impression has been made.’

‘The bad, bad, thing,’ Ax went on, ‘is that they’ll say Fred authorised our raid. It isn’t true, he did not. But then they’ll say he knew, and didn’t stop us, and they may have some kind of evidence of that.’

‘Does Harry know?’ wondered DK, suddenly. ‘Does this explain his silence?’

Harry Lopez was the virtual movie producer with White House connections, who had invited Ax and his friends to Hollywood, on the pretext that he was making a biopic about the Reich. He’d been acting as President Fred Eiffrich’s errand boy, and the real issue had been rather more serious: an outbreak of Celtic style ritual murders, a suspected rogue Pentagon project; a trail of strange events that had eventually led Ax and Sage to their assault on that desert stronghold: where the occult suicide warriors were holding Fiorinda hostage.

The movie project had been real, though, and a vital component in Fred’s charm offensive, setting up Ax Preston, champion of the sane way to face the future, as his Poster Boy in Europe. Rivermead had been scheduled for global release, last time they’d heard. But Harry had gone very quiet, in recent weeks—

‘Yeah, Harry knows,’ said Sage, with resigned conviction. ‘He knows all about this fuck-up, promise you that. Poor kid.’

‘But those bastards were insane!’ Chip burst out.‘They were disembowelling each other, in the hope of creating a magic psychopath like Fiorinda’s dad! They were dead anyway! The US government was about to turn Lavoisier into a glassy hole in the ground! How can a video of Ax and Sage, er, okay, killing some of them, be a weapon in a smear campaign?’

‘It wouldn’t have worked a year ago,’ Fiorinda agreed. ‘But then the A team did what they did, and ended the oil wars at a stroke with zero US casualties. To a lot of US voters that’s a very positive image. So now the lunatics formerly known as the Profit Motive And Business as Usual Tendency have joined hands with the lunatics formerly known as the Occult Terrorists. The Lavoisiens are no longer monsters, they are practically Moral Majority. They didn’t murder anyone, their victims were volunteers. Besides, they weren’t even getting anywhere with their weird project, they were just well-meaning self-immolating fantasists… That’s the story, it’s the story we told ourselves: and if we could change it, especially the last bit, I’d rather not.’

Sometimes Fiorinda’s trademark irony could be chilling.

‘The letter we can’t show you,’ said Ax, breaking another uneasy silence. ‘Claims that Baal the Black Dragon contacted Fred’s enemies months ago. They’d already spotted I was a weak link, and designed a smear campaign about Fred’s precious Ax Preston, the violent troublemaker, so they had everything in place.’

‘Who’s Baal?’ asked Dora. ‘Sorry, I’ve forgotten.’

‘One of the Lavoisien leaders, it doesn’t matter. What a gift eh? So, the only question is when. Traditionally it’ll be around the end of the summer. At least Fred’s team gets a good chance to prepare their defence.’

‘Okay.’ Felice rolled her eyes and counted on her fingers, ‘There’s a huge scandal, that could potentially break Fred in November. Both sides know about it. But they made this gentlemen’s agreement to keep it quiet for six months—?’

‘Yeah.’ Ax’s eyes were fixed, absently, on the blank grey screen. ‘It’s weird, but US Presidential Campaign teams know how the monster called democracy works, if anybody does. I’m guessing that if our intelligence is reliable, neither side sees this as a surefire death blow. What they see is that the odds have changed, and they both want the time to make best use of that. Sadly, it’s the bad guys who now have the edge, and Sage and I gave it to them—’

‘You didn’t!’ declared Verlaine, loyally. ‘Baal did that!’

A muscle tightened, at the corner of Ax’s jaw.

‘Well, that’s it. That’s all we know, and probably almost certainly we’ll hear nothing more until the day story surfaces. Could be never for all we can tell.’

‘Maybe Fred’s already cut a deal,’ suggested Rob.

‘This is just another round of vicious squabbling over the deckchairs on the Titanic,’ muttered DK, rolling his eyes. ‘It’s disgusting.’

‘But Ax, what are we supposed to do?’ demanded Cherry—

‘Nothing. This is a need to know session only. There’s something Sage and I have to do: which is get my family out of jail, soon as we can set it up, just in case we’re extradited—’ The Few recoiled, visibly and as one: all eyes turned on him in panic and reproach. ‘Okay, okay, not that bad, but I’ll have to move things along.’ He sighed. ‘It’s the way things work. You do what you have to do, in an emergency, then later you have to answer for it, when all the rules you ignored are back in place.’

The living room was like Fiorinda’s music room: a sketch of its old self. The same old-fashioned gas stove, same big red couches. A couple of pictures had been returned to the walls, but there were no books, no details. The Falmouth Jade, the ancient stone axe the Second Chamber had sent to California, to prove they wanted Ax to come home, stood propped on a stand on the mantelpiece.

It looked lonely.

‘There goes Hollywood virtual stardom,’ murmured Verlaine.

‘Shit, and I was counting on that,’ Cherry complained. ‘My little copyself was all stretch limousines, botox and boob-jobs and you guys were eating my dust—’

The Few groaned and cat-called, on auto-pilot. An hour ago, if you’d asked them, they’d have told you the support of the US President didn’t mean much. They were back in England now. Back to Crisis Management Gigs and the Volunteer Initiative; and the so-called Leader of the Free World was far away. They didn’t want to feel the shock of loss they felt. A background warmth was gone. Gone, that half-guilty feeling, (after the terrible cost of what the A Team did), that at last the very worst was over. Normal service would never be resumed, but there would be no Neurobomb. There would be no more nightmare “magic”.

Allie cleared her throat. ‘This Black Dragon, how much did he know?’

‘All good,’ said Fiorinda cheerfully. ‘Okay, I’m Rufus O’Niall’s daughter, and there are quarters in which I’ll never live that down, but I’m not guilty of being a magic psychopath. The Lavoisiens tried their hardest, and they couldn’t find a trace of anything like that in my head. Hey, get a grip, people. We don’t know that Fred’s enemies would try to start the research again, much less that they’d succeed. With any luck, they just want their own bloke in the White House. They haven’t noticed that modern civilisation walked off a cliff, so they see no harm in playing good old fashioned dirty.’

‘Are you going to be all right, going on stage today, pet?’ asked Anne-Marie, looking up at her in unctuous concern. ‘I’m only a little bit psychic, and this has reelly upset me, that’s why I ask.’

Ax and Sage set their teeth.

‘I’ll be fine, thanks.’

‘How will the Second Chamber react?’ asked Chip. ‘I mean, if that video does turn up on the airwaves? Have we any idea?’

Ax shrugged. ‘Not a clue. It could even do us good if Fred publicly disowns us, as I think he must. The House would have to stop calling us dupes of Babylon—’

‘Shame,’ sighed DK. ‘I like “dupes of Babylon”.’ He frowned. ‘What about this Preston Family rescue operation? Can you tell us anything more?’

‘Only that it’ll be fine and you’re not involved,’ said Sage, with finality.

‘Don’t feel bad,’ Fiorinda told the room, dryly. ‘Nor am I.’

Ax and Sage, shoulder to shoulder, looked mutinous and said nothing. Something was wrong. The bad news had been delivered. A certain edginess and gloom, that they’d noticed in their leaders since the sudden return from Paris, was explained. But that wasn’t it. Not a fabricated scandal that might never emerge. Not the return of the Neurobomb threat. What was it?

What was bugging Ax and Sage, separating them even from Fiorinda?

‘Ax, you guys are not buying this shit, are you?’ began Rob, uneasily. ‘You’re not psychos, you’re not to blame. You had to do that.’

But Rob, as everyone knew, had never picked up a lethal weapon in his life.

The entryphone chimed, a security crew voice announced Roxane. Soon s/he was at the door, which had to be unlocked for hir, by hand. The veteran critic, post-gendered survivor of uncounted musical revolutions, entered with a sweep of hir silver and ebony cane and a swirl of Dantesque robes: raising hir eyebrows at this curious ceremony. S/he took a seat on a red couch beside Verlaine, settling hir bones with a caution that belied the rakish swagger, and the splendour of hir make-up.

‘Sorry I’m late, m’dears. It takes me such a time to make myself decent these days.’ S/he grimaced like a Kabuki mask at the locked door. ‘Well, is it safe?’

‘Safe as we know how,’ said Ax, grinning.

He told the Reich’s court philosopher the story.

‘How very annoying. Am I to view the corpus delicti?’

So Sage had his wish: it was twilight in the desert again, and the predators were hunting. Fiorinda watched her lovers. What were they looking for, when they studied this clip of tampered record, frame by frame, over and over? Some crucial detail that would promise them they were innocent?

‘It has a brash, synthetic, Sergio Leone appeal,’ boomed Rox, ‘but I prefer the Harry Lopez cartoon. Let me see… Clearly we need to discredit the Manson-oid cultists, who have somehow become sympathetic. Surely that won’t be difficult? At least one of their horribly tortured victims was not a volunteer, I believe?’

Roxane had stayed at home when the rest of them went to California, and this had opened a slight distance, which didn’t seem to be growing less. It was as if s/he still believed in a world where the leaders of the revolution sat around a circle of schoolroom tables. The Three announced the latest disaster, outlined their desperate plan, and somehow another battle was won, somehow victory stayed in prospect—

The Reich’s survival had become a war of fixed fronts. Nothing moved.

‘’Fraid tha’s not relevant, Rox,’ said Sage, politely. ‘It’s Fred Eiffrich’s problem, not ours. The Internet Commissioners jus’ thought we’d like to know.’

‘Discredit them?’ muttered Verlaine. ‘My God. Sounds like nailing Al Capone for tax fraud. Rox, you don’t get it. I still wake sweating and blubbering, from dreams where the Lavoisiens succeeded in their selfless project—’

Ax cut him off by reaching for the remote. ‘Well, you’ve all seen it, and there’s nothing more to say, so I’m going to destroy this before it gets us into more trouble. I hope you’ve memorised your favourite moments, Sage.’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

They did not step down from the train, but it was supposed to look as though they did. Their b-loc avatars arrived in a Reading Station VIP lounge, out of sight, and met the public on the forecourt. Paper-flower-bedecked open cars carried them to Richfield Avenue gate, where they disembarked and strolled through the crush, under arches twined with living vines of rose and honeysuckle. There were banners flying and drummers drumming; a cordon of minders gathered gifts and messages, and obscured the fact that the leaders of the Reich could not be touched.

Soon all celebrities will make personal appearences this way!

‘Hey Ax, hey, hey, Ax! What d’you think of Glasto pre-empting you?’

The Mayday festival at Glastonbury had opened at sunset on Beltane eve.

‘Dunno about the Beltane thing, it’s the first of May to me. But that’s Glasto: any old fakery that’ll extract money from weekend-hippies.’

‘Hey, hey Sage! Hey, Fio! This way! How about leaking something about Toby’s Masque??’

Traditionally, the secrecy of the finale was fiercely protected—

‘Not as good jokes as mine use’ter have,’ grinned Sage.

‘I’m appearing a concept,’ confided Fiorinda, capriciously awarding this questioner her most fabulous smile. ‘It’s very, very moving.’

They reached the Palace of Rivermead, multi-coloured lo-rise Gaudi cathedral, built for Ax by the Counterculture’s chief architect, in the glory days. This was Ax’s citadel, which had fallen to the enemy: occupied by Rufus through the terrible Green Nazi winter, and here were the victors, returning to their own. It seemed there should have been wild applause or a solemn fanfare. Instead there was only silence, sudden and complete, quenching that un-Reich-like pap-storm.

The Triumvirate mounted the steps by the Dead Cars sculpture; the Few close behind. The Second Chamber couldn’t steal and rewrite everything.

They passed through the flower-wreathed doors, masked by minders, and disappeared. Upstairs there was a VIP reception, but the b-loc avatars wouldn’t be attending due to a technical hitch in the live path. Mr Preston’s family were there instead (except for Ax’s mother, and the new baby, who had to stay back in the fortress for security reasons…) If truth be known, Ax might have conceded this point, if the suits had pushed a little harder; and if they hadn’t been so determined to rub his nose in the hostage situation. His girl had won her lonely battle. He would hate this dump forever, but he could have walked into the slimy reception smiling.

If truth be known, he’d been tempted to ditch the whole b-loc idea, because he needed this big day. But the last thing he could afford right now was a trail of suspicious sudden concessions; so never give an inch.

The split-screen effect wasn’t painful. It was hardly noticeable, because consciousness is a point, not a line: still there was a collective sigh of relief as the Few lost the remote site. Rob and Felice reached to tug off their headsets.

‘Sorry,’ came Sage’s voice in their ears. ‘No pass-outs.’

Their other selves had warped to a different location on the live-path. They were in Reading arena, standing on uncannily green grass, in the central piazza of some fairground, outdoors, Bohemian city. The air smelt of spilled beer and burned beet-sugar plastic, and roiled with conflicting musics. Hordes of campers, plus further hordes of ticketed punters, swirled around: body paint and fancy-dress glowing in the cool sunshine. There stood Red Stage with its towers, and the tiny figures of some hapless early band. Orange Stage, Yellow Stage (also known as Scary Stage, because of its accident record); the cobalt cone of the Blue Lagoon. Violet Alley with a new crop of rides, the Green Room where the comics must still be standing up; the smoky, jazzy, Mood Indigo tent. Only the eau-de-nil geodesic dome of the Zen Self tent was missing—its conspicuous absence dispelling a fleeting, rather horrifying, impression that they’d died, and this was their eternal home. The avatars looked around, and saw that they were visible. Heads were turning, elbows nudging. They saw each other, just slightly transparent, clothed in stagecraft holograms; in characteristic finery.

The dress-up was necessary. Unless you took some vicious drugs, your b-loc appearance at the remote site could revert to the self-image held in the somatosensory cortex, in a lapse of concentration: a goblin shape, all hands and mouth and genitals.

Sage wore his sand-coloured suit, with the glitter of gold in it (in reality, long defunct), and Aoxomoxoa’s living skull mask. He felt the ethereal tug of the mask’s presence, and saw beside him a sixteen year old boy, not very tall, Celtic tattooing around his left eye. Making a touching, futile effort to look like he did this all the time… A familiar joy rushed upon him: the sheer delight of seeing those mountains of crunched numbers turned inside out, all this… The freedom to play with these momentous toys! Did I say my rockstar career was over? Musta been on drugs.

‘Now, where’s my band?’ drawled Aoxomoxoa, hands in his pockets, plunging gladly into the forgotten mode. ‘I know I left them round here somewhere.’

The Heads, who were hovering around the mark, counting everybody safely in, and shielding their arrival, grinned broadly. Skull masked, they couldn’t help it.

They were not free. A shimmer in the air, on either side of their remote-site field of view, warned them of their limits. Anyone who strayed was liable to vanish. But the live path was cunningly constructed: it looked as if they were. They mingled with the crowds in graded backstage corrals, strolled across the arena, joined the camp-councillors in the Blue Lagoon. Their touch was thistledown, they could neither eat nor drink; their mood had a tendency to break up, like a bad phone signal, into uncertainty and dread—but they leant on Aoxomoxoa’s exuberant energy, just like long ago, until confidence and ease became genuine.

The backstage B-Z listers were very touched that Ax and the Few were socialising with them instead of the grandees: and making a stand for creative rights. The techno-hippie camp councillors were thrilled, and talked of having the whole site live for next year. Ax enlightened them firmly about the cost, and was taken aback by the starry-eyed gaze of a certain hairy apparatchik—

‘What’s up with you, Joffrey—?’

‘You sound just like Ax,’ exclaimed the editor of Weal, proud-to-be-annoying hippie vidzine. He must have missed Ax terribly: the Second Chamber simply ignored opposition in the media, except when arresting journalists or destroying an issue.

‘Well, thanks. Oh, yeah, and while I remember. I saw “Ax is back and he has a little (hit) list”. With the border of thorny roses, SA80s and the coffins? Fucking cut that out. I have no hit list. And don’t give me any arse about the “freedom of the Press”. I don’t believe in it. Not until, if ever, you lot grow up—’

‘JUST like Ax,’ sighed Joffrey, dewy as a kid meeting Santa.

They’d been looking forward to this b-loc Mayday with varying degrees of tech-failure terror, existential unease, and bitter resentment of the Second Chamber. But the blow they’d just suffered, that nobody else knew about, ignited them. They were manic: lucid dreamers, riding the wild disaster-wave as they had so often done before. They were deep in the past, bemoaning the terrible fate of having to go on stage in this crap novelty form: hologram shadows playing virtual instruments, probably get canned, and serve us right—

Chip, Verlaine and Cherry lay on their backs, gazing up at the sky, insouciantly indifferent to the fascinated glances of the crowd. ‘That thing Fiorinda said about the Drumbeg event?’ remarked Chip. ‘At the Neurobomb meeting?’

‘What thing?’

‘I shall quote. When perfect “fusion” is reached, when a coherent, solved, human self becomes one with the state of all states, then it cuts both ways, and the state of all states becomes a conscious mind. And it’s none time-bound, and the person reaching fusion was you know who. Does that mean Aoxomoxoa now actually is God? Always has been God, as of that night at Drumbeg?’

‘That is a very cool idea,’ murmured Verlaine.

‘I see a difficulty,’ drawled Cherry, slow Cornish. She could really do the Sage voice now, better than either Chip or Ver. ‘Sage didn’t make it all the way.’

‘Oh, right. He didn’t. Shit, tha’s a shame.’

‘The big job may still be vacant!’

‘Wait a minute. I thought you guys believed in Jesus-God.’

‘We do,’ explained Verlaine, patiently. ‘Emotionally. But we can fool around with the concept, conceptually, when it’s interesting—’

‘Whoever first reaches total fusion,’ Cherry murmured, half closing her eyes against the split-screen; Mayday sun pinwheeling through her virtual lashes. ‘That person becomes God and creates the universe. Wow.’

They took the stage together, just before the Masque. It was liquid night, the cold spring stars washed out by rape-oil fueled stage lights, a sea of round eyes and mouths catching gleams, in the gulf beyond the security cordon. They understood that this compressed, “supergroup set” was a put-down, meant to diminish “Ax and his Few”: but the Reading crowd didn’t see it that way. They yelled Ax’s name insanely, louder and louder, until they realised he was waiting for them to shut up. Ax was on stage, and equally back in Brixton consulting with the techs, watching himself on a monitor, saying yeah, that’s it, give me those values. So bizarre, such a new feeling—

‘You know,’ he remarked, head bent over the neck of his Fender, a sleek wing of dark hair falling forward, the sleeves of his dark red suit jacket pushed up, Keef Richard style. ‘I thought I was done with this. Almost cut my hair, if you know what I mean. Thought it was time to become a proper President, and do nothing meaningful for the rest of my entire life. I thought, tonight, I’d go through the motions, and you’d be nice, for old time’s sake. But I dunno. Maybe what we need is not less rock and roll around here. Maybe we need…more.’

Knowing as he spoke, sudden certainty, that this was the last time. Never again. Whereever he would be next Mayday, he would not be standing here—

Fuck tomorrow, that’s my crowd, you bastards.

The Fender screamed. Ax swung around to face Fiorinda, and they fell on the music with utter, brilliant savagery, such a pas de deux between punk diva and guitar-man, as no one had seen in their lives before—

Back in Brixton as they lost the remote site, Dora lunged for the baby-alarm, which had been flashing for some time. She held the ancient plastic brick out to Anne-Marie.

‘It’s for you, Ammy.’

It was late, and the babysitters were losing it. Anne-Marie’s bender-rats did not know the meaning of the word bedtime. They just got more and more tired and hateful, until they fell over. AM believed this was the natural way.

‘Hey, Ammy—!’

Ammy blinked, and gazed at the brick. ‘I don’t like to be with my babies when I’m on drugs. I’m too sensitive, I can’t relate to them. You better go.’

Smelly Hugh was nodding, eyes shut and a beatific smile, probably jamming with old Tom again: but he never did childcare, anyway. Meanwhile, thought Ax, marvelling at the selfishness, it’s my office the little darlings are trashing. He felt he ought to practice fatherhood, and get good at it. He moved, and realised he was soaked in sweat: glanced at his watch, and found it was past midnight.

Where the fuck was I? Where did the time go?

‘Don’t worry, Dor. I’ll sort them out.’

‘No, no. It’s okay.’

Dora gave AM a smouldering glare (entirely useless) and touched Ax’s shoulder as she passed, briefly bewildered at the solidity of her own smooth brown hand, seeing the sheeny red of Ax’s old best suit, imposed on a scruffy brown KEEP THINGS COMPLICATED sweater.

Is real me here? Or has real me just vanished? What does b-loc mean—

She left the room. ‘Dora has left the room,’ announced Kevin Verlaine, softly.

Everyone laughed, for no reason. B-loc sets were tugged off and heaped in a victorious pyramid among the tired buffet plates. They’d forgotten what it was like to play the Reading crowd, to feel that whoosh of history coming back at you. Wine was poured, food attacked, they were ravenous, hey it’s so quiet, let’s have some music—

Fiorinda and Sage stayed put. The Oratorio had struck the crowd as a little slow, after the Reich’s set. That was their poor taste, no doubt to be firmly corrected when the reviews came out. The soloists themselves still felt the resonance of that music, solemn and self-satisfied and innocent, and in a moment its banality would return to them, but just now it seemed in context: powerful, sad and true. Banal as the National Anthem, after Ax’s wailing Hendrixed-solo, traditional now as God Save The Queen: when the hush fell, when it was time to sing. Sixty thousand voices, millions more at the Big Screen locations, pleading for what we wish we were. For an impossible mercy: word perfect and as tuneful as the English can ever get.

Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering…

And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,

And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

They touched fingertips: Sage grinning fit to split his beautiful face. Fiorinda looked down at her skirts, surprised that the silver and blue and green costume she’d been wearing for The World had disappeared, and the smoky-opal party dress her avatar had been wearing gone too. Dammit, I swore I’d never do costume changes.

‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Sage. ‘It’s a psychedelic drug. Tell me, did we execute our stage coup? I’ve forgotten.’

‘Me too. Short term memory waits for no one. Oh, wait, I think we decided it would be more fun to play it straight, the way we were told. And pre-emptively drown it, with a howling rock and roll set right before…’

‘Yeah, yeah, you’re true, now I remember.’

B-loc is a drug. You don’t notice the effect with a phone call, but significant activity and it’s a riot. I suppose people will get used to it, if we ever develop those industrial applications. Or there will be a lite version, for everyday.

‘Tastes and smells, Fiorinda?’

Roxane was watching her with acute, forensic interest…

‘Huh?’

‘Is ethereal b-loc communal-stardom going to be enough?’

‘It’s better than feeding on human flesh, Rox.’

The party broke up. The Few headed off in their different directions, the techs took their leave. Rox, who didn’t leave a comfortable chair lightly, lingered, waiting for hir taxi to be announced. Ax and Sage sat on either side the babe, plying her with buffet tidbits in distinctly sexual foreplay. If you hang out with rockstars, you get used to being bathed in post-performance pheromones.

‘I hate to interupt,’ said Rox. ‘But congratulations on another triumph… Yet some might say you delivered a dangerous snub to the Second Chamber today, Ax. Mr Preston comes to Reading, but he won’t touch his guitar, and he forces an Ultra Green Neo-Feudalist government to accept his futuristic tech.’

‘We’ve done b-loc on stage before. We did it in California.’

‘Ax, don’t be obtuse. That was the Chosen Few, bi-locating briefly to the Hollywood Bowl, run by I-Systems US. A very different kettle of fx.’

Ax ate a forkful of chicken. ‘What are you getting at, Rox?’

‘I know the cover story, but many observers who analyse Mayday won’t be dwelling on a contractual dispute. They assume you are above such things. Some will say today was your Presidency in a nutshell. You’re determined to make trouble, but you have no hands-on power. Literally, no muscle. Is that really what you want?’

‘Am I supposed to practice the answer I’d give in public? Okay, I’d say…damn right. I want to be insubstantial. It’s my intention to leave government to the government, encourage good practice in social welfare by gentle persuasion, and put my influence behind techno-green lifestyle choices—’

‘Very good. And the trouble-making?’

Ax looked up: a gleam of grim amusement. ‘I hadn’t finished. That’s my agenda, which I mean to follow. But not straight off… Ooh, there goes the entry phone. It must be your taxi.’

Marlon had dropped out of b-loc during The World, felled by slumber, and had stumbled off to bed as soon as the show was over. When Rox finally condescended to leave, that was the lot of them, thank God.

‘It went well,’ said Ax. ‘Do you think?’

‘Oh, yeah. Weird being so old, and how I still love it.’

‘Me too.’

Fiorinda reappeared, having shown their last guest to the door. The men were sitting quietly, hands clasped, enjoying the silence. Sage knew she would make straight for Ax, and she did: her whole body alive with single-minded hunger. Ah, female choice. It’s a fabulous thing to watch. Even better when you know you’re next.

THREE

Small Ax

The stately home was quite a pile. It stretched interminable, crusted with artistic fortifications, along the base of a low green hill; a red-brick Gormenghast. From the South Terrace formal lawns extended to a drop like a tank trap, a tree-scattered park and woodland beyond. The turrets of a gatehouse could be glimpsed in the distance; through fresh young foliage. The village, Wallingham Camp, was a mile or so off to the west. A drive, or private road, crossed the park, before sweeping around to join the main approach: bounded by deer fences so tall they were an eyesore. Must be some well-hard three-day-eventer stags around these parts.

A few sheep, rare breed pet animals, were grazing.

Make a list

Identify somewhere the folks would like to live. Forget Bridge House, it’s too late to move them back there, it has a blue plaque and a carpark. (NB. That car park has to go. Okay, it’s reserved for essential private transport, but what that means is, one law for the elite, one for the rest. The people don’t know I had no control over what happened to my childhood home, so it makes me look like a right hypocrite.)

‘I always thought of Kent as flat,’ he remarked.

‘It’s flatter by the sea,’ said his companion, a fleshy man, in Islamic dress but bareheaded, about Ax’s own age: his red mouth like a fruit in the middle of a full set beard, waves of thick dark hair crowding round his face. This was Faud Hassim, once the front man of an Islamic guitar band from Bridgwater called The Assassins.

The Assassins had been very encouraging company for a mixed race outfit from Taunton called The Chosen Few—a year or so behind them on the trail. It had all gone sour in the days of Dissolution, after Ax converted, and Faud found himself in the stinging position of being the other Radical Islamic Rockstar, not the famous one. There had been nasty scenes, dirty acts of sabotage: a night at Reading, hard to forget, that had ended in a planned and ugly free-for-all. Yet it was Ax Preston who’d paved the way for Faud’s present success, ironically enough. He’d left the music and gone into politics. Currently he was a leading “Rebel” MP, who also filled the post of the Government’s Adviser on Countercultural Affairs: vacated after the fall of the Green Nazis by the unlamented Benny Preminder.

He wasn’t a big fan of Ax Preston; still carried a rancorous loser’s attitude around, with absolutely bugger all justification. But Ax had more tolerance for the resentment these days. He could see that from Faz’s point of view, fate had just been damned unfair.

They were on the terrace together because it was Ramadan, and the rest of the party was eating lunch. Ax’s minders—barmy squaddies from the Insanitude—sat placid on the low wall a few yards away, modestly armed. They were a compromise. Ax liked to drive his car alone, walk down the street alone, and in England who had ever been able to stop him? But these days he was forced to provide his own security, just to keep an eye on the inevitable government spooks.

The barmies had a Shakespearian look: sitting there patiently idle.

‘When are you three planning to move in here?’

‘Not immediately.’ Ax left the balustrade and strolled.

Faud kept pace beside the President, maintaining a slightly surly air. ‘This place isn’t big enough?,’ he inquired. ‘You’re holding out for a private castle?’

‘Nah. We’re urbanites. Don’t want to leave London.’

The terrace was a lengthy stroll. It was the kind of house that you might never leave, thought Ax, as he kept up his side of a stilted conversation. The women, naturally, would rarely get further than that tank-trap. Indoors there would be long expeditions for little serving girls with coals. Well, scratch the coals… He glanced at his watch, an equally fogeyish replacement for his moon phase Seiko, the one the kidnappers had nicked: old friend that he still missed. He never felt hunger pangs in Ramadan, he just started to get the running on empty feeling, that Sage found so addictive. Sharp set, as the old phrase goes. The fasting gives you an edge.

‘We should be praying, loudly, outside the dining room windows.’

‘Testifying our witness,’ agreed Faz, gloomily.

They were alone in their observance, as they’d been alone for midday prayer. The shock of having no oil in the bank had cooled a lot of modern Muslim ardour in the Diaspora. Attendance at Friday prayer had plunged, across the former UK. As much as you wish it could, no organised religion can thrive on spirituality alone—

Faz Hassim, far from conventionally devout in the old days, had the air of sticking to his ethnic garb in defiant mourning.

‘We’ll soon be as dickless as the Christians. Can it be God’s will?’

They laughed together: because it was the fasting month; because as different as their allegiance to Islam seemed, they both cared about such things.

Faz unbent, allowing vulgar curiosity to unfurl. ‘How difficult is it, living with non-Muslim partners?’

‘It’s not a popular topic. I keep my observance to myself.’

‘Where are they today, Sage and Fiorinda? Don’t they respect your family?’

‘Sage may turn up later.’

‘None of the Few could make it, either?’

‘It wouldn’t be appropriate, Faz. This is not a rockstar occasion.’

Ax looked up at the house, the first storey laden with blue torrents of wisteria in flower. A south face. The red and white roses in the terrace beds were opening, undamaged by the long winter. It reminded him of Bridge House, his lost heimat. Bridge House inflated in a disquieting dream.

Nearly time to go in—

Faz was peering at him with earnest curiosity. Well, now what?

‘Do you ever feel left out? On the sidelines, watching Fiorinda and Sage do their fevered, romantic Cathy and Heathcliff thang?’

‘All the time,’ said the President, long resigned to tactless questioning about the Hot Couple. (He pined like a lost child for Sage’s presence at his side, in place of the bearded Assassin, but that was his own business.) ‘Feeling left out is the essential threesome experience. Our relationship is like democracy, you know: a terrible idea, except for the alternatives.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Faz, embarrassed.

‘That’s okay.’ Ax glanced at his watch again, and at last came the deferential summons in his ear. ‘Time to go in. C’mon, let’s get into character—’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Listen, Faz, could you do something for me?’

‘What is it?’

‘This afternoon, could you talk to my mum? I’ll be occupied, and I don’t like her to get ignored. Just stay by her, could you?’

‘Okay. I’ll do that.’

Wallingham, built in 1906 for a newspaper millionaire, in erudite, oversized imitation of an Elizabethan fortified house, was supposed to be a National Treasure. Ax didn’t see it. Outdoors the place was like secure hospital thinly disguised as Hampton Court. The indoors was undeniably beautiful, but not to his taste: Art Nouveau in full grande horizontale spate, obsessively restored (there were records: you don’t blow a fortune on a place this size and forget to keep a scrapbook). It was a sumptuous period stage-set they walked into, with black-and-white uniformed servants everywhere you looked. They were directed to the Clouded Yellow Drawing Room, the one with the Klimt wall-hangings, to join the infidel.

Back to that list—

Get Jor and Milly to approve the real estate. Let’s face it, it’s those two we need to please. Once approved, quietly aquire said property. No money? No problem. Our credit is good, and if not, Sage’s dad will stake us & won’t feel a thing

Meanwhile, poke around and turn up a face-saving excuse for the move

This all takes time…

Ax waved aside a flurry of respects (maliciously, he knew this set loved to play at courtiers), went over to Milly and sat on the arm of her clouded-yellow satin armchair. She’d lost weight again while he’d been in the US; she was looking very stylish. The last traces of old, down-dressing drummer Milly, with the don’t-care haircut and the gardener’s hands, had vanished. It was an obscure blow.

‘Okay, Mil?’

There was nothing sexual left between them, not a twinge. But there was something… When Ax was tense he hated to be touched, a legacy of the hostage experience. She had not touched him, as he endured the social greetings circus. She did not touch him now as she looked up, locked hands in her lap. The new baby, Milly and Jordan’s second child, wasn’t here. He was with his Kettle grandparents. Ax had discovered this only when he arrived, and he had not been pleased—

‘I’m okay. Ax, there’s something I meant tell you.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Don’t be pissed off with Jor. It was my idea to send Troy away.’

‘Well, congratulations. Listen, could I use that? You didn’t want me and the baby and Jordan together at the same public party, something on those lines?’

‘Use, use, use… You’re a bastard.’

‘Yeah, and I’m sorry. It’s your call. But may I?’

‘Anything that helps, Ax.’

He nodded, smiled briefly, and moved on to join his brothers, who were standing together in front of the summer fireplace, where a huge jardinière of cut flowers sprawled under elven swirls and swathes of beaten pewter.

‘Y’all right, Jor? All right, Shay?’

They talked a little. None of them had heard from Tot (Torquil), for a while. The fourth Preston brother, who came between Jordan and Shane, lived in Canada. He had an engineering degree and a proper job, he’d never been into music.

‘Lucky bastard,’ said Jordan, sulkily. ‘Me, all I wanted was to be a famous rockstar. I knew I had it in me. But it had to turn into something else, didn’t it?’

Trust Jordan: he’d win prizes for Most Inappropriate Time To Pick A Fight. But Ax was not going to snap back. Today his heart was full of the knowledge that what he’d done to his family was terrible. You follow the light of destiny, you think you know the price. Then the real price comes and smacks you, from the last direction you expected, and you see it was obvious, all along.

‘D’you remember when we learned to play together, Jor? You and me and Mil in her mum’s garage, and then the four of us in the basement at Bridge House? How we’d talk all night about being Stone-Free Futuristic Artisans, firstborn of the new?’

‘No,’ said Jordan. ‘I remember how you used to talk, and it was crap.’

‘Don’t be like that,’ pleaded Shane, the peacemaker. ‘Did you see the ON AIR signs, Ax? They’re giving us a tv show, in here. Live at Wallingham, a quality new music showcase.’ He jerked his chin at Jordan. ‘He’s going to be the host.’

Ax looked, and saw the violence that had been done to the distant, watered-silk yellow walls. There were several boxy, retro studio signs, knocked up in the gaps between fabulously valuable pictures.

‘When’s this due to happen?’

‘Dunno. Soon.’

‘Bet you’re jealous,’ said Jordan, with a smouldering glare.

‘I’m consumed with envy.’

Then the Prime Minister came up, with his willowy Anglo wife.

Greg Mursal was medium height, broad in the chest, with a bruiser’s ruddy, thickened features and vigorous hair cut en brosse. He had a Celtic tattoo job on his cheeks and chin, which to Ax combined strangely with his sleek business suit.

The wife, Hilary Sallet, was in finance of some kind.

Ax had heard this man’s name for the first time the day he was preparing to fight a bloody, mediaeval battle in the Vale of Avalon. Greg Mursal, who he? How come he’s my Prime Minister? With naivety that seemed incredible now, he’d thought someone Ax Preston didn’t know about couldn’t be important. But the smoke clears, and it’s the Greg Mursals who come out on top. Dissolution, Crisis, the monster called Rufus O’Niall, none of this had made much of an impression on Greg and his kind. The government of England was what it had always been: a feeding ground, rich pickings for the proper people.

And how did they see Ax? An underclass youth-culture celebrity, boosted briefly into power by extraordinary times; who was now their property.

‘Fiorinda says Fred’s going to kill the Neurobomb stone dead,’ said the PM, ‘if he gets his second term. Is that what you believe too, Ax?’

‘I did until I heard it was an election promise.’

‘Hahaha, okay! Now, can we talk about you three moving in here?’

‘Maybe this isn’t quite the moment,’ murmured Hilary.

‘You know it’s what the country wants,’ Greg plunged onwards. ‘They want their Nouveau Royal Family, you don’t mind me calling the Prestons that? Living together in a beautiful, landmark palace. C’mon Jordan, tell the man. You’ll love it, Ax. You have your state of the art recording studio, your immix theatre, pool, sports courts, wonderful gardens, the most gorgeous countryside in England all around, and you don’t have to lift a finger, because Lady Anne takes care of everything.’

Lady Anne Moonshadow, an old lady with a long record on the Right and Occult wing of the Green movement, was the current Speaker of the House of Commons; something of a break with tradition as she was not an MP. She wouldn’t be seen today. As the Prestons’ Housekeeper, she stayed tactfully out of the way when they entertained. According to the Weal she had a very special, organic relationship with Greg. Maybe they were the same person, in a mystic way.

‘Security’s good too—’ put in Jordan, glumly.

‘I wasn’t going to mention that, but it’s true. Brixton is fine, we all love funky old Brixton, but we have to look after you Ax, and we can’t do that, not the way we should, in the inner city.’ A thought struck the Prime Minister, or he made out it had struck him, widening his eyes as he gripped Jordan’s upper arm. ‘Have you told Ax about “Wallingham Live”? You’ll love this, Ax. A showcase for new music, er, interesting, Indie music. Recorded as live, with an audience, in this very room. You’re to be the host. Between acts you get a prime-time forum to talk to the people. Any topic you like, absolutely no holds barred—’

Oh, the perfidy of Management. Ax and Jordan, fully interchangeable, looked at each other, for once in reasonable accord. Can you believe this arse?

Ax laughed. ‘Lets talk about it in office time, Greg. Today, I’m celebrating Mum’s birthday. Excuse me.’

Hilary was muttering as Ax walked away: probably telling Greg he’d screwed up, should have waited until Jordan was out of earshot. She was right but it was a saving grace in the man. He makes ridiculous gaffes, thank God for a human fault—

It was quite a crush. Twenty five covers at lunch, and the afternoon guests were still arriving: Ministers, celebrity media folk, fashionable scholars. When the President moved, the focus of the room swivelled to follow him, like a multiple eye on a stalk. They all knew that Ax was powerless, a funky figurehead made of wood, but they had Hollywood minds. He was the money, for as long as he was called ‘President’, and because he’d recently “Headlined on Mainstage”. Whatever that meant. They didn’t have to pretend they liked the music any more, but Mayday was a big event.

Ax strolled and smiled, exchanging words here and there; musing on the ironies of history. The room was full of box-fresh titles, created when David Sale, Prime Minister of Dissolution, had packed his reformed House of Lords with newly made Green peers. His cunning plan had been to divide the dangerous leaders from the Countercultural Movement masses, using the ju-jitsu of those great English vices, greed and snobbery. The joke was on David—who was dead, a casualty of ‘Fergal Kearney’s’ reign. The Green Peers ruled, and the mob did not vote any more.

Straight from green to rotten, didn’t we used to sing that?

The guests whispered about Ax’s private life. If you were Jordan, how would you feel about Milly’s sexy President-exy moving into Wallingham…? Could Ax be little Troy’s father, do the dates fit? Look how sulky Jordan is today, and Milly so nervous. Why aren’t Fiorinda and Sage here? It all fits together. Next to his brother Ax looks old, lean and worn in his shabby best red suit (the President’s austerity is an example to us all). Next to the President, heart-throb Jordan looks soft. If you were Mil, which of them would you pick? What will Fiorinda do, if she loses out?

He reached the far side of the crowd, spoke to his mother and crossed back again, deriving malign amusement from the way he could tug that eye on a stalk to and fro. A bold young fashionista asked how did he like the Wallingham décor.

Ax shook his head. ‘I don’t care for aspic, it’s like eating dolls’ house food.’

She gasped, Oh!, round-eyed, reminding him of Allie, long ago. Maybe that’s where this babe had picked up the mannerism, Allie Marlowe in a magazine.

‘You plan to revision it? What an immense idea! But Wallingham is, like, sacred! How would you revision all this?’

When did it get sacred? I never heard of the place before this year.

‘Ooh, I’ll get back to you. I’ll have to give that some thought.’

By the windows to the terrace his sister Maya was surrounded by admirers (she had to be the belle of this ball). She flashed him a smile: the most solid of his siblings. Ax took the smile, banked it, and decided to inspect a table display of art objets, which placed him beside the Wiccan scholar, Jack Vries.

‘That’s very beautiful,’ said Jack, ‘Could I see it?’

Ax handed over the piece he’d been examining.

It was a small bronze: a hunting dog, seated, full of life; her narrow, graceful head turned to groom her sleek flank, her tail arched over her back. Obviously Celtic, and if not a copy about two thousand years’ old.

‘Very fine,’ said the scholar, Greg’s eminence grise. One of the ‘mistaken patriots’, but rumoured to have served his time: to be up for a Cabinet post in the next reshuffle. Devout Pagan, independently wealthy, (family money from an old Belgian electronics firm). A bit of a mystery man, otherwise. He was more sombre than Ax, in a suit of deep, midnight blue. ‘A lovely example of La Tene, isn’t it?’

‘Isn’t it a find from Wallingham Camp?’

‘Ah, yes, you’re right. In the nineteen twenties, in a back-filled pit at the threshold of the Sanctuary. It’s rare to find a votive offering so well preserved.’

‘I only recently discovered we have a ritual site next door. I’d thought “Wallingham Camp” was a minor hill fort. You know the place well, Jack?’

‘Not well,’ said Vries. He set the statuette back in its place.

‘Nor me. We must take a walk over there, see what we can kick up.’

Faud Hassim, obedient to the bond of the fasting month, sat with Sunny Preston. He had thought Ax’s request strange, this was Ax’s mother’s birthday celebration (infidel habit). But it was true, the old lady had been sidelined, left to look after her grandson. How could a man neglect his mother like this? What had all these showy people to do with a family celebration? Every time you try to admire Ax Preston, he disappoints.

He knew Ax’s widowed mother only by sight: a Christian from the Sudan, with dark skin and crisp greying hair. She rarely appeared in public. At a loss for topics he asked about the problems of running such a huge place, and was surprised to learn she had no part in the housekeeping. It was like living in a hotel, she said. But she wasn’t idle, she was fully occupied preparing for her university course. She and the child had a jigsaw beside them, spread on a scallop-rimmed drum table.

‘I intend to qualify as a lawyer,’ said Ax’s mother, calmly sifting pieces. ‘Though my eldest son threatens he will never speak to me again.’

‘Ax will never speak to you—?’

‘I mean son in law, maybe: Sage hates lawyers. I hope it was a joke. He has the sweetest nature of any man I ever met, but he’s full of mischief, isn’t he?’

For Faz, this was a new view of Aoxomoxoa.

The grandmother worked on the jigsaw. The five-year-old piled pasteboard towers, flicked them over with his thumbnail, and watched—furtively, intently—the burly servants, in their formal black and white: who stood in pairs at the doors of the room, and at every tall window that lead to the terrace. Faud followed the child’s eyes, and experienced a shocking gestalt shift.

Sunny glanced across to where her actual eldest son was talking to Jack Vries. ‘Tell me, Faud. How do you get on with this new method of calculating the Zakat? It’s a torturous work of the devil, according to my Ax.’

Successfully distracted, Faud plunged into a detailed explanation.

Greg got up a party to visit the newly restored Edwardian Real Tennis Court. Maya Preston was observed flirting with Jack Vries: which raised eyebrows. Jack’s sexual tastes were unknown even to his intimates. At four the whole gathering moved outdoors to tables under the lime trees, by the croquet lawn, for tea, and birthday cake and champagne. It was almost warm enough. The younger crowd set up a game.

‘The people want a conservative society,’ declared Greg. ‘With a small ‘c’, of course!’ (his audience chuckled obediently). ‘They’re not afraid of inequality, Ax. And they’re not afraid of Paganism, it’s our natural religion, anyone’ll tell you that, But nothing against Allah, it’s your futuristic tech that scares ’em off.’

‘My husband believes in an organic Counterculture,’ murmured Hilary.

Ax took out a pack of tobacco cigarettes. A flunkey (the kind of flunkey who wears a shoulder holster under his jacket) swooped with a lighter; the President shook his head. He turned the cigarette between his fingers, Mr Preston’s worry beads.

‘I don’t know, Greg. In the old days, the money men and the mediafolk used to say: look, the people want to buy crap music, it’s their choice. But the people didn’t choose the playlist on the radio. They didn’t decide who had the promotion budget, or which bands had the sound turned up on the festival stage. The record company made those decisions: commercial success went to those who knew how to play the system, and that often doesn’t accord with talent, or even ability to play the instruments.’

Greg Mursal grinned. ‘I think you’re kidding yourself, Ax.’

‘Oh, maybe. But that’s not where it ends, you see. What happens next is that criminal corruption moves in, because the system is primed for corruption. Before Dissolution, it was getting ugly. England was like Bob Marley’s Jamaica. The people were making their “choice” among the “artists” who would take a cut from organised crime. That’s why the Chosen Few, and others, didn’t want anything to do with the commercial machinery. We took our music straight to the fans.’

‘And the rest is history—’ murmured someone.

‘I love that!,’ exclaimed the young woman who had accosted Ax earlier, and who had since tried to remain glued to his side, dreaming of a commission to remodel Wallingham interiors. ‘That’s so inspiring!’

‘Mm. I’m not saying, do without the money men. We’ll always need them, to back up our futuristic tech, but their judgement can leave something to be desired—’

A breeze shivered the fresh silk of the linden leaves, a mallet struck a wooden ball with a resounding, Pock!: and suddenly the sound of engines broke the quiet. A convoy appeared from the woods: first a sleek, preposterously long grey van; then several squat, military-looking vehicles, brightly painted and bobbing with multi-coloured balloons. The guests stared like cattle. The barmy minders left their places behind Ax’s deckchair, and moved over to where Sunny Preston and the child (and Faud Hassim) formed a group on their own.

Frowning, chin down, the PM pressed his finger to his ear, one of modern life’s odd, commonplace gestures. His face changed.

Sage was driving the van, wearing hippy-dippy battledress: which took him back. George Merrick beside him was similarly attired. The uniforms were a nostalgic touch, invoking the way the barmy army had earned their reputation—

‘You know what this reminds me of, boss?’ remarked big George.

‘What?’

‘Heaton Park Manchester, on the Rock the Boat tour. It rained like fuck, an’ we took shelter in that folkies’ storytelling tent… Boat People Summer. Fuckin’ frantic times.’ George sighed fondly. ‘Riots in the ports, refugee reception camps burned out, the worst English weather in living memory—’

‘Distance lends enchantment. I don’t remember. I don’t think I was there.’

‘You never remember anything.’ George tipped his head back, ‘Hey, Cack, Bill? You remember the boggart story? In that park with all the mud?’

‘It wasn’t Heaton Park,’ called Bill Trevor, from the measureless caverns of the van’s back quarters. ‘I reckon it was the other park.’

‘With the more mud,’ agreed Peter’s (Cack) Stannen’s serious little voice. ‘But in Manchester the grass grows back faster, it’s the toughest grass in the world. It’s the best place in England for rock festivals.’

‘They kept saying that,’ yelled Bill.

‘You may be right,’ George conceded. ‘Anyway, it was a story about a boggart, kind of house-goblin, piskie they have up there. It was driving a farmer’s household up the wall, so they decided to quit. The family’s out in the yard, their gear piled onto carts. Another farmer drops by, says, what, are you flitting? An’ a weird little voice pipes up, from deep down in one of the carts—’

‘Aye, neighbour, we’re flittin!’ shouted Bill and Peter.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?,’ growled Sage, above the cackling.

‘This isn’t going to work, boss.’

‘It’s not a solution. It’s clearing the ground, so he can work.’

‘You’re soft in the head about him, boss. It doesn’t do to get soft in the head.’

The convoy reached the tank trap and drew up. Four figures, one of them notably tall and slender, emerged from the grey van. They jumped up and down, waving, as if trying to attract the attention of the CCTV cameras that topped the deer fence. Guests began to laugh and clap, realising that the skull masks meant this was Sage’s band. Aoxomoxoa and the Heads had arrived, and their strange behaviour must be a planned entertainment. Other figures in Bohemian military dress tumbled from one of the trucks, like circus clowns, and proffered a folding stepladder. The big, broad skull-masked fellow climbed it. He waved (grinning, naturally) to the company under the limes: applied a circuit breaker, and set to work with bolt-cutters.

The PM leapt to his feet, as did Jack Vries

‘What is going on!’ bellowed the PM.

Applause faltered. The black and white servants hesitated, waiting for orders. Ax, in his Edwardian-repro deckchair, hadn’t stirred.

Faud Hassim, primed by a little boy’s betraying eyes, felt his heart begin to thud. My God. The perimeter guards must have been dealt with already. He counted eight, ten Wallingham servants with the croquet party; but there was an army of them indoors. My God the man is reckless, ruthless! It was a terror coup, an afternoon of long knives, the wicked and the parasites gathered here to be slaughtered—

Albion tugged his sleeve. ‘They’ll hurt themselves. I mustn’t touch the fence. Sage says don’t even think about it. A big deer is much bigger than me.’

Faud recalled that the baby (rumoured to be Ax’s own son), had been sent away. Was this older child doomed, reckoned disposable?

Sunny patted his arm. ‘Don’t worry, Faz. It’s going to be fine.’

Ax rolled the cigarette he couldn’t smoke until sundown between his fingers, and gathered Milly, his brothers and his sister, with a glance. Be calm. This is not going to go wrong, this is within my power. He grinned for the audience.

‘It’s a Happening, Greg. Sorry about your fence—’

A section of deer fence flattened, the convoy deployed a field ramp, rolled up it and crossed the lawns. The tall ringleader came ambling over, a rifle slung on his back, and now everyone knew the beautiful, fearsome mask of the living skull. Sage bowed extravagently to Sunny, the skull doing loutish charm with a dash of sober reassurance. He proffered a slim briefcase.

‘Happy Birthday, ma’am. You havin’ a large one?’

‘I’m having a fine birthday,’ said Sunny.

‘Well, here’s the deeds. Your new residence awaits.’

The barmies raised a cheer, but thankfully refrained from an Afghan salute.

‘The deeds?’ The Prime Minister repeated Sage’s words, his lips moving without sound, pop-eyed in dawning comprehension. Jordan stood with his arm clamped round Milly’s shoulders, teeth bared in a frozen grin. Nice one, Jor. If you end up having to convince your masters, over my dead body, that you had nothing to do with this stunt, you’ll be cool—

‘You broke the fence,’ remarked Albi, looking up at Sage with worship, and then everyone heard the taktaktak of helicopter rotors.

Who can this be? Who can run a helicopter these days? Some fabulously rich veteran rock-god, dropping by for cake? A large, vintage personnel-carrying machine hove into view, the chequered hat-band speedily announcing its provenance.

But who had called the police?

What the hell’s going to happen?

Some of the guests (it was written all over their faces), took a good hard look at the idea of running for cover; no one stirred. The helicopter descended, the rotors slowed. Two spruce young uniformed officers got down, a man and a woman, and stood to attention as Commissioner Kieran Matthews appeared, also in uniform. Commissioner Matthews had worked with Ax Preston since the Islamic Campaign, when he’d been in charge of the policing of the Separatist War region. He now held one of the three top posts in the English Police Service. He acknowledged the Prime Minister and his wife with a nod, looked indulgently askance at the raffish paramilitary display; took off his cap, tucked it under his arm and saluted.

‘Everything all right, Sir?’

‘All good, Kieran,’ said Ax. ‘Glad you could make it, thanks for turning up.’

‘Not at all. I’m delighted to pay my respects.’ A grin cracked. ‘Birthday cake on the lawn. No need to call in the regulars for that, eh Sir?’

‘Hahaha. I don’t think so.’

The Prime Minister looked at Jack Vries, for an unguarded moment, and gave a bark of laughter: he made no other comment. The senior policeman went to offer his birthday greetings, and Ax shook his head at Sage.

‘You couldn’t have come round the front door, like a civilised person?’

The skull-masked one saluted smartly. ‘Tried that, Sah. Cock up, Sah. Couldn’t get through. Service should be back to normal soon.’

At this moment, reinforcements arrived. Servants poured from the house, brandishing firearms and screaming on the ground, hands behind your heads! The guests milled in panic. The barmies held the goons at bay, goodhumouredly, shooing them like sheep: until they realised their mistake and retired, crestfallen.

Sage took off the mask, and Ax took off his smile.

‘Hi, soldier. How did it go?’

‘Hi, other soldier. The perimiter is ours.’

‘No misunderstandings, no scuffles, no casualties?’

‘None, zero. Never in doubt, not a shot fired.’

Breaking the hostages out like this had not been Ax’s original plan, not even after he’d discovered that Wallingham was a fucking fortress, and that his family were never allowed to leave the grounds all at the same time. But with the Lavoisier scandal hanging over him, he’d had to give up diplomacy. The stunt should be safe, but it wasn’t over yet. The skull reappeared, morphed into a cheery and convivial grimace and Sage turned away, to work the crowd.

‘Greg,’ said Ax. ‘Jack? Could I speak with you?’

The Prime Minister and Jack Vries walked with Ax towards the Elizabethan knot garden. ‘I’m sorry,’ Ax said, ‘about all that. But there is a serious purpose. I’m afraid my family has to leave Wallingham: it doesn’t suit my mother. I’ve found a smaller house. It’s further from town, but I promise security won’t be a problem.’

‘I saw military gauge weapons,’ said Greg, biting off the words. ‘Forbidden to your hippie ex-paramilitaries, Ax. I’m sorry too, but that’s a serious infringement—’

Ax shook his head. ‘Nah, they’re all fakes. No firing pins.’

The ones we saw, thought Jack and Greg, transparently. The weapons you’ll hand over, another day, if we force the point… Possibly the barmies really were unarmed, and could be dealt with, at the cost of a horrible public incident. But Commissioner Matthews’ presence warned that Ax was not without heavyweight allies. The PM must realise, also, that many of the party guests were on Ax’s side right now. The nomenklatura will accept a lot, if they’re well looked-after: even hostage-taking. But they don’t like the practice much.

Ax waited, gravely smiling.

Greg Mursal nodded. ‘Then that’s settled. If you’re sure, Sir.’

‘Oh, I am. You see, there’s Wallingham Camp. When I found out we had a Celtic ritual site on the doorstep, I didn’t like the association. Although of course, I’m sure Green Nazi blood rites were never practiced there.’

The full extent of the human sacrifice network would never be known. Nor the extent to which associates of these two beauties had been involved. But there’d been a time when illegal, cruel and prolonged animal sacrifice had been stoutly defended by the right wing of the Parliamentary Green Party. The occasional horse was still getting disembowelled, and there were rumours that the perpetrators were protected—

Greg looked shocked, ‘Ax, that site has never been active in modern times!’

‘I should hope not. Even so—’

‘The President is right,’ cried Jack. ‘The association gives entirely the wrong message, this should have been raised when Wallingham was proposed! I’m a believer, but I share your feelings, Sir. Especially since there may be hm, excuse me, personal and dynastic considerations. Milly and er, both her children must leave here at once. Immediately! As the Wiccan consultant to the government, I have been shockingly at fault. You have my abject apology, Sir!’

How about your resignation?, thought Ax.

Nah, didn’t think so.

Dynastic considerations. You can’t complain about colourful gossip you have encouraged, but he was chilled: thinking of those mad Plantagenets in Paris; visions of a little prince on a leash, the inconvenient adults having succumbed to mysterious accidents… They must go, he thought. By democratic process, but these bastards have to go. I’ll lever the “Rebels” into power. It shouldn’t be impossible.

‘Well, that’s the explanation. I wanted to make a happy occasion of the move rather than a scandal. I couldn’t consult without spoiling the surprise, but I was sure you’d be sports about it. I hope that was okay.’

‘Of course!’ declared Greg, looking dangerously flushed. ‘Of course!’

‘Good, that’s good. Thank you, both of you.’

Greg, Jack and the President returned to the party in smiling accord. They’d agreed that immediate departure would be a little extreme, and devised a brief announcement. Ax had no objection to the fiction that the surprise had been long planned. Nor to the addition that though the Prestons were moving, for Sunny’s health, the Wallingham Live Show remained very much a “live” project.

As the guests departed, the barmies were setting up camp all over Wallingham lawns, under the supervision of Sage’s brother Heads. The hippie soldiers were staying, with their military gauge weapons (possibly fake, possibly not): and Greg Mursal, in turn, had no objection to this arrangement. When the Prestons were packed they’d get a barmy army ceremonial escort to their new address.

Ax would have liked to stay and talk with his mum without the crowd, but it would have been tactless, given the circumstances: and anyway he had to get away from Jordan. He knew the signs, they were both of them strung tight, a screaming match was not far off. He and Sage returned to London as planned, by road: Ax driving his beloved black Volvo coupé, the four barmy minders in another car. Sage called Fiorinda to tell her it had gone well. She thanked him in a few words, and got off the air. He sighed and turned his wrist, making the implant time figures flicker, off/on, off/on. Running fast, he noticed. It hadn’t worked right since Lavoisier.

‘I knew it would be okay.’

‘Never in doubt,’ said Ax. ‘That’s the easy part.’

He thought of the tv prison show, his brother as smiling host.

‘We’ll have to keep the new place garrisoned. Jordan hates my guts and I don’t blame him. What’s his life like? A choice of captivities.’

‘Fuck Jor. Don’t all top celebrities live like so?’

The old motorways had become a playground for people who liked to drive (and who had a President’s ecofuel privileges). Traffic, such as it was, avoided them: they were lonely and dangerous. Sage watched the rearview mirror, noting with resignation that the minders had vanished, left far behind. Ax was tearing up the pocked M20, in the mood where he’d be delighted to meet some hijackers, and put that charmed life of his to the test again. But someone has to worry.

‘It had to be done. I couldn’t let them hold a gun to my mother’s head. They knew it was unworkable. I called their bluff and we’re all pals. For now.’

‘What about the Extreme Celtic connection?’

‘I don’t think so. Jack and Greg, in another world they’d have been normal, mildly dodgy, right-wing politicians. They’ve just been around riff-raff like you and me for too long. Gun-crazed paramilitaries, giving them ideas.’

Wild verges, awash with speedwell and daisies, bluebells and lacey white chervil, flew by. It need not have been okay. This afternoon could have ended very badly, one good reason why Fiorinda had to stay out of it. But it would not have ended in blood, because that was not going to happen again. Never again.

‘You know what, Sage? I bought my parents a house with my first real rockstar earnings. I was so proud of that. My dad mortgaged it, remortgaged it, spent the cash and defaulted on the payments. I remember having to sort that out, in the middle of a violent revolution, and I didn’t have any money. Ten fucking years on, nearly, and I’m just where I was. I’m even driving the same car.’

‘What’s wrong with that? I like this car.’

‘It’s a bit small for you, my big cat.’

‘Oooh, I don’t mind. It’s cosy.’

They glanced at each other, and grinned. So we made it, one more time. All you can ever do is hope the luck lasts.

‘It’s a job,’ said Sage. ‘We can do it.’

‘Yeah. Live for the weekend.’

In the back seat, where Fiorinda should have been curled, the goblin shape of the Lavoisier video was muttering to itself: aye neighbour, we’re flitting. Somehow the worst trouble they’d ever known, its claws deeper into their flesh.

Maybe they were just older.

The “Wallingham Happening” was widely reported, with what seemed like official approval: a jolly prank, Ax and the PM sharing the same sense of fun. The Prestons completed their move. Then came a dinner party, at Joss Pender’s mansion in Holland Park: Sage’s father the software baron was not a fan of the Westminster set, but he had their respect. Greg Mursal and his wife, the Triumvirate, and one or two other significant people sat down together, a Second Chamber social baptism for the rockstars; and a confirmation. The new deal had been accepted.

Immediately after that Sage’s mother, the novelist Beth Loern, came to London and they had to go to another dinner party, at Sage’s sister’s house. This was in ways a far more unpleasant experience. Beth had been wickedly slighted, treated like a nobody, not that she would have contemplated accepting an invitation to dine with that bastard Mursal, and everyone had to console her. Worse, Sage’s sister Kay unfortunately served farmed salmon, the food of the poor, as a compliment to Ax’s Green austerity, and Sage would not eat it. Sage had not eaten a fish since he was two years old: when they gave him a goldfish for a pet, and the little boy with crippled hands noticed that fish do not have hands either… And salmon are intelligent, you know. How did it go from there? Impossible to follow, ridiculous and hateful.

On the way home—at least the torture ended early, due to austerity curfew—they stopped at The Monkey’s Paw for a drink Sage was still glowering.

‘You know,’ began Ax. ‘I’m not going to defend Kay, but—’

‘Then don’t.’

‘Leave it, Ax,’ advised Fiorinda, bored.

‘It can’t be easy. Were you fooled by that “oh, we’re doing this farmed fish thing as a fashion statement”? They’re struggling, the signs were everywhere.’

‘Let them eat lentils.’ said Sage. ‘I do.’

He got the pints in, and set them off the tray with a glare. ‘Yes, Citizen Ax, I know they’re brim glasses, and no I’m not going back to ask her to top them up.’

‘Don’t be so fucking childish Sage. Ax didn’t say a word!’

Ax picked up an ancient copy of Weal and left them to it, a strange warmth growing behind his breastbone, a memory of that garret in Montmatre.

Back at Matthew Arnold Mansions Fiorinda said she deserved a proper bath, and she would have one. Ax sat and teased her, while she turned an alarming scarlet under the bubbles, and carried her into the bedroom wrapped in a big towel. Sage was lying naked on the bed, propped on one elbow: smiling like he’d found his temper.

‘Wha’s that you got there?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Ax. ‘But they scrub up very rosy and juicy-looking.’

‘I’ve heard they’re edible.’

‘Yeah, me too. I’m gonna give it a try.’

‘You want me to look after the front end, while you do that?’

‘If you would.’

He started on the delicate skin on the inside of each elbow. Took a gentle bite at the firm, yielding muscle below the curve of her ribcage, each side; then the hipbones need some biting. He pressed his cheeks, his lips, his brow, to the fresh, damp living warmth of her inner thighs, and at last nuzzled into this tough silky curling mat of hair, the salty, liquid goal so familiar, oceanic, always new.

Fiorinda lay in her towel, taking Sage’s kisses.

‘If I let you go, will you try to escape, strange creature?’

‘You’d better hold me down. Just a little bit, to be on the safe side.’

When she let him know he’d finished eating Ax sat back on his heels and wiped his mouth, every fibre of his body thrumming, desperate to take one of them, hard and quickly, but it’s fabulous to be so desperate, he could hold on.

‘All yours, brother.’

‘Hey,’ said Fiorinda, equably, ‘I think Ax gets held so I can eat him, now.’

‘She’s right, you know. Fair’s fair.’

‘Well, okay. I can see how that would work.’

He woke hours later, rising from rare oblivion into a state of undefined anxiety that he recognised. Always the same, after our desperate victories. You’ve been focused on one thing, it’s gone, and all the rest rushes in, disordered. The treatment is to get the fears in a line, make a list. The drop-out hordes problem, now known as the camps. The devastation of civil rights, not a big issue in our day, horrible and alarming now. Hints at what Jack Vries really does for the PM, to make himself so useful… If I thought I could lever Mursal out of power, I was dreaming, this regime has deeper roots than that, but there will be things I can do, and I’ll do them. He felt that happiness inside, waiting like a trapped bird, for the cage door to open—

He rolled over, and took Fiorinda’s warm, sleep-softened body in his arms.

‘No more family gatherings,’ she mumbled. ‘Not for at least twenty years.’

‘Okay.’ He kissed her closed eyelids, ‘Fiorinda, would you marry me?’

Fiorinda opened her eyes, nose to nose with him.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I don’t mind, if you like.’

‘What about you, big cat? Sage? Are you awake?’

‘I think you should have asked me first,’ said Sage. ‘I’m the oldest.’

‘Sorry, I’ve never done this before.’ Ax sat up. ‘Okay, I didn’t mean to do it like that, it slipped out. But I’ve been thinking. We love each other, we’re going to stay together, and have children if possible, and children want their parents to be married. The way I see it… I’m not asking you to marry a man, Sage.’

‘Good, because it’s too much of a break with my style.’

‘You’d never live it down. What I see is, we two would both marry Fiorinda, and you would marry both of us, Fio. How does that sound?’

‘Fine,’ said Fiorinda, thinking she could disabuse them of this weird notion later, without hurting Ax’s feelings.

Sage turned on his back, hands behind his head. Ax seemed to be talking about a religious ceremony. The guitar-man must have consulted his patron in the Faith, luckily a Q’ranic jurist, and Mohammad has tracked down a precedent: some lively Mughal Caliph and his beloved Vizier, sharing a bride. This is a lightning decision he’s been mulling over with the mullahs for months. Can’t I have any private life? Ah well, that’s what you get for shagging the king of England and what the fuck.

‘Yeah, okay. I’m in.’

Another aspect came to mind. ‘But I won’t convert.’

‘Oh,’ said Fiorinda, ‘Nor will I. Sorry, Ax. I didn’t think of that.’

‘I’m sorry. Did I mention Islam?’

They did not get the chance to agree he had not. Ax exploded out of bed and grabbed at clothes, his eyes blazing in hurt and fury. ‘Did I say the word Islam? I know fucking well you hate my religion. Okay, forget it.’

‘Ax, don’t—’

‘Ax, Ax. Hey, lissen—’

No use. Slam, bang, crash. He was gone, leaving them gasping.

‘That’s your fault,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Idiot.’

Meetings paved Ax’s day in slabs of weary words. One or two, hidden in the dross, he’d arranged for himself, and they were useful. The rest was insulting make-work, designed to keep a puppet harmlessly occupied. Late in the afternoon he walked down to the Victoria Embankment trailed by his minders, relentless shadows, and stood staring at the water.

Neither of them had called him. Did he have a home to go to?

Something nudged his elbow, and though his reflexes were razor sharp for casual touches, he didn’t recoil. Fiorinda’s hand appeared, beside his own on the parapet, lining up so their braided gold Triumvirate rings were level. He looked round: her grey eyes were watching him with such tender understanding that he wanted to fall at her feet. A sigh. He looked the other way and there was Sage, arms folded, gazing dreamily ahead of him.

‘How many ceremonies d’you reckon, Sah? One for each region, and one for every major belief system? We’re going to need a fuck of a lot of cake. And I think Fee ought to have a different new dress every time.’

‘Damn right. Hm. I’ve never been inside a working Christian church. I hope I won’t be obliged to into something ghastly, and fly out of a window.’

Ax’s heart rose from the depths of his stupidity, into golden light.

‘You don’t have to be nice. I hate weddings. It was a crass idea.’

‘I love you,’ said Sage. ‘Will you ever believe that? I would be happy to say so in public, swear it til death do us part. I didn’t mean to piss you off, I was tactless and I apologise. I’ll do it. Why shouldn’t we do it?’

He took Ax’s face between his hands and kissed him, fuck-the-public-place: an embrace that Fiorinda thought she should not join, but they pulled her in. Then they drew apart, looking at each other ruefully: acknowledging the pull of that cloud of white tulle, the chaste beauty of morning suits, the gold and scarlet and the bride led around the fire. The drunken friends and gatecrashing paparazzi—

‘You were right to raise the question,’ said Fiorinda. ‘But it’s not for us.’

‘I know. It’s for some other people.’

The armed guards followed, as they walked by the great river.

The make-over of Buckingham Palace had ripped through the old Insanitude club venue, laying waste to the Few’s memories in the name of Ax’s Restoration. They were warned by Allie and Dilip, friends on the inside, when ruin reached the Balcony Room: the Reich’s Office, the centre of their rule. Rows of workstations had already been stripped out, walls bared, all their longterm-makeshift fittings vanished. The battered schoolroom tables were roped off, mysteriously intact.

‘It hasn’t been recorded yet,’ said Allie. ‘The decorators have to take a video, and number all the parts, so they get it right when they put it all back.’

‘What’s it going to be?’ asked Cherry. ‘Some kind of shrine?’

‘Yeah. With copies of the Tussauds waxworks, I think.’ They’d all been ‘immortalised’ in Madame Tussauds, at the height of their fame.

‘That is rank. Who asked our permission? Are we paying for this?’

The Reich, a registered charity, had made a sizeable contribution to the restoration funding. Their financial controllers had found this was affordable, though the Volunteer Initiative was as always desperately short—

‘We should make them buy copies of our virtual avatars from California,’ said Chip. ‘So at least poor old Digital Artists get some money back.’

‘Not a chance. Tha’s labscience. Carn’ have that.’

‘The Citizen King has to have a respectable official residence,’ sighed Allie. ‘They aren’t even asking you to live here. Just be thankful you guys got away with turning down Wallingham. Our admin will be farmed-out: but I get a new office downstairs, so I’ll still be here. Just take whatever belongs to you, last chance.’

They poked around, unearthing dust-bunnied items of clothing, scraps of food; forgotten mascots from behind the radiators.

‘I feel like a redundant yuppie,’ said Dora. ‘Oooh, Sage, watch out, you’re on the wrong side of the rope!’

‘I’m an exhibit.’

‘We are not spooked by any of this,’ declared Verlaine. ‘We shed copies of ourselves all the time. Let the public worship our old toenail clippings, we don’t care. Move your arse Sage, we have to sanctify the Triumvirate chairs.’

Sage moved his arse and wandered, staring at pale patches on the dirty candy-pink walls, the Triumvirate’s yuppie box under his arm. The Adjuvants were laying a fragment of arcana on each seat: a dessicated pondweed cracker here, a fossilised lump of canteen veggie curry there; a venerable hairgrip that may have belonged to Fiorinda. Or possibly to Her Majesty Elizabeth the Queen Mother, as the sub-radiator strata might have become confused.

Anne-Marie had come up from Reading, to take a spiritual reading and the end point of so much history. She’d been standing in front of the Balcony, eyes closed, taking deep breaths. ‘I feel nothing,’ she announced.

‘That’s okay, Ammy,’ said Dora, while others rolled their eyes.

‘It must be it was time to move on. Reelly, I’m more worried about getting through Lughnasa.’ Anne-Marie picked up a broom left by the decorators, and absentmindedly began to sweep the floor.

‘Lughnasa—?’ repeated Rob. ‘Is that the one in August?

‘Don’t bother, AM,’ said Allie. ‘The floor’s probably going to be converted into a sacred wall in Tate Modern. They’ll want the dirt left on it. Why Lughnasa?’

‘Or Hungry Ghosts. Something always hits us round there. Think about it.’

Sage took his box away with him across Green Park, longing for the grey Atlantic. But the cottage in Cornwall where the three of them had fallen in love, Tyller Pystri, the Magic Place, was out of reach. They were afraid to think about it, in case they attracted the State Nostalgia merchants. A blue plaque and a car park, oh, spare me that. He was going to meet a former Reich camp follower at the Royal Academy, where an exhibition of Sage Pender’s immersion cells was about to open.

He’d been interviewed by Dian Buckley many times: she’d written a book about Ax. He didn’t expect any surprises. They trod the august halls together, (closed to visitors for the benefit of this interview); getting videoed.

She asked him how he felt about having his work elevated to such heights.

‘It’s okay, I suppose.’

‘Oh, come on, Sage. That’s the kind of provocative thing you’d have said a decade ago. You’re a grown up now.’

A decade ago, he thought my language would have been con-fucking-siderably more colourful. He was tempted to explain that his triumph was soured by the way the RA had ‘acquired for the nation’ notepad material that had gone missing in the Green Nazi occupation. Sage had not made a gift, nor seen any money.

Waste of time. I’d just sound like a stingy bastard.

‘This is not the way I’d have done it, see. You can display cells live: so anyone lookin’ at them gets a dose of the direct cortical, the sensory percept code I built into the light waves. The way they are here, they’re stone dead.’

‘But immix perceptions are fake. These, er, drawings are real art.’

‘Why, thank you…’ He addressed the cameramann. ‘Is that a digital cam?’

Dian’s crewperson looked alarmed. ‘Uh, yeah, er, Sage—’

‘Shame. You aren’t storing analog record of light on colours, angles, surfaces, like the back of Dian’s lovely head. You’re storing bits. But if you was using your bare eyes, it would still be code, everything is. We live in a virtual world.’

But it’s a shame to tease the crewpersons. Soon he dropped out, dissatisfied with himself and knowing he was safer on auto: answering nicely while he thought about other things. Dilip’s health, still okay, thank God. Fiorinda, whose period was late again, just barely, and this must not be mentioned. Will I ever do anything new? Or is that all over, fit only to be pinned on walls like dead insects? And it’s bullshit, Anne-Marie: summer is awful because summer is festival hell. Terrible things have happened to us any time of year. He was even thinking of Dian, whose eyes were greener, her tits more peach-perfect, upright and splendid than ever. Amazing the way trash goods like boob jobs are still available. Wonder what’s under her clothes; and what’s she going to do when she gets really rich? Have the lot chopped off?

Still, a woman he could near enough look in the eye, he’d always liked her for that. He had once fucked the lovely idiot Dian, mainly for the charm of her height. George had taken him to task, he remembered. Do not fuck the mediababes, boss. Everybody does it, everybody regrets it. You think she knows she’s a sandwich, does she fuck, you’re gonna hurt her feelings and that’s—

Dangerous?

Where did that flick of alarm come from? How could Dian Buckley be dangerous? Now she was asking him when had he realised he was gay.

‘I’m not.’

‘Oooh, I’m not allowed to say that, am I? When did you realise you were—’ Dian smiled indulgently. ‘Bisexual?’

‘I’m not… Dian, if you’re gay nation by birth, I b’lieve you know it before you are five. But anyone can have a same sex lover, or vice-versa, that’s just normal. I can’t believe you’ve never tried it. You should.’

‘Sage, I don’t know. I remember the one night stands, the macho posing. You were a textbook case. But okay, how do you feel about being in an unorthodox sexual relationship that’s a national obsession? A religious icon, to many people.’

They’d left the exhibition. They were in the coffee shop, still with the team in attendance, facing some teeny patisserie, a bottle of dry white wine and another of fancy water. Something had snapped him to attention. What was it?

‘Religious? Like, Pagan religious?’

‘O come on, you know you’re sacred. Look, I have you on my key-chain.’

‘Ah, well that proves it.’

She showed him, laughing merrily. She had one of those silver charms on her chain (no keys), depicting tiny Ax ’n Sage ’n Fiorinda in a three-way fuck.

‘Will you touch it for me? That’d increase the potency fantastically.’

Damn. It had been a crime against Heads Ideology to vet interview questions. Let them print what they like, stupid fuckers, was the only attitude. But maybe Ax and Fiorinda’s lover ought to change that policy, because his mood was spinning away from him. I can’t do this. I can’t remember how irreverent and outspoken I’m allowed to be about the appropriation of my sex-life by brain-dead so-called “Pagans” and the trinket industry. Let’s change the subject? Lets talk about how the government takes every cent I earn, gives me pocket money and spends the rest on razor wire—

But he had never (not since the hell of his own making he’d endured over what he did to Mary Williams) let an inteviewer get to him. He grinned at the green-eyed babe, took the charm, and handed it back with a smile.

‘There, rub that on your struggling petunias. I can’t promise anything.’

He was still wondering what had given him the jolt, when the silver charm, glinting on Dian’s well-turned hip, returned it to him and sent him to another place. Darkness, a smell of ooze and smoke. He was looking for something he didn’t want to find, a tightening net, something heavy—

‘Are you saying, in a snidey way, you don’t believe in magic? But Sage, you’re the Zen Self Champion! You went beyond death, you fought an occult duel with Rufus O’Niall that saved the world. For many people, intelligent sceptical people, you’re the reason why we’ve all come to believe in magic!’

The champion poured himself a glass of wine, eyes down. He needed to concentrate on what had just happened to him, but it would have to wait.

‘I never went beyond death, Dian. Tha’s a misconception.’

Dian recalled the physical magnificence of Aoxomoxoa, the fabulous young bull he had been, when she was the Reich’s favorite interpreter, the only one who understood. The sweet dream she’d had, and the morning when she’d found out it was over, that he’d just spent the night with Fiorinda. She’d had to deal with that betrayal in public, without warning, a humiliation she would never forget—

He’s still got to be one of the most beautiful men in the world, she thought. But he’ll never be what he was when I had him.

‘Hey, wow, when did you start drinking again? Isn’t that terribly irresponsible, when you’ve had a liver transplant?’

‘Not a transplant, it’s a regen. Livers are easy, they grow like—’

‘It was an intensive care bed. Okay, you won’t talk about magic. I suppose that means you won’t do any yogi tricks for me, oh bodhisattva?’

‘You’d be right. Well, we’ve done art, an’ rock and roll is beneath us. How about Paris? Let me tell you how I loved that so-called protest. I want to live like a refugee, except with a dry place to sleep an’ futuristic tech, the rest of my life. That’s what it was about, do you remember? You were there. Treading lightly on the earth, down by the river at Reading, in the mud and blood and beer?’

Dian shook her head. ‘I can’t think of anything to ask you about Paris. What’s your opinion about the Grey Lady in Amsterdam, or ooh, werewolves. Can human beings really transform into wild beasts?’

‘Hahaha, oh yeah. For sure. Now we’re talking cocktail hour.’

And Sage waxed lyrical, relieved to have found a safe subject, on the new drugs, sadly forbidden to him, being far more demanding on a regenerate liver than alcohol, that had such weird effects—

‘What was it,’ asked Dian, with an impish twinkle, when he paused for breath. ‘That happened when you were five, that made you realise you were gay?’

Fiorinda came home, after a masterclass session at Battersea Arts Centre; where she was teaching a rock guitar course. She didn’t really approve of these sessions, for if you could pass the audition, then you surely ought to be teaching yourself, with a broom handle and a piece of string if that was all you had. You ought to be too proud to go to school. But students in the Reich’s Hedgeschool Education Scheme had to learn to read and write and figure before they signed up for anything glamorous: so she was achieving something useful. Close your eyes to the fact that our rescued drop-out kids are now the privileged few—

Doug Hutton, supremo of the Reich’s personal security, was in the tiny guardhouse that had once been a broom closet, making an inspection that involved a jug from the Monkey’s Paw and wreathes of fragrant smoke.

‘Of course you guys would leap up, fully in control, if I needed defending.’

‘Course we would, but you don’t need us. Sage is up there.’

‘Oh, good.’

How hateful to have armed guards living in the house. What happened to being wild and free, citizens of Utopia…? Hard to test, and put an end to hoping. Hard to resist testing. Not pregnant again, but harmlessly this time, just an irregular period, she climbed the naked stairwell (they still hadn’t finished unpacking) chasing a tail of memory. Same naked stair, same weary mood. She knew the dress she’d been wearing, the blue taffeta with the emerald sparkles, she could hear the sound of Ax’s guitar, sad and lonely. Which of our disasters? It wouldn’t take shape.

Sage was on the brick terrace, outside the french doors in the living room; where Fiorinda’s orange trees had stood. He sat crosslegged with his back to the wall, and smiled when she appeared, but his open eyes were so still she knew he was far away—studying a process of conversion, once mediated by neurolab machinery, that now continued without the tech. Studying to solve the equation of himself. She watched him, feeling a little frightened. It was dangerous work. Olwen had said he shouldn’t do it without life support. He could get lost and die in those mazes.

Slowly, his presence returned to the surface.

‘Hi, sweetheart.’

‘Hey, my pilgrim. How did the interview go?’

Sage grinned. ‘Badly.’

‘Well, fuck her,’ said Fiorinda, automatically: but she was taken aback. Sage and Dian Buckley never goes badly!

Except possibly from Fiorinda’s point of view.

‘How do you mean? What did she do?’

‘Nothing, she was just bog standard Dian. It was me, I was annoyed about the notebooks, an’ it put me off. I was listening to myself, talking about my work and how it should be displayed only a special way, I sounded like David Bowie.’

‘How awful for you.’ Fiorinda affected to take alarm. ‘Did you hit her?’

‘Ha. Those days are gone. I should’ve done, Aoxomoxoa lives! Nah, the violence didn’t get beyond mild sarcasm. But she’s going to tear me to shreds: I’m not invulnerable any more.’ He sighed. ‘Something else. They know about the video.’

‘What?’ She stared at him, electrified. ‘Dian told you that?’

‘Give me credit. I’d be makin’ more fuss if a mediababe had jus’ announced I was due for extradition… No, something stranger. I had a snapshot flashback.’

‘Oh.’

Sage had taken so much snapshot, the vicious neural aligner they’d used on the Zen Self quest, that he would never be free of it. He had lapses, like tiny epileptic fits, from which he returned (returned, though no time had passed) with a glimpse of his brainstate at another place and time: and he would know things, sometimes things that clearly hadn’t yet happened. Usually negative. Call it his share of the Drumbeg fallout—

‘Somewhere down the line, I’m in the dark, dank sort of smell, I’m wading thigh deep in cold water, and in my head is the memory that the Lavoisier video did go public, the suits had known almost as long as we had, an’ we were screwed—’

‘Screwed how?’

‘Nothing fatal, obviously. Acute existential nausea, for all I can tell you.’

She knew about the existential nausea. That outrageous tampered record had torn things open in her boyfriends, shaken them beyond reason—

‘Anything else?’

Toby Starborn. But he’d keep that to himself. Toby had probably popped into his head for no reason, except he was in the RA, talking arse about art. So now we both dread that name, he thought. Wonder what “Toby Starborn” means as a coded message from the future? Something I don’t want to be found…

Yeah, thanks for that, Mr Snap. Most helpful.

‘Not really.’

‘So this is what it’s like,’ said Fiorinda, bitterly. ‘We break the mind/matter barrier, and our reward is useless oracles, no better than if we were talking to a python in a cave. I suppose it’s reassuring, really… You’re going to tell Ax?’

‘Of course. For what it’s worth.’

She sat beside him against the wall, took his hand and felt its grip, warm and strong. The bogey man didn’t get us. The past is a defeated foe. Sunlight fell through the dusty urban air, quiet neighbourhood sounds reached them. The afternoon gardeners were busy, in Brixton’s vivid backyard strip farms.

‘Fiorinda? Is it my imagination… Or do you also suspect we are in deeper shit that we have ever been before?’

‘Deep shit,’ said Fiorinda, instantly. ‘Deep, deep shit.’

‘Finally time to cut and run?’

Fiorinda thought, stubbornly, of her masterclasses. ‘Fuck that. Nothing’s happened yet. We have committments, and you won the Wallingham round. Besides, you know Ax can’t bear to give up. He just can’t.’

‘I know, I know.’

Once before, they had rebelled against Ax Preston’s desperate need to save England. They weren’t going to make that mistake again. She touched the sickle-shaped indentation at the left corner of his mouth, which used to need a trick of the light to make it visible. ‘And I’m buggered if I’m going to be chased off my patch by Dian Buckley… How do you mean, she’s going to tear you to shreds?’

‘I’d rather not dwell on it. You’ll find out soon enough… Augh.’

‘What?’

‘I left our yuppie box at the Royal Academy.’

‘What was in it?’

He screwed his face up. ‘Can’t remember. A manky cardie. Old hair grips.’

‘Oh well, never mind. They’re sold off to the Saatchi Rooms by now.’

Sometimes there is no warning. Other times, you know exactly what you should do. You don’t do it, simply because it’s an option that’s been open too long. You’ve turned it down too often, you just turn it down again, out of pure habit.

FOUR

Careless Love

Festival Season hell was upon them. Fiorinda was in the North East, playing with her old bandmates DARK, in County Durham, Tyneside; all around that cold and beautiful coast. Ax and Sage were back in Brixton, lucky enough to be together for forty-eight hours. In Ax’s office downstairs, after midnight, Sage read documents on a screen. Long time since the Minister for Gigs had done any hands-on management, but the troops out there liked to see Aoxomoxoa’s sig decorating their mountains of dispatches. He didn’t mind the work, it was peaceful. Occasionally he made a note: an email he would send, something he would query.

Ax was practicing his Chinese, copying characters from a book of proverbs. He was immersing himself in all things Chinese at the moment, the way only Ax Preston can… It made Sage uneasy.

‘Going to have to give this woman more money, Ax.’

‘Can’t. What woman?’

‘Road manager, Jennifer Lateef. She does not hump boxes, she does the informatics. We’re paying her beer money an’ she’s a star. She’s going to quit, get a real job an’ we’ll never find anyone else.’

‘Well, I can’t help it.’

Sage pushed back, and watched the calligraphy. The brush in Ax’s hand paused, the tip swept down again, making a long, curved stroke—

‘Is China to be your next theatre of operations, Sah?’

‘I’d like to go there. It seems like a happening kind of place.’

I’d like to go anywhere, thought Sage. Just roam the streets, only it would upset the fucking spooks. Soft winds and rains of a cool night, outdoors—

‘What’s that one mean?’

‘Qi huo ke ju… It means a precious treasure worth cherishing. Merchant Lü identified a hostage prince as a precious treasure worth cherishing, and this was very smart, because with Lü’s wily support the prince became king of Qin, and his son… Who was actually Lü’s son, it’s a long story… Became the first emperor of China.’

‘Was he a good guy? The first emperor?’

‘No!’

‘What happened to Merchant Lü?’

‘It ended badly.’

‘Fuckin’ inscrutable proverb… Ax, please don’t suddenly run off to save the world from the wicked emperor, an’ leave me.’

‘I won’t. This is a beautiful thing to do, you should try it.’

‘Mm. It’s late. Would you care to come over to my side of the fire, at all?’

On cue, his screen chimed. A box opened and there was Marlon on the doorstep. He was in Brixton for the summer holidays, supposed to be observing an 11.30pm curfew but Sage had not been concerned. Mar didn’t know it, but he was under fairly close surveillance. In the old days, the lock on their front door had been biometric, a thing you looked into and it read your iris patterns. They’d moved with the times: Marlon waited for armed guards to check him out and open up.

‘Don’t call him on being in the pub,’ advised Ax.

‘Not tonight. But Mary’ll ban me again, if she finds out I’ve been allowing underage drinking—‘

‘Marlon’s going to ban you himself, if he finds out you’ve had him tailed.’

‘Hey, there’s someone with him,’ said Sage.

The girl was trying to lurk out of sight, a glimmer of long silvery brown hair in the shadows, but they recognised her at once. It was Silver Wing, Anne Marie’s second-oldest, a scarily independent young woman of thirteen: living with Rob and the Babes in Lambeth at the moment, having had a huge fight with her mother.

‘Bugger. What shall we do? Send her home in a car?’

‘That’d be a little draconian. Just call the Righteous Collective, make sure they know where she is. If we send her back the car will get followed, and that’s going to piss the brothers off. Why shouldn’t she stay?’

A dissatisfied silence from Sage.

‘So make up a bed in the music room, if you want to get all Mid-Wales about it. Don’t forget a few rolls of razor wire. They’re probably just good friends, Sage.’

‘She’s far too young.’

Ax laughed. ‘Let’s go upstairs, my big cat.’

Marlon and Silver sat on Marlon’s bed, having negotiated the front door and the guardhouse without attracting the attention of Marlon’s dad and Mr Preston. Silver combed her damp hair, it had been raining gently out there.

‘Shouldn’t we say hello?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘It would be childish.’

Silver rolled her eyes. ‘I knew Ax before you did.’

But Marlon outranked her, she had to accept that. Aoxomoxoa’s son had always been at boarding school, far above Anne-Marie’s raggedy campground brats. They sat with an ashtray between them: smoking grass, showing-off; trying out lines.

‘My dad wants to stop me having sex or taking drugs,’ said Marlon. ‘It’s a joke. Thank God Ax is different. And Fiorinda’s my best mate.’

‘When I was eleven Mum and Dad tried to give me to Sage, as his junior wife.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Nah, it’s true. Ask your dad. My parents are totally decadent, without knowing what the word means. They thought being his concubine would be a great career for me.’

‘Arwan.’

Maybe he looked like his mum: Silver didn’t know. He didn’t look anything like Sage. No more than Fiorinda’s height, with peaky Welsh features. His eyes were gold under thick black brows, naff-o tattooing round the left one. The dressing on his hair smelled like woodsmoke and hemp oil, which she liked. She wondered how it felt to be a boy who had no chance, not a hope, of outdoing his father. She had grown beyond her parents before she had her first period.

‘I was Fiorinda’s handmaid when Rufus was doing her, in Fergal’s body. We were in and out at Rivermead that winter, Pearl and me—’

‘I don’t think you should talk about it.’

Fiorinda’s ordeal preyed on Marlon. He had sometimes lain awake at night, unable to get horrible images out his head.

Light, powerful footsteps came down the hall. A brisk knock, and Marlon’s dad filled the doorway, rangy and wide-shouldered, light glittering in his hair. ‘Hi Silver. There’s a bed for you in the music room. Don’t stay up too late.’

‘Yeah,’ said Marlon, bored. ‘Fine. G’night Dad.’

‘G’night kids.’

The door closed. The teenagers smothered giggles. They lit another spliff and talked again, going deeper. Bad news always gets out. They didn’t know to call the problem the Lavoisier video, but they knew Ax and Sage were in big trouble. All the Reich kids knew, maybe better than their parents, how horrible things were getting: on the streets of London; on the campgrounds that were no longer safe havens. At last Silver glanced around the spare room, once full of Sage’s junk, now made over lovingly for this little prince. She touched his bare foot with her own.

‘What about the plan?’

Marlon nodded and shook his head at the same time. He wondered what it would be like to fall in love with someone his own age… It wouldn’t be this girl. Wanting to have Silver had nothing to do with Silver.

‘I dunno. I think it’s too weird, I mean, yeah, but—’

‘Okay, let’s see if Ax’ll send me back to Lambeth. Let’s ask him.’

The living room was dark and empty. Lamplight trembled out from under the Triumvirate’s bedroom door. Silver wrapped her arms around herself, listening hard. She heard Ax’s familiar voice, a wordless murmur tinged with laughter. Her rightful owner answered, with a crooning, roughened softness—

What would you see if you opened that door? The heart of the Reich, the red dragon and the white. She closed her eyes, wrapped in the heat of that core. Harm to their enemies. Protection over them. I would give my life, give anything… When she opened them Marlon was staring at her, through the deep shadow of the hallway.

‘It doesn’t sound like we should knock.’

‘Let’s go back to your room.’

They lay down together like children in Mummy and Daddy’s clothes. They were Sage and Fiorinda, and Ax was watching. They did not mention the make-believe, but they knew it made what they were doing more powerful still.

The Heads were in residence, between Festival dates, at their old headquarters, the converted warehouse on Battersea Reach. A week later Ax went to meet Sage there: he’d managed to spend one night with Fiorinda in the meantime, most of that on stage with their respective bads. It could be September before the three of them were in the same room in the flesh. He was admitted on the first floor, above the flood defences, by Marlon. Techno, ancient or modern (Ax could not tell the difference) crashed down from the floors above, stray immix effects caught your eye like unattached hallucinations. The hallway was full of strangers, in altered states or merely drunk: a proper, old-fashioned debauched rock and roll afternoon clearly in session.

‘Hi Mar. Is your dad about?’

‘I haven’t seen him for hours. Bill’s in charge, upstairs somewhere.’

Marlon went back into the room he’d left. Ax glimpsed an illusory glade of shining branches, the river through a long window. Silver Wing dressed in green brocade, her silvery hair tied up in a complex knot, sitting on a green sofa, beside a red and white chessboard. Like something out of a fairytale.

Bill Trevor was entertaining Gintrap (fresh-faced young divinities, Neo-Feudalist Metal, well-meaning but hungry); plus The Trap’s merry girl and boy entourage. The RA interview had aired, and Sage had indeed been ripped to shreds. Gintrap found this hilarious. They worshipped Aoxomoxoa, they were in awe of someone so big he could afford to be ripped up by Dian Buckley. Ax declined the alcohol, the other drugs, and affected to enjoy the joke. Dian’s hatchet job did have some fine moments of unintended humour.

‘Hey, Bill? Where’s the boss?’

‘I dunno where they all got to,’ said Bill, looking disgusted. ‘I think they went boating. Down the river for a cup of tea at Greenwich.’

Thereafter Ax took the back stairs to the ground floor, where huge strange stage properties braved the risk of drowning. From thence he was admitted to the other back stairs—which didn’t appear on the plans of the building—by Heads crew, who graciously disabled the annoying Cornish password routine for him. Down and down. There had to be a secret passage. Overgrown kids like the Heads couldn’t do without a dungeon chamber in their fortress. They’d never really known what to do with the amenity, but now it had a purpose.

It was named “the annexe”, after a canvas army surplus tent, where the young Fiorinda had spread her sleeping bag among the black boxes, in Traveller’s Meadow at Rivermead, long ago. No bruised grass and immix boxes now. Instead, a suite of white-painted concrete rooms, and in the centre a chamber that housed two of the Zen Self cognitive scanners—bequeathed to the Heads by Olwen Devi, when she went home to Wales. The scanners were not being used for Zen Self experiments, that adventure was over without Olwen. The weird scientists had a new project: less mystic, equally off the wall and out to lunch.

People used to say the Zen Self dome in Reading arena was bigger inside than outside. Ax’d felt the effect of an excellently designed geodesic himself. The new annexe seemed smaller than it ought to be, thick white walls crowding in, until getting to the central chamber felt like squeezing into a skull, through channels of bone. You wouldn’t want to be claustrophobic. What if there was a fire? What if there was a raid? There’d just better not be—

A body lay on a trolley bed, in the square room, brilliantly lit, packed with expensive equipment; and full of people. The body was pasted with telltales, a drip in one skinny arm. It was Dilip Krishnachandran, eyes closed, wearing a b-loc headset. The space blanket that covered him rose and fell; his shuttered face was calm. Two Zen Selfers, the postdocs who’d chosen to stay in England, were in attendance.

Chip and Verlaine, Cherry Dawkins, George Merrick, Cack Stannen and Sage occupied the remaining space, along with two English bio-physics graduates who’d hustled their way onto the team, somehow having got wind of a chance to study Mind/Matter applied tech. Another DK was with them, looking much healthier than the one on the bed; except for a touch of transparency.

Only the Zen Selfers—both called Gwyn, one male and one female—acknowledged Ax. Everyone else ignored him.

‘Hi, anoraks. How’s it going?’

‘It’s fine,’ said virtual DK. ‘Glad you made it, Ax. I wanted you to be here.’

Ax propped himself against a server tower beside Chip; there were no spare stools. George, the focus of attention, appeared to be playing an ancient black and white videogame. Cross-stitch trails moved across a tightly hatched grid, changing almost faster than George could nail them.

Chip distractedly offered a spliff.

‘No thanks. It’s still Ramadan.’

‘Oh, sorry.’

‘A technicality, considering the passive smoking effect in here. D’you guys ever stop to think how—’

‘Slight screw up,’ said Chip urgently. ‘We have to re-enter the insertion, George has to key it in, manually, and there’s not much time before we miss the launch window. Could you keep quiet? Please?’

On the wall above the cot, where DK-in the-flesh could watch it without stirring, someone had taped a plastic tv screen. Fiorinda was up there, playing with the Charm Dudley Band in a clear-walled marquee, blunt whaleback hills behind the stage; no sound. The women were dressed in fake animal skins with flirty tails, and painted white-face with blue spots all over; like Hindu cattle dressed for a festival. Ax was not sure if this was an improvement on the torn jeans and safety pins. He couldn’t see her, but he knew Allie would be among the people on side of stage. Was DK looking for her, as he gazed upward, eyes wide open now? No one knew what had happened between those two. It seemed like a crying shame they’d had to break up.

Maybe she couldn’t stand the idea of DK’s shortened lifespan, the constant fear that he would start dying. Maybe that was it—

One day, he thought, love and quarrels between my friends will be all I worry about. I’ll live by the seasons and the door of my house will have a latch, no lock; that only get fastened at night. Right now, I think the cognitive scanners have got to go. This is not safe. Our suits believe those things are Neurobomb-building matériel, hell to pay if we were caught in possession.

He wasn’t too concerned about Sage’s flashback, but the Royal Academy interview made him feel vulnerable. Did she pick up a hint that it was open season, or was she actually given instructions? That’s a nasty idea… We’d never get away with smuggling those beasts out of the country, might have to destroy them. How would you do that? Do they require to be chucked in a volcano? Would a sledgehammer just bounce off? He could believe it. The feats those things had made possible were so utterly supernatural—

Correction, not supernatural. A part of natural we didn’t know about before—

A whoop from George, a burst of applause, a babble of jargon. Grinning and clapping along with the rest, Ax gathered the space cadets were straight with Goddard again, all systems go. Sage looked round, at last, with a sweet and dazzling grin.

‘Hi there, werewolf—’

‘Hi, other werewolf.’

‘I didn’t know Ax was a werewolf too,’ remarked Chip, cheerily.

‘Hahaha. Look at him, blatantly he’s a werewolf. He can raise either of his eyebrows, independently. Hey, Ax. If immix brings out the beast in people, aren’t I leading my audience back to a state of primal innocence. Shouldn’t Pagans reckon that’s a good thing?’

‘Oh, a Daniel come to judgement!’ crowed Gwyn y gwr.

‘You can shoot a rabid dog,’ said big George, eyes on the screen in front of him, where the cross-stitching had been replaced by outer-space tv: very clear, you could almost feel the cold. ‘Without accusin’ it of moral error. You won’t be laughing if the fucking Second Chamber makes our code illegal.’

‘They won’t do that. It’s their money.’

According to Sage, Dian had asked him about the new “South American” cocktail drugs that made you hallucinate being an animal, and were rumoured to produce actual, physical symptoms in some cases. Dian’s cut n’ paste had Sage claiming that immix had often turned him into a shaggy throat-tearing Alsatian at the full moon, and he’d found the experience great fun. Dian making out she hoped it was a joke. Sternly telling him it was a joke in poor taste, in these days of real magic… Sage was (on the record) refusing to take the assault seriously. You say one thing, they print what they damn’ well please. It’s not worth worrying about.

Aoxomoxoa can’t sue a mediababe for calling him a big bad wolf—

‘—no, Chez, you can’t give it to me here—’ DK passed his ethereal hands through each other. ‘Have to give it to me over there. Can’t hold it.’

‘Sorry.’

Sage bounced off his stool, took the spliff and bore it off to the body on the gurney. ‘You ready for the off, DK?’

‘Not yet, my lord,’ whispered DK-in-the-flesh, a ghost of a voice, adamant. ‘This short trip will do for now… But soon, yes.’

Ouch. Last summer in California, when DK thought AIDS had got him at last, he’d wanted to go out Aldous Huxley style, pumped full of snapshot, under a scanner. He’d used emotional blackmail to get Sage to promise he’d set this up with Olwen. Sage had hated the idea, dreaded trying to sell it to Olwen Devi.

Fucker’s going to hold me to it. He’s a hard bastard, in his way—

‘Hey,’ said Gwyn y gwreig, minding the telltales. ‘He can’t smoke. No major muscle effort!’

‘Sorry—’ breathed DK. Then it was time. Affirmations bouncing round the secret lab. Nearly there, DK’s locked down, a-okay, Confirmed—’

Sage had returned to his place. Chez suddenly darted over to the cot. She’d wanted to be the one taking the flight, she had a hunger for that leap into nothingness, but she was only an apprentice, the newest recruit. She’d envied DK passionately, but now she realised he might die. DK might die, right now, be gone forever—

‘Let’s have the sound, Chez.’ She held his hand, it was limp like paper and twigs. His liquid dark eyes, huge in his hollowed face, were fixed on the taped-up screen. ‘Let her sing me out there, my oceanic Fiorinda.’

‘You’re sure you won’t fuck up something scientific?’ Ax was asking, last minute concern. ‘And piss off the people who own this space junk?’

‘They encourage amateurs,’ said Verlaine, as to an annoying toddler.

‘It’s okay,’ said Sage, more kindly. ‘The Goddard AI won’t let us screw up. All we’re doing is sending out a signal, an’ getting some free pictures back.’

Fiorinda, time-displaced (the Hartlepool tent-show had been yesterday) stood up to a mic on a stick, guitar slung on her hip, singing an old favourite, “Rest Harrow”, low and tender—

Heard her

Whisper

As he

Ploughs her—

Then she belts out the punk-goes-Country catch—

Let the sun come up tomorrow,

Let the sun go down tonight

Let the ploughshare and the harrow

Work and rest,

Work and rest!

Dilip-in-body, on his narrow bed, was run into the realtime cognitive scanner, the cowl swallowed his head and shoulders. B-loc DK vanished. The data took off, on its piggyback relay ride. The big old satellite they had importuned, which had been keeping its steady vigil on the X-ray universe for more years than Dissolution could count, opened to their input; generous as the earth to the plough. The massively rich signal that was Dilip Krishnachandran flew, and he was there. If he had not been paralysed by amazement he could have danced like thistledown on the six-metre-square counter array, in the microgravity and the cold blazing darkness.

Seconds later, under Battersea Reach, they saw him, standing on the array, snapped by the satellite’s exterior cameras: fuzzy as Neil Armstrong on a ladder.

YES!, howled the weird scientists, and the chamber exploded in joy.

Then they held their breath, because DK still had to get home. If something went wrong with the b-loc, the scanner would have a snapshot of his last normal brainstate, and restore at once. If something major went wrong physically, which might happen, no specific reason why, that would be different—

The Zen Selfers ran him out of the scanner. He opened his eyes.

‘Oooh, that was high! The blue earth, the coloured stars—’

The cramped space erupted again.

We’ve done it! We can do it!

Hey, hey, what else can we try? Pity the International Space Station is a hulk, can’t place a call when there’s no one home. Hey, the Chinese have stuff on Mars! It’s a long way. For the signal to travel so far, slinging it around, how would we—

Maybe a short moratorium, thought Ax, helplessly. And just hope my big cat leaves the really mental stuff to others… I can’t stop this. This is why the Reich exists. To hold the pass, to keep the future alive, until a relief force arrives.

Sage was so gloriously happy. The endless pointless duties, the endless faking that was Ax’s daily grind, what was the use of it if there were no moments like this?

The Innovative Food Production Group met in the President’s office in the Railham Building, the address for Reich affairs in Whitehall for a very long time. This particular day Lucy Wasserman was there, Member of Parliament for North Stoke, (House of Commons, not the Second Chamber): the woman Whitehall favoured as Greg Mursal’s replacement. She was a member of the Countercultural Movement, but not a known Rebel. Not a public figure, no Cabinet in waiting, an all round better bet than the candidates the Rebels favoured, but they could accept her. The meeting discussed the application of very high tech to very small mixed-arable farming units, while the President and the prospective PM checked each other out. Lucy was forty-something, looked younger, dark short hair, clear skin, what seemed like natural calm and gravitas: and if she’d worked for it, all the better.

Slowly, slowly. Non-violent regime change is a delicate project.

‘We should call this approach Gold Beach,’ suggested one civil servant.

‘Oh?’ said Sage. ‘Why a beach, what’s gold?’

‘Before D Day,’ explained the speaker, a young white guy in a retro suit and tie, ‘A British Major General called Hobart invented an array of tank-accessories, for getting the troops through the Germans’ awesome beach defences. US commanders rejected the lot because they looked strange and ridiculous. The 50th, using Hobart’s funnies, landed 25,000 men on Gold Beach, with 400 casualties. The US landing on Omaha was a slaughterhouse. Such is the legend.’

WWII references were a tradition, possibly founded by Fred Eiffrich and his ‘Fat Boy’ coining. They’d come to signal a wide network of those who had cut through the crap of polticial self-interest, and grasped that the Crisis was global war. A war with no human enemy, an all-out battle for survival.

‘Okay,’ said Ax. ‘Partial solutions. Patchwork, temporary, mixed techniques, Hobart’s Funnies, and I like that idea about growing ethanol crops in obsolete underground car parks. Let’s see how it appeals to the public. Gold Beach it is.’

Lucy Wasserman smiled.

The meeting over, Ax and Sage walked a corridor. Fiorinda was due home: they were miserable about her possible fooling around with Charm Dudley, DARK’s frontwoman, queen of Northern Dyke Rock. So, we say nothing about Charm? No, wrong message, we say a few, casual, normal things. How was she, did you fight—

A figure appeared on a crossing passage in front of them. It was Jack Vries. The Wiccan scholar stared, as if affronted by the sight of two grown men holding hands, bowed slightly without a word and passed out of sight.

‘What’s he doing around here?’ mumured Sage.

‘Let’s find out.’

Vries could only have been visiting the Countercultural Adviser’s office, there was nowhere else to go on the corridor they’d seen him leave. Mr Preston and his Minister breezed in there, and found Faud Hassim alone: a little startled at the sudden visit, but seeming pleased to see them both, and pass the time of day—

‘Was Jack Vries just in here?’ asked Ax.

‘Vries? Er, yes. Yes he was. Wanting to look over your inventory, in fact. I don’t know why that’s any of his business, and that’s what I told him.’

‘He’ll just come back with the proper paperwork,’ said Ax, resignedly.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Sage. ‘We’ve nothing to hide.’

The three men laughed. Sage and Ax went on their way: but they were alarmed. The IFP meetings were not secret, but Jack Vries had no reason to be in this building. One thing you learn, in politics, is to take notice of a warning shot.

’Reeka Azziz woke up in hot sunlight with a talking-heads tv studio pasted on her eyeballs: she rolled over, groaning mildly, and pressed her fingertips to the wall. A tug of cell metabolism energy and the window turned to shade, the air cooled. But the tv wouldn’t switch off. Overnight she’d forgotten the nerve-impulse tweak she’d just learned. She had to fall out of bed, whimpering, blunder to the washstand, rinse her fingers in saline and excavate the button from behind her eye.

Fuck, she muttered. Shit.

She’d been warned not to sleep with a new eye-socket gadget in place, but she’d just forgotten. Completely sober, just forgotten. Nobody had told her it would be so comfortable. Now her left eye felt as if someone had been gouging at it with a blunt penknife, and she wouldn’t be able to wear her new toy for a week: fuck fuck fuck. Dad had said she should hold out until the tiny permanent-wear kind came down in price, but he was living in the past. Things don’t get cheaper. Things vanish.

She found a clean sock, dipped it in cold water and held it to her aching face, while turning on her ordinary tv with another ATP impulse. She wanted to watch the rest of the Channel Seven breakfast show. This fucking house! She hadn’t pre-programmed her button, the house computer must have detected new hardware, and helpfully switched on the show because it was one of Areeka’s favourites.

Her parents had moved into Tower Hamlets New Model Housing before she was six, flooded-out refugees, Ax Preston’s guinea-pigs, and she loved the whole fucked-up futuristic thing, she was proud of her address, but it had a fucking mind of its own. Good, it was still Fiorinda, in some field, having a breakfast picnic and talking about the old days. How angry they’d all been, helplessly angry, because the world was falling apart and they felt so dis-empowered, but then Ax Preston came along and said we can do something about this… We can fight for our lives, not with violence but by doing practical stuff, everyday stuff. Your own hell, you can’t change, but you can do something about the hell that’s engulfing the world—

I want to have my hair like that, thought Areeka. Her mum said Asian hair would fall out if you kept bleaching it and curling it, and gene-treatment, if you had the money, made your scalp wrinkly…

But she was listening hard. Not to the familiar words: to the message Fiorinda was sending to the Reich’s faithful. On the surface Ax’s return had been everything they’d hoped for, but recently the message was not good. The warning, defensive way the leaders talked on shows like this; the way Dian Buckley had dared to treat Sage. The way that fucking traitor Roxane Smith could be detected sneakily dumping Ax Preston, taking the government line that he was just a figurehead President. Never was the dictator, never brought peace to English Islam or fought the Green Nazis, never really been anything but a pretty-good guitarist with terrific PR—

She was about to take to the road. Anti-ag-camp protests, volunteer work, tent-shows, samizdat tech fairs, would fill the summer weeks. Her parents were terrified she’d get arrested, but it was their own fault, they’d brought her up to be an Ax Preston baby. Friends reproached her for being a half and half, but she had to think of her career. London calls, you can’t be the new Fiorinda and live in Norfolk.

Downstairs, Mum was haranguing the drinking-water-man, telling him his cans were short measure and smelled of sick. Inertia rules the over-thirties. Mum and Dad hated and feared what was happening as much as Reeka did, but the nearest they came to protest was buying dodgy free-enterprise water from the Roms.

She sat among her half-packed clothes and camping gear, nursing her eye, listening to her parents’ early activities around the house, while the breakfast show moved on. Finally, when she was sure they wouldn’t walk in on her (Not that they ever did, they were civilised, at least they would knock), she dived into her rucksack and pulled out the battered make-up case. It travelled with her everywhere: it didn’t hold make-up. It was lined with battered green and yellow tissue flames, each flame edged in glitter, patient handicraft she’d done when she was twelve. It was sacred now, she would never change it. Fiorinda’s photograph (on stage, her tiny face a screaming mask in a cloud of red hair) was framed in fragments of Traveller’s Joy, supposed to come from the wreath she’d worn at the Inauguration Concert; the ensemble protected by clear sticky paper. If Mum opened the box it would be okay, she’d see teenage heroine-worship. Dad would spot at once that it was a Pagan shrine, and go beserk. You’re wrong, Dad. The Old Religion doesn’t belong to the bad guys. No more than Islam ever belonged to a bunch of women-hating fanatics—

She took the plaited cord and bound it round her wrist, took the knife in her right hand, and prepared to jab herself in the web between finger and thumb of the left. It’s not Black Magic Dad, it’s no different from Friday prayers. It’s not meant to change God’s will, or anything like that, it’s just praying, something you do to be part of “God”. She intended to ask a blessing on her leaders, to invoke a protection, but she was thinking of how much she hated the Second Chamber, and these were the words that slipped out, silently, as she shed a few drops of blood—

Ruin fall on them

Roxane climbed the stairs to hir rooms in Queen Anne Street, leaning hard on the silver mounted walking stick s/he used with the swagger of a Regency Buck while in public view. Nobody waiting for hir, which still hurt, though s/he hadn’t lived with Chip and Verlaine for years. Ah, how I miss my boys. But how good to have them back in London, and do I detect a trace of broodiness? How late-Roman-empire, s/he thought, divesting herself of outer robes. How superbly grotesque. A middle-aged (sixty is the new fifty) sexual neuter: hoping for grandchildren from a young man to whom s/he was once mentor, substitute parent, lover. And this former child-lover’s current boyfriend; with whom one has also had intimate relations.

Yet these days medically feasible, and almost respectable.

A glass, a bottle of good port secured, s/he retired to hir favourite armchair. It was barely eleven o’ clock, but morning tv was such a disaster for hir old bones, and Rox liked the ancient painkillers best. I need a new hip, perhaps a new knee. I’ll travel to the Pacific Rim, have the operations, and I’ll be young again. Maybe the boys will come with me, seeking my modern-miracle grandchild… Pipe-dreams. S/he sipped hir wine, with discrimination, thinking sadly of all the little English gods, going over the hill into oblivion. Soon not a soul on earth would remember why the curate’s egg was good in parts, or how it’s on a Monday morning that the gasman comes to call. Or know what I mean when I sing: I am the Vicar Of Bray, Sir. I defy the winds of change. I will always turn my coat, and survive, and serve the music. I only wish I could have seen Fiorinda’s bright star ascend, and charted her passage, a great artist needs a great critic, but it was not to be—

S/he’d had to distance hirself. Put clear water between “Roxane Smith” and the reckless schemes she feared were hatching. Because, let’s spit it out, if I should be questioned, I am too old and frail to contemplate keeping my mouth shut. So, I do my best, and I am true to you, my old friends, in my fashion.

We have done what we could. No green field shall be broken, Ax. Not for fifty, or a hundred years. Birds will sing in the bushes, sheep may safely graze (a great many of them, but not too many). Generations of charity-school children (our charity: the future’s beacons of excellence) will take with them, out into the wicked world, the culture of music, recreation, and the hard work of compassion, that you created… It isn’t what you wanted, but it ought to be enough, for any one man.

The Mountain’s too big for you, Mohammad. There is nothing you can do, this time. Except go down with the ship… Roxane caught hirself, a little horrified. With a turn of hir wrist, s/he flicked a few blood-red drops onto the rug. Absit omen.

FIVE

The Way It Is

The old mad woman lay dying, stripped of medical support: she was “comfortable”, nothing could or would be done to delay the last breath. In a corner of the room sat a brawny figure in nurse’s whites, doing a crossword; bright sunlight through the window-blinds striping her brawny arms. The nursing staff in this place all looked like combat-trained bouncers, it wasn’t an ordinary Care Home.

Fiorinda watched gran’s withered hands, the hoops of her rings sagging loose, diamonds and sapphires winking as dying fingers crawled, plucking at the straight-tucked sheet. Was something in there still trying to get out, tear off the bedclothes, throttle the guard and escape…? Puusi Meera, the virtual movie star, had once told Fiorinda, don’t ever wear a lot of rings. It makes you look frustrated. What a fine compendium of useful, practical information Puusi was. Fiorinda wore only one ring, so she was safe from the imputation. Were you frustrated, Gran? What was it you wanted out of life? You can’t have wanted what really happened.

You can’t have, can you—?

My food tastes funny, Gran. I think I’m ill.

‘You’re not ill. If your food tastes funny, Frances dear, that’s the first sign you’re pregnant.’ The grandmother says this to the twelve year old girl; a twinkle in her eye. The girl thinks gran can’t possibly know that Frances, STOP CALLING ME THAT! I’M FIORINDA! I CHOSE IT, IT’S MY NAME!, could be anything like pregnant. She feels superior, because she doesn’t yet know her grown-up lover has scarpered, and it’ll be many more days before she realises, pregnant is exactly what she is… Here, in the secure nursing home, older Fiorinda can step back. Looking through those twelve year old eyes, as if through peepholes cut in a picture, she sees the grandmother’s wicked knowledge. She sees herself, a naked young girl with her arms and legs twisted up: greased, glistening, ready for the oven on grandmother’s kitchen table, ready to be served up to her ogre father. Her mother, who escaped him once, has no idea, only dread suspicions, that it’s all started over again—

Oh, no, Frances dear. I can’t tell you! Your mother would skin me alive!

I think you loved him. Of course you worshipped him, he was the Master, but I bet you were in love with him too. She leaned forward, chin on her hands, trying to read the past in that crumpled, secret little face. Gran as a young woman in big skirts with small waists: good-looking, classy connections, no money, and no morals.‘I wasn’t the sort of girl a man marries’, said the grandmother’s voice in her mind, smug and salacious… Your association with Rufus goes way back, you met him when he was one of that rich-as-fuck London rockstar set, “dabbling in the occult”, a taste for young meat, and there you were, the self-styled witch with two juicy young daughters. Fiorinda’s mother had been the ambitious one, had a career in rock-journalism. What was Mum like, in those days? She could only think of Dian Buckley: Shallow Dian, knowing Rufus was a spooky, evil bastard but thrilled to have landed a megastar—

(Probably exactly the way Dian thinks of Sage these days. Her rockstar beau who turned spooky, and how cool yet creepy that she’s fucked him.)

I want to believe not, but I’ll never know. Everything I never asked is leaving the world, with this old woman’s last breath.

Frances dear, I have a little present for you—

A dry chuckle sounded close in her ear: it made her jump. The clock on the wall said time had passed, she’d been staring at gran for an hour and a half. She got up and went to the bathroom, to look for blood. Her pants-liner was still cornhusk blonde, not a spot, but she could feel the cramps beginning. Wish I could forget I’d ever been de-sterilised, this is torture. But oh, God, what if it works?

The pale walls closed in on her. She was twelve again, and oh God, what if I’m pregnant? What had she been thinking of? How could she have imagined she could escape, have a normal life? Ploughboys and princes fall for creatures like me but it can’t last. I have to go down again, into the lake, I have to vanish, under the hill.

She stopped at reception to sign herself out.

‘If there should be a change, call me.’

There would only be one change now. ‘All right Ms Slater.’

She was bottling out. She’d missed the moment of her mother’s death, she’d promised herself she’d see this one, but too bad. Soon she was on a train, heading for Central London through the depopulated suburbs. She had sent her car and driver away, without an explanation: shouldn’t have done that! I’ll sort it later, thought Fiorinda: imagining she was a kid again, and nobody really cared where she was, what she did. She’d bought a one day pass for coins, she crossed the maze of overground and underground, mechanically following a route from long ago: staring, vaguely puzzled, at the Greening of the city: brick and concrete jungle riven with new rivers of flowering meadow, birds and butterflies, Queen Anne’s Lace, buttercups and sorrel. In a North London cemetery, where her mother’s ashes had been forked into a rosebed, she wandered helplessly: looking for a small grave she’d never visited. She knew Mrs Mohanjanee, her kind friend, had arranged for the baby (Rufus’s baby) to be buried, under the bizarre impression that the lonely little girl next door was a Christian. She didn’t know where to start, she didn’t know what she was looking for (is there a headstone?). Couldn’t face the cemetery office.

I’d better get back to Brixton, she thought, but her feet took her to the cold house of her childhood. In through the garden gate, under the overgrown laurels, dark tunnel to gran’s old lair. The door was padlocked, but she had the keys in her bag. She’d been planning to come here, to see what state the house was in.

The basement had been cleared. There was nothing left of the witch’s cave where little Frances had fed on spicy gossip, while her mother brooded upstairs. She’d found a dead body in a place like this once, when the Reich was young. Empty basements smell of murdered children. She unlocked another door, into the house above, and mounted through the dusk of boarded windows to her old bedroom. Under the bed there was a secondhand acoustic guitar. In the mattress she would find the split where she had hidden her music—

There was no furniture, only a spotted, dusty mirror propped in a corner. She sat on the floor, where her bed used to be. Me and my useless mutant brain, what good am I to anyone? Ax and Sage don’t need me, they’ve got each other, I always knew how that would turn out. The curve of her palm remembered the feel of a downy little skull. She could not wipe her tears, she had to hold him very carefully.

Oh, shit, what if you drop them?

I’ll never forget you, I will never forget you.

She woke with an aching head, her face sticky with tear-tracks, curled on her side in the dust, streaks of twilight creeping in from the boarded window. She sat up, what the hell am I doing here?, and realised she’d been woken by the sound of intruders. Shit! What’ll I do? The door opened, and who’s this looming dark figure? A man, a big tall grown-up, and he’s brought another even taller man; an accomplice—

They came in and sat down, shadowy in the gloom, unsure of their reception.

‘How did you know where I was?’

‘Masculine intuition,’ explained Sage.

‘Is she dead yet?’

‘Sorry,’ said Ax…‘Your gran was still breathing, when we dropped by.’

‘Bugger.’

The thought that today was all to do again was awful.

‘I sent the car away. I know it was irresponsible—’

‘We narrowed it down,’ said Ax. ‘After we remembered you’d been planning to look at the house. Don’t worry about the car. That’s no problem.’

‘D’you want to talk about it?’ asked Sage, gently.

‘There’s nothing to say… I was waiting for her to die, I started thinking about it all, and I just crashed out, fell into my stupid past—’ She stared at them. ‘It was about the baby. My baby, he was such a good baby, he hardly ever cried, until he got sick. He was so sweet, he was my friend, and no one remembers him but me—’

The closer you get to someone, the more you understand how memory shapes them. What’s important and what (amazingly) is not… Ax saw a little girl with a baby in her arms, all the bewildered, painful love in that child’s face. File everything else as no account, every illusion I ever had of achieving something good, this is what matters, her steely innocence, her courage, her incredible courage.

He took his girl’s hand, too choked to speak.

‘But you do remember him,’ said Sage, taking the other. ‘So that’s okay. Sssh, don’t cry, stupid brat—’

‘I never hated her, you know. I hated mum, because she was always miserable. I knew gran was wicked and I didn’t care. She was interesting. Even long afterwards, when Rufus was fucking me, dressed in Feargal Karney’s corpse, and gran knew all about it, and she was on his side, I still didn’t hate her. There was no point. You’d do your head in trying to talk about right and wrong to my gran. The expression beyond good and evil was made for people like her… But you don’t get it.’ Her calm broke down again. ‘It’s the baby. We have to stop this. How can I dare have another baby, knowing what I am? What might it, what I am, do to a baby?’

Ax was paralysed, terrified of doing the wrong thing: Sage grabbed her and swept her into his arms, rocking her while she shoved her face against his shoulder.

‘Leave it out. Tha’s bullshit, my brat, and you know it.’

‘It’s not bullshit.’

‘Yes it is, nyah, nyah, nyah—’

‘Why shouldn’t you have a baby?’ said Ax. ‘You’ve been proved in the fire, Protector of the Poor. Whereas heartless selfish bastards who don’t know what is in them, and are not fit to be parents, have kids all the time.’

‘Think of my fucking dad,’ suggested Sage.

Fiorinda covertly turned her face and glanced at Ax. Not to mention your fucking mother, they thought: but they wouldn’t say it. Sage’s mother was a sacred icon. Ax cleared his throat. For hours they hadn’t known where she was. Sage had been sure she was fine, but Ax had been very scared; and was ashamed of himself.

‘Does this fear of babies imply you didn’t bleed yet?’

‘No blood, but I’m sure it’s coming, I can feel it.’

‘Meanwhile “the scare” continues.’

Late periods were called “scares” to confuse any prowling demons.

She freed herself from Sage’s arms: they shifted until they were sitting in a row, their backs to dank, peeling wallpaper, Fiorinda in the middle.

‘All right, I’m okay now… Did anything happen?’

‘We don’t know,’ said Sage. ‘We’ve been off the radar, looking for you.’

Flagship Fiorinda had not been called back to base because her gran was finally dying (that was a bonus). She’d been recalled because Ax and Sage thought something was up. An increase in traffic on Greg Mursal’s insider network: the Reich couldn’t access these communications, but they kept track of the activity. The Royal Academy interview; Jack Vries appearing in places where he had no business to be. Minor harrassment. A posse of Reich youth had been picked up in Hyde Park by uniformed Met, for public drinking. Nothing wrong with that, except the kids complained it was one of many incidents, and that they’d been taken from inside the boundary of the Permanent Festival site. The Met ought not to do that…

Straws in the wind, nothing definite, but it began to mount up—

‘We left Marlon handcuffed and locked in a cupboard.’

‘I hope you gagged him too. Or he might plead with Doug and get out.’

‘You can laugh,’ said Sage. ‘I just know he’s not streetwise, he’s spent his life in darkest Mid-Wales or at boarding school—’

After the police round up, Marlon had slipped his surveillance and been missing for hours. He said he’d decided to walk home, why not? It was true, the kids walked everywhere. It was a craze with them: no mobile phones, no passing through Tube gates or waving chip-cards at bus sensors. To move around without a trace.

‘What a fun visit for him,’ said Ax, unhappily.

‘It’s not your doing, babe.’

They were silent, thinking of the countless small and not so small annoyances of this life: resentment softened by the fact that right now they were alone together in a secret place; and Fiorinda still just might be pregnant.

‘We’re going to have to tell the Rebels,’ said Fiorinda.

‘You could be right.’ Sage tipped his head back, frowning. ‘They’ve co-opted you in their plan to replace Mursal, Ax. That was inevitable, given they have a plan, but it puts us in a false position, with the Lavoisier thing hanging over us. It might never happen, or be completely harmless, but we know about it—‘

‘Snapshot visions can easily mean the opposite of what they seem to say.’

‘Yeah, but, mm… I don’t like the way the suits never asked us for another Neurobomb meeting. It’s not nat’ural. I can’t believe they’ve given up the idea of building themselves an ‘A’ team…’

‘Maybe they’ve given up asking the Lennonist pacifists to help out.’

‘Mm.’ Sage withheld judgement.

‘I don’t think you should have talked to them at all, Fiorinda,’ said Ax.

‘Someone had to, and I’m not on their map.’

They’d begged her not to come near the Wallingham stunt, yet they didn’t seem to have a clue why she’d insisted that she would deal with the Neurobomb Working Party. They went through the motions, but they simply didn’t see risk in the same way when applied to themselves: it must be genetic, a male thing. How else would soldiers go off to war so cheerfully? So Fiorinda has to be the pushy brat, determined to make her mark with a fancy government committee—

Ah well, fair enough. She had been that brat, long ago, often enough.

They reached Brixton Hill in starry summer night, footsteps sounding in the quiet, through the elven streetlighting of SW2. Downturned golden flowers welling open before them, dwindling into candles again behind; unless other late passers-by triggered another wave. They had no premonition. The guard let them in, and Allie was in the front hall, in her office clothes: big-eyed, pale and frantic.

‘Where the fuck have you been! Why couldn’t I call you?’

‘Neasden,’ said Fiorinda. ‘My fault, I got pissed off waiting for gran to die, so I did a pilgrimage to the old homestead. I’m sorry Allie. Did they call? Is she dead?’

‘What?’ snapped Allie. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Is she dead?’

‘Who?’ Allie recovered her wits, shocked at the way she’d spoken to her leaders: but they didn’t seem to have noticed. ‘Oh, your grandmother. I don’t know, Fio. That’s not why I’m here. You’d better come upstairs. Faud’s seen it.’

Ax gave her a look of quiet concentration. Sage nodded.

They went upstairs. Faud Hassim, in his customary white shalwar kameez, rich hair rebellious under a close little cap, rose and bowed when the Triumvirate entered the living room. He had seen the Lavoisier video. Early this morning he’d been asked to join the Prime Minister and certain close advisors, for an emergency meeting. A shocking scandal was just breaking in the US—

After a while they moved to the square oak dinner table. It was weirdly as if they were in conference with their defence lawyer, who’d already identified the questions he would not ask. No reproaches, no demand to know what they’d known about this bombshell. The PM wanted a televised debate on the issue, irrespective of whatever happened in America. The venue would be the Lower Chamber, Ax and Sage would answer to the House, Jack Vries would take the chair—

Quick work. This hadn’t been figured out in a day. The snapshot message had been reliable: They’ve known all along. We are screwed—

So this is how they live, thought Faud, who had never been inside these rooms before; never come close to being a personal friend of the three. He was impressed. by their spare and modest dwelling.

‘We couldn’t reach you, so we’ve spent the time consulting with the CCM, the Permanent Festival Councils, significant Urban Communards, all of them your friends. We, the so-called “Rebels”, want you to accept the government’s challenge, and every party we consulted agrees it’s what should be done.”

‘Who was at the briefing this morning?’ asked Ax.

Faud hesitated. ‘The PM, Jack… Actually, it was a small meeting.’

‘Actually it was just those two?’ said Ax, acutely.

‘Yes.’

Well, that’s interesting. That’s a telling piece of information.

‘What is the issue?’ Sage asked. ‘Do they accept the video as genuine?’

‘Greg Mursal wants the issue to be your raid on Lavoisier,’ said Faud, slowly. ‘He wants the House to decide if Ax Preson, as titular leader of the English Countercultural Movement, had the right to decide, without consultation, to make a savage attack those people, devout Gaians, arguably our allies—’

Fiorinda nodded. ‘But what are Jack and the PM hoping to achieve?’

Faud and Allie were drawn to stare at each other, across the table: Allie bit her lip. ‘We will make this a debate about what the Lavoisiens were trying to do, what nobody denies they were trying to do. Our national stance on Fusion Consciousness Weapons will be, will be aired,’ said Faud, as if he hadn’t heard the question. ‘Ultimately, it will be about the future of this new country. A trial of strength between the Countercultural Movement as it was originally conceived, and corrupt NeoFeudalism at the top.’ He was fiercely earnest now. The video had shocked him, they could see that: but he was unshaken. ‘Ax, we need you to do this. We have to welcome the confrontation, sieze it as our opportunity. You can’t refuse.’

They’re going for impeachment, thought Ax. That’s why the reenactment nuts want to hold this farce in the House of Commons, where their faces have barely been seen since Dissolution. Before turning us over to the Second Chamber for trial. We should skip the poisoned chalice, resign right now.

But the trap had closed, and he could see no way out.

Fiorinda’s grandmother died in the night. When she’d taken the message she went to the toilet, and confirmed what she already knew: blood, a few little bloody tears. It was a relief to feel the familiar sad weight, settling back on her heart.

One shock at a time, please.

By the next day, ‘The Lavoisier Video’ was all over the shredded but indomitable global village. Citizens of the Great Peace, in Ulan Bator, were probably shaking their heads over the wicked antics of the famous rockstar warlord and his champion. The full-length video was hard to come by, but within forty-eight hours of the breaking news, a remastered, feature-length version of the trailer appeared, complete with a soundtrack of Ax, Sage and Fiorinda’s greatest hits. It was an explosive success.

In the US, long-prepared moves of formalised violence were exchanged, like the opening of a giant chess game. Crisis Europe’s response was guarded, at least at first. The Lavoisier affair had been swamped by the A Team event, that had swiftly followed: European authorities didn’t know what to think. In England, the popular media swiftly grasped that Ax’n’Sage had either saved the world (again). Or they’d been turned into psychopaths by the Pentagon, and ought to be locked up. The government was doing the right thing; or the Rebels were forcing the government to do the right thing. Questions must be asked, it was probably a Constitutional Crisis—

Ax went to see Joss Pender in Holland Park.

Social niceties didn’t detain them long. They left Joss’s wife (his first wife; he and Beth Loern had never married) and retired to Joss’s den, a fortress where they could speak freely, if you could speak freely anywhere—

‘How long had you known?’

Joss glared, fury barely tamped down, from behind his oversized Italian car-designer’s desk: defended by a barricade of congential untidiness; papers, random souvenirs, dead gadgets, digital art.

‘March.’

‘And told no one.’

‘Couldn’t risk it. It wasn’t ours to leak.’

‘I’ve seen the “video”. The whole thing, although neither you nor my son thought to provide me with a copy. D’you mind if I say it’s appalling?’

‘We never had a copy of the whole thing, I only just saw it myself,’ said Ax. Suppressing a desire to yell, what did you all think we’ve been doing? What did you think we were doing to the Islamic separatists in Yorkshire? Playing guitar at them?

‘What they’ve done too you is outrageous…and very clever. Have you considered memory-retrieval imaging?’

‘Nothing like that’s going to work, Joss. The courts tear brainscan evidence to pieces, whenever it’s presented. The bad guys are no longer disputing the video’s manipulated: they’re just saying no one can tell by how much. Why wouldn’t the same go for the images we stored in our heads?’

Sage’s father looked like Marlon Williams grown old: slight and energetic, the same cocky, wary, golden-hazel eyes. Same jet black hair, in Joss’s case thickly powdered with silver. Normally you’d never guess he was nearly eighty. Today the years had fallen on him, an old man’s impotence flaring in anger—

‘My son was eighteen months old when he lost the use of his hands. By the time he was four I knew it wouldn’t ever slow him down. He could write code you couldn’t fathom in a lifetime, before he could dress himself unaided. My son is one of those rare people who could have done anything he chose—’

Whereas instead he had to end up the bumboy of a rockstar warlord, starring in a cowboy snuff orgy… Ax’s relationship with Joss had been fine, until Sage had insisted his dad had to know they were lovers. Difficult ever since. As Fiorinda’s other boyfriend Ax’d been fine. Now he was a rival, and you’d get your head in your hands if you called Joss homophobic but there was that too: a bit of distaste.

We always use a proper condom, he thought. You won’t catch anything.

No, no. Keep your temper.

He could see a framed photo of Stevie, aged about six, in the part-geek, part-bowerbird nest that was so disconcertingly familiar. It had slipped sideways behind a perspex block that enshrined a dab of pioneering photonic crystal: eks, not fade away. Gurning for the camera. Little hands, that had lost several fingers to infant-meningitis septecemia, buried deep in his dungaree pockets. Ax remembered that gesture. He remembered Aoxomoxoa’s daily struggle, often in pain, so well hidden until you knew him, making sure disability didn’t ever slow him down—

‘He’s Leonardo da Vinci, Joss. I know it, I’m not arguing.’

It’s not my fault he never wanted to be king of the hill.

Joss sighed, hard and long. ‘You know, Ax, over the years, while you’ve been snake-charming the assets out of anyone you could reach, I’ve had the feeling you were saving me for something. So, here it is. What do you need?’

‘I need you to be my Post Office. I want to give you my Internet Commission cypher, and for you to take over that connection until the debate is out of the way.’

Joss nodded, looking slightly piqued at the modesty of the request. ‘What taking charge of Open Gates?’

The Lennonist bed-in publicity had won a concession. There was to be a pilot scheme, from October of this year, whereby a few government-owned camps would be run as open shelters. If it was a success (whatever that turned out to mean) it would be rolled out, and there’d be a time limit for the private sector to get rid of the razor wire and watchtowers as well. Plenty of weasel words in there, but it was something, and public support was very strong. That’s non-violent direct action for you: maybe it looks embarrassing and stupid, but it works—

‘No, that’s best left to look after itself. The other thing I need is for you to dismantle the annexe. I need someone, as safe from reprisals as possible, so not Sage’s band, to pull the plug there if it seems advisable. Get rid of the scanners, destroy them, ship them out, whatever you can.’

The lines around Joss’s mouth deepened and tightened.

‘When?’

‘Whenever you think. Sage will talk you through it.’

‘The video was a low blow,’ said Joss, his helpless anger building again. ‘Temporarily, at least, all the hopes of the people who wanted you back—who worked hard for your return, Ax—have crashed to zero. We’ll have to start again. But I don’t blame you two for that. Or for failing to anticipate the CCTV, or for failing to warn us… That insane installation under Battersea Reach is something else. Don’t you realise the science-hating lobby would destroy you for the scanners alone, and there are others who’d call it witchcraft? They don’t mess around, Greg Mursal and his cronies. They’re not the clowns you take them for, Mr Preston—’

‘You keep thinking I own him,’ said Ax, answering the rage, not the words. ‘I don’t, anymore than you ever did: I didn’t set up that space-lab. But I wouldn’t have stopped him if I could. This is what we do, Joss. We keep the door open and the lights burning, in case modern civilisation comes wandering home—’

Joss made an impatient gesture, possibly of apology. ‘All right. Consider it done. My God, Ax. Why the hell did you two have to get into that situation? Couldn’t you have left it to the professionals, for once in your lives?’

No, because the professionals meant to kill Fiorinda, thought Ax.

Could he say that? Even to Joss, in here?

He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to keep it straight. He would forget what could be said and what could not. Answer the question, he told himself. Answer the question, volunteer nothing. But the words spilled out, despite himself—

‘We were in Mexico with Fee, and we were losing her, Joss. She was falling apart, after what her father did to her; and then helping to kill him. We couldn’t reach her, we daredn’t touch her. It was incredibly painful. Fred’s emissary arrived, with a new problem, and it brought her back to us. I don’t remember making a decision, then or later. I wanted Fiorinda, you see. That’s all what was on my mind.’

‘Is that the line you plan to take in the House? You went on your killing spree in the grip of a sexual obsession?’

Ax smiled warmly, and nodded. ‘That’s it, spot on, well done.’

‘I apologise,’ said Joss, after a moment. ‘That was completely uncalled for.’

‘It’s okay. I’m sure I’ll have to field worse.’

In Washington the scandal had become weirdly focused on funding issues. Fred Eiffrich, unable to clear his expensive unlimited-force operation through the proper channels, had turned to the illegal expedient of paying ‘foreign mercenaries’ in vouchers for Hollywood stardom… In London, Ax and Sage’s defence team believed, the actual raid would be downplayed. Since it involved extraordinary courage; since it had saved Fiorinda’s life. The focus would be on character assassination. It would get dirty, and it would get personal—

Joss changed tack. ‘You’ve heard nothing from Fred?’

‘No more than you. A figure on the screen, saying his lines.’

Ax had known, the moment he saw Alain’s courriel, that he no longer had privileged access to the US President. So it goes. You make friends, you part from them. Sometimes a powerful friend loses an election: sometimes he has to throw you to the wolves. It hadn’t occurred to him that Fred could be in personal danger. But the “Fred Eiffrich” on the screens, since Lavoisier broke, had a spooky, stilted look, if you knew the man—

‘D’you think he has other troubles, besides this affair?’

‘I’m sure he has: but I wouldn’t know the details.’

Joss’s anger and Ax’s resentment, slipped aside. In silence they faced the prospect of a Neurobomb arms race, led by a new regime in the US, sweeping up the paranoid, unaccountable post-A Team world. Ax stared at the glittering crystal in its clear matrix, fighting a Black Rose moment, limitless fear of the Fat Boy.

Bullshit, things like that never happen. We’ll turn this around—

‘The debate is punishment for what happened at Wallingham,’ said Joss at last. ‘The people know that, they’re not fools. Fuck Greg and Jack, self-important mediocrities, can’t take losing a trick. What you did at Lavoisier, the real thing, not the tampered version, was heroic. I haven’t said that, I want to say that, and I’m making sure my opinion goes on record. But you have to do more than win, Ax. You have to undo the damage. You have to make the people see you are Ax Preston again. Our hero, our saviour. Can you deliver?’

Would I say no? thought Ax, but he took his time before replying: reviewing the odds he’d been weighing up night and day. The Rebels, the elected Members, the Secret Rulers (I’m looking at one of those right now). The Fourth Estate, and the callous, wayward English people themselves. In the other corner, Greg Mursal, Jack Vries; and the Second Chamber. Not even all of whom were fond of Greg; or his attack dog. A home crowd, basically manageable, and how many genuine, personal, determined enemies? A handful. Perhaps only two—

‘I can do it.’

Maybe you’ll pull it off, thought Joss, feeling the young man’s resolute calm, and the ability nobody could doubt. Ax Preston never lost a battle yet. But he was shaken by the bone-deep moral exhaustion he detected. Joss had never been in a firefight (and resented the new, or resurrected, rules of manhood). But he’d seen enough blood on the boardroom carpet to recognise certain states of mind.

Death wish, ooh, death wish—

‘Fine. Changing the topic, what do you people think of China? Do you “Techno-Green Utopians” approve of what’s going on there?’

Ax shrugged. ‘I doubt if we know what’s going on. But I’m talking to netizens who say the Great Peace brings liberty, equality and workable solutions. They say you lose nothing when you join the Sphere, they hero-worship the person or persons behind it all—’

‘You can’t trust a chat-room.’

‘I have to say, the precedents are lousy.’

They spoke of Fiorinda’s glorious North Eastern tour. Sailing; North Cornwall, the hopes of better weather this summer. Joss accepted the Commissioners cypher, and they parted friends. Better friends, at least, than they’d been in a while.

The opening of the debate was set for the 14th of June: after Whit Recess, and ensuring the show would be over before Alban Heruin, the Summer Solstice. The Insanitude Mail Room was swamped by messages of support, and forced off the air. Anyone who had access to the coverage became addicted to the incomprehensible things going on in Washington DC; while the people of England formed opinions based entirely on prejudice, or else had none. To London’s Reich Youth the Lavoisier affair was adult crap, none of their business: but there were exceptions. Silver came to Brixton Hill, and argued with Marlon out on the warm, dusty street. Passers-by noted the kids, isn’t that Marlon and Silver?, but this was SW2. No one stopped to stare.

‘We have to tell them,’ hissed the girl with the silver brown hair.

Marlon was like a hunted animal. ‘You don’t know my dad. You don’t know what he might do, he’ll do something horrible, disastrous and stupid.’

‘Fuck you. I know Sage fucking better than you ever could.’

The sex had been nothing personal, but there was a bond between them now all right. They might never escape from what they’d done together. ‘Okay, you win… Have your way, bitch,’ added Marlon, in Welsh. ‘And to hell with you.’

‘You too, bro,’ said Silver, viciously. ‘All of that.’

Ax was in his office, getting round to neglected trivia. He was reading a handwritten note from William the cleaner, a demarcation dispute with the security crew, when Doug Hutton put his head round the door.

‘Can Mar see you for a minute, Ax?’

‘Yeah?,’ said Ax. ‘Of course, he can see me anytime.’

He put the note aside, and tried to look inviting. A timid knock, then Marlon walked in, Silver Wing beside him. They got themselves chairs, without speaking, and sat close together. Oooh boy, thought Ax, immediately. She’s pregnant—

‘How’s it going, Ax?’ said Silver, ‘You know, the debate prep?’

‘It’s going to be okay, Silver.’

‘Really?’

‘Never in doubt.’

A slight exaggeration: the indicators were mixed.

‘That’s good,’ croaked Marlon.

‘Something else you wanted to know?’

‘N-no,’ whispered Silver, gripping the folds of her nutbrown homespun skirt in grubby, childish hands. ‘Something we have to tell you.’

She’s pregnant. Fuck. Silver Wing was nearly fourteen, a woman according to the customs of her people, the Counterculture. Not in English or Welsh law. Shit, what a moment, and Mary is going to be livid. Then Ax was disgusted with himself. Get your priorities right, for a minute or two. The child’s going to have a baby.

‘Okay,’ he said, gently. ‘C’mon, you’re not in trouble. Tell me.’

Marlon looked to Silver. Silver looked back, hard and long, and then at Ax.

‘He’s been questioned by the police.’

Chills ran down Ax’s spine. ‘When you were picked up in Hyde Park? You were all questioned, weren’t you? About what?’

‘It was different for me,’ whispered Marlon. ‘I thought it was the police.’

‘Wait a moment. I’d better get Fiorinda down here, and your dad, Mar. It sounds as if they should hear this.’

The day Marlon had disappeared for hours, he and Silver had been in Hyde Park. They’d been rounded up with others and taken to Southampton Row for a severe telling off. The kids claimed they’d been inside the Permanent Festival campground: the Metropolitan Police begged to differ, Ax had his doubts, but the incident was closed. So far, so minor, but Marlon had something new to tell—

‘They said they needed me to answer questions about another issue. I was driven somewhere, not far. It didn’t look like a police station, more like a private house. I didn’t notice much, I was too scared. They… I was alone in a room with a woman, not in uniform, she asked me a lot of questions. Then they took me back to Southampton Row. They said next time I was in trouble my dad would hear about it, and they let me go. I was just glad to escape. But Silver had waited for me, and when I talked to her, I realised something very weird had been going on.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us right away?’ asked Sage, who stood by Ax’s desk, his arms folded, calm expression; trying to remain impassive.

‘Because I knew why they’d done it,’ said Marlon, looking up. ‘They wanted me to tell you, so you’d g-go berserk. So you’d be out of control and you and Ax would get f-fucked over in the debate—’

Ouch.

‘You should have told us,’ said Ax. ‘But you’re doing fine now. What were the questions about, Marlon?’

The boy coloured, and stared at the floor. ‘About my dad, and what happens when I come on visits, and I don’t want to say any more.’

‘It’s because of what we did,’ whimpered Silver, twisting her skirt in agony. ‘All of this, it’s because of what we did. We slept together, we did it to make a s-spell against your enemies, because we knew you were in some kind of trouble. My mum says sex is the strongest of all magics, and she says it comes back on you, only I never thought about that part, and, and one of us was a virgin. That makes it a million times stronger—’

Marlon shrank in his chair, deep red to the hairline.

Fiorinda jumped up, dropped on her knees by Silver, siezed the girl’s hands and held them firmly. ‘Silver, look at me. You think it was wrong to fuck Marlon, and if you did it for any reason but love, fun or friendship you’re probably right, but it’s not the end of the world. You have not committed magic. Trust me, you haven’t hexed anyone in the slightest. I’d know.’ She waited, until some of the alarming, drained and white-lipped tension left Silver’s face. ‘All right?’

‘All right,’ whispered Silver.

‘You know what: I’m going to take you home. Doug will drive us to Reading, and I’ll talk to Anne-Marie. You’ll stay on the site, with your mother, until the debate is over, is that understood?’

‘Yes.’

Fiorinda left with Silver. Ax and Sage let Marlon go to his room: trying not to show how angry they were; cutting short their attempts at reassurance, as he’d clearly had enough. Marlon’s travel plans were made: Sage had told him he had to go back to Wales, before the debate kicked off. A decree Mar had accepted, they now realised, with suspicious docility. Sage went upstairs. A while later he returned to the office and sat staring into space.

‘You were right,’ said Ax. ‘We should have given him a 24/7 bodyguard.’

‘Never out of arm’s reach, yeah… I’ve spoken to Mary.’

‘What did she say?’

Sage looked at the strong, shapely artist’s hands that had been crippled paws. Crippled paws but handy fists, blunt instruments he’d used viciously on his former girlfriend, his son’s mother. Both of them drug-addled, locked in mutual lust and hatred, a really nasty, destructive lifestyle, but that’s no excuse—

‘Mary says… If I need her she’ll come up to testify for the defence.’

‘Wow.’

Sage nodded. Wow indeed.

‘I told her it’s not that kind of trial.’

They relapsed into silence. No use talking about it. Soon the ‘debate’ would be over, vanished like the miasma it was, and they would get back to work. Ax felt that the bodhisattva would be okay. There was that core of peace in Sage, which nothing could touch. He was trying to keep the depth of his own emotional crisis to himself.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Despite Silver, we’re going to win this.’

‘Yeah’, Sage agreed, wearily. ‘I know.’

On the thirteenth Fiorinda was in Liverpool, on Volunteer Initiative business. She met Alan Cosby, the waste-plastics magnate, at his stark but central offices in Ranleagh Street: trading a popstar-royal geisha hour for financial committment to the Open Gates scheme. It costs money to dismantle that razor wire. They were old friends, in that Cosby was routinely generous to the VI, and warranted Fiorinda’s personal attention. She wore the glamorous smoky-opal frock from Hollywood; the interview was broadcast live on the regional news, and published on the net. It was a pleasant change, despite everything, to talk to someone for whom the future looked bright. Even if she did have to suppress thoughts about ruthless waste-plastic futures-trading.

Mr Cosby shook her hand warmly as they parted. ‘Ax Preston gave the drop-outs a life,’ he announced, ‘and gave me back my self respect, as I don’t have to step over the buggers no more. Now, while you’re at it, there’s young woman who plays the didgeridoo outside St John’s—’

The nation’s sweetheart laughed. ‘Sorry, Alan. She’s a colleague, a working musician, we don’t clear those away. Offer her a job, if you think she’d take it.’

Cut to Recycling Magnate of the Year, crosslegged on the sunny pavement, finding out about the different styles of Western and Eastern Arnhem Land from the young woman with the didgeridoo. Debate, what debate? It’s business as usual for us citizens of Utopia, thank you Mr Cosby.

The sleeper sabotaged her at Crewe, by having H-problems and threatening to blow a piece of Cheshire sky-high: but she was on her way again at dawn. Patchwork power sourcing, including trailing behind a wood-burning steam locomotive at one point, slowed her journey. At Milton Keynes she watched as the great casket of the Palace of Westminster was opened, on National Rail tv.

The crowded train was very quiet. She thought of the Referendum, long ago, when the people had been asked to vote on the repeal of the Death Penalty, and they knew Ax would quit if they refused to be merciful. If they could, they’d give him another landslide, she decided, watching faces. But the people weren’t going to be asked, and many of them had no vote, anyway. They were debt-casualties, bonded labour, neo-feudal serfs. We will fix that, she thought. We will get your franchise back for you. Ax has it on his list, and we aren’t beaten yet—

She saw the opening salvos; part traditional, part impro. Ax was in his dark red. Sage wore a suit in dusty-blue, dating from the glory days: discreetly remodelled, as Sage would never have the body Aoxomoxoa’d had when the Reich was young. White-headed Jack Vries was sombre as a funeral. Second Chamber celebs filled the Commons front benches, surrounding the narrow pit like gentlemen-bruisers—with a few tough, stylish ladies—jostling at a prize fight. The Member for Teddington, let his name be expunged from memory, proposed the motion of censure.

The sound was very bad, she could hardly make out a word.

At two in the afternoon, having sent her overnight bag to Brixton, she crossed St Stephen’s Green; where they had tried to burn her alive. The day was cool and clouded. She made her way through a silent crowd to the Gallery entrance, where she was saluted and ushered upstairs into a hushed, avid, VIP crush. There was a roped off section for Ax’s close associates. She snuck in at the end of a row, beside Rob.

‘How’s it going?’

‘It’s okay,’ said Rob, eyes front, rigid as a gun dog. ‘It’s okay.’

‘It’s horrible,’ whispered Dora, leaning past her lover, showing the whites of her eyes. ‘Horrible but good. It’s going great. You need an earbead, here—’

Ax Preston had never used speech-writers in the dictatorship—something people found hard to believe now. He had no tricks of oratory—except the ones carried over from his other profession, such as his sense of rhythm, his effortless timing, his instinctive, peerless feel for an audience. Those who knew had warned Greg and Jack, don’t let Ax speak. If you let him get going, you’re screwed. Work on Aoxomoxoa, who has all that dirty washing, and a famously short fuse… Faud Hassim’s team, in the other corner, had rehearsed their principals furiously: where the worst questions would come from; the dangerous special interests. They knew the danger, they had cunning plans and fallback positions; and Sage knew when to duck out—

All of this had gone by the board. The PM and his allies must have been inwardly rubbing their hands in glee at first, because it had seemed that the leaders of the Reich had no idea how to protect themselves. Quite right, Ax admitted. We didn’t know what we were letting ourselves in for, when we agreed to help the President track down his occult terrorists. No more than when joined the government’s popstar Think Tank, the year of Dissolution. We blundered into a situation out of stupidity and vanity, and then we were in too deep to get out.

Yeah, agreed Sage. We knew the Lavoisiens were sincere in their beliefs. They’d mostly been driven to suicide-warrior terrorism by righteous desperation, and we knew that when we shot them down.

Asked to confirm that they’d believed the nest harboured a “Fat Boy Candidate” a psychic monster of unimaginable power: Ax said it wasn’t true. They’d been pretty sure there was no Fat Boy among the trainees, they’d just been set on getting Fiorinda out. They were afraid she’d be caught in friendly fire when the ‘unlimited force’ US government raid happened. Implored by a friendly questioner to condemn the faked ‘video’, Ax said it wasn’t faked by that much. Sage said, and what did you think we were doing up in Yorkshire, that time? We were killing people, it looks nasty. Now you’ve seen us doing it, dunno why it makes such a difference.

Did they admit the secret camera footage was substantially accurate?

Not the dialogue, but broadly, yeah, in the events.

Had they fired on anyone who was unarmed?

We don’t honestly know.

Did the President and his Minister take pleasure in dealing out death?

‘There are people who will never touch a lethal weapon,’ said Ax. ‘I wish that was me. I’m efficient, I’ve taken pleasure in that. Insh’allah, I’m not going to do it again. Tell the truth, I’m grateful to the Black Dragon for the shove up the arse… You’ll never entirely get rid of violence, it’s part of life. But our fight for survival in an overwhelming Crisis is turning into something else now, and we all know it. It’s time to to think hard about the traits we want to encourage in this new thing, and the traits we want to keep down. Initial conditions are crucial. We’re the parents, we’ve got to be careful what kind of a start we give to this baby world.’

This was Mr Preston’s longest speech.

Parliament had been out of fashion for a long time. Most of the Elected Members, tracked down, bused and bullied here for the occasion by one side or the other, had never been inside the building before. But the chamber grew sober and concentrated, as on the best occasions in its active career. It became evident that Ax and Sage were not self-destructing; not at all. They had seen the one straight path, and they were sticking to it. The issue was violence, the ultimately futile and destructive solution of violence that had haunted England since Dissolution. The President and his Minister, unprofessional soldiers, were not the accused. They were the expert witnesses the House had called upon, offering their experience.

When Fiorinda arrived the bad guys were on the ropes. Jack Vries had launched a blatant cross-examination of the former Aoxomoxoa, and nobody on the Rebels’ team had protested, because Vries was so obviously desperate. Does Mr Pender agree he has a history of uncontrolled aggression? That as ‘Aoxomoxoa’, before Dissolution, public outrage was his trademark?

‘Yes.’

‘Rapine and pillage are the signs of the berserker,’ mused Jack, consulting his notes. ‘Have you ever raped anyone, Sage?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did she prosecute?’

‘No.’

‘Well, we shan’t pursue that,’ said Jack, with a courtroom flourish. ‘Or act on your confession of a serious crime. You’re wise not to deny it, considering the media reportage of your liasion with Mary Williams. Rape with grievous assault was quite a hobby of yours, wasn’t it? Could you explain how a rapist, and, may I add, a former heroin addict, came to achieve the Zen Self?’

The House kept quiet. Mr President Ax sat back, mysteriously passive, and let his volatile friend take the punches—

‘Achieve is technical, Jack. It means you’re there because you reached a point where you will be there, an’ fusion is outside time. I don’t know what would happen to someone else: the science is neutral. What happened to me is ongoing. I would say it’s hardly begun an’ I don’t know if it has an end.’

Whoever told you you could make me take a swing at you was mistaken, sunshine. The sad truth is, half the time when I was nineteen I wasn’t out of control. I was worse than that. I used to hit people cool as ice: because I felt like it.

Jack nodded. ‘Ongoing. A process that might be reversed, and isn’t that what happened in the desert, Sage? You invaded a place of power, in a state of unwisdom and unpreparedness, as you have admitted. We have been told there was no evil magic at Lavoisier, it was all mere delusion: but I don’t take my opinion on these affairs from the US security forces. There are powers beyond their understanding, and I can show exactly how and in what form you and Ax were disastrously affected—’

Jack opened his notes, and commenced to explain what a werewolf is, very cogently: dismissing the common errors, referring to learned sources. Might he draw the House’s attention to their slates, where they would see a certified copy of the relevant passage from that notorious ‘Royal Academy’ interview—

Uproar.

Consternation. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the Rebels were dealing with an accusation that could put Ax and Sage on trial for their lives: because witchcraft, despite past misuse of the law by enemies of the state, was still a capital crime—

Faud Hassim leapt up, demanded to be recognised (which Jack didn’t deny him) and urged, at the top of his voice, that the House should affirm that any attempt to weaponise natural magic, by any means, by state, by opposition group or private persons, was anathema: and that was what had been happening at Lavoisier. This censure of Ax and Sage was turning law and justice on its head! There was loud and prolonged applause, almost drowning the boos and hisses—

The session closed at six. The debate was to run for three days, with a possible continuance to five days, and no anti-social hours. The PM had been warned that late nights and a bunker atmosphere would favour the rockstars. Fiorinda went down to the floor, her presence cutting a path to where the steps of the sanctuary would have been, when these moots were held in the mediaeval Chapel of St Stephen.

‘I feel I should have quartered oranges, and fresh towels.’

‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ said Ax, sternly. ‘You’re supposed to be in Liverpool, protector of the poor.’

‘How could I resist?,’ Fiorinda smiled for the cameras, of which there were plenty. ‘This little place may not be much, but we’re fond of it, we English. It’s nice to see it functional again.’ She put her arm around Sage, an unusual public gesture that made him grin at her and murmur, nice: but she felt his weariness—

‘You were great, Jack. Terrific stuff, all those references. Well played, sir.’

The Few left the building in a body, huddled around their leaders: beautiful people in unconsciously show-off clothes, rockstar clothes, walking away from a fight together, intact but battered, as how often before. ‘Did I tell you?’ inquired big George. ‘Do not fuck with them!’ The boss hung his head. It was so bad, it was funny. ‘I know, I know. I have learned my lesson… But, but it was fucking years ago!’

‘They never forget. Hell hath no fury like a sandwich.’

‘You won’t do it again, will you?’ Cack insisted, anxiously.

‘He won’t,’ promised Ax. ‘I’ll see to it. I can get very jealous.’

Verlaine was less struck by the humour of the situation. ‘Werewolves!’ he snarled, with uncharacteristic venom. ‘He’s a fucking lunatic, oh how I’d love to get my teeth in the bastard’s throat—’

Fiorinda tucked her arm into his. ‘Cool it, son. Look happy, we’re still on show. Don’t panic. We’ve conceded a goal, but we had the best of the play and it’s not even half-time.’

On the second day Fiorinda turned up beside Faud: neat and spruce in her old dove-grey trouser suit. She was formally spied as a stranger, and defended her position, correctly addressing Jack Vries, not the protestor. She was Mr Preston’s deputy, and therefore the acting titular head of the CCM, with a theoretical seat in the Reformed House of Lords. If she’d chosen to use her privilege on the other side of the Lobby today, she certainly wasn’t alone! (Laughter). Thus began the second act, in which Fiorinda’s performance was inspired. She touched the hearts of aged House of Commons anoraks by her attendance to the forms, and when she didn’t know, she made it up. She bounced up and down like a Jack in the Box, she made elaborate use of sarcasm; she employed all the beloved jargon.

Early in the day, she dropped the bombshell that she had not been an innocent bystander in the Lavoisier raid. If Ax and Sage were censured, the nation’s sweetheart must suffer the same. This caused an upset. Someone from the Second Chamber back benches wanted clarification, took part in what way? Did the Right Honourable young lady handle an assault rifle? He wished he could have seen it. How could she have had anything to do with the killing, while she was a helpless prisoner? Was she suggesting that she had taken part in the spree by magic?

‘My lord Speaker,’ said Fiorinda, ‘The Right Honourable Lord says “magic”. I say we know that this is a world where time and space, and material constraint, are not what they seem. I may have been fighting beside my rescuers, in some real sense; for there are mysteries. All I meant was that I take my share of the blame, if there is any. If Sage and Ax had not taken the terrorists by storm, I’d have been dead.’

The PM, arms folded, glowering like a bull with a sore head, gave Jack a sign to let this pass. Don’t touch Fiorinda. That had been another warning, and somebody was going to get a bollocking… A fresh question, this time from a Green lady aristo of goodwill. Can the Right Honourable Ms Slater tell us, is she then also a werewolf?

Laughter.

Fiorinda responded, (observing the forms) that she did not know. Perhaps Lord Vries had another secret identity in mind, in his magical menagerie.

A Rebel MP thanked Ms Slater for explaining her Houdini-like prowess, and had a question about the amnesty Ax had secured, for the surviving Lavoisiens. Had this life-saving negotiation gone unrecorded by the famous secret cameras? Or had it landed on the cutting room floor, due to artistic license on the part of the so-called ‘martyr’ behind this pitiful farrago of a crypto-neo-conservative stalking horse, sponsored not by the people of the US but by a ruthless paranational Babylonian conspiracy between the most brutal end of the entertainment industry and the most insane of mass-destruction weapon-mongers—

Outcry, uproar. Many voices defending the Lavoisiens, shouting that it was Ax Preston who was the lackey of the evil empire. Many others shouting them down, waxing furiously contemptuous of the Greenwash Fat Cats’ censure—

‘If he was a suicide warrior,’ yelled someone in the Gallery, ‘how come he’s not dead? The Black Dragon could only be a reliable witness at a séance!’

Order! Order!

The session ran until ten and broke up in a mill, all kinds of people trying to get next to Ax and Sage and Fiorinda. The Rebels were loud in their elation. It was over, the government was creamed, the division tomorrow a formality. Jack had shot himself and Greg in the foot, with that ill-judged over-the-top ‘werewolf’ ploy.

‘Tomorrow we’ll finish them,’ declared Faud, mopping his brow—the evening had grown sultry and close, in the poorly climate-conditioned Chamber. ‘We’ll sink the Neurobomb without a trace, we’ll pulverise the bastards!’

‘They said Fiorinda must not be involved,’ muttered Greg, to one of the older members of his Cabinet. ‘She wasn’t to be anywhere near the fucking House, her name never mentioned or they wouldn’t play ball. D’you think she…she disobeyed them? Or was it a set up?’ The veteran clapped Lord Mursal gently on the shoulder. ‘You’re learning, Greg. You’re learning!’

Photocalls and soundbites, in the Lobby and then outside, in the airless swelter before a cloudburst. The Few were in a mood to celebrate. Ax and Sage were staying behind, as they must, to socialise with their enemies and their supporters. Fiorinda slipped through the meshes, avoiding both friends and enemies (it’s a knack) and walked away alone in the dark; feeling depressed. So we’ve won, and it wasn’t even hard. But what will the public will remember? It’ll be the werewolves smear. They’ll be thinking no smoke without fire, just because it’s interesting. What do ordinary people care about politics-anoraks scoring obscure points off each other—

Greg and Jack are not amateurs. They know what they’re doing.

Half way to Westminster Tube someone caught up with her. It was Joe Muldur, NME roving reporter of long ago.

‘Hey, Fiorinda!’

‘Hey.’

Not all journalists are insensitive prats. He fell into step beside her, and she didn’t object to the company. ‘How’s life, Joe? I haven’t seen you for a while.’

‘You’ll see more of me soon. I’ll be on your fabulous trail.’

‘The festival circuit? You haven’t moved on to higher things?’

‘Like the lovely Dian? No fucking thanks.’ Joe glanced at the nation’s sweetheart, strangely alone and sad after that triumph. ‘How are they, I mean besides this crap? The tiger and wolf love affair, is it in a good phase?’

‘Oh, you know, as usual,’ said Fiorinda gloomily. ‘On again, off again. They like to keep things simmering. Well, I’m going this way.’

They’d reached the Underground. ‘I’m off back to the House,’ confessed Joe. ‘It’s an expenses party, can’t turn down a free drink, it’s against my religion. I just wanted to say…to say… Your guys were brilliant in there.’

‘Yeah. Only, unfortunately, we were all wasting our fire. This country hasn’t been governed by Parliament since about the Napoleonic wars.’

As she headed down the steps she knew that he stood looking after her, with puzzled sympathy and even pity—across the gulf that separated Fiorinda, forever, from real life, real music; from everything that matters.

Never, never back your enemy into a corner, unless you’re prepared to do one of two things: either kill him or turn him. Ax was acutely aware that he’d offended against this law, not once but twice now. He didn’t see how he could have done otherwise. He’d had to get his family out of Wallingham, and he’d had to come out on top in this ‘debate’. But he sure as fuck did not want to start a civil war, and he could not turn Greg Mursal.

His failsafe arrangements seemed ridiculous, after the day was won. They agreed to have me back because they didn’t want me running around loose, he thought. They don’t want to destroy me. They want to destroy my power, while keeping the legend for their own use. But I knew that. I knew I was coming back to this. I’ve tried the alternative, arbitrary rule, and it was hateful. The country’s stable, there are massive public works, sustainable development, in many ways this England is a success. I have to work with the NeoFeudal gangsters who’ve made the trains run on time. It’s the only way to keep the stability, and claw a few human rights back.

Soon, hopefully, it’ll be a better set in Westminster.

He stuck to mineral water, slightly maliciously, knowing how this annoys alcohol-drinkers; and felt for Sage, who was downing pints for both of them. The big cat detested playing the role of Joss Pender’s son, he wasn’t flattered to be accepted by this caste as one of their own. Please don’t get get drunk, Sage… From another part of the bar (the big room gone all flowery nouveau William Morris, but somehow retaining the old die-hard men’s club ambience), Faud Hassim and his pals cast smouldering glances. Like lovers betrayed. Ax would have to explain to those idiots, I have to schmooze with the PM, otherwise what the fuck use am I? The rock and roll stage was on his mind. He had realised recently that he needed the Chosen Few very much. Jor and Shay and Mil; and Maya. They’re my instrument, with them I make my best music, but I’m trapped, ‘we won’ and I’ll never be let loose again—

A supper party had been proposed at Jack’s place, no one having eaten dinner. Mr Preston and Mr Pender called Fiorinda, to tell her they would be even later, and found themselves in a car alone with Lord Vries: Jack facing them in the cavernous, leather-scented rear section. The clouds had burst, they reached Hyde Park in a black downpour. Ax glimpsed the stained, crumbling tower of the derelict London Hilton, former HQ of England’s first rockstar President, the monster known as Pigsty Liver. Saul Burnet. He had not thought of the Pig in years.

‘Ain’t you afraid to be alone with us?’ wondered Sage.

The scholar blinked. ‘Oh, I don’t think you’ll transform tonight. There is no full moon, and this is central London, not a locus of evil.’

‘You don’t say. Well, as long as you’re happy.’

Park Lane was in the process of being narrowed, obsolete impermeable surface being torn out. They left the car at a landscaped garage in the midst of the deconstruction. Only emergency services and diplomat plates were allowed into Central London sidestreets. ‘I won’t flout the law with the king of England in my care,’ said Jack, humorously. The driver ran around to provide umbrellas; but the rain had suddenly stopped. A van pulled up, and half a dozen armed, uniformed guards got down. ‘I’m not usually so grand,’ Jack explained, ‘but tonight I can’t take chances!’

They walked into the seclusions of Mayfair: three tall men wielding folded umbrellas, followed by a troop of armed bravos. Ax was disoriented, he hadn’t eaten since noon, and had drunk only water. The scene seemed Victorian, Mediaeval, an amalgam of both. This could not be the present. If Sage had not been stalking dourly beside him, radiating evil temper, he’d have been sure he was dreaming.

Jack’s place was in Berkeley Square, one of those flat-fronted Georgian mansions of the innermost city; highly prized by the new elite. Golden-white light spilled, extravagently, from the shell-ceilinged porch to the pavement. ‘I have yet to hear a nightingale!’ Lord Vries pointed his umbrella at the shadowy masses of the gardens. It must be a favourite line. For once Ax caught the native Flemish in his voice, a hint of Jack’s immigrant status, the naïve pleasure of someone who has fought hard to belong. ‘I hope you enjoyed your Eid, by the way, Sir. The Islamic holidays are very quiet, aren’t they? Inward turned, unlike the open, public, life-affirmation of the great Pagan rites.’

‘Very unlike,’ agreed Ax.

They’d had time to do some probing. Ax was certain that Jack Vries himself had been behind what happened to Marlon. Greg would have known about it, too, of course. But they were impossible to attack. Simple, they just deny everything, pick some scapegoats and shove them out to take the rap. He wondered about the bond between the two men, it didn’t strike him as sexual. Was Jack still going to get his Cabinet post? Or was that conditional on the result of the debate?

‘Maybe you should install a few,’ suggested Sage. ‘In concealed cages.’

‘Hahaha. Caged nightingales? That’s against the law, Sage!’

They reached the brightly lit steps of number 50. ‘Well, it was a lively performance. You play to win, Sirs, and so do I. But off the pitch I hope we’re going to be good friends!’

There were more lights inside: servants bustling. Suddenly Ax knew (something in Jack’s tone, complacent, sly) that this was where Marlon had been questioned. He saw the room where it had happened. A floor of red and cream tiles, dark brocade curtains. A white woman in a severe coat and skirt, not quite uniform, her features like holes in dough, faced the boy across a small table. Jack wasn’t in sight, he was listening and watching elsewhere. The woman’s voice was low and menacing, too low for Ax to make out the words, but he knew what she was saying. Has your father ever interfered with you? Marlon answered, staring back, damning her eyes, Only when there was nothing on the telly—

The vision lasted no time. It vanished and he didn’t know where it had come from. From his imagination, probably. Jack Vries was saying “good friends” with a smile of comfortable, insolent superiority. A veil of thin scarlet swamped Ax’s field of vision. He punched the smug puppet-master, hard and accurately, in the throat.

It would have been better if it had been Sage. The former Aoxomoxoa was a seasoned public bruiser, who knew how to land a smack on some annoying bastard for maximum spectacle and no serious damage. Ax had never hit anyone in his life, before he went to Yorkshire and learned to do it so as to maim or kill. Jack went down, the guards rushed up. Two of them crouched over their master.

‘Mr Preston,’ said one of the men, urgently. ‘You should leave, Sir.’

‘What—?’

‘Get out of here, I’m not kidding—’

Sage knelt and touched Jack’s throat. The scholar was breathing, but it didn’t look good. ‘Sage, you got to get Ax away,’ hissed the crouching guard; the other nodded violently. Sir! cried the rest of them, starting to panic. Get Ax th’ fuck out of this! Ax and Sage stared at each other. Dear God, what have I done? A car entered the square, less scrupulous than Jack about the byelaws. Maybe the Prime Minister was inside. Upper-caste voices and ringing footsteps approached from Bruton Street.

‘The guys are right,’ said Sage.‘We should leave. Sort the details later.’

They hurried, heads down, until the all-night streetlighting of Piccadilly made them double back: but that was a mistake. There was no escape route, no back alleys left open to intruders in this nest of privilege, and an outcry had begun. They hit broken-ants-nest activity, voices, flashlights, the affront of sirens. Sage thought of vaulting the railings around the next gardens, hiding under the bushes until the hue and cry had passed: but there were shouts, excited barking, lights and movement in there. Hunting us with dogs, well that clarifies the situation. The rain, which had become a downpour again, was their only shelter. Running, up one street and down another, waves of honeysuckle and jasmine scent escaping from secret cloisters. Shite, what a neighbourhood to choose. They kept hitting the concrete defences around the arse of Grosvenor Square, no Ambassador in residence but the fort was still standing. Either that or some other embassy’s armoured back yard, and are they sleeping, are they hell. Try again, more dead ends, we’re screwed, shit, this is a rat trap—

Hunkered between the bins in a narrow basement area, Ax could feel, a heartbeat away, the moment that he needed to reach, the moment before he had taken that terrible action. The rain hailed on him. At the end of the area a small flight of steps led to an ivied, wrought iron gate. The look on Fiorinda’s face as she turned and walked away, in the lights of Parliament Square. Oh, Fiorinda, oh God, I’m sorry—

‘Mr Preston?’ whispered a shadow, seeming clad all in glimmering white.

Ax was in his office, a room where they often sat together in the new regime, because the upper floor could feel mournful. Fiorinda was off somewhere. He was at his desk, knowing there was something very wrong because Silver Wing had told him so. Sage leaned by the window, in a characteristic pose. He was telling Ax that he was leaving, it was over. ‘When we were together before,’ he said, ‘in the dictatorship, I loved you, but we were rivals. Now we’re lovers and it was okay in Paris, but it gets in the way here. It makes me not the right person to be your grand vizier, so I’m leaving you. It’s for the best, babe.’

He woke on a wave of heart-pounding horror, and lay for a moment in abject gratitude. It was a dream, oh thank God. He was dressed except for his suit jacket and shoes; lying on a thin mattress on the bare boards of a large, cool empty room. Sage was sitting on this mattress, leaning against the wall by a window. Through drifts of muslin Ax glimpsed a courtyard, trees and some kind of white pavilion. It seemed to be early morning, before full light. He sat up.

‘Sage. I dreamed you were leaving me. God, that was horribly real.’

He pushed back the hair from his temples—he had a pounding headache—; the dream insistent on being told. ‘We were in my office, but there was something wrong with the room. You were saying that you were never in love with me before, just fuck buddies, for her sake, but now you were, and it meant you had to quit.’

Sage was looking at him strangely…and with a hideous shock he knew that this was the room in the dream. ‘Oh shit. It was a telepathy artefact, wasn’t it? You were sitting there, like that, and that’s just what you are going to tell me.’

‘No!’

Sage dived over, and grabbed Ax in a fierce embrace. ‘It’s true, I feel differently, and it was okay in Paris, it was wonderful, but it doesn’t fit back here, it makes it fucking hard to, to tell you what you should do. But I’m not going to quit, oh, no no no, never, never.’

They held each other like children, like babies too young to be ashamed, and other cold, shattering grey mornings gathered around, all the way back to the Hyde Park Massacre, and the allegiance forged there.

‘Sage, where are we?’

‘Ah—’

Where to begin, thought Ax, with sympathy. ‘Don’t worry, I remember what happened. I remember what I did… It’s just, I seem to have lost the last part.’

Sage kissed him on the brow and sat back, looking uneasy. Ax saw his suit jacket, in a soaked and crumpled heap, on the floor by the futon.

‘Are we prisoners? Sage, tell me—’

‘No, we’re not prisoners, not s’far as I’m aware, but…you’re not going to like this. We’re inside 30 Charles Street.’

Maybe he was never going to remember the whole thing, only the snap of his fist connecting, and then fragments, pounded by the rain; and here’s one of them, two scimitars crossed under a shock-headed palm tree—

‘Ah, shit.’

‘Hahaha. I’m glad you’re still thinking like a statesman.’

Ax picked up his best suit jacket and shook it out. It was cold and clammy, water-stained and smeared with dirt. He looked around for his shoes.

‘What are we going to do?’

‘Well, Sah.’ Sage grinned, suddenly light-hearted in this void. ‘This is what I’ve figured out so far. We’re going to say thank you nicely to Prince Al-whatsisface and his staff, leave Saudi territory as unobtrusively as possible, get ourselves back to Fiorinda, and instigate Plan B.’

Fiorinda had been in Lambeth, having an unpoisoned drink and a nice spliff among friends, when her baby went over the edge. She spent the first thirty six hours after the Berkeley Square incident looking calm for the cameras, saying things as anodyne as the situation would bear (!), and cursing herself furiously for leaving them to cope with the suits alone. Sage had been okay, just dumb misery, but she had fucking known that Ax had about a quarter of a hair-trigger left before he snapped.

She knew they hadn’t been caught. She wouldn’t have believed anything the police told her, in their solemn voices of awed dismay, but she trusted her instincts. She set certain arrangements in motion, severed herself from contact with the Few, and waited, with a strange feeling of lightness—as if something terrible had been averted; not committed. On the second morning she went to Brixton market, with Doug for a bodyguard, and while she was buying vegetables a woman shrouded from head to toe in black silk slipped a message into her hand.

That afternoon she was at Battersea Arts Centre, giving her rock ‘master class’, as if nothing was wrong. The group comprised fourteen youngsters and three mature students. Six were in b-loc. The rest, including the boy in the wheelchair, and the autistic girl with her Mentor Carer, were real South Londoners. Fiorinda sat on the small stage and showed them how she would take a phrase (from ‘Stonecold’), and make it the basis of a solo. You have left the…babies stone cold. Those five notes, that’s plenty, you’re using the pentatonic scale (sorry, I’ll explain these terms again if you need), you make it fly, but you don’t forget where you began—’

She watched herself in her monitor, foot on a rest, dark red curls falling round her face, her left hand in close up, the dancing gleam of her gold-braided ring as she broke into demonstration. The viewpoint pulled out, her fingers leaping up and down the neck of the old Martin. In the other half of her split screen, behind the students, she could see the armed police at the back of the hall; engrossed. Maybe she ought to suggest they bring guitars… Someone paged her. She looked to the side, the music dying, and tugged off her headset. One of the Centre staff had come quietly to the wings. She put the guitar down.

‘Excuse me.’

In scuffed, utilitarian darkness she was handed a radiophone, and told that someone was waiting for her at the back entrance; she spoke to Doug Hutton. The Battersea Arts Centre person looked scared to death: having handed the phone, she said nothing more. Fiorinda didn’t say much either; just asked Doug could he wait a minute or two. Doug said he could, just about.

She returned to the stage and looked out at her audience; sorry, class. Twenty six of them, counting the police: seen worse. What happened to the proverbial dog? Curious, respectful eyes all fixed on her, her students awed and dismayed by the turn of events. Except for Ira, the autistic girl, who didn’t know anything had happened. ‘I want to do something different for a moment,’ said Fiorinda, with a calm little grin. ‘And then I’m going to take a short break.’

She stood, hands by her sides, and sang, pure and strong.

As sweet Polly Oliver

Lay musing in bed

A sudden strange fancy

Came into her head

Nor father nor mother

Shall make me false prove

I’ll go for a soldier

And follow my love…

And so goodbye, Utopia. She zipped up the Martin and shrugged it onto her shoulders; collected her tapestry bag, another guitar case and a flat oblong satchel which held Sage’s visionboard. Thus laden, she walked off. The police didn’t make a move to stop her: Doug was waiting just out of sight.

They met Ax and Sage in a caravan-café on a layby on the old A24. The fugitives had shed their best suits. They were dressed inconspicuously, and wearing anonymous-looking digital head-masks. There were no other customers. They stood up as Fiorinda came in: the masks vanished. She had that feeling of lightness, a lifting of something dreadful, as she walked up and took their hands.

‘I’ve done some of the emergency things, not the most spectacular ones. Lucy’s out of the country, as Doug will have told you; Hobart’s Funnies are dispersed. Well, d’you think you killed him?’ She had no reliable information on Jack Vries’ status. Possibly he was dead, or in a coma. Possibly he was fine, and lying low for his own protection

‘I don’t know,’ said Ax. ‘But I know I broke his neck.’

Fiorinda nodded, with satisfaction. She hugged him, and his head went down against her shoulder, briefly. Sage’s blue eyes were saying everything’s all right.

That night they were on Shoreham Beach, the long shingle bank that lies alongside Shoreham harbour on the coast of Sussex. It had been a fashionable seaside address, but was falling into dereliction from fuel starvation. They were in the kitchen of a rambling stucco pad, once the home of a music biz demi-god, a friend of Allie Marlowe’s. The demi-god lived in New Zealand now (sensible man). A slight hitch had arisen. They couldn’t sail, the wind and tide were contrary. The little boat that would take them out to the bigger boat in the Channel needed liquid marine fuel, a petrol-substitute that was strictly controlled and involved getting the right documents stamped. This problem had been fixed, the juice was on its way. It was about two am. The kitchen had a lot of glass around the walls, but the blinds were tightly closed. The light was electric, one white fluorescent tube.

Doug was leaving with them. Given his role in the Reich, and his part in this operation, he couldn’t stay behind. He was a solitary fellow, serial monogamist. He’d had a different steady girlfriend every year or so since they’d known him; had no children that he was aware of; no other ties. He’d just revealed the contents of an extra suitcase he’d been jealously lugging around. It lay open on the demi-god’s kitchen table, displaying a cache of firearms and ammunition. A classic .38 automatic pistol, a big spidery modern Mauser. A small Dutch plastic automatic, simple in use and okay for a lady’s hands. Then in the second layer of the chocolate box the heavier, more esoteric items. ‘I know my new career as a pacifist hasn’t had a very auspicious beginning,’ began Ax. ‘But Doug—’

‘I’m with Ax,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I don’t know how, I’ve never tried, so it would be stupid for me to carry a firearm around.’

‘You don’t have to know anything, Fio. It’s just point and squeeze.’ Doug looked at Sage, hoping for support. ‘Tell her, Sage.’

Sage shook his head, smiling.

‘I’m only saying,’ pleaded Doug. ‘I’m only saying, in case of emergencies—’

His radiophone, lying where they could all see it, began to flash. They’d left a camera trap on the single road onto the beach. There were vehicles approaching, and no chance it was anything but trouble. Time to get out. No exit except by sea, have to do without the engine. Before they could move they all heard, above the wild sound of the wind, a rush of many footsteps. Lights shot through the blinds. They were surrounded. Some of the federales must have come out by boat, and must have already captured the landing stage.

It turned out, later, that it was Faud Hassim who’d betrayed them. Maybe his feelings had been hurt, because unlike the Few he hadn’t been on Ax’s need to know list about Lavoisier. Maybe he’d been upset by the way Ax schmoozed with the bad guys after the debate. Maybe he’d decided his responsibility was to the CCM, and it would be dangerous and useless to protect the Triumvirate any further. Anyway, he’d known more than he should have known, and he’d ratted on them.

The four people looked at each other. For a moment all of them, even Fiorinda, felt that a last stand, Ned Kelly shoot out was an excellent idea. Out in a blaze of glory, fuck it, end it, why not? The moment passed. Ax sighed. ‘You’d better shut that lot and try to think of somewhere to hide it, Doug. We’ll have to go quietly.’

They thought they would be taken back to London. But they weren’t.

PART TWO

SIX

Insanity

The deputation came at evening, to the suite of rooms designated for the Triumvirate. Lord Mursal and Lady Anne Moonshadow were accompanied by Mairead Culper of Glastonbury Council, Boris Anathaswamy, the fusion scientist from Culham (his presence alarmed the three more than anything that had happened yet); and Faud Hassim. The humbled rockstars were grubby and dishevelled, the visitors were soberly and formally dressed, and backed by an entourage: armed security, and black-and white Wallingham servants, no doubt also armed.

It was a reprise of their first nightmare initiation into State Affairs, years ago, after the Hyde Park Massacre. Except that they were alone, and except for the horrible twist implied by that “Neurobomb Expert”.

They need not have been alone. They’d already been given the opportunity to chose companions for their detention, or ritual exclusion, or whatever this was—the situation was still raw and uncertain. They had reviewed the list of approved names, and declined the offer. They didn’t know what had happened to Doug, and this preyed on them. He’d been their last responsibility, and they’d screwed him up.

Somewhere outside a midsummer day was drawing to its close. Bees were droning as they left the flowers of the lime trees by the croquet lawn. The herbs in the Elizabethan Knot Garden were shedding spice and astringency into the sun-soaked air. In this dank room, deep inside the fortress, there was no natural light. The walls were hung from ceiling to floor in dark blue, with a woven pattern of the crescent moon and stars; the same pattern was repeated on a splendid, though worn, Vorsey carpet. The windows behind the draperies were shuttered and locked.

They hadn’t seen daylight since they were on the road to Shoreham. It seemed likely, right now, that they would never see it again.

Greg Mursal ought to be happy. He had the Triumvirate where he’d wanted them: isolated and under his control, in the Nouveau Royal Palace: but he seemed dissatisfied. Maybe it was because the Moon and Stars wasn’t one of the showcase suites: it had clearly been hastily prepared, and there were signs of dust and neglect.

Greetings were exchanged. The deputation treated President Ax with a sorrowful, knowing deference that set Fiorinda’s nerves crisping. She sat in a dark blue armchair, and idly counted the woven stars (though a whisper of intuition told her she ought to save this small pleasure). They were told that Jack Vries was not dead but he might not live; there were no further details for the moment. As to Mr Preston’s request for a personal call to President Fred Eiffrich—

Sometimes you have to lay that useless high card down. Ax’s friends would have been reasonably safe if he’d got away across the Channel. They were in grave danger now. Having no other recourse, he’d had to try an appeal to the Leader of the Free World—

‘We’ve spoken to Mr McCall, but I’m afraid we can’t reach the President.’

Ax frowned. ‘McCall?’ He did not know the name. He had hoped they’d get to Hana Rosen, Fred’s redoubtable Chief of Staff.

Greg nodded, exuding dark, suppressed satisfaction. ‘That’s right. Denton McCall, acting Secretary of State. Nobody you would know, Ax. Apparently there’s been some palace politics going on behind the screens, a little bit of a reshuffle at the top in Washington, we’re getting the real picture now. Nothing for you three to worry about.’

‘I see,’ said Ax.

The room, shrouded in midnight stars, rang with the silence of a shock that you can’t hide. So it was true: Fred was gone. The forces of unreason had dispensed with electoral process. What about his niece, Kathryn Adams? What about Harry Lopez, the golden boy with the hot White House connections? What’s happened to them all? It was as if they’d been told of a shipwreck, far off on black icebound seas. Did the unsinkable, beautiful monster really go down this time? Did our friends get to the lifeboats?

Boris Anathaswamy cleared his throat.

‘We’d better proceed to the matter in hand,’ said Mursal. ‘The matter in hand… Well, I don’t have my Wiccan Consultant, but Boris is standing in, as our chief neurophysicist. We’re lucky to have an authority on call.’

Fiorinda’s wandering attention was caught. She looked straight at Boris, with a sudden, warm and dazzling smile. The scientist flinched, and cleared his throat again. His eyes cast a flicker of longing at the double doors of the room. Guards stared back: no escape there.

‘Ahm, the condition is incurable.’

‘Condition?’ snapped Sage. ‘What condition?’

‘Commonly known as lycanthropy, the condition is a, not strictly a regression, but a, resurgence of the primitive, best recorded in Europe in the berserkers, naked outlaws, of Scandinavia. Men who are recognised as having become rabid animals; neurological outcasts. Physical effects that first seem signs of neglected grooming, as in overgrown nails and hair, are the heralds of actual transformation. Often periodic and linked to the lunar cycle, scientifically proven to trigger neuroactive change. We also see cases like the Maréchal de Letz, public fame hiding secret witchcraft: where self-control is unimpaired and supports a façade of normalcy for years. Compare the psychology of traumatised combat veterans, African child soldiers. Young males thrust suddenly into situations of extreme violence: supernatural heroism and berserker feats followed by sociopathy, psychosis, moral and mental degeneration. Recent Crisis in Europe has brought a surge of well-attested supernatural cases. Finally, uncontrollable fugue indicates the condition has become irreversible. Severe damage will be found to the amyglyda, seat of emotional roots of humanity, and typically more than 25% loss of brainstem tissue—’

‘Thanks, Boris. We remember Jack’s presentation.’

Sage cut the babbling off: it was a kindness. Anathaswamy might have thought he could do this, but he wasn’t coping. Sweat stood in drops on his blood-drained face.

‘But yer neuro isn’t up to yer physics, mate. Lose a quarter of the brainstem, you wouldn’t get a berserker, you’d get a stroke victim struggling to breathe unaided—’

‘Nevertheless, we are certain that this is lycanthropy,’ said Lady Moonshadow, with a superior smile. ‘Dr Anathaswamy’s diagnosis will be borne out by an unbiased neurological scan, which can easily be arranged.’

In a brief interview, shortly after the arrest, Greg Mursal had revealed to Ax the true nature of his relationship with Lady Anne: that she was his ritual consort, and they were joint heads of a certain, very low profile, élite Pagan community of worship—the branch of Paganism to which anyone who was anyone in government had to belong. Did that make Lord Greg and Lady Annd leaders of both Church and State?

Probably.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Ax, and the three waited for more, calmly accepting the news that they were beyond all legal process, without sharing a glance. Their air of being in telepathic accord disconcerted the deputation a little, making for pauses and hesitations: but it wasn’t going to deflect the leaders, or their puppets, from their script.

‘The situation is this,’ began Faud Hassim, huskily, eyes on the Moon and Stars carpet. ‘Mr Preston, is, is not guilty of assault, attempted murder, nor manslaughter. Not guilty, because he is very, very sick, he is becoming like a ravening animal—’

‘He is guilty of involuntary witchcraft,’ cut in Mairead.

‘The penalty is death,’ said Lady Anne. ‘We offer a painless assisted suicide by lethal injection. If preferred, should Ax wish, or should his wise partners so advise him, we can supply expiatory rites, in the manner of his death, to restore his human nature. Naturally, he is expelled from the Countercultural Movement. On his death, by either means, the Movement will be freed from the taint of association. There will be no further repercussions.’

Ah, so that was it. Nicely done, Faz. If you can trust them.

‘I’m offered the death penalty. What happens to my partners?’

The old lady shook her head. ‘That’s not for you to know, Mr Preston.’

‘No ugly publicity,’ Greg moved in to close the sale, eager and blunt. ‘No more show trials, eh? It’d be quiet and dignified, very private. Close family with you, if you like.’

The deputation waited, gazing at these fallen idols. What did they see? Two worn, unshaven men, in their mid thirties: both tall, one a gangling blue-eyed giant. Both looking older than their years. A young woman with tangled corkscrew curls, thickly marked brows, a stubborn jaw. Grubby and unremarkable, how on earth did they survive in power for so long?

Ax sighed, and said something, evenly and almost cheerfully. Nobody on the PM’s side recognised the language: for a revealing moment they all looked very scared.

‘Don’t worry, it’s only Greek. I said, “the appropriate penalty would be to pay me a stipend for the rest of my life, to support me in the criticism of individual citizens of Athens…” It’s what Socrates suggested to his judges, in the blasphemy trial, 399 BCE. Death was the proposed sentence then, too.’

‘He’ll be right,’ Sage assured the suits, helpfully. ‘Check it out. He knows his Classics. He had a stack of Ancient Greek and Latin stuff on his chip, the one the Mexican kidnappers took out of his head. If you have one of those implants for a while, a lot of data gets transferred to the grey matter.’

‘The Athenian judges expected you to bid for your punishment,’ supplied Fiorinda. ‘To grovel, and show a proper feeling. Socrates made them an offer, instead.’

‘Will you two please stop talking about me as if I’m not here?’ Ax smiled at the Prime Minister. ‘Well Greg, in English, that’s my suggestion and it’s a good one. What do you say?’

They didn’t say anything.

Fiorinda glanced once from Greg to Lady Moonshadow, her eyes grey stones, the pupils drilled to points (a strange response to this dim light): and resumed counting stars. The Zen Self champion, long legs folded in a spiky half-lotus, in a dark blue armchair, tipped his head back to gaze at the ceiling.

Lady Moonshadow rose. ‘We shall of course give you time to think it over.’

The visitors departed, with their guards. The three stayed exactly where they were, wondering if that was all. Very shortly they heard returning footsteps. Faud Hassim darted into the room and stood with his back to the doors, wild-eyed.

‘I’m sorry Faz,’ said Ax, without rancour. ‘If you’ve orders to soften me up, don’t bother. I am not going to top myself. We’re holding on, and you’ll thank us some day. You did what you thought best, but you made a bum choice. Do you really think you can trust those buggers to stick by a deal?’

‘It’s not that.’ Faz spoke in a muttering undertone. ‘I have a word for you, from Babylon. I don’t know what it means, it’s Iphigenia.’

‘Okay,’ said Ax. ‘Thanks.’

The former Assassin stared at them, maybe in horror; maybe in pity. ‘I shall stay beside your mother, Ax,’ he blurted. And he was gone.

They retired to the red bedchamber. They had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dining room and a small library, besides the blue reception suite. They liked the red chamber best, because it was the biggest. It was draped like the Moon and Stars room (heavily shuttered windows behind the arras), in dark red with an interlocking pattern of golden briars; which was repeated everywhere in the furnishings—this had a quirky resemblance to the bio-hazard sign: appropriate, for a werewolf’s lair.

They hadn’t tried to nail the concealed cameras, there was no point. Be thankful for great mercies, there were no actual guards with them inside the suite. If there was no natural light there was plenty of space, and the lamps were ATP, which meant Sage could control them and feed them.

‘I am shocked at Boris.’ Fiorinda rubbed her arms. It was cold in their prison, the air was musty and tomb-like. ‘How could he fall so far, so fast?’

‘I expect he’s hoping to stay alive,’ said Sage. ‘He was screwed the moment he accepted his invite to the Neurobomb Working Party, now he has no way out. We know how it happens… How shocked, my brat?’

‘Oh, just shocked. I blame myself for that brainstem nonsense, I bet I started them on that track. I’ll swear, when I was trying to blind them with science, most of the class had never previously spotted a Neurobomb, Mass Destruction in human form, might have a funny sort of brain. I’m sorry, Ax.’

‘Don’t beat yourself up, little cat. It sounded like classic Paganoid pseudogook to me. I bet the camps are full of neurological outcastes.’

They’d been in prison for two days and a night, no food or drink provided. Fiorinda and Ax’s phones had been taken, Sage’s eye-socket button had been confiscated, and his wrist implant zapped to death. That was the sum of the depredations so far, but it can always get worse, always, any moment, get horribly worse. But Ax’s lovers were displaying intense relief, their worst fear had not materialised: and Ax’s own spirits rose. This strange lightness that filled them, better enjoy it, it couldn’t last—

Ax sat on the floor with their bags, making an inventory. Fiorinda and Sage wandered, surveying the domain. A curtained fourposter bed. A tall Arts and Crafts armoire, slightly damaged; a couple of red armchairs. There were pictures on the walls, but none of those Wallingham table displays of priceless objets. The chimney in the gothic hearth was wide enough for a full grown sweep, but there was an iron grille cemented inside it.

‘Lady Anne is a hereditary aristo, isn’t she? I mean, she’s Lady Anne something or other, besides the Moonshadow bullshit?’

‘Lady Anne Stanley,’ agreed Fiorinda, peering at pictures. ‘She’s connected with this place, maybe a great-great-niece of the millionaire, not sure how many greats: but I don’t know. I’ve tried never to talk to her, in so far as we’ve met, because I’m afraid she knows, knew, my gran—’

‘Well ladidah,’ said Sage. ‘D’you think she fucks Greg at Beltane?’

‘Augh. Thanks for the charming image. She’s eighty.’

‘And Lord Mursal has the chemistry of a brick with acne,’ countered Fiorinda, ‘You are being ageist Ax, and anyway the Great Marriage is not supposed to be fun.’

‘What does Iphigenia mean?’ asked Sage. ‘Do you know?’

‘She was Agamemnon’s daughter. He was supposed to sacrifice her, to get the Greeks a fair wind for the Trojan Wars.’

‘Right.’

‘And there was hell to pay,’ Fiorinda stared at a murky cottage, set about with dirt-blurred haystacks. Is that a Corot under there? ‘Mourning Becomes Electra and all that. What does it means as a message?’

Sage folded himself into an armchair by the hearth, dust clouding up from the upholstery. Fiorinda drifted over to join him.

‘I suppose it’s some kind of sorry I can’t help, from Fred.’

‘So that means—’

‘Fred can’t chat, but he’s in a position to be handing out obscure Euripidean apologies,’ said Ax. ‘Which I call good news, far as it goes: could be worse.’ There was nothing to eat in the bags. He’d been hoping for an overlooked biscuit, a sweetie or something. ‘I am so fucking hungry.’

‘Everything could be worse. I bet there are rats in these walls,’ Fiorinda settled on Sage’s knees, her cheek against his chest. ‘I have my tinderbox, and there’s wood all over the place. We can have rat au vin. If we had any vin.’

Sage took her chin and lifted her face, ‘Did you curse him?’ he whispered, his mouth against her lips.

‘Did not!’

Ax came to sit at their feet, bringing an untouched litre of mineral water and his smokes tin. Dust rose from the gold-briared carpet, and now they did not seem to be prisoners. They were travellers on a lonely road who had stopped for the night in Dracula’s Castle. Fiorinda and Sage were kissing and whispering: Ax found that his cock was standing. In fact, he had not felt so horny in weeks, the afterburn of peril will do that, sometimes.

‘We don’t need ration water, thank God. Not unless they turn off the stuff in the taps. What are you two muttering about, hm?’

‘Nothing,’ said Fiorinda. ‘He’s insulting me, but its just babytalk.’

‘Shush,’ Sage grinned at the bad brat, and ah, it’s a fine thing to have hands that will unfasten her clothes. ‘I say we live for the moment.’

‘I am doing,’ said Ax.

He filled his lungs with gentle smoke, and got up on the arm of the chair to pour it into her mouth. A three-way snog developed. Ax was totally absorbed, getting near the point when he must have more, when he realised he’d lost them both—

‘What is it?’

No answer. The big cat and the little cat had raised their heads, and were tracking something he couldn’t see: very catlike behaviour. There wasn’t a sound in the room, apart from their breath. Not a rat scratched, not a board creaked, no blustering wind in the chimney. If it had been as quiet as this two nights ago, maybe they’d be in Paris now.

‘All right. I’ll buy it… What the fuck’s up? What can you see?’

The bodhisattva and the magician’s daughter exchanged a cautious glance.

‘C’mon. Don’t tell me there’s a ghost.’

‘Could be,’ said Sage, on a speculative note. ‘You could call it that.’

‘Maybe,’ agreed Fiorinda. ‘There’s something in here with us, anyway.’

‘What’s it look like?’

‘A black shape. Like something, not there, only moving.’

‘Terrific.’ Ax stared hard, and shook his head. ‘Well, I don’t get it. What kind of a ghost? Is it, like, a person…of some kind? Could we turn it?’

Sage shook his head. ‘Dunno. I suppose we could try.’

‘Better let it get used to us first,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I think it’s nervous.’

They moved to the bed and enclosed themselves in the curtains, in a cloud of dust (good job none of us has asthma). Were they still watched? They put the question out of their minds, got naked and pursued the heady bliss of this void, this freedom: no regrets, no obligations, only the threefold knot, their whole world.

‘My angels,’ mumbled Fiorinda, clambering between the cold damp sheets to sleep.

‘Fee, hey, you have to be in the middle.’

Fiorinda claimed she found sleeping in the middle demeaning, it made her feel like a disputed soft toy; also suffocated. But she didn’t put up much of a fight.

‘We forgot to turn off the lamps,’ said Ax.

He made the expedition, mildly wondering what it would feel like if he bumped into that moving black shape: returned safely to their warm bodies again, in a startling pitch darkness.

‘Oh,’ said Fiorinda. ‘The ghost’s gone.’

‘Yeah, figures,’ Ax was plunging toward sleep. ‘We probably scared it. Remember, Elsie would never stay in the room when we fucked—’

Elsie had been the original little cat, Ax’s pet cat, who’d lived with them on Brixton Hill. She’d been killed, in the Green Nazi time: Ax mourned her still, poor Ax, he falls in love so easily, and never forgets. Sage and Fiorinda were touched to hear her invoked. It seemed like a good omen.

Maybe the ghost came back and watched over them. Maybe they were in shock: and fear for their friends, terror for the way they might die here, locked in these rooms, had yet to reach them. They slept well, anyway.

The next morning breakfast was brought to their dining room by servants in black and white. Their luggage arrived. There were no concealed messages, but they could tell that Allie had chosen the books, the jewellery and toiletries. Allie’s hands had folded their clothes—and their friends should have been getting the hell out of England by now, they were comforted.

Later in the day, Greg and Lady Anne returned to hammer out the details of the contract. Ax’s offer had been accepted.

Rick’s Place

What happens when you take a nation of hard-wired hedonists,

Rick’s Place on Net and Cable, Freetcyungbingliu/g/royalintern.eng/s86730 Star Nippon Oita and Phoenix, also, mYTm Oz and Asia, & US ‘mtv’

The Revolutions Number One: The Deconstruction Tour (also the Hilton regime, from the first Popstar President Saul Burnett’s HQ in the Lonron Hilton)

Number Two: Ax Preston’s Dictatorship (the Rock and Roll Reich)

Number Three: the Green Nazi occupation (Extreme Celtics)

Number Four: Ax Preston’s shortlived Presidency

Number Five: The Wallingham House Arrest

deep in debt and sodden with alcohol, first you knock them down with a massive economic crash, then you feed them for years on a diet of wild green violence and joyous rock; and then you give them license to believe in fairytale monsters? What you get is the England of the Fifth Revolution, the headless chicken on the edge of the map, where the ripe craziness of Crisis Europe is distilled to the nth degree. The epitome of it all is the Palace of Wallingham, eighty kilometres from London in the beautiful country of Kent, where I found Ax Preston and his Triumvirate partner’s holding court. Ax’s government tried to sentence him to assisted suicide a few weeks ago, after an incident involving a high-ranking official. When he refused to co-operate, they gave him a palace to live in and a tv show of his own,

Want to be on Rick’s Place?  Buy your ticket when you buy your permit to leave the capital, there are a varying number of places available in the live audience. The club is recorded as live, in the Yellow Drawing Room, Thursday Friday and Saturday, Ax n’ Sage n’ Fiorinda arrive at seven and leave at midnight. Don’t promise your Mum she’ll see you, because the televised show is a mash-up, but expect to hear the hottest new bands and the established greats of English music, besides the Triumvirate and the supergroup known as the Band of Gypsys, Ax’s rock and roll Cabinet. And to rub shoulders with the green and pleasant land’s new high society. Wallingham House is a trip in itself, but at the moment it’s closed to the public. Keep off the subject of politics, but toreign tourists are in no danger. Private hire cars are only for those who enjoy dealing with hostile bureaucracy, but trains from Victoria are frequent; take a shared taxi from Ashurst and agree a price before you get in! DON’T miss the last train back to London. Overnight accomodation in Kent is rare as hen’s teeth, blindingly expensive & you could end up in labour camp if your picked up and can’t prove you have a place to sleep.

on which he’ll continue to criticise government policy. International protest at Ax’s arrest has been muted, maybe because the “Lavoisier video” has left people feeling there’s no smoke without fire. Maybe no one knows WHAT to make of the situation now. But one thing’s for sure: the Ax Preston charisma remains strong as ever. It was my privilege to meet Ax for the first time, at this strange juncture in his extraordinary life: and to interview the three most fascinating, controversial figures in World music…

Fiorinda read through the copy. She held out her hand for a pen, removed one errant apostrophe and corrected ‘country’ to ‘county’. The journalist, a sun-wizened, middle-aged Australian rock expert called Keith Utamore, watched her. Around them, chaos reigned. The Yellow Drawing Room was being set up for the show. This had to happen every week, because Lady Anne insisted it be returned, as far as possible, to its pristine state between gigs. Artists and privileged guests were socialising, while the dancefloor crew manouevred the big turntable onto its bearings, a tricky job, and sound engineers tested their ability to focus on any conversation, at any table. The set for The Gintrap was getting cabled-up for their trademark retro kit.

‘Will there really be Oz tourists pouring in, clamouring for tickets?’

‘Huh?’ Keith looked puzzled, then he laughed. ‘Oh, no, no, that’s our style. Armchair travel, kind of gallows humour? The Rough Guide to places you’ll never see again. I do that a lot, on the World Music Round Up.’

She smiled and nodded. World Music, that puts us in our place. She’d never heard of Keith Utamore before tonight, but this just proved Fiorinda’s ignorance. He was huge in the real world, a friend of Joe Muldur’s, and the interview was for a massive Australasian radio/net show: which had the approval of the Great Peace.

The Yellow Drawing Room roared like the sea in a shell, dark and bright like a tv studio, although it would be summer daylight outdoors. She always looked first at the terrace windows when they came down, but there was never a chink in the heavy curtains. Never a glimpse of sky or lawns or trees. The ON AIR signs were getting tested now, flashing red, and alternating to CASH CROPS KILL in green.

Little of what happened here would get onto the actual show. Fiorinda hadn’t seen it, (she wasn’t sorry); but reports reached them. Even the guest bands’ numbers were faked elsewhere. But the screws liked their make believe to be thorough… There was something sinisterly childish about the whole deal. We had the Insanitude, so they have to have a hot night-club venue, only theirs is better, because it’s on tv, the old holy of holies, politicians’ Mecca. Which proves they won, and we lost.

The journo was looking at his slaughtered apostrophe.

‘The intro’s a first draft. You’ll have full approval before we broadcast. Are we ready to go?’

The Rock and Roll Queen of England looked pointedly at her glass. Keith refilled it with Rick’s Place vodka, yellow and warm as piss. There was no bar, only a stingy ration of wine and water on each table: but the servants would bring liquor, for a price. A snake of cable crawled over his feet, shouts of panic came from the struggling dancefloor. At the next table a man in an evening jacket that he wore with easy grace, with slick, jaw-length dark hair and skin the colour of milky tea, had joined the Scottish party: two bands and hangers-on, who were touring together but didn’t seem to be mates—

Fiorinda knocked back a healthy slug. She could put that stuff away.

‘Sure, but we should move from here.’

Keith wanted to stay close to Mr Preston, ‘This seems a quiet spot.’

‘You’ll talk to Ax later. Trust me, any time you see blokes wearing skirts over their trews, I mean strides, like that, it’s best to give them space. See the unnaturally white guy with the very black hair and, strangely, no tattoos? That’s Phil MacLean. The Sikh woman at the end of the table, her name’s Campbell, although she may not look it. They’re desperate re-enactment nuts, they have a grudge going back at least three hundred years, and practically every time the bands run into each other, it gets physical. They’re regulars, so I know. They had a real barney one time.’

Fiorinda snagged the vodka and the glasses. Keith Utamore perforce followed, looking over his shoulder. ‘Then why do they sit together—?’

‘They’re Scottish.’ She signalled to a couple of burly waiters, who carried a table to the outer regions of the universe. ‘There. Now we’ll be fine.’

‘Could we clear up a couple of things first, so I don’t fall over myself? “Rick’s Place”, that isn’t the real name of the show, is it? In the English tv listings, I noticed it’s called “Merry We Meet.”’

‘Mm,’ agreed Fiorinda, screwing up her face.

‘“Rick’s Place” is better, yeah.’ They laughed. ‘Is that a reference to the classic movie, Casablanca? The Café American, Play it again Sam—?’

‘Romance, plots and counterplots on the sidelines of a global war,’ agreed Fiorinda. ‘Haha, yes, of course.’

Mr Utamore nodded, still curious. ‘Okay, who is “Rick”? There’s nobody called “Richard” among the Few.’

‘Ax is Rick. It’s a twisted English joke about incarcerated monarchs.’

‘Ah! The Mediaeval Richard II! Let us sit upon the ground, and tell sad stories of the death of kings—!’ Keith caught himself, consternated.

‘Gallows humour,’ said Fiorinda, with a charming grin. ‘We do it too.’

‘Shall we begin?’

KEITH UTAMORE: Fiorinda, may I say how wonderful it is to be speaking to you, after having followed your meteoric career, and played so much of your music for the audiences of the Pacrim and the southern oceans… ‘Stonecold’, ‘Sparrowchild’, ‘Wholesale’… Great songs, many great songs, the anthems of an era. And then ‘Yellow Girl’, one of the top female singer songwriter albums of the century. You have the music in you, princess. And for the soundists out there without a picture, let me tell you, I’m a lucky man, sitting beside a very beautiful, gracious lady, in the most amazing English stately home, which is being transformed into a tv studio nightclub, as we speak…

FIORINDA: As we speak, portable dancefloors are suffering disasters

KEITH UTAMORE: Cables are strangling each other. Well, it’s beauty before age, because I’ve snagged the lady first… Do you ever do interviews in trio?

FIORINDA: Not often. There’s too many strands, with three active musicians.

KEITH UTAMORE: And recently, another strand. Could we talk about the new supergroup. That came about in the US, last year, didn’t it? How did the Few, in separate outfits all through the Reich, become the Band of Gypsys?

FIORINDA: We didn’t call ourselves that. We’ve never called our supergroup set anything. A pirate producer used the name Band of Gypsys for a download package, and the music media took it up. I don’t really like it.

KEITH UTAMORE: But the Hendrix association must appeal to Ax?

FIORINDA: Yeah, except it’s a negative sort of association… I don’t think the ‘supergroup’ has a name. We’ve always played together, mix and match, different combinations. If what we do now has a name it should be all of our band names, run together. Like one of those very long chemicals.

KEITH UTAMORE: I was hoping to see this ‘very long chemical’ tonight, and tape them, but apparently that’s not to be.

FIORINDA: Maybe later in the series. But we have Gintrap for you, and Sovra Campbell, and the Phil MacLean Band, back for a second visit, and very welcome… Ah, there you go, you see, the Scots don’t have band names. It’s a trend. There’s Gintrap, okay, but they’re very retro lads.

KEITH UTAMORE: I’ve been hearing a lot about Gintrap.

FIORINDA: And tonight we have the Chosen too, which is quite an occasion.

Sage had waylaid the Preston family in the show’s Green Room, while Fiorinda entertained the journo, and Ax was occupied with the Scots—a perfunctory antechamber, closet-sized by Wallingham standards, that nobody else was using. Glum sheet-steel maidens in fluted draperies paraded, lifesize, along the peacock blue walls. There were hard chairs, refugees from some government waiting room, a side table set with pitchers of beer, cheap English wine and stacked paper cups. Sage wore evening dress, the uniform for the hosts of Rick’s Place. The Chosen wore the jeans and jumpers look they’d always favoured onstage: expensive nothing-special. They were wary. They didn’t often find themselves alone with Aoxomoxoa. A very tall, weirdly good-looking techno-geek, dressed like a waiter, throws himself on the mercy of four suspicious, down to earth West Country musicians—

‘He’s scaring me,’ said Sage. ‘I know where we are, I know what’s happened, but there’s something else. I don’t like his state of mind.’

Ax’s siblings looked at each other. Milly Kettle rolled her eyes.

‘Everything he ever did was wrong,’ suggested Jordan, mordantly. ‘He hates himself. Everything stinks. Don’t argue, trash the fucking lot, NOW.’

‘Despair and die,’ said Milly.

‘You are kidding?’ demanded Maya. ‘Did you really only now notice?’

‘We’ve had that fucking everyone better despair and die trip laid on us, every fucking gig,’ Jordan enlarged, eyes kindling. ‘He’s never satisfied. He turns it on himself, hardest, which is supposed to make it all right. Would you say he can be difficult to live with? Possibly? Eh?’

‘You should have shared recording “Put Out The Fire”?’ groaned Millie. ‘All the CDs were horrific, but that was utter HELL.’ The Chosen specialised in terrible, hopeless titles for their songs and albums.

‘Every fucking time.’ Shane shook his head, grinning. ‘We do it all wrong, he has to rip up the set and start again. It’s his fault, of course, but—’

‘Always his fault, he’s to blame, but somehow we’re getting yelled at.’

‘Because yes he’s fucking demanding. Someone has to be.’

‘Because compared with Ax, everyone else is taking the piss.’

Not what I meant, thought Sage, not at all. It was hopeless, the Chosen were in a world of their own, as always. Their brother is on Death Row, stay of execution for good behaviour, and if he accepts execution by slow torture it’ll be better for the rest of us. They know this, but it doesn’t get through—

‘Okay.’ He mugged relief. ‘Yeah. Thanks. You’re right.’

Then nobody knew where to go with this conversation. ‘So why do you guys put up with him?’ said Sage, at last. Immediately he wished he hadn’t said that, because their demanding, impossible big brother was in the trap he’d hauled them out of. There was nothing they could do, and their distress was suddenly open, written on their faces.

‘Because if you let him do it,’ said Jordan, dead straight. ‘If you let him use you the way he wants, what he does with you is fucking brilliant.’

Strange words to hear from your lover’s brother. But why not? Why shouldn’t Jordan know how it feels to be with Ax?

‘Are we okay to lurk in here?’ asked Milly, changing gear.

In the Drawing Room they’d be surrounded by Wallingham black and whites, and they were afraid.

‘No,’ said Sage. ‘I want you where a lot of people can see you. There’s a well-known Oz radio journalist in there. Stick by him, if you can.’

The mess was hidden out of sight. The VIPs arrived, plus humbler members of the privileged class, who’d queued, schemed and paid large sums in barter, favours, wheelbarrows of Swedish euros for their ‘invitations’. Everyone drank bathtub vodka: many smoked the tobacco cigarettes, available as a special indulgence of Ax’s gritty, retro tastes…that made for a wonderfully louche, oldtime atmosphere, Mr Preston and Mr Pender moved around, obedient to the conceit that these were welcome guests, ‘at home’ with the royal rockstars. Random interactions were recorded, to the delight of the lucky targets. Far away on the edge of things the journo from Oz continued to monopolise Fiorinda; which was fine by Fiorinda.

KEITH UTAMORE: Speaking of life as an icon, what about the Starborn portraits? He’s said he rarely thinks about anything else, and he’ll go on ‘painting’ you all his life. Is that uncomfortable, or is it thrilling?

FIORINDA: (off guard) Toby Starborn is a stalker! LAUGHS. No, he’s okay. Toby’s very devout, and he sees me as some kind of magical sign—

KEITH UTAMORE: I’m afraid I’m still a rational materialist.

FIORINDA: Hahaha. So am I, Keith, but I’m afraid we’re living in the past. I try to look on the transformation of magic into science as just another way of cutting up the world, that gives new insights, and access to new technologies. Try neurophysics, it’s easier to say than the ‘m’ word.

KEITH UTAMORE: Another way of cutting up the world… You’re something of a philosopher, aren’t you Fiorinda?

Across the room Ax Preston (who had long deserted the Scots) took an acoustic guitar from a waiter. Keith snapped to attention.

‘Excuse me, Fio—’

‘Oh, sure.’

The interview was over, the journalist patched his Tablet into the Drawing Room’s superb sound desk, and began recording Ax’s impromptu instead. It was ‘Long Black Veil’, a current favourite of his.

There were few at the scene, but they all agreed

That the man who ran looked a lot like me…

Gallows humour.

‘Maybe you shouldn’t have run,’ said Keith Utamore softly.

‘Oh, we should have run,’ said Fiorinda, smiling, eyes on her prince. ‘We shouldn’t have got caught. How are you planning to get home, Keith?’

‘I don’t know.’

That startled her. She’d assumed Utamore was one of the new Masters of the Universe, free to return to his own world at any time.

‘I came to Europe eighteen months ago. There was a window when SIA was doing scheduled flights into Paris, so I took my chance to get a context for all the terrific Crisis Europe and Reich music I’d been playing. You know what happened next.’

‘The ‘A’ Team.’

‘I’ve been stranded ever since. I’m afraid of the airship accident rate, and crossing the Pacific by sea’s a bloody dangerous trip. I’d go overland, and island hop from Singapore to Perth via Guinea, but you’ll have noticed I’m Japanese ethnic? I’m okay in Melbourne, but over there I could get pulled over and wake up in Guangdong, in a re-education camp—’

What did Fiorinda know? The so-called Great Peace could be as terrifying as England, if you were on the inside looking out. Hey, compadre, have you been trapped like us, all this time?

A touch on her bare shoulder. It was Ax, cheerful and relaxed.

‘Mind if I join you? I have some time now, Keith.’

Gintrap, with their ‘deliberately crude’ tunes (Like they had a choice), and daft lyrics went down well. As did a couple of shall-we-say unremarkable performers; with the right politics. Phil MacLean’s Gaelic NeoFolk outfit was greeted with rapture. Sovra Campbell’s classic folk/classic violin set pretty much exactly equally applauded: thank God. Between the guest bands Fiorinda played piano, her gold and green party-frock skirts rustling around her, while Bill Trevor and Sage leaned on the grand to sing… Hey, look at us, the nouveau royalty, almost as good as the professionals.

Ax was being interviewed, she was glad he was getting a break.

Is my team ploughing, that I was used to drive,

and hear the harness jingle, when I was man alive?

Bill Trevor’s beautiful tenor rose unearthly, and the boss replied, deep and sweet, with an edge of cruelty that sent a shiver to every woman’s core, and plenty of the men. Oh yes, the world goes on fine without you, my dead friend. ‘Is My Team Ploughing,’ had been a fuck-you party piece, long ago: released by these bad boys as an extra track on the most terrifying of Heads albums—

Her fingers almost stumbled on the keys, because she had what Allie used to call a ‘reverse déjà vu moment’. What is this weird place, where did the real world go, is this a nightmare? The vertigo passed, ghosts remained. She remembered that Fred Eiffrich had loved Houseman.

The Chosen were on last, with a big emotional set featuring ‘Straight From Green’, which the establishment loved because the tune was simple and catchy, and they never listened to the words of popsongs—and dissidents (none of whom you would ever see in here) loved because they did.

But it was okay in Rick’s Place: no censorship was the deal.

‘Now we’re going to do a Chip Desmond and Kevin Verlaine song,’ announced Ax. ‘Called “Dupes of Babylon”. We may be gone for some time.’

‘If we don’t come back, send out search parties!’ cried Milly from behind her drums.

The high life laughed and clapped, pleased with themselves for getting the joke. Of course, Chip and Ver were notorious for their convoluted, no-exit, marathon songs. Keith, having finished his interview with the last of the three, stopped beside Fiorinda on his way out. ‘Just wanted to say it’s been terrific, you three have all been wonderful in, er, not ideal circumstances. Thank you so much. I have to leave, my car is waiting.’

He stared at the band. ‘Tell me one thing,’ he murmured. ‘Ax and Sage. Can they really transform into animals?’

He was serious, maybe surprised at himself but perfectly serious. Unbelievable. ‘Can human beings turn into monsters?’ Fiorinda smiled. ‘You’re asking me? Oh yes, Keith. Teeth and hair, I’ve often seen it.’

Sage had been afraid she’d hexed Boris Anathaswamy, and Fiorinda shouldn’t be insulted, because such things had been known to happen. But not for a long time: and right now Fiorinda, even if she hadn’t sworn off, wouldn’t dare to touch the Wallingham situation, not by a breath. She felt it shivering, fearfully balanced, on the edge change—

Shame Keith Utamore missed the last encore, which was one for the annals. Sage and Ax, standing together in front of the Prestons’ set, sang ‘Liquid Gold’ in close harmony, dreamy and slow.

Figure of eight

is the sign

Of infinity

Figure of eight

Has that swing, up and round

In the sweet swaying plane,

up and down, on the wave

and again, and some more

come and go, let me soar

float and fly

as I ride,

as I ride

And seals our trinity

How much how much how much how much of sweet(ness) can one heart hold?

My baby my baby my baby my baby my baby my baby is liquid gold

The ‘waiters’ were calling time. Ax and Jordan thought about it, decided to go ahead, and gruffly embraced. ‘You’re not coming back,’ muttered Ax, holding the hug for a moment. ‘You’re to stay away from now on, all of you. See you when I get out of this.’

The Triumvirate were routinely searched, scanned, escorted through the house and locked into their suite. The red bedchamber welcomed them, with its cool, dank and enclosed air.

They’d been imprisoned for nearly two months, and oh god to see the sun again, but to an extent the red bedchamber was home. As opposed to the Moon and Stars, which they hated because it was where they went to be interrogated. The nervous ghost, something between a pet and a bad dream, had seen them playing games and having silly spats in here. Reading poetry, and classic English novels, aloud to each other. Acting out scenes from plays. It overheard all their conversations, reminding them they were not alone.

Sage flopped into the big armchair, tugged loose his black tie, and sang softly, reprising that perfect encore: How much, how much, how much…Ax sat on the floor: laid his head on the big cat’s knee and picked up the harmony, eyes closed: Of sweet can one heart hold, my baby my baby my baby… When you know you turned in a good performance it soothes your soul, no matter what.

Fiorinda drank water to ward off a hangover, lined up the three refills she’d snagged while necking Keith Utamore’s vodka, and thought of a night at Brixton Hill, when they had serenaded her with her own music. First I was pain, then I was meat, then I was water in the desert. Then I became oxygen, fire in the air. Now I’m molten metal. Hm. Is this progress?

They weren’t supposed to take anything from the Drawing Room: but Fiorinda carried a shoulder bag with her evening shawl in it, and the screws on the way back, though unfriendly, often didn’t bother to hassle her. The bottles were the waterbottles they’d had with them when they were arrested: they’d begun to deform, bio-degrading slowly in this sunless world. This frightened her. It would be bad when they were gone: an epoch.

Little did Keith Utamore know he’d had to interview them separately because they were suspected of telepathic powers when they were together. Little did he know that they’d been interviewed, awkwardly, in the middle of a tv show recording, because that was the only time they were allowed out of the cells… Self censorship, like abused children, we don’t tell, we know the things we’re not supposed to say. But she corrected herself. Oh, he knew. He had a good enough idea, he’s a professional journalist, he had a rare opportunity and he handled the situation—

The legendary Wallingham interview with the Triumvirate gains poignancy: we know that a few days later Ax n’ Sage n’ Fiorinda were shot, and their bodies buried somewhere in that house.

‘Liquid Gold’ drifted into silence. Sage stroked Ax’s hair.

‘How d’you get on with the Scots?’ asked Fiorinda.

‘Fine.’

‘I dunno why you encourage them,’ said Sage. ‘They’re just trouble’

‘Reasons of state,’ explained Ax, still with his eyes closed. ‘Mr Minister, Scotland is our main trading partner. Cultural entente greases the wheels. It’s part of my job as President.’

‘Oh yeah, and what about Wales?’

‘Bring me a Welsh band, I’ll sit at their table. They can be regulars too.’

There wouldn’t be any Welsh bands at ‘Rick’s Place’. The Welsh didn’t like what had been done to Ax. As so often in these situations, the neighbours knew far more than the English public did. They knew about Lord Vries, and his ruthless secret role in government. They felt he’d had it coming.

The Scots also knew the score, but they had an agenda. Phil MacLean and Sovra Campbell were secret agents. They’d come to England on tour, and penetrated Wallingham, to offer Ax a new job. This offer, laid on the table, undercover of nightclub conversation, might be genuine: or it might not.

It was like Paris, except it wasn’t funny: the disaffected President was getting headhunted. Was it possible that the Second Chamber didn’t know about MacLean and Campbell? MacLean, at least, had been known to the Reich for years… The suits had rewritten recent history: maybe they’d fooled themselves as well. Maybe it’d never crossed their minds that when you can have a rockstar warlord, when rockstar revolutionaries make the fur fly all over Europe, inevitably other rockstars are going to be recruited by the secret services, to spy on their unruly colleagues… Ax was letting the Scots talk, taking care not to incriminate himself: at the back of his mind the knowledge that one day he might be desperate enough to take any risk.

‘You seemed to be getting on very well with Joe’s backpacker,’ remarked Sage, jealously. ‘What’s the story there?’

Fiorinda’s boyfriends were hostile to anything remotely connected with Joe Muldur, she couldn’t imagine why.

She shrugged. ‘Nothing. You talked to him as much as I did. Hey, did you get that he’s an ‘A’ team refugee? He sends his very respected prog down the line, but he doesn’t know how to get home himself… He hasn’t a clue.’

‘Oh,’ said Ax. ‘No, I didn’t get that. Poor guy.’

They’d had a faint hope Keith Utamore might be an emissary from Pan-Asian Utopia, but Fiorinda had tried him, and he wasn’t. Ah well, can’t expect everyone who walks into the gin-joint to add to the hectic intrigue.

‘The Pacific is full of sharks and pirates. Or is it the China Sea? Indian Ocean? I’m not good at Geography. And he’s scared to go by air, if there were any ships, because of hydrogen accidents.’

‘Has he used our intercity railway system at all?’

‘I didn’t ask. I thought it would be unkind.’

‘I was blushing fer my ignorance too,’ said Sage. ‘I’m gonna try hard to catch the evening news, when I’m on my “weekend” leave.’

Ax had surrendered under terms, and his terms had been accepted. He could criticise the government all he liked from behind the bars of his gilded cage: no one censored his lyrics, he was trusted to talk to foreign journalists. But he was still under a death sentence, they were all still prisoners, and how long could this state of affairs continue? Greg Mursal, last time they were interrogated, a week or so ago, had told them Sage was to be allowed out. He could talk to Allie Marlowe, and to his father. Greg had mentioned those two, specifically: which meant something, they weren’t sure what.

Ax had been hustling for better conditions, including parole for his partners: but now they were scared. The red room was safety. Sage outside would have wandered far, and Ax and Fiorinda would be afraid for him.

Sage and Ax vacated the armchair, and walked around, restless.

Fiorinda arranged her water bottles, listening as they rehearsed the possibilities. Could this parole be the first step to a negotiated plea? Sage must speak to lawyers, must try to get sight of any statements that had been made. What had become of Lord Vries’ security guards? They’d been told that there were ‘unimpeachable witnesses’ to ‘a scuffle’, ‘apparently between Lord Vries and Mr Preston’. As if there was room for doubt as to what had actually happened… And yet this was the incident that was supposed to prove Ax was a monster.

No one had asked Sage for an eye witness statement, and he didn’t think he should volunteer…

Suppose, (admitting nothing) the werewolf idiocy were dropped. Suppose Ax were accused of the unpremeditated thumping of the Wiccan scholar? How would that go? Compensation, wouldn’t that be the Celtic way? We could do compensation… It was a puzzle, with hopeful touches. There could be a way through. We may be able to put this behind us.

Talking to the ghost, motormouthed: it always took them a while to recover from ‘Rick’s Place’. A spliff would have helped, but they’d finished their supplies long since and no more were forthcoming. Smoking was not allowed: which caused Ax suffering. No alcohol either, except what they could cadge from the punters when they were on duty… At last the dead silence of the shuttered room returned, like the darkness that flows back, underground, when you switch off a torch. Fiorinda curled up in the red chair. Sage and Ax sat with their shoulders propped against the bed: black jackets discarded, bowties untied.

Could we saw through the locks on the shutters behind the arras, with a nailfile? Could we suborn our guards, find a secret passage? But they never spoke of escape. They did not plan to escape. They planned to win this difficult and delicate game. We’ve seen worse, we’ve been in rougher spots than this and turned things round.

Fiorinda watched the two men. ‘I think you are being galley slaves.’

They grinned at each other. ‘Hahaha, yes we are,’ said Ax.

‘What do you do when you’re being galley slaves?’

‘We’re on the bench,’ said Sage. ‘Chained together, hauling our oar—’

‘Blisters rubbed raw, and we have to keep going, boom crash, boom crash boom crash—’

‘And then you have sex.’

‘Er, no,’ said Sage.

‘We get whipped all the time,’ Ax went on, with enthusiasm, ‘and its dark, and we have manacles that gall our wrists horribly, ankles too and—’

‘Sometimes, rarely, we’re allowed to sleep under our bench.’

‘And then you have sex—?’

They shook their heads. ‘You don’t understand, Fee. It’s not like that. It’s very sexual but not directly about fucking. That’s the sexy thing about it.’

‘I want to be a galley slave.’

‘You’re too small,’ said Sage, quickly. ‘You couldn’t handle the oar.’

‘Bastards. I don’t care. You are just idiots. What’s the use of a sexual fantasy where you don’t even have sex?’

‘All right, okay,’ said Ax. ‘You’ll be pissed off, but you may as well know, when we are galley slaves we keep you under the bench, folded up very small.’

‘To keep you safe,’ explained Sage, with a naked look. ‘Because we’re all right, as long as you’re safe—’

Fiorinda thought of a way that she could join them on their bench, and haul that massive oar. As if looking into a mirror, she saw a big chestnut-skinned man in flamboyant middle age. He had a curling mouth, offensive eyes, shining, black ringlets. It was her father, Rufus O’Niall. She kept him on a leash in a sealed compartment in her mind… Ax and Sage knew this. But she wasn’t going to remind them of it, not now, not in this place.

‘Sage, if it isn’t cancelled, and you do get out, will you bring me some Volvic water?’

‘Yep, er, if I can. Any other brand that would do?’

‘Volvic. I like the picture. Maybe Buxton, if you can’t be bothered.’

‘Gimme a break, Fiorinda. I’ll do my best. You got any orders, Ax?’

‘Liquorice and wine gums.’

‘Oooh, tha’s not very healthy Mr President. Organic liquorice?’

‘No. I don’t want to chew a fucking root, I want sweeties.’

Not a word of the mortal dread of parting. Not a word, never, of how it really felt to be trapped in here. A palace is a place where people never speak their minds. How different from that night two months ago when they had faced death together, with such sensual abandon. But the doom passes, you find that you are still in the fight, so you keep fighting. What else can you do?

‘Hey,’ said Ax. ‘Is the ghost with us?’

Fiorinda looked into the dark, empty quarter beyond the armoire: ghost territory. ‘Yeah. Prowling around over there, being a black shape.’

‘Why don’t we try turning it?’

‘I don’t believe it’s turnable,’ said Sage. ‘It’s been locked up too long, it’s been driven stupid. I’m tired, let’s go to bed.’

Sage had hoped to walk out of the prison gates on his own two feet, but not a chance. He was driven to London, and only achieved the miniscule victory of getting dropped on Grosvenor Place—rather than have a Wallingham car inside the walls of the Insanitude. The State Apartments entrance said it was closed for refurbishment. Ah yes, that euphemism from the Crash years, shops and pubs and retail parks, the sign slowly acquiring a mature patina of grime. Yeah, that’s us, we’re closed for refurbishment…

Across the Courtyard revisionary builders were at work.

Allie’s new office was on the ground floor of the South Wing. She’d seen him coming: as he walked in she held up a neatly rolled spliff.

‘Ah!’ Sage collapsed onto a chair, dragged over another for his feet, sparked up and leaned back. ‘Thank you—!’

‘My pleasure,’ said Allie. ‘Hey, you’re looking buff!’

Sage grinned… Whoo, Allie’s trying to cheer me up, I must be dying. ‘Well, there’s a gym, and not much else to do. You want some of this?’

‘No, I’m working. How are they?’

He looked around. The décor was grey and cream and cocoa-brown: very Allie, feminine, elegant; a little narrow. An amimated frieze of festival scenes, artisan digital art, East Midlands school, circled the walls. Pretty nice. The projector, futuristic magic-lantern, made a dainty piece of furniture itself.

It was hard to adjust to the idea that he was not on camera.

‘Fiorinda’s good. Very good. She’s in a bad temper with the VIP punters, which they love, they love her cut crystal put-downs. Getting most of her calories from vodka, I’m afraid…but she’s wonderful.’

‘Ax is not so good?’

Allie and the Few’s former super-hunk had once been enemies; and he could still provoke her: but they’d been allies for a long time on the vital issue of Ax and Fiorinda’s well-being.

‘Not great. He’s stopped praying. He hasn’t said but I can understand why, always watched in that fucking evil place: but I don’t like it.’

‘Ax given up the salat—!’

‘Don’t take on, he’s okay. If it’d been me that downed the bastard, I’d prob’ly be feelin’ a lot more shit than I do. It’s just a very wearing situation.’

‘I’m glad he did it,’ cried Allie, passionately.

‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

None of Ax’s friends and neither of his lovers had a word of blame for Mr Preston, and they never would. Ac had been well entitled to make one slip, after everything he’d carried on his shoulders all these years. It had just been fate. The fact remained that the Rock and Roll Reich’s situation had taken a dive from struggling and difficult to utterly impossible. The noise of the building work crept through Allie’s soundproofing, along with the tinny, nagging shadow of someone’s execrable taste in music.

Allie grimaced ruefully. ‘Okay, maybe not that far.’

Sage tapped the spliff carefully, in the ashtray provided.

‘Well. What’s the situation look like from out here?’

‘Impressively weird,’ began Allie, vehmently. ‘The President is definitely a werewolf and he has to kill himself—’

Ouch. They’d been really hoping the werewolf charge was on the fade.

‘But he must go willingly, to prove the mandate has passed on. No one talks about it, not even the gutter press, but everyone knows that Greg’s church, the so-called Moderate Celtic Pagans are trying everything. Wiccan power-sex, skyclad prayer meetings, voluntary blood-letting, illegal sacrifice, you name it. The one thing they can’t do is execute Ax unilaterally, because that would be a disaster. Cows would die.’

‘Is Lord Vries still alive?’

‘Hey! What are you implying? This is a civilised country, we don’t have the death penalty for murder, it doesn’t matter if he’s alive or not, the issue is witchcraft!’ She changed her tone, deflated. ‘We don’t know, Sage. We think he must be, but we can’t find out. Nothing has leaked… So, Ax is a werewolf and he has to die. On the other hand, at the same time, you three are happily settled at Wallingham and “Rick’s Place” is a big success. People will start calling it “Merry We Meet” when they’ve seen the rebranding campaign, and all’s right with the world. Oh, and we can’t visit you privately, for security reasons: but we get stacks of “Merry We Meet” invitations, and we’re implored to use them.’

‘But you won’t.’

Allie gave him a wry look. ‘Yeah. Fiorinda tells us it’s over, in a voicemail. Then you three get a tv show and refuse to put us on the guest list. We got the message. We know we’re not supposed to turn up.’

Sage’s brother Heads, Bill Trevor and George Merrick, had defied the message, arriving at the club’s doors with ‘invitations’ they’d acquired independently, some nefarious way. The management had been delighted. The prisoners had been weak enough to accept the fait accompli, and Bill and George had walked out at the end of the show, unmolested… But no one else better fucking imagine they’d be welcome.

No one else must fall into the pit—

‘Strictly speaking,’ Allie went on, only a slight quiver in her voice (she hated the Sage could frighten her with a look). ‘We should have fled the country and denounced the Reich, I know, I know. But it’s lucky we stayed, isn’t it? Because Ax did rescue something, and if we’d gone, there’d be much less chance of getting back to normal. There really is a chance, Sage. People recover from horrific scandals all the time, we can get back on track. But something has to move soon, or it’s going to go long term. It’s going to be an Aung San Suu Kyi thing, with you guys under house arrest for fifty years—’

‘Thanks for the charming image.’

‘Sorry.’ Allie sighed. ‘Oh well, to continue the update, Mr Eiffrich is back on our screens, and looking good for a second term. Italy has made the disintegration official, it’s now er, six countries? And China continues its scary Western March: they’ve invaded Uzbekistan, sorry, liberated the Uzbeks from the brutal climate-change denying child rapists who were destroying their rich heritage.’

‘Actually, we heard that, it was mentioned around the dance floor. An’ I promise to pay attention, as soon as I have less on my mind.’

As far as you can believe anything, they believed it was true that Fred Eiffrich had survived. He had new staff in significant posts, no more problem over the ‘Lavoisier scandal’, and he was reviewing the Neurobomb issue. US voters, as Fiorinda had predicted, liked the idea of a new super-weapon.

Ax went round ‘Rick’s Place’ avidly collecting harmless foreign news. Sage and Fiorinda could not care less. He wondered how it felt to be an Uzbek? What’s it like to be liberated by the Chinese? Could it be all bad?

‘Oh, and Alain booked a call. I told him I couldn’t be sure when you’d get here: he said he’d stay by the phone.’

‘What’s he want to talk about?’

‘The Lavoiser and Violence soundtrack, he said.’

Alain de Corlay had announced he was producing a new version of the famous video, intercut with highlights of the Commons ‘debate’. He claimed that French techno-green expertise had stripped out the vicious tampering, and these were the original images…

Sage raised his eyebrows. ‘Okay, fine.’

Allie handed him the phone.

‘Ah, bonjour Sage, how’s life in the Conciergerie?’

‘Not so bad. We’re getting the better quality straw now, thanks—’

The landline connection between the Insanitude and the Ile St Louis was standalone, as secure as it gets. He struggled to believe he did not have to censor himself… The conversation shifted into french, Allie didn’t try to follow, but she saw him frown.

Sage put the handset down, looking thoughtful.

‘What is it? New bad news?’

‘No, it’s all good. Except he says they’re going to close “Rick’s Place”.’

‘You only just opened! The ratings are terrific! How does he know?’

‘Rumour mill.’ Sage shrugged. ‘I doubt if it’s true, the bastards love their tv show, but it might not be a bad sign. Maybe we’re getting out.’

‘We hear fifty rumours a day,’ agreed Allie, struggling with a completely irrelevant professional reaction, what the hell’s going on, you don’t cancel the Triumvirate! ‘Good, horrible, plain weird.’

Briefly, their eyes met. It’s more bad news. Don’t dwell on it.

Sage hauled up the bag he’d dumped when he took the spliff, and thumped it onto her desk. ‘Anyway, here’s the correspondence.’

Ax had resumed some of his Presidential workload. His letters and reviewed documents, were taken from the suite in a sealed bag: which was presumably then opened and the contents examined. This time Sage had walked out with the bag untouched. Bizarre.

But who could figure the Second Chamber’s priorities?

‘Where is everybody, do you know?’

‘Not around,’ she said, apologetically. ‘Not til this evening. Everyone’s in Hyde Park, doing Party In The Park.’

The festival season was carrying on regardless, but Sage couldn’t join in. He had to stay away from any place of public entertainment. No meetings with the Countercultural Rebels, either. He wasn’t too cut up about it.

‘But at seven you’re to meet your dad, at the restaurant where he’s taking you for dinner, with some highly useful and important people.’

‘Augh.’

She handed him an e-reader. ‘You get there at seven so he can talk to you before the lawyers arrive, but here’s a briefing. You need to seem very confident, but please don’t pick up the bill. You can’t, it will be huge.’

‘Those days are gone.’

‘Well, try not to pick up the bill,’ said Allie, resignedly.

‘Hahaha, I’ll do my best.’

‘Then there’s this.’ She gave him a clear envelope that held a minute gleam of metal. ‘Your mask button: you can have it back.’

‘Oh, really?’ He tipped it out, and held it on a fingertip.

‘What do you think?’

‘I know you’re a fan, but I’m afraid I’m not going to stick this behind my eye right now. I’ll interrogate it a little first.’

‘And this, which is from Ammy for Fiorinda.’

The parcel was messy and not sealed. He looked inside. Packets of herbs, little dropper bottles. A closer look, and his heart turned over. He pushed the parcel back across the desk, shaking his head.

‘No good. That’s not going to get in.’

‘Ammy left it open, so they could see it’s all organic magical stuff.’

‘Ah, tha’s where she was wrong. They don’t give a flying fuck if we smuggle a truckload of mouldering Russian tactical nukes into Wallingham, but organic an’ magical, that’s another story. Tell Ammy thanks anyway.’

The noise outside rose again. Crash, bang, saw, saw… Is someone chopping down a cherry orchard out there?

‘Well,’ said Allie. ‘There’s a lot to discuss.’

‘Yeah. I’ll be back tomorrow, okay? After I do this dinner party. I’m going to head off to Battersea now. I’ll call you in the morning.’

‘Is that where you’re staying, not Brixton?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t fancy Brixton.’

‘I’ll send a car to take you to the restaurant. A nice car. About six thirty at yours, okay?’

‘Fine. Hey, have you any idea where I could find some Volvic spring water? I mean, don’t care about the analysis, a bottle with the nice label?’

‘Made in France, by volcanoes?’ said Allie, immediately.

‘Shit. Is this a big girl thing? That I ought to have known about?’

‘Sage, Volvic doesn’t exist. Not for years. You won’t even get a good fake: she’s winding you up. Get the princess some Buxton.’

‘I don’t take that kind of risk.’ He stood, unfolding to his full, improbable height. ‘I learned my lesson in Dissolution Summer. The one time in my life I wasn’t there to drive the princess home, thought I had better things to do, and what happens? She goes to Lambeth, fucks Ax Preston, an’ the rest, as they say, is history. God knows what she might bring home next.’

He’s such a bloke, thought Allie. Ax is incredible and unique, and Fiorinda would be different from anyone else in the world, whoever her father was. But once you get past how weirdly clever he is, and what he looks like, and the Zen Self, Sage is such an ordinary, helpless bloke.

He’d hoped Allie would take pity on him. He had often been told he didn’t know how to shop, he only knew how to impulse-buy like a five-year-old. He secured liquorice and wine gums, no problem, hunted inefficiently for Volvic water around Belgravia: and decided he might have better luck on familiar territory. The August sun was white in a hot dull sky above the King’s Road, making him wish he’d been taking sunscreen. Yeah, there’s a gym, Allie. It’s a box, no natural light. Guards walk you there, lock you in, let you out, walk you back. No, I don’t believe we’re in immediate danger, not even if Rick’s Place is cancelled. But if I thought this was going to go on for years, my Ax going crazy with remorse, and Fiorinda withering into bitterness: I don’t know, I might welcome a swift way out.

He was institutionalised. London was unreal, all he could think of was the red room. All he wanted was to be back there. There was a tune going through his head, very familiar, what’s that?

Never a frown, with golden brown…

Hm. Maybe not.

He’d forgotten to ask about Doug. Allie would have told him if there was news, but he must remember to ask.

At Battersea Reach he found Cack, skull-masked, waiting in the hall.

‘I thought you’d be at the Park.’

‘Didn’t fancy it, George and Bill said they’d be okay without me.’

Other Park-refusnik members of the Heads resident circus gathered. Sage gave them what he could, the reassurance of seeing their sacred idol alive and well. When that became too much he dismissed the crowd and retired with Cack to the glade-room, with the singing, ringing trees; a favourite haunt of theirs.

‘There was some barmies here earlier. Wanting to talk to you.’

‘What, in uniform? The fuckers. They know they’re not supposed.’

‘No, but they said they were ISB Crew. I took this off one of them.’

‘This’ was a Yap Moss campaign button. An enamelled circlet of moorland rushes on a cream ground, a beautiful thing: marking the ugly final battle of the Islamic Campaign. Sage turned it over. Every genuine Yap Moss button was engraved on the reverse with a number, and the soldier’s tag: the makers, Lacey and Wear of Gloucester, numbered all their works. This had no mark at all. Quite right: none of the “Insane Stupid Behaviour” Crew had been at the bloodiest battle, far as Sage knew.

He shook his head. ‘Sad and pitiful.’

‘You couldn’t call it a fake, hardly, could you?’

Sage agreed, and they fell into a discussion, which seemed to both of them perfectly natural, of the deficiencies in the greens. The cracked creams were equally poor. They moved to a more general discussion of enamel work, how the chemical changes of heat-firing affected different colours: how this related to shifts in firing and partial firing of individual neurons, in the visual cortex. But light is God, if you want to create synthetic percepts; not colour. Soon they were talking about edge and line, an endlessly absorbing topic. Perfect pitch for luminance is far rarer than perfect pitch for tones of sound: Sage and Cack Stannen were equally matched, equally obssessive—

All the while, Sage knew that Cack was full of something, but you couldn’t rush Aoxomoxoa’s collaborator. He’d get confused, he’d lose the plot. At last they returned, calmly and casually, to the barmies themselves.

‘They were scared of our spooks,’ said Cack. ‘Stupid buggers: spooks never hurt anyone. They’ll be upstairs at that pub on Battersea High Street all afternoon. They know something. It’s about Ax, and some security guards.’

Sage found himself a pack of Anandas. He lit up.

‘Which pub was it?’

‘The one that’s been shut a long time.’

If you hurry Cack all is lost. They established, meditatively, that this pub was not the Castle, nor the Woodsman, nor that strange fancy one, from which Aoxomoxoa got banned. Nor the ill-fated one that used to keep trying to be a gastropub. It was Dwyers, the defunct Irish bar with the chocolate-maroon glazed tiles (a digression to nail the hue code for various angles).

‘Are you going to go?’ asked Cack, hopefully.

It was a long time since they’d taken a walk out together, just seeing the world and discussing how to code it.

‘I might. Want to come along?’

They left by the water frontage. The government spooks occupied a flat just across the road, in the housing blocks that lined the river to the east: but there was no sign of them today, not a wink of a lens. Spooks never do any harm, do they?, repeated Cack. Never, said Sage. It was the Heads’ policy to tell Cack this, so he didn’t get anxious.

Riverside Walk, despite inundations and stinks, and much-disputed flood proofing, had kept its ancient charm. Everyone was living a floor higher up, that’s all. Sage and Cack talked as they walked, remembered fondly the evacuees who had come to stay for a year. The lively Borough of Wandsworth Council meetings, when George and Bill were Councillors. The flood-sink year, when inner London gained some new, pretty wetland, and all the dictatorship prefabs went up.

Today the river was docile in its bed, slipping by, glassy smooth. There’s a fishing cormorant, making great ripples, there’s an interesting post. Here’s the modest beauty of St John’s on its patch of green, sandbag bunkers and the ancient school with its emblazoned shield. No kids around, they must be off harvesting something.

Better Death Than False Of Faith…

Sage noticed at last how sweet it was to be outdoors, and what a great place Battersea was, how infinitely superior to Brixton. The toytown yellow-brick houses, his funky, endearing psychological landscape that had barely changed, just a few variant details, in a decade of violent upheaval. It was an oft-noted phenomenon. The inner cities thrived on green revolution, fed themselves from allottments, milled and ground the wheat they grew on handkerchief fields; while the rural hinterland fell into the abyss. Ironic, but there were factors that made it inevitable.

It takes one idiot savant to ignore another. Eventually he noticed that Cack was still wearing his skull. Head etiquette said Sage should therefore also be skulled-up, but he didn’t have his button in place. Belatedly, he wondered why Cack was masked at all. They didn’t do that any more.

‘Hey, Cack, why the mask?’

Cack’s Hallow’een head grinned, without expression.

‘I thought I should.’

Sage kept walking. Asperger’s is a catch-all. Sufferers with the exact same deficits have their own quirks. Not to dwell on the past, but Peter ‘Cack’ Stannen could have his pants on fire, and he wouldn’t say a word (this has been proved) until you asked him the right direct question. On topic he’s unbeatable. Off topic he thinks you know things when you don’t. He thinks he’s told you things when he hasn’t. He wears the mask when he’s upset.

‘Cack, why did you take the button off those barmies?’

‘I thought I should. They didn’t know I took it.’

‘Okay. Was there anything else?’

‘I don’t think they were really barmies. I didn’t like them.’

The defunct Irish bar was coming up. Sage had a momentary glimpse of a figure moving, in one of the grey windows on the upper floor.

Cack looked at the once-bright lettering above the door. ‘That’s a nasty lime green,’ he said, severely. ‘I don’t know what gets into people.’

‘Nor me. Peter, my dear, we should take an elementary precaution. You’re to walk on. When you get in range of the public callpoint at Clapham Junction, you call George, and you tell him where I am and why. Don’t call him before, use the public callpoint. Lose yourself in traffic. You got that?’

‘Elementary precaution,’ said the death’s head. ‘I got you.’

The door on the corner was open, the dark inside stank of defeated years. Sage went in, very relieved that he’d realised he shouldn’t bring Cack with him. In the old days he wouldn’t have thought twice: Cack was little, but he was useful. But none of them’d had any respect for Peter’s strangeness, back then. Although they’d loved him dearly. It was the fifteenth of August, full moon tomorrow night, was it a coincidence that he’d been let out at full moon time? They’d wondered about this, but it wasn’t worth turning down what might be Sage’s only chance to meet negotiators. Whatever was waiting he was forewarned, and George would know where he was. He was also in very good shape, if not the Aoxomoxoa of old, and this had a visceral effect, although he had no intention of using violence. Not if he could help it. All his thoughts were on the red room, back in Wallingham.

Let’s see what these fake barmies have to sell—

He went up the stairs, he opened a door, and grasped immediately that he’d better retreat. But if you sup with the devil you should take a long spoon, every pitcher goes once too often to the well, and if he keeps on trying, sooner or later the king of the lads is going to put his fist through the wrong window.

Cack reached the junction of Falcon Road and St John’s Hill. Here there were streams of people, after the friendly quiet of Battersea Village. Crowds in a familiar street didn’t usually bother him, but the “boss in jail” idea had hit him very hard, and having Sage home “for two days” wasn’t easier. How glad is two days’ worth? When do you reach the cut-off point on the curve, the downhill slide to “boss in jail again”? It sounds simple but it isn’t. The crowd didn’t get to him, but the gum stains did. There were gum stains all over the dirty pavement. Bane of my life, muttered Cack, and started counting.

It was many hours before the search parties found him.

Hungry Ghosts

Sage remembered that before the fatal debate his son had been taken from a police station, with the knowledge and consent of the Metropolitan Police, for a vicious illegal interrogation. And he had been powerless to pursue the culprits… He had ignored this warning. They had ignored all the many warnings that it was time to quit. They’d come back to England to reprise the dictatorship the way Ax had originally intended. Charm offensive, softly softly: but you can’t do that. You can’t return to the same fucking poor situation you held in check with an army at your back, and say let’s play nicely. They don’t know how to be nice, they’re institutionalised.

He understood the depth of Ax’s distress now, that staring-into-nothing mood. We took on the bad guys, and we did not SEE their priorities, we only saw our own. That’s our unforgiveable worst crime.

England’s nameless, unaccountable secret police chief entered the room, in a motor chair. A rigid plastic collar, swathed in white silk, held Lord Vries’s chin at a haughty angle. He was a nineteenth century dandy, ineffably sleek, blond and pink, a true blond, not a shade of vulgar yellow in it.

Sage grinned. ‘Is the collar permanent?’

The chair glided over to a desk: Jack flicked a switch. ‘We are now recording. You have consented to this procedure, Mr Pender?’

‘I’ve consented.’

Jack rose and came to him, using the cane that had been balanced on his knees. Walking didn’t come easily. Got a brace under his clothes to keep that neck in alignment, Sage guessed. ‘Two realtime cognitive scanners were stored in the building on Battersea Reach. We searched the premises some weeks ago, including the rooms under the basement, and found nothing. The residents, including Mr Merrick, Mr Trevor and Mr Stannen, denied all knowledge of the whereabouts of the controlled neurological equipment.’

‘So do I.’

‘It is illegal to possess, or have in your possession, the precursors of weaponised magic… I don’t want to bring the Heads in for questioning, Sage. Or any of your employees. They aren’t criminals. That’s why it’s best if you tell me where the scanners are.’

‘I can’t tell you what I don’t know. But you’re welcome to try.’

He wanted to ask what was being done to Ax and Fiorinda. What had happened to his lovers, if he was here… But he shouldn’t show anxiety. Keep things simple. Humiliate someone, he will humiliate you back if he can, and they had humiliated Jack Vries, in public, in the House of Commons. It’s a fundamental law: bastards have feelings too, forget that at your peril. So I take my licks, Jack will feel better, and maybe I’ll survive.

The white tiled walls of the room gleamed. What happened to Peter?

‘Do you know what day it is?’ said Jack, leaning on his cane.

‘Er, Thursday? Evening?’

Dad is at the restaurant, thinking how fucking unreliable I am.

‘It is the night of the full moon, of the seventh month of the Chinese year. The Chinese call this the moon of the hungry ghosts. We call it Lúnasa. It adds up to a time of great power. If you can’t help us to locate of the scanners, then this interrogation may precipitate a transformation, which would be another answer to our inquiries.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

‘As long as you understand that you may involuntarily incriminate both yourself and the President; and you still consent to the procedure.’

‘Jack, be serious for a moment and listen to me. I’m not superman, and I’m not a werewolf. The rules have not changed. I took part in a very high tech neurological experiment, the ‘A’ team took part in another, and outside of those conditions “magic”is as futile as it was a thousand years ago. Your time of great power is a crock too, you can’t make the Chinese and the so-called ‘Celtic’ calendars add up, because they don’t. None of it adds up.’

Oh, fuck. I ought to be humouring him.

The dandy moved his poised head carefully from side to side. ‘You’re the one who doesn’t understand, Sage. In all my studies I never had one single unequivocal proof that I could move the world: yet I believed. I am a believer, I am a practitioner of sacred truth, and you have proved my faith, and the faith of millions like me.’

Fiorinda had told Sage that if the Second Chamber did try to build an n ‘A’ team, Jack Vries would be the most dangerous candidate in England. He stared up at the dandy, pitiless secret policeman, this deadly knowledge running through him.

‘You don’t want Olwen’s scanners. They’re useless to you.’

Jack took a deep breath, and set out on the difficult journey back to the desk. Sage watched, with a terrible shrinking in his throat and belly, a tremor in all his limbs that he could feel through the chemical paralysis.

Flick of a switch

‘The interview was halted for a call of nature.’

‘Let me speak frankly, off the record. You’d better understand that nobody is going to stop this, and I am not afraid to touch Joss Pender’s son, don’t make that mistake. The Lord and the Lady are sacrosanct, you are not. If you’re bluffing, I suggest you stop bluffing now.’

‘I don’t know where the scanners are. I consent to the procedure.’

The equipment was Pacrim, Indonesian: about fifteen years’ old. This pointless torture machine is how the British government was spending my taxes, when I was a filthy rich bad boy, back before Dissolution. So remember, this is not new bad news… A mask came down, a stiff gag pressed between his teeth, his eyelids were delicately drawn back. Was Lord Vries still in the room? He didn’t know. Fine, flexible needles slid around his eyeballs, and probed deep. He had been told the nerves would suffer no damage, unless this went on for a long time. He was afraid it could not be true.

He was back at the Insanitude, in Allie’s new office. He said to her, ‘You never did get your eyes lasered, did you?’ Allie said, ‘I’m fine with contact lenses, thanks.’ He was afraid for her: she’d be helpless when there were no more contact lenses in the shops. ‘You should do it, stop pissing around. Eyes are important. Go to Cardiff. Take DK with you. Once you’re there, don’t come back.’ If he made it plausible enough she would leave.

He returned to other scenes, and told other people. Get out. It’s over. Go! But Sage must not get out from the house of pain. Don’t start meditating, or you will die. Die, hear that? So DON’T.

The Stranglers alternated with Schubert, first movement of the B flat piano sonata D960. Both good, neither of them touching the pain.

He visualised the muscles of his face, the cascade of tiny spasms that added up to the word agony: which would not be written, because the anaesthetist who was standing by had upped the dose and he was completely paralysed. He could hear them murmuring about what they saw on their screen, the voices neutral, unintelligible…The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin, a very useful work, ancient photographs pored over by the teenage Aoxomoxoa. Images that had fascinated him, when he was thinking out how to build the avatar mask. How to map the muscle-fibre contractions, by mental reverse engineering. Are all artists part-butcher? Yes.

We cut open the world. I am a vivisectionist, no wonder I have bad dreams. Surprisingly, he could still think. Why couldn’t he black out? The immense vitality that was his birthright, that had carried him to the Zen, was not his friend now.

The sessions ran together, the spaces between were pauses of calm clarity, and he was not aware that he was losing track of time, of place. He saw the world the way the bad guys had seen it, with COGNITIVE SCANNERS all huge, and everything else dwindled, two dimensional. A couple of times he thought of saying why don’t you ask my dad? But he was in uncharted territory. Ax’s failsafe arrangements had assumed Joss Pender was safe from reprisals: can’t assume that now. For once in my life I would have screamed for you, please help me daddy. But I daren’t.

Illuminations. A clear glass, standing on a red-gold velvet tablecloth. At first he thought it was a remembered detail from an old picture, a Chardin? No, more modern. Eventually he realised the painter was himself. The glass was Ax, and the velvet was Fiorinda. But where am I? He was worried, he was afraid he had disappeared from the relationship, something he was always afraid of, because they are locked in process, I am just their catalyst, the medium; whatever. Then he knew: I am the picture, of course. The picture of the world that the mind makes is the I that sees the picture, it’s a paradox.

He began to code himself.

SEVEN

The Walls

On the first night they were alone something unprecedented happened. It was about an hour after they’d been escorted back from Rick’s Place. They were were in the wired, after-the-show mood, cruelly compounded by Sage’s absence, but no motormouth jabber tonight. Ax was building card houses, Fiorinda was pretending to read, but turning few pages. The bell that summoned them to the Moon and Stars receiving room rang. They stared at the row of antique chimes above the door of the red chamber… Ax moved first. He went to her, took her hands and kissed them.

‘I’ll get it. Stay here.’

He went through the suite preparing himself, a reflex long established. Allah Akbar, be ready to die, do it well, be glad it will be beside her.

God is good.

The Moon and Stars room was empty, likewise the antechamber with its doors to the outside world. Someone knocked, a discreet, respectful tap, and he felt a change, a shift deep in the murky entrails of this impossible situation. A manservant in black and white stood in the lamp lit corridor, pair of guards behind him with parade ground faces. He proffered a silver tray, in white gloved hands. On the tray lay a mobile phone of venerable design.

‘A call for you, Sir.’

‘Is that you, Ax?’

Ax stepped back into the antechamber and closed the door. ‘Who’s this?’ He knew he should know the voice, but he didn’t.

‘It’s Joss, Joss Pender. Listen, Sage has gone missing.’

‘What—?’

‘I can talk a little, not much. He was supposed to meet me at a restaurant, he didn’t turn up. He reached London. He was with Allie at the Insanitude, then we know he went to Battersea, probably on foot. He went out with Cack Stannen, George and Bill were at the Party in the Park. Then we lose him. They found Cack about ten, wandering around Clapham Junction. George and Bill are talking to him, but it’s difficult to question Peter. Sage didn’t have a phone, no chance of a trace. There may have been some ex-barmies at the Warehouse, earlier today. They may have been offering some kind of information.’

‘Have you? I mean, who else knows about this?’

‘Yes,’ said Joss, dryly. ‘We’ve informed the police. No news yet.’

‘Joss,’ said Ax, thunder in his head, a fury of helplessness. ‘Be careful.’

‘I’ll be careful. I’ll find him, Ax, don’t worry. I have my resources.’ The older man’s voice sounded calm, resolute, fatherly. ‘May I speak to Fiorinda?’

Ax sprinted to the red room, but before he got there the phone was dead.

Greg Mursal never stayed at Wallingham, so far as they were aware. He came down for meetings, and went away again. Lady Anne, the governor of this royal prison, was punctilious in her respects. They did not hear her comings or goings, buried alive as they were, but she would send messages to the Moon and Stars suite: announcing her movements. The next morning a handwritten note arrived, presented on a silver salver. It said she would be remaining at Wallingham, at their disposal, ‘during this distressing time’. A gracious turn of phrase. They wrote back, asking to be informed of any news at once: and prayed for another phonecall from Joss. It didn’t come.

They hoped for something from “Rick’s Place”, but Bill and George didn’t turn up, and the Scots were still in England, but not scheduled to return to Wallingham this week. The punters knew that Sage was out. He had ‘business in town’ (euphemism: everyone knew the real situation, of course). But they worked the crowd, brought up against the fact that they had no friends here, without detecting the slightest rumour that he’d vanished; or that he’d broken his parole. They told themselves that if the disappearence was being kept quiet, that meant it was all right. The enemy had decided that the lawyer-meetings couldn’t happen after all: but Sage was okay and coming back. He should have returned on Sunday morning. He didn’t, and Lady Anne regretted to inform them that there was no news.

The royal prisoners sat at either end of the dining table, a manservant behind Mr Preston’s chair, a womanservant behind Miss Slater’s. Mr Pender’s place was not laid. Courses were presented, in elaborate sequence: an entrée of cold cuts, as it was a Sunday. An asparagus soup, a superb round of beef, with several dishes of plainly cooked vegetables. Traditional English cooking was the rule… They were living dolls in a doll’s house, the Wallingham servants callous children, who insisted on keeping up the dreadful game. Fiorinda barely ate at these meals, she had lost too much weight in two months, it scared Ax. But she did not look weak on it. She looked electric, her pale skin burning from the inside: she was live wire.

‘I found out something about the ghost,’ she announced, signalling for her beef to be removed untouched. ‘The ghost in our red room? It was in a memoir in our library.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘There was a young woman who lived here in the nineteen fifties. She was playing with an ouija board, although she’d been warned not to, and she conjured up something that evil that withered her soul. So then she died and she’s been trapped in that room ever since, getting more and more crazy.’

‘Rough.’

The staff who worked inside the Moon and Stars suite were carefully chosen. Their loyalty was to Lady Anne, Wallingham, and possibly the Prime Minister. If they’d been given their choice of dolls they’d have preferred Jordan and Milly Preston: such a handsome, docile couple. They considered Ax tainted, and Fiorinda ungrateful, cold, and too intelligent: which isn’t what people want in their royals. But they believed in the ghost, and they didn’t like it. They’d been overheard telling each other that the red chamber had always been haunted, by the legendary Black Shape, and you mustn’t let it touch you… Ax saw the eyes shifting, felt the frisson passing him, and grinned malignly. Stick it to them, Fio.

‘D’you think we should change bedrooms?’

Fiorinda shrugged.

‘You don’t think it will harm us?’

She raised her hollow grey eyes, and smiled like ice at the girl presenting another dish. ‘No, thank you… Not us, we’re untouchable. Think who we are. Other people, yes. It might well.’

A card game, on Monday night. Ax and Fiorinda crosslegged on the floor of the red chamber, two lonely royal children locked up and forgotten in the haunted room.

‘D’you remember the Armada Concert?’

‘What about it?’

‘The end of the Rock the Boat tour. We were doing the gig in a derelict kiddies’ theme park in Cleethorpes… Are sevens transparent?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then you’re picking up again, sorry.’

‘Fuck.’ Ax arranged a massive influx of pasteboard. ‘These cards are getting old… Pleasure Island, yeah, I remember. Horrible dangerous dump.’

‘Oh? I liked it. It was so odd, colourful and dreamlike, and the rides the hippies got working were insane. Tom had just been killed, but that’s not what I’m remembering. I’m remembering a moment when I met you, on a falling-apart theme-park “Mediaeval” street. I had armed guards round me, for the first time. Just like a big celebrity eh? But it wasn’t like that.’

‘No,’ said Ax, ‘Your turn, babe… It was more serious.’

Fiorinda picked up. ‘You had the armed guards too, but you, you fucking looked armed yourself, although you weren’t. Hahaha, but I can put them all straight down again, sorry. Anyone could see you had killed people, well, of course, everyone knew you had, up in Yorkshire.’

‘Thanks. I love it when people look at me and see a killer. I looked at you, you looked at me, an’ the backstage crowd looked at us. Yeah, I know the moment you mean.’

‘That’s when we saw that this would happen,’ said Fiorinda.

A hush of awe, that closes like a fist over the young man of twenty-eight and the eighteen year old girl, in the nervous hour before they face a dangerous crowd. Any one of those big, violent concerts in Boat People summer could have been the same. When a nation was tearing itself apart, they had chosen not to be celebrity-cattle. They had chosen to make a stand, to hold things together, to protect the poor. They had known, as early as Boat People Summer, that in the end their choice would bring them somewhere like here. To this dank room, the smell of dust, the deathly silence. You can’t call those moments of realisation ‘seeing the future’, it’s not the future.

When we were there, we were here.

Fiorinda uncovered her three concealed cards for the end game. Ax sighed, he was losing badly. ‘Sage wasn’t with us, was he?’

‘No, he came and found us later, in the storm shelter.’

‘Oh yeah, I remember.’ He looked up from his sorry hand, and smiled at her. ‘You know, I know there was a time when we were together and he wasn’t our lover. He was your big brother, best friend, and—’

‘Your best mate, who used to be your big NME feud enemy.’

‘Not enemy, Fiorinda—’

‘Hohoho. You just hated his-a steenking crowd-pulling guts.’

‘Anyway, I was saying… I can’t remember it. Literally. I think of us, Sage is there. If I think of us in the past, he must have been there. In bed, whatever, and if he wasn’t, he must have just popped out for—’

Fiorinda put down her cards, face up. ‘I’ve won, let’s stop. Please.’

They held each other’s hands: desolate and terrified, crouched on the dusty golden briars, in a slew of worn, greasy playing cards.

Suffering in public is a hell only for pride. Celebrity cattle are humble creatures, who will scream and flail for the cameras, and feel no pain. Ax watched Fiorinda’s contained agony for as long as he could bear it; which wasn’t long. On Tuesday he requested an interview with Lady Anne, a request which was granted immediately. A startling change. He was escorted (it was strange to see new parts of the house, to have glimpses of the outdoors through unshuttered windows), to a fine set of rooms, though not one of the great showcase suites; with leaded windows over the south lawns.

The old lady had favoured alpha female business suits whenever he’d met her before. In her private study she wore a floor-length gown in pillar box red, with blue slashed sleeves, her meagre hair covered by a close fitting red cap. She was standing when Ax walked in, gnarled hands clasped over a big chatelaine of decorative keys. He thought of Rox, grown old and shrunken: but Lady Anne was not beyond gender. Somehow made sure you knew she was female. She curtsied, and then remained standing when Ax sat down.

‘Please.’ He released her with a gesture, thinking of the Mediaevalists in Paris, the fatal conviction you get that these people are so far out they’re laughable. Oh no, they’re crazy as bedbugs, but they’re sharp enough.

She was a parched little mummy inside the lobster carapace: he could have broken her in half. But that’s the werewolf talking.

Lady Anne took a chair. There were no attendants in sight, he’d asked for a private interview and this seemed to have been respected. She embarked on a speech of greeting, before he could forestall her. He sat it out politely and asked if she had any news. A wary look flickered over her face and was gone: no, there was no news. As soon as there was anything to report she would relay it without delay.

‘Bill Trevor and George Merrick didn’t turn up at the Drawing Room for the show,’ said Ax. ‘It was from Battersea Reach that he disappeared. I’d like to speak to them. Could you get hold of them for me?’

Lady Anne looked as vague as was possible for the tough old bitch. ‘I believe it’s been decided that Mr Trevor and Mr Merrick should not visit or communicate with Wallingham, for the moment. For security reasons.’

‘I see.’

Oh, fuck. What’s happened to the Heads?

‘We don’t know why Mr Pender disappeared, and that makes, well—’

The vague smile and the wary eyes. He realised that she was afraid he knew the truth, by telepathy. Wolfman here could be playing games with her, knowing all along just what was happening to his boyfriend. I did not know for sure, thought Ax. Not absolutely sure. But I do now. I know enough, God help me. He stood up, went to the windows and looked out over the drowsy gardens, the tank trap; the tree-dotted park.

Allah Akbar.

‘These “expiatory rites”, that were mentioned at the beginning of our stay here? I’d like to know more about that.’

He knew the painless lethal injection wouldn’t be enough. If the king’s going to die you want some TA-DA!, about it. Some wicked fancywork. But he could taste the fanaticism in this woman., and she wasn’t alone. If he offered his royal self, in trade for a dirty lab-science superweapon (who was refusing to co-operate, obviously), he knew where Lady Anne’s vote would be. He could divide the bastards, at least. What will they do to me?

Late summer sunshine on the lime trees by the croquet lawn, and a shocked silence behind him.

‘Your Majesty.’

Ax turned, feeling that his face was a mask and he was looking through the eyeholes. Lady Anne was on her feet, totally disconcerted. Were those tears, brimming in her sunken old eyes?

‘Your Majesty. In…in advance of the formal announcement, which Lord Mursal plans to make very soon… I must tell you that by many signs, we are now blessedly sure that there was not the slightest hint of lycanthropy. I am preparing new arrangements for Your Majesty’s accommodation, very gladly. Whatever happened—we may never know—no blame attaches to Your Majesty! The blow, if there was a blow, was a king’s perquisite, your outrage was just, Lord Vries will beg your forgiveness for the—’

Ax was bathed in a craven wash of relief: this animal does not want to die in extended agony. But now he had nothing to trade. All he could do was stare her down, trying to figure out the new position.

‘Lord Vries is alive! I’m glad to hear it. Where is he?’

‘Lord Vries has recovered sufficiently to return to his duties. He is hesitant, perhaps unduly hesitant, to seek an audience with Your Majesty.’

Lady Anne drew a breath, having revealed this whacking faultline. Her old face glowed. ‘But soon all will be well. The Lord and Lady will rule, from Wallingham, under my watch and ward. Mr Pender will serve his country in his own way. All will be well in England, all manner of thing will be well.’

She went down again, foundering in her heavy skirts like a ship hitting rock, into a deep reverence, her old back ramrod straight, her eyes filled with misty exaltation. Yep: tears. Tears of actual joy, he thought. His skin crept.

‘Well, this is a great day,’ he said, coolly, when he thought the pause was long enough (fucking hope that stunt murders her sciatica). ‘I hope the salving of my reputation is a good omen, and that we’ll be hearing from Mr Pender soon. I’d like to call Joss, and give him the good news, could you arrange that? You know, our lack of private telecoms is a problem.’

Lady Anne rose up, unembarrassed. ‘Any news will be relayed to Your Majesty at once.’ She didn’t seem to have heard the part about private telecoms.

In the red room Fiorinda was working at her embroidery. She’d requested the materials some time ago, to make a change from reading. It frightened him to see her like that. He was responsible, he had thrown her back into a world of chattel gentlewomen, stitching pretty flowers because they weren’t allowed to do anything else. But she was a long way from using handicrafts as satire now. You have to do something: preferably something painstaking, that helps you to give nothing away.

‘What did Lady Anne say?’

He had been on the brink of horrors, and felt immeasurably shaken. ‘I’m not sure… I mean, I know what she said, but I don’t know how much I’m reading into it. But I think Sage is okay. I feel as if I have reason to hope.’

Fiorinda paid attention to her satin stitch, frowning a little.

‘In words?’

‘As soon as she has news, we will have it. Bill and George won’t be coming to the club for the moment, for security reasons… And I’m not a werewolf any more. Not suspected of being a werewolf, I mean. I’ve been cleared, don’t ask me how. Lady Anne was about to inform us, my request for an interview forestalled her.’

It was a turning point in their affairs. Lady Anne came to visit them, with ceremony. She repeated the joyful tidings, and when asked about Sage spoke in veiled terms about matters, which would soon be resolved. They were presented (another of those silver trays, offered by Lady Anne’s favourite senior womanservant) with the internal keys of the fortress.

The keys were meaningless. They unlocked the outer door to the Moon and Stars suite, which was always guarded, and bolted and barred on the outside every night—and some public rooms that were never locked anyway. The freedom to roam was genuine. They were escorted into the gardens: by guards who saluted them with reverence. They felt the sun, they saw daylight and growing things, they breathed fresh air. When they returned indoors, they were taken to a drawing room, on the same floor as the Moon and Stars but in a different world—where tea was served by servants who were nothing like the screws in their prison. Later, they were escorted back to rooms that had been scrubbed and burnished, worn bedlinen and towels replaced by far superior articles; the rich colours of the hangings and carpets glowing, the air scented with bergamot and vanilla. Around midnight the antique mobile phone was brought for Ax, same routine as before.

Ax thought it would be Joss, and it still might be bad news.

‘Hi, Ax.’

‘Sage!’

Fiorinda was beside him in the antechamber. Her eyes shone, he gave her the phone.

‘Where are you, are you okay?’

‘I’m fine, my brat, relax. Look, I’m sorry you’ve been anxious, but I can’t come back yet, it’ll be a while longer. Is Ax still there?’

‘I’m here, I’m still here—’

‘Are things better for you by now? They should be.’

They clung to the handset together, their cheeks touching. Sage’s voice was tired, calm, cheerful: obscurely more convincing because they couldn’t see his face. ‘Yes,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Things are better, I wouldn’t say they’re good, but m-materially improved: and you? How about you? Can you talk?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I can talk. I’m going to get you out. Got to go now.’

‘Can we talk to you again? Sage!’

‘Soon, so just relax, stick with it. This is good, everything’s okay.’

The phone was dead.

‘He didn’t mention your not being a werewolf,’ said Fiorinda.

‘Maybe he doesn’t know.’

On Thursday night, Rick’s Place had been reprogrammed too. The transformation was subtle, presumably because as yet there had been no official announcement: but the guards who took them through the house had a different attitude. The burly ‘waiters’ who had followed them around the night club floor, officiously close, were replaced, in the take-the-bullet space, by gilded scions of the new ruling class. These young men didn’t introduce themselves but acted very respectful. They imagined newsflash headlines PRESIDENT AX EXONERATED! TO BE CROWNED KING!

On Saturday night the Scots were back again. Ax teased them about their persistence. Did they think the ‘invitations’ they handed over went into a prize draw, were they trying to make sure of the jackpot?

‘Do they not?’ Sovra’s tone expressed sober enjoyment of the joke. ‘That wad be a grave disappointment. We’ve been counting up the scores and are verra hopeful we have the odds.’

‘Well, that’s good,’ said Ax. ‘You keep wishing.’ He laughed and moved on, shaking his head, followed by his respectful shadow.

George and Bill had not appeared, they hadn’t heard from Joss Pender again, and there’d been no second call from Sage. The cosmetic changes meant nothing. They’d have been fools not to realise that they were more helpless, more isolated than they had ever been.

Fiorinda, now that she could get out of the Moon and Stars, cultivated the female staff. She did not speak to them. She made them speak to her, in the simplest way. She sought out places where the cleaners were working (it took an army to keep Wallingham in perfect order), and touched things. The women could not scream at her, or attack her, when she held some fragile gewgaw. They had to ask her politely to desist, and then they discovered that Fiorinda was very interested. She would like to know what she was touching, where it came from; how do you look after it?

Plenty of the women would not play, but some of them would…

She didn’t know if this was useful. A space had opened and she was moving into it, that was all. Plus, it was something to do, that kept her out of Ax’s way. Such is life. Shared terror for their darling had made them cling to each other, but now fear was getting old and foul, and everything jarred.

Endless corridors. Staircases for every rank, miles of attics, odd little doors opening onto a planetary landscape of roofs and parapets. Endless show-off rooms at the front of the pile, larded with decorative plasterwork, thick with gold bordered, rose-pink carpeting (a favourite Wallingham colourway). Always cold because of the north aspect, and the huge fountains at the head of the carriage sweep.

This house is built backwards, it belongs in New Zealand.

Sage had been gone for thirteen days, a dull afternoon was hazing into evening outdoors. Fiorinda helped a Wallingham lady called Hazel to dust porcelain in the Reynolds Passage; their work surveilled by a cast of fake-pensive eighteenth century debutantes, with huge fluffy powder-grey hair.

‘It’s been a lovely summer,’ sighed Hazel, a sandy, scrawny little woman with pebble glasses, and the authority of her passionate dedication.

‘Gorgeous.’

A fat pair of blue urns, finned in gold like exotic fishes, flanked a gilded nymph and shepherd group on a pedastal. Two by two by two by two. Nothing goes by threes. Did these things ever mean anything to anyone? Try to imagine Wallingham as a family home, generations of the tat a home accrues, presents and prizes and souvenirs: all laid out in immaculate manic order. Look, inside these urns there will be hairgrips, buttons, hairy blu-tac, plecs, stubs of pencil—

‘And very, very special for us, because of having you and His Majesty here. Both hands on the piece, at all times, ma’am.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Where does the time go? It seems as if Lammas is hardly over, and you start to think about Samhain. I do hope we’ll still have you then.’

‘Were you brought up a Christian, Hazel?’

The woman must be sixty. Obviously she loved her job, maybe she wasn’t very smart, but surely she remembered a normal world—

‘Yes ma’am. I came to the Old Religion in my teens, what a long long time ago it seems now. So many changes. That’s when I started working here, for the National Trust, and met Lady Anne, who took a real interest in all of us. She’s such a wonderful person—’

Damn. Cross you off my turning list.

‘I was wondering if it was at Samhain that His Majesty means to undergo the rites, such a noble thing for him to do.’ Hazel sighed sentimentally, and her dusting slowed in contemplation. ‘Though very solemn for you, ma’am, of course.’

‘The expiatory rites? Why would he? Ax is not a werewolf!’

‘Oh dear.’ Hazel’s cheeks went pink. ‘I shouldn’t have… I didn’t mean anything… Someone said, in the housekeeping room… His Majesty has been discussing it with Lady Anne. Ma’am! Please! The Ch’ien-lung urn—!’

Their suite, as they had discovered when the shutters were opened, looked into an internal courtyard. Ax sat in one of the window embrasures of the red room, picking guitar, and peered down at the square of pavement three floors below. There was a dry fountain in the centre: he couldn’t see any doors into the building. Blank windows, shuttered on the inside, walls of water-stained stone… His Les Paul usually stayed in its case in the bottom of the armoire, along with Sage’s visionboard, the First Aid kit; and Fiorinda’s saltbox, in her tapestry bag. They were superstitious about touching these treasures, which had so far been ignored by the jailers. Out of sight, out of mind.

But he had needed the comfort of holding this old friend, because Fiorinda, he didn’t blame her, had turned cold on him. What could he say to her? They didn’t know how closely they were watched. They were agreed (it was one of the things they couldn’t discuss, but he thought they were agreed) that the visual surveillance might be quite poor. But you had to assume anything you said was heard. Forget the invasion of privacy, who cares if they see you cry, if they see you making love: fuck ’em.

Just remember to say nothing, ever, that could get you in trouble.

It’s the way a lot of people live their whole lives.

His fingers moved, his mind went round in circles. If that was Sage, speaking to us in real time, not a recording, and intuitively, instinctively I believe it was, and I know she does too…then he is not okay, fuck that for a lie, but he is alive, and he used a keyword. Who could make our bodhisattva use a keyword, against his will?

Begone dull care,

You and I shall never agree—

Ax had once told an enemy of the Reich that rockstars are like gods: dumb idols, eating well and making the priests rich. That was the fate that had closed on him and on Fiorinda. They had powers, different powers, that could tear the world apart, but they would do nothing. They would stay here, coffined in stone, not daring to move. He looked up at the tank of sky. How much more of this can I take? What can I do for her? She doesn’t love me, she wants Sage, and I can’t get him back.

The real meaning of Iphigenia was burning a hole in his heart.

Fiorinda stripped off her felt slippers and her polishing gloves, and dropped to the floor, arms huddled round her knees, thick curls falling forwards, smothering her. The walls are glass. Every wall in this prisonhouse is a one-way mirror, we are whores in a fish-tank, waiting to be scooped out. They took Sage, so now Ax can’t wait, he’s jumping up and down squealing me, me, pretty please. The bastard. I hate him. I hate, hate, hate him. Torrents of silence poured through the woven stars, it’s like having your mouth stitched up. She steeled herself, and rose to her feet, stretching and rubbing her back. My, that stately-home housework is demanding!

‘Tomorrow,’ said Ax, ‘we could take another walk in the gardens.’

It was later in the evening: they had dined. The shutters were locked and the hangings drawn over them, the servants had departed. The scrubbed and burnished red room was a stranger, they felt bereft. Ax picked guitar: setting Fiorinda’s teeth on edge, and breaching their silent agreement that the treasures should never be touched. She sat with her embroidery frame.

‘I thought you’d decided not to play guitar in here.’

‘It’s something to do. I’m getting interested in the English idiom.’

‘How fashionable of you. You should send out for a lute, I’m sure Lady Anne would be delighted.’

‘Maybe I will,’ said Ax, narrow-eyed. ‘Right now I’m going to work on me new repertoire of Hendrixed-up English folksongs. Is that okay?’

‘You do that,’ Fiorinda kept her head bent, counting threads. ‘Ax, you bastard, is it true you’ve volunteered for the expiatory rites?’

Ax did not reply. He stared at her, dumbfounded. Are you so angry with me you’ve forgotten we’re on camera?

Yeah, she thought. I’m so angry…‘So I take it you did. You are incredible. You fucking idiot, expiatory rites means they will burn you alive. They are not kidding. They had me on the bonfire, remember? Burn you alive? You’ll be begging for it. They will hang you, draw you and quarter you, that’s the least they have in mind. DO YOU KNOW WHAT—’

‘Yes.’ He set the Les Paul aside. ‘I know what it means. Okay, I made the offer, maybe I shouldn’t have, it just came to me to do it. This is old news, Fio. Lady Anne turned me down, I’m not a werewolf.’

She applied her needle, viciously accurate. ‘Poor Ax. They wouldn’t let you immolate yourself, and it’s your only trick. You utter bastard. You didn’t think you should tell me first? You always did love him best.’

‘I said, she turned me down. Look, this is out of date—’

‘I think they took Sage and tried to make him turn into Wolfman, and whatever happened gave them an excuse to decide you’re clean. They were prepared to sacrifice him. They can use us. Sage doesn’t fit in the picture.’

‘Fiorinda, Sage is okay! For fuck’s sake, we both talked to him!’

One savage glance told him what she thought of that, and told him also she was in control. She had not lost it under the strain, she just hated Ax. She bent over her work again, her words clipped and icy. ‘So fine, Sage is gone, we’re the fucking Lord and Lady, and you’ll have to settle for the slow torture of staying alive, at which I am expert. Ax, remember when I came back to Lambeth, that time after the first meeting of the Countercultural Thinktank, did you really seduce me, polite word for it, because you fancied me?’

‘Huh? Where’s this coming from—?’

‘Or did you have a huge crush on Aoxomoxoa, and you wanted to fuck something that belonged to him? I know I’m not your type, in the female line. You prefer a real woman with plenty of tits and bum, so I’ve wondered.’

She looked up, limpid grey eyes and a smile of contempt.

Nothing is safe. She’s a psychopath. She’ll attack something as precious and vital as the first night you spent together, eight years ago—

‘I wouldn’t mention it,’ said Ax, curling his lip. ‘I have never thought anything of it, but it was you brought up the idea of sex, not me. You did have a bit of a reputation, so I wasn’t surprised. My memory is we both had a good time. Several good times, as I recall.’

Fiorinda stitched rapidly: sliced open to the bone by this evil misrepresentation. ‘That’s right. I often offered to fuck blokes when I was a kid, to get it over with. Teenage girls in the music biz find it’s easier. I used to have a lot of good times too. You’re easy pleased, Ax. I was faking.’

‘I knew that,’ said Ax. ‘Fuck’s sake, you were sixteen years’ old, with a passion for your abusive daddy and more or less oblivious to the existence of the rest of the human race. What kind of pornstar do you think you were?’

It was a knife-fight now. The horrible release of saying the worst, nastiest thing possible, with full knowledge and intent, was irrisistible.

‘You self-obsessed little Hitler. Remember when you ran away, Mr Dictator, because you were convinced the threesome wasn’t working, how noble of you? Was that really to let Sage have me? Or was it because you’d grasped you were never, ever, going to hear me say I loved Big Brother?’

Ax had run away because it was Sage and Fiorinda, the lovers who kindly allowed Ax allowed to get in bed with them, and he had not been able to bear it. He took full responsibility for the disasters that had followed, as she knew. But if there are no rules, then yes. YES, her scorn for what he was trying to do had been a hateful burden. Fiorinda sneering on the sidelines, refusing to take responsibility for her own choices, saying why bother, the situation’s hopeless, into the foul swamp and never get out, you can’t win—

‘You know, I could never understand why you didn’t leave yourself. You could have had Sage off me anytime, and enjoyed making his life a misery as he trailed round the jet set world he hates, chasing your fucking twisted ambition to be a global super-pop-star just like abusive daddy—’

‘D’you think I don’t know we’re in here because of you? We should never have come back, we knew England was dangerous as all hell, but when President Eiffrich says oh please take this poisoned chalice you jump at it because he makes you feel big and Ax Preston can’t resist a gamble—’

‘Sorry, Fio, you can’t pin that me. I didn’t “bring you back”. You did it yourself, it was your choice. I’m not your big strong daddy-substitute. I’ve never been your boss—’

A sound, quiet but unmistakable. A door had opened, and closed.

They stood frozen, as in a game of statues, knowing there had been an escalation. Trying to figure out what had happened while they were screaming at each other. The coiled chimes were still. No bell had rung, but someone was inside the suite. They had been invaded. This had never happened before, never. The gold briars glinted on the red wall hangings.

A weight of menace: is this it? Are we going to die now?

Ax picked up a lamp.

‘Will you stay here while I go and see?’

‘No!’

The midnight room was a cavern of shadow, Ax’s lamplight waking gleams from the stars and crescents around the walls. He thought, for some reason, that he would see two coffins lined up open on the floor. No coffins.

‘Anyone there?’

Something moved. There was a tall figure sitting in one of the chairs.

It was Sage.

‘Sage?’

‘Hi there, my dears. See? I told you I’d be back.’

It was his voice, sweet and deep. It was Sage. He was dressed in a grubby white shirt and jeans: and, strangely, wearing dark glasses. As they came closer, he turned his face away. He was avoiding the light.

‘Are you all right?’ whispered Fiorinda.

‘I’m fine. Jus’, not the light, okay?’

He seemed rooted to that chair. They looked at each other, constrained not by the surveillance but by Sage himself, something in him they dared not touch.

‘Let’s get you through to the other room,’ said Ax.

Fiorinda took the lamp. Ax walked with Sage, guiding him. At the door of the red bedchamber he baulked, unwilling.

‘They cleaned the suite,’ explained Fiorinda. ‘The red room doesn’t smell the way it did any more. Part of our new privileges.’

‘Oh right. Shame. I missed this place, I was used to this place.’

‘We think so too,’ said Ax. ‘C’mon, lie down, my big cat.’

Sage lay on their bed, obediently, flat on his back. Fiorinda closed the curtains, dimmed the lamp to its lowest setting and set it on the bedstand.

‘What happened?’ breathed Ax.

‘Well, they want the cognitive scanners,’ said Sage, reasonably, as if he expected Ax and Fiorinda to know all about this. ‘To build an ‘A’ team. They think I know where, an’ they want that information so they won’t have to bother arresting anyone else. They’ve been using memory retrieval imaging. O’ course I don’t know where the scanners are, so they’re not having any luck, but they keep trying.’ He lay very still, but kept talking, motormouth. ‘It’s a crude old machine, ’bout ten-fifteen years old. I don’t know what they’re seeing on their screens, I bet it’s crapdoodle. So tha’s what’s been happening to me. I walked into it, stupidly. Then I thought, better co-operate, since I can do no harm. As a bonus, you and I are not werewolves any more, Ax.’

‘Yeah, we know. How did they figure that? They provoked you and you didn’t bite them?’

‘Somethen’ like. Anyway, now I get a break. Recovery time. Is there, is there any way I could talk to my dad? I’d like to tell him I’m okay.’

They held his hands, staring at each other across his body.

‘Will you let me take off those glasses?’ asked Fiorinda, softly.

He hestitated. ‘Okay… But no more light.’

She gently lifted the sunglasses, cheap wraparound shades she’d never seen before. They saw dark bruising from his brow to his cheekbones, some of it livid: some many days’ old, diffusing into his white skin.

Oh God is good, he still has eyes, but what a mess—

‘Did they damage the nerves? Baby, did they damage the nerves?’

A bare whisper, trembling. ‘They will if they do it much longer.’

‘I’m going to get the First Aid,’ decided Fiorinda, abruptly.

‘Please. Got some morphine, allegedly, before they dropped me off, but it’s barely touching this. Uh, please. And could you move that light?’

Ax put out the lamp. Fiorinda darted to the armoire, and came back with the box. In deep shadow, she pressed a diamorphine popper to his white throat, snapped it; and another. Immediately he sighed. ‘Ah, thanks.’ The eerily calm voice became a slurred murmur. ‘Jack Vries is alive and well, knew you’d be thrilled Ax. Can I talk to my dad?’

‘Not now, sweetheart,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Let the drug take you away.’

‘Got to keep still,’ mumbled Sage, ‘Lying down with m’head still, tha’s all, my brat. Better tomorrow, not as bad as it looks, di’n’t mean to scare you.’

They left him, closed in the heavy curtains, and stood, Fiorinda with her hand pressed over her mouth. The room seemed unnaturally bright, blood red hangings, blood red carpet: veined in cruel, barbed sickles of gold.

Ax requested a second interview with Lady Anne, and found her rock-solid. Clearly she resented the Neurobomb agenda, but there’d been a division of the spoils and she was satisfied. She had her captive king to play with. She apologised for the charade of Mr Pender’s ‘disappearence’, and explained to His Majesty that England must have Neurobomb technology, and there was no political will for a partnership with the Welsh, who in any case denied they had access to the Zen Self company’s work at Caer Siddi. Therefore the lost machines must be located—

I’ll bet there’s ‘no political will’ from the Welsh side either, thought Ax. Grasscuts still sting, it hurt to know how England was rated by the other countries of Britain. Slavery, secret police, the labour camps. Bring back the days when we were just crap at any form of competitive sport—

‘Did you know that the Zen Self scanners can’t be used for weapon development?’

Lady Anne inclined her head. ‘I believe all advanced technologies are open to adaptation. Mr Pender may have exaggerated the difficulties, when speaking to Your Majesty, in the light of his religious scruples.’

‘I see.’

How fucking ironic that this self-deluded apparatchik was the one who was supposed to believe, starry-eyed, in magic. He thought of Sage’s information space science, its fabulous diversity. B-loc and Immix. Decoding the 0s and 1s of reality itself. Air for Mars. And Fiorinda, ah, my living goddess… But mostly he thought of the people of England, and the only way he could protect them now. The flag of St George didn’t matter a damn.

He was disoriented, lost, stepping over the edge.

‘In view of developments,’ Lady Anne was saying. ‘Your Majesty may wish me to cancel the Yellow Drawing Room evenings?’

The name of this game is cat and mouse. When brutal pressure fails, you apply sweeteners. Make the prisoners grateful, call a halt to the torture, make them afraid the bad conditions will come back. Lady Anne’s offer was amusing, in a way. But the last thing Ax wanted now was to lose the misery that was Rick’s Place.

‘Certainly not,’ He took out a pack of cigarettes, which he’d snagged from one of the nightclub tables, last week. ‘May I?’ She bridled, but he lit up anyway. One of the attendants (they were not alone this time) scurried with a silver bowl. ‘It was for times like this, great emergencies, that the Rock and Roll Reich was invented. The show must go on.’

He did not know what the hell was happening, outside these walls. Everyone he cared about could have been rounded up and shot. Russia could have declared war on China, and they could both have the Neurobomb. He wasn’t going to ask Lady Anne to enlighten him. He wasn’t going to ask her any more questions at all… He was only in this room because it would have looked fucking strange, if his boyfriend had come back blinded and he didn’t ask to speak to the management.

But he saw the flicker in her eyes, and stored that knowledge.

‘We’ll continue to entertain our guests. It’s the least we can do. Mr Pender, I am sure, will be ready to continue the investigation soon.’

They left Sage sleeping, with the ghost to watch over him, and went for a stroll in the grounds. It was a day of mist, the warmth of late August colliding with a cold front from the sea. The spear-carriers, guards and servants, kept a respectful distance. The Lord and Lady walked to the middle of the smoothly shaven lawns, alone. ‘I know you blamed me,’ said Fiorinda, biting her lip. ‘Because you went away, and he decided to get his liver ripped out fighting a duel with my father. Now you see. You can’t stop him either.’

‘Yeah,’ said Ax, ‘Plus you got yourself hatefully raped, just to save a few lives. I was always disgusted with you about that, too.’

Everything terrible thing they had said to each other was possibly true, but the love was stronger. She laid her forehead against his shoulder, and he held her there, his cheek pressed against her hair. They walked on.

‘I’ve searched the First Aid Help menu. There’s nothing about people who’ve been tortured by having needles stuck behind their eyes, but there’s plenty about eye-socket gadget injuries. We can extrapolate.’

Medical assistance might be offered, but they weren’t going to trust it.

‘Good,’ said Ax.

‘Something else you should probably know,’ she added, head down, thrusting her fists into the pockets of her drab hoodie. The Triumvirate wore dull and shabby old clothes when they weren’t in Rick’s Place, in odd contrast to the shining black and white of their attendants. The paparazzi of Crisis Europe (the paps will always find a way) had pictures of this, and called it a rebel statement. They were wrong. It was simply good taste.

He nodded, without meaning.

‘I’m pregnant.’

Ax stopped walking. He stared at her. ‘Oh God. How…how long?’

‘I’d missed a period just before Sage left. It never happened.’

‘Oh, my God.’ He had not been counting. ‘I didn’t think. It never crossed my… Oh, God, no wonder you’ve been hating me.’

‘Shut up. Anyway, I’ve been necking rot gut vodka regardless, so you can hate me too. You didn’t ask me how I’m sure.’

‘Are you sure? Have you tested?’

‘Are you kidding? Under their eyes? No I fucking have not!’

‘But you’re sure you’re pregnant?’

‘It’s not that I’m so sure,’ she said, staring at the toes of her shoes, left foot, right foot. ‘though I am… It’s like this. In less than two weeks I’m going to miss another period, and I don’t think we kept it locked-down secret before all this happened that I was trying to have a baby. This is a royal prison. You can bet your life somebody’s keeping an eye on the queen’s linen.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Well, anyway, what are we going to do now?’

They were approaching the tank trap. A thin mist shrouded the park. They turned and headed back, before their attendants intervened.

‘I know what we should do,’ said Ax. ‘I’d already decided. We find out if the Scots are real, which I think they are, and sell England to them.’

She thought about it. ‘How do we find out?’

‘Try our luck. Give them the gear.’

Fiorinda watched her shoes for two paces, then she nodded. ‘Yeah. How else?’ She looked up, pale as a candleflame, her stubborn jaw set hard. ‘That sounds to me like a bloody good idea. Let’s do it.’

Ax grinned, with the same fierce satisfaction. Then his face broke up, he blundered, sobbing like a child, into her arms. The guards and servants watched this, a cast of Shakespearian extras, but that was okay. Good King Ax might well be distressed, with the dilemma he was in over his boyfriend.

Phil MacLean’s sympathies were impeccably Celtic, but before Dissolution he’d been one of the former UK’s outspoken radical rockstars, same breed as Ax Preston and the English ‘Few’. He was an ideal “Rick’s Place” regular: vetted and approved by the secret police, and yet a half-way plausible buddy for the Triumvirate… Sovra Campbell was nothing so vulgar as a rockstar! She was a conservatoire-trained violinist, stooping to conquer the popular music audience with phenomenal success; no political background whatsoever. As agents they made a good team, a typical, awkward, rock-tour line-up partnership: the verisimilitude enhanced by a few colourful scraps between their followers.

Were they really empowered, by the Edinburgh Assembly and the Convocation of Elders, to offer Ax and his lovers a ticket out of jail? Ax believed it. The price was convincingly high, for one thing. No face-saving Act of Union: England as a nation state would disappear, But if Ax said yes, the Scots would retire their current President—an ancient celeb, who agreed to the deal—and take drastic action. They’d looked into it carefully, and believed that a rescue would be legally justified. They had cleared the proposal, secretly, with Dublin, and Cardiff.

This was the pitch Phil and Sovra had been giving Ax, hiding it in plain sight, in elliptical conversations. Ax had been temporising, always coming to the same sticking point. Wallingham’s a fortress, you don’t know the details, what’s your game plan, how are your reivers going to get us out? The Scots had no answer. But they knew Ax did: and they knew that when he was ready, if he was ever ready, he would hand over the means.

It had been easy to talk. It was difficult to commit, very scary: but there was no other way to do it except to do it. The Thursday night after Sage came home, Ax went beyond the point of no return, and the Scots immediately closed with him. A hard choice, but it could have been worse.

Better than falling into the hands of the Irish—

He left the Scots’ table and strolled into the crowd: smiling, doing his job, desperately trying to read through the lies, the ignorance, the baseless gossip. Are you ‘queer for Brussels’, Mr Preston? I am not.

Do you think we should let Belarus go under?

Ooh, it hasn’t come to that, not nearly. You know, I’m just a rockstar, the decisions aren’t made at Wallingham, but—

Women like glittery dolls, men in sleek tailoring, jigged around on that recalcitrant dance floor. The guest bands did their spots. Regulars asked after Sage. ‘A throat infection,’ said Ax. ‘He must have picked it up in London. A singer has to be careful you know. Maybe next week.’ Did they know what had really happened to Aoxomoxoa? That’s the wrong question. They all knew what happened to people who make trouble, and that their favoured rank would be no protection. They’d just forgotten there was ever another way. If you told them it used to be illegal to obtain evidence by torture in this country, they’d wonder what you were on.

Fiorinda went to sit with the Scots; giving her shadows an easy time, because these were safe associates. She was in a teasing mood, dividing her barbs evenly between the raw-porridge-eating, home-spun MacLeans, and the effete cosmopolitan Campbells. Or should that be the raggey-plaided clueless sentimental MacLeans, and the forward-thrusting ruthless, proletarian-crushing Campbells??? It was all in fun, with bursts of laughter that turned heads, and brought a regional tv crew over. The mediafolk were sent packing, with cat calls and showers of austerity twiglets.

You’ve done us to death! Pick on somebody else—!

Fiorinda and the violin diva took a turn around the room together, as if this was the Eighteenth century. They made an arresting couple: the rockstar queen in her timeless party frock, a fine old Kashmiri shawl in brown and gold covering her shoulders. The tall Sikh woman with the long face and strange, light eyes, who bore the name of one of the greatest Highland clans, arrayed in sober high fashion.

They paused to admire the Klimt hangings.

‘We mustn’t touch,’ said Fiorinda. ‘They’re fabulously valuable.’

‘Are they no’ replicas?’

‘Nope, the real thing. As is the Van Dyck over there, and the Delacroix: both hung in here because they are yellow. And people are allowed to smoke all over them. Crazy, isn’t it.’

The two women bent closer. ‘I don’t actually like Klimt,’ confided Fiorinda, absentmindedly lifting the fabric to examine a detail. She dropped it again, grabbing Sovra in pretended alarm. ‘Oops, what a crime. I’ll get us thrown out. I’m such a klutz about the ornaments in this treasure house.’

‘A troubled man,’ agreed Sovra. ‘Maybe no too open in his sexuality,’ she added severely, and calmly transferred a slip of glittering crystal, that had just been pressed onto her bare arm, to a place of greater safety:

eks, not fade away.

George had smuggled the chip into Rick’s Place, early in July. It held the whole instruction set for hacking into Wallingham, plus the barmy army battle plan for the May raid. It had never left the Drawing Room, as there was a good chance it wouldn’t have got through the punitive search and scan the Triumvirate suffered when they were taken back to their rooms. The Klimt hangings were cleaned by ultrasound twice a year, the next date still months away: so they’d been a smart hiding place, keep it simple, always the best.

The Scots would be scanned, but approved guests didn’t get taken apart, and the chip was very small, and practically inert.

This I can do for you, my prince, thought Fiorinda. You have to tear your heart out, but you don’t have to hand it over personally. Now we find out. Maybe she’ll take that straight to Lady Anne… She wondered how it felt to be Sovra, and what would make someone sign up to be a secret agent, hey, you’re a fine musician, be shot for sixpence, it’ll do nothing for your career—

Sovra may have been thinking on the same lines. ‘Are they no’ afraid you three’ll take advantage, mixing freely with all sorts of chancers in here?’

‘The Drawing Room is comprehensively wired,’ said Fiorinda, ‘and protected by ritual magic. And they trust us. What could happen? Even Greg Mursal knows Ax Preston would never betray his country.’

England and Scotland looked at each other with reserved respect. A hell of a bungee jump, sister. And you. Good luck. And you. They returned to the table, because Ax had begun to play. He’d brought down his famous cherry-red Gibson, for the first time in the history of Rick’s Place. He gave them a blistering solo set, a blast of pure and hard electric, nothing green or organic about it. He didn’t give a fuck how they reacted: but the crowd was wowed, smitten, ecstatic. The dip in popularity Ax had suffered, those weeks when his star had faltered, were forgotten. As long as he was locked up in Wallingham, he could do no wrong.

‘That was way cool!’ gasped one of his courtiers, at the end of the recital: pronouncing the ancient jargon with gusto. ‘You are such a pro, Sir!’

‘Yeah,’ said Ax, meeting Fiorinda’s eyes across the smoky dark and the lights, and getting the a-okay. It’s done. ‘That’s me. A real old pro.’

Phil and Sovra’s tour was over. Their last visit to Rick’s Place was the last night they spent in England. The reivers, who’d slipped over the border by ones and twos—augmented discreetly through the summer, as the agents became certain they would close the deal, stayed behind: gone to earth, with their smuggled arms. The operation was handled so there was no marked discrepancy in numbers in the tour party, coming and going: but border control wasn’t tight, for approved festival traffic. Safely delivered in Edinburgh, George’s chip was deciphered, evaluated and passed on to the commanders of the raid, who moved south to join their troops.

Ax and Fiorinda obeyed the White Box’s instructions, and dosed their bodhisattva with diamorphine until he refused it; wanting to stay clear and be with them. He often insisted he was fine, but at night he would cling to them, shaken by fits of deep, helpless trembling. Fiorinda thought that one day he’d tell her what had been going on in his mind, and it would be nightmares featuring Jack Vries as an appalling father, a merciless god. When a tame medic arrived they drove him off: openly angry, outraged and shocked.

Lady Anne felt that Jack Vries’ apology was insupportably delayed, and dreaded the moment when she’d have to approve a renewed interrogation. Since she did not believe in the Neurobomb agenda, she contemplated poison, to get rid of the unlucky third once and for all. But it would be difficult. The Lord and Lady refused to allow the servants near Mr Pender, and would give him no medicine except of their own providing.

They’d thought of poison. They were living on Rick’s Place bar snacks.

They spoke to each other with stitched-up mouths, the days passed, they went down to Rick’s Place again. China’s adventures in Central Asia eclipsed the run up to the US election: which held no interest, it was such a sure thing for Fred. A group of rogue neurophysicists in Argentina had been caught trying to build an ‘A’ team, and arrested. A colossal, Stalinist, Russian engineering project, last ditch defence (according to the Russian Feds) against the ‘global-warming ice-age’, had been abandoned, devastated by extreme weather. They heard nothing more about a public announcement that Mr Preston was not a werewolf: that deal seemed to be on hold.

They knew nothing, except that Phil and Sovra seemed to have got away with it, since there’d been no immediate repercussions. Then a couple of stragglers from the Scottish tour turned up at the club on Friday, and passed the message: it’s on.

The raiders hit the Wallingham perimeter around midnight of the seventeenth of September, their arrival by road buried in the traffic spike when the nightclub closed. They were in a strange land, and they’d never attacked a fortress before. But Ax and Sage did plug-and-play battle orders, designed to survive hippie guerrilla idiocy or inspiration: they didn’t know any other way. The first phase of the operation went smoothly. Wallingham’s security software had of course been reviewed after the May debacle, but the codes had been reset not replaced, so change didn’t go very deep. The very expensive package that generated frequently changed, randomised passwords throughout the systems, had not been ditched. The ‘Rick’s Place’ traffic spike was the last genuine information Wallingham’s defenders, human or machine, ever saw.

The perimeter was secure in half an hour. The attack on the house itself began about one thirty am. Entry (all doors and windows were physically locked and barred, as well as being systemically alarmed), was effected through a scullery window; which was simply forced. The indoor troops were getting reports and visuals that looked and sounded perfectly convincing, and showed only a quiet night. They had no idea they had no alarm system, or that the perimeter was lost. They didn’t know anything was wrong, until the Scots were all over them.

The prisoners in the red room were almost as poorly informed as the garrison. Their shutters had been locked as usual, and the outer door of the suite secured, when the servants left after dinner. Their suite was so deep inside the house they would hardly have heard a rocket attack on the distant façade. They wouldn’t know when the power was cut off, (which should have happened early on): their corridor had never been on the Wallingham House private renewables grid. Ax and Fiorinda sat on the bed, watching the lamplit room from a cave of curtains; holding Sage’s hands while he lay on his back and kept his head still. His eyes were much better, but still heavily bandaged most of the time. They made conversation, the real words silenced.

‘It’s chilly tonight,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Don’t you feel that the season turned this week, like a leaf? Like a waterwheel, tipping over into autumn?’

‘You “feel” that cos you know it’s close on equinox, my brat.’

‘What does an equinox do? Is it registered by our brains?’

‘Yeah, whether you know it or not. It makes you happy, slightly.’

‘It’s always cold in here,’ complained Ax. ‘I’m dreading the winter.’

Endless corridors, endless galleries, endless vast public rooms. The word had been around midnight, but Ax didn’t know if that meant kick off or the perimeter taken. If midnight was the perimeter they should be inside by now. How long before they locate us? It’s good that we can’t get out of the suite, he told himself. We’d be fools to be out there, don’t want to commit prematurely. If they fail we’re innocent, we knew nothing.

Fat chance of getting away with that—

He listened: searching the silence until he thought he could hear the guards breathing outside the barred door of the suite. Calculating, approximating as best he could. This part of the May plan had never been executed, there’d been no need for it. The ground floor window that is only directly visible to camera eyes, no sight lines. Get basement and ground floor locked down, leave a party to mop up. A couple of men to run a firecheck on the non-combatant servants in their quarters, and keep them quiet while the main force sweeps up and inward. Clear up as you go, and you should never have to engage with major numbers—

You don’t know where we are, that wasn’t on the plan, you’ll have to work it out. Don’t head for the show-off rooms the Preston family occupied.

It’s a fortress, what does that tell you, trainspotters?

Make for the central keep.

find out if we can fly—

Ax’s imaginary Scots were still on the ground floor when there was a muffled thunder of boots outside. They got off the bed, Sage too, nerves thrilling, is it fight or flight? A mass of armed men, must have been twenty of them, burst into the royal bedchamber. Oh, fuck. Never-seen-action fatigues. Not the rescue party.

‘You’re to come with us!’ yelled the foremost guy, red and blue flashes on his sleeves and shoulders: an officer in Wallingham’s private army. ‘Come on! Now!’ He was wildly brandishing an assault rifle, lost to all respect.

Ax set the barrel of the gun aside (it had been jabbing at Fiorinda). ‘Come with you? Why? It’s the middle of the night. What’s going on?’

‘There’s a helicopter waiting, Mr Preston,’ cried a second, calmer man with officer’s flashes. ‘On the roof of the great library. You have to come quickly Sir, Ma’am,’ He looked at Sage, and flinched away from the Zen Self champion’s bandaged blindness. ‘And Mr Pender.’

‘But…but wouldn’t we be safer staying in here?’ said Fiorinda doubtfully. ‘If there’s some kind of trouble?’

I could do it, thought Ax. The guy who just called me Mr Preston, not that sickening Your Majesty, he could be turned. I could grab the wavering rifle from Mr Weak Link there, turn this around. All it takes is boldness. But what then? What then…? He stared at Fiorinda, rushing on disaster, telling her we are fucked, I won’t kill and they’ll call my bluff. I can’t do it.

Fiorinda stared back, grey eyes like stones in the dim light.

‘Just wait a moment,’ said Ax. ‘I asked you to tell me what’s going on. Is the house on fire, is this a drill? Has war been declared?’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Sage, unhurriedly. ‘What the fuck’s up?’

Both officers were very disconcerted to be addressed by blind Sage. They glanced at each other, breathing hard, and quickly eyes front again.

‘There’s been a disturbance,’ cried Mr Nice. ‘A… Possibly a break in.’

‘You don’t need to know!’ shouted Frantic Guy, rifle flapping again. ‘It’s not for you to know. You just come with us, right now!’

Their men were in a tight pack, looking nervously around the room.

‘Okay, okay,’ said Ax. ‘We hear you. Give us a few moments to pack.’

Everything they meant to carry was already assembled by the bed. He headed for the armoire, took down a suitcase and began to fill it with clothes they never wanted to see again: with an appearance of haste but no hurry. Fiorinda, whatever you’re going to do, do it. Oh shit, my babe, magic drives people mad, and you’ve already been to that hell once. How can I ever escape from doing violence? How cold it is over here. He wanted to tell her no! Don’t do it to yourself, we’ll find another way… When he realised that his throat had closed, his mouth was dry. He was in the grip of an overwhelming dread, coming at him from the ghost’s favourite territory.

The Haunting Of The Red Bedchamber had served its purpose when they’d heard it mentioned by the servants—since they happened to know that Sage and Fiorinda’d made the fucking thing up. Their friend the ghost had confirmed that the bedroom was bugged; and was a good psychological tool. The ghost was always listening. Told ourselves there were no cameras or mics inside the bedcurtains but never dared believe it. Fucking sickening. So there’s no ghost, there never was a ghost, but his hands had begun to shake. Something invisible, animal and repellent watched him, creeping closer. He kept shovelling clothes, slow make it look fast, this is not a small thing, this is too much babe, don’t know if I can stand up and get back to you…

Mr Frantic shouted incoherently, rushed over and grabbed Ax by the shoulder. Ax turned, slow make it look fast: raising an eyebrow.

One of the men in the pack wailed aloud. They were backed up on each other like sheep, up against the wall by the fireplace. Mr Nice, lightish skinned, round in the face, was a sick shade of grey. He yelled at his partner. ‘You don’t touch Ax! You don’t lay your hands on Ax!’

But he was backing up himself, and so was Mr Frantic. What did they see? It had them penned: an invisible black sheepdog. Ax stumbled to his feet, dread like a tugging wave. Fiorinda was staring at the invisible black dog too, and Sage’s bandaged eyes were fixed on the same spot. Ax crossed the room, they scooped their bags, their treasures, the First Aid: bolted through the suite, slammed the outer door and crashed the bars into their sockets.

The night guards must be in the red room with the others. The corridor was empty and dim: lit by infrequent ATP lamps in wall brackets. Somewhere, not far away, there was a considerable firefight going on.

‘My God,’ gasped Ax. ‘That was strong medicine, Fiorinda.’

‘Fuck!’ breathed Sage. ‘It was real, there was a real ghost! Hahaha!’

Fiorinda was chalk pale, her eyes huge. ‘I’ve seen that happen before. I didn’t do it Ax. The internal world and the external world change places. They did it to themselves. They had laid hands on the king.’ She stared at them. ‘The ghost was Wallingham… We’re all playing with fire.’

They listened to the sounds of battle, and grew calm.

In his blind negotiations, Ax had tried to insist on non-lethals as weapons of first resort, zero casualties as the objective: starting the bidding low to keep the final price down. Who knows if the Scots had understood, or complied? Battle plans always break down at some point. No regrets, but the size of what they had done came home to them.

‘We better get this under control,’ said Ax. ‘You up for that, big cat?’

‘Oh yeah. Lead on. Jus’ make sure I don’t fall over anything.’

‘Go ahead, I’ll take care of the old lady,’ said Fiorinda.

Running through stately corridors in the dark, it was like high-class hide and seek: except for the smell of cordite, the glue-sniffer sting of non-lethals. Hoping not to hit any tear gas. Yells and flashes below as she crossed a gulf of stairwell. She found an English body, and shame gripped her. We did this. Oh, fuck. More English bodies. At least these ones weren’t dead, just moaning and wriggling in the grip of sticky webbing—

Lady Anne had been sleeping when the attack came. Like Margaret Thatcher, she needed very little sleep: but she treasured the hours from midnight to three am, when she relinquished command to Tom Lacey, Wallingham’s peerless steward; her ally in many skirmishes with the conniving National Trust, years ago. Usually she slept unaided, but she had taken a pill, tailored to give her a measured dose of oblivion, as she was exhausted by the stress of the Mr Pender situation. She had a guilty fondness for prescription drugs.

She had known nothing of Tom Lacey’s last stand, or the decision to move the prisoners. Her household officers had been unable to page her rooms, her women had been silenced. Roused out of bed, she was brought to her study in her nightgown: in lamplight, meaning the generator had failed. The drug clouded her mind, usually so sharp and decisive. She thought they were Wallingham men, holding her up by her arms because she did indeed feel on the point of falling.

‘Where are they kept, ye auld witch—’

‘Let me find my glasses.’ The plan of Wallingham flung down on her desk, the confused sounds she could hear, had flooded her with the greatest of terrors. Fire. But the hands were extremely rough, and the faces unknown to her. Instead of taking out her glasses she pressed the panic button, then opened a small drawer in which she kept a powerful talisman, a gold locket holding a nub of shrivelled flesh. She thrust it into the ringleader’s face.

‘Begone from here!’

She was struggling, a tinder-limbed, pitiful grotesque, in the arms of her captors, when the study doors were flung open and the young queen marched in. Fiorinda knew these raiders at once. They tended to naked ropey limbs and heads scoured of hair, instead of dreads and ragged layers: plus skin more luminously white than you often see in England. But they were obviously just barmy army squaddies, the Scottish version of Ax’s hippy guerrillas. The lunatic dregs of radical society, getting shot and not even asking for sixpence, and well over the top as usual.

Her heart went out to them.

‘Hey! What the fuck do you think you’re doing!’

Altercation followed. The Scots were not willing to relinquish their prey, neither Lady Anne nor her elderly lady’s maid—who was being roughly held still in a corner. They were righteous, stubborn, and unfavourably impressed by her ladyship’s weapon of first resort, an object which Fiorinda suspected was the preserved and sanctified heart of a newborn.

Abomination. Shall not suffer a witch to live, etc.

So, not Celtics then. Must be the other team.

She had to yell at them for about five minutes, handicapped by the fact that she could hardly understand a word they said, before she brought them to admit that raping politically sensitive VIP old ladies wasn’t in the deal. All right, didn’t mean to insult anyone, not raping, beating up the old ladies—

Different, but enough like barmies for me to hold them.

‘Lady Anne, you’ll be able to contact Lord Mursal, or whoever you wish, in a few hours. Meanwhile you’ll stay in your bedroom, under guard, and you won’t be harmed. You’re in the hands of a civilised nation now,’ (pause to glare at the trainspotters) ‘and you’ll be given civilised treatment.’

She didn’t know if it was gratitude, or undying hatred that she saw rise in the mad old eyes, as the PM’s ritual consort was led away with her servant. Nor did she care. A baby’s heart, how cute. Just don’t get killed on my watch.

Someone had turned the power back on. As Fiorinda and her new friends headed north from Lady Anne’s suite, the great public rooms were suddenly ablaze with light. The reivers started muttering.

‘What is it now?’

The leader of the detachment said something incomprehensible.

‘I’m sorry, I really don’t understand. I may be a musician but I’m hopeless at languages. Is there a MacLean in the party?’

This put them on their dignity. An older man with a grizzled bullet head spoke up, in the same precise, nit-picking English as Sovra Campbell.

‘The men are just saying, they accept the ruling on summary justice against persons, but what would the cailin rua’s opineenion be on the removal of property?’

The cailin rua (it means red girl) barely hesitated. ‘Make it small stuff,’ said Fiorinda, feeling like Lady Macbeth, and good about it. ‘Don’t waste time.’

The illusion that they’d taken control was shortlived. They left Wallingham in the bare, windowless back of a van, which they shared with a dozen or so reivers. The Triumvirate sat close together: not touching, because they didn’t want to show weakness. They were no longer themselves. An hour ago they had been Ax and Sage and Fiorinda, in prison. Now their charmed lives were over. What they had been, what they had done, their whole extraordinary career was over. Scenes rose up, all played to music. The reckless energy of Dissolution summer. The young Fiorinda screaming her desperate pain from Reading Main Stage: firelight and night. A huge crowd under a pure blue sky, held silent and entranced, passionately exalted by Ax Preston’s guitar. The fabulous weirdness of Aoxomoxoa’s immersions, turning the world inside out in the Insanitude ballroom… It was bad to know they’d sold England, but they could tell themselves the country was surely better off this way. There was nothing to soften their own shame, their loss of status. It was devastating.

The wheels were leaping over very poorly surfaced road. Now to make this work, thought Ax, stubbornly positive. He wished they’d been able to manage their own escape, but if it had been possible, where does that get you? Ax and Fiorinda and Sage, either running for their lives or fomenting a horrible civil war… No, this was the right choice, statesman’s choice. And now to make this work. Say it often enough, it’ll come true. For England. For the people he had served, all of them, all ages, all dresscodes, through the years of disaster. He could feel Sage’s exhaustion beside him, and the big cat’s fear of what this jolting journey was doing to his eyes…

It was a foretaste. There would be months of this. They would be paraded in public. They would be interrogated, hopefully without torture, they would be taken from place to place, moved from one captivity to another. A figure like Ax Preston is either dux bellorum or a greasy banknote: currency, passed from hand to hand. They saw it all, and closed their eyes. We will never escape. Mouths stitched shut. Occasionally one of the Scots asked Ax a question, and he answered calmly and confidently.

After some time, maybe a couple of hours, the van drew up. They were handed out, into cool air and a feeling of landscape emptiness: almost like the desert. They saw misty stars, a shadowy mass of trees, and a square-angled blot rising in the foreground. Was that a house…? It was a house of sorts that was revealed, when the Scots brought up the big lights. Two gable ends and a chimney, no roof, not much of the walls left. A stone-floored lean-to kitchen silted with rubble. Ax asked were they stopping for the night.

That got a laugh, because it was nearly dawn. ‘Business,’ said one of the men (if there were women, they were hard to spot).

They’d parted from the small army that had taken Wallingham, there was only this one van. They moved into the ruined house, the three closely surrounded. Fiorinda noticed that she could understand what was being said to her, which meant this must be a MacLean party, Highlanders. Gaelic speakers, pure English as a second language. She saw that Ax and Sage had realised the same thing, and they were uneasy too. In the hands of the Celtics, for some private business. Fuck, that doesn’t sound good…

Everyone sat in a circle, there was an atmosphere of expectancy. The high-powered lamps were hooded, to mimimise the escape of light into the sky. Reivers took out their Wallingham souvenirs, and showed them to each other. Gold boxes, trinkets; little rolled-up razored canvases; antique objets. The three larger items of loot felt self-conscious. One of the two commanders of the raid came and sat opposite them, in the open centre of the circle. He greeted Ax and Sage with the respect due for what they’d done back in the house, and introduced himself to Fiorinda, with dignity. His name was Neil.

‘Now we seal the contract.’

‘I’m not going to sign anything here,’ said Ax firmly. ‘Not until we get to Edinburgh, to the Assembly. I intend to do this by the book, no side deals.’

He was clutching at straws.

‘It’s no’ about signing things, and it won’t wait.’

Beside Neil sat a small man with a bowed back and a neck like a turkey, dressed in a white singlet and black cotton trousers, seriously tattooed around his bald, wrinkled head; sleeved down his arms. Where had he come from? He didn’t look like a reiver.

‘It’s me you’ve got to see,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I’m an expert.’

It seemed Ax had to be tattooed. Neil agreed that this stipulation had never been on the table before: but it had always been in mind. If Ax refused, the Celtic Party, largest political voice in Scotland, would simply withdraw support from the Edinburgh deal, and it would collapse.

‘The Celtics of Scotland don’t entirely trust the Assembly,’ explained Neil, in a soft-spoken, reasonable tone. ‘They don’t entirely trust Ax Preston either, and you’ll understand that. They’re with you all the way in rooting out the lunatics, Ax. But they remember the Velvet Invasion, and they have a lingering feeling in their minds that Mr Preston kills Celtics, or at least tars them all with the same brush. A little knotwork will make a big difference.’

‘I’ll have to think it over,’ said Ax, realising he’d been doublecrossed.

‘That’s the first count,’ said Neil. ‘The second count is that you are known to be a wily fucker, but once you have our badge on you, you’ll have a hard time wriggling out of the bargain. We’ll be recording the operation, for legal reasons, hope that’s okay.’

They laid Ax on his back on a reed mat. The tattooist took out his inks and needles from a briefcase. ‘My name’s Billy,’ he said to Ax, in a piping little old voice. ‘I’m not a Scot, I’m not Celtic. I’m a wanderer, maybe older than Celtic, maybe nothing. I chose this spot: I’ve been around here before. It’s called the Wood Court, and it’s holy. No shrine nor stone nor sacrifice, none of that, it’s just a right place.’

Two massive reiver hands settled on Ax’s skull, with a vice-like grip, and the lamps moved closer, so he felt their heat.

‘Keep yer head still,’ advised Billy, ‘and it won’t take half an hour. If you can’t, it’s going to be longer.’

Ax kept his head still.

When the job was done, everyone got back in the van and they drove on. Another jolting drive, then the van seemed to leave the road. It stopped again. The men got out. The Triumvirate glimpsed the trunks of trees, early morning in a wood: then the doors were shut. After a while Neil put his head in, and reported that everything had gone according to plan. The police had been avoided. The rest of the war party was well on its way to the border. No trouble, except one of the injured men had died. Fatalities on the Scots’ side now stood at three, the bodies being taken home, of course. It had been a smooth dismount. What about us, asked Ax. What’s the delay?

We’ve been told to wait for dark, said Neil.

They stayed in the back of the van all day, too burned out to sleep or to talk much; or to feel much anxiety. The Scots came and went, grumbling out of boredom, and once producing sandwiches. Ax spoke when he was spoken too, expressing hopes for peaceful change, the swift collapse of the Second Chamber. He was sickeningly aware that events had passed out of his control. He kept thinking, it’s going to be tough being Ax Preston, in public, with this thing on my face. He’d expected his eye would close up but it didn’t, the needlework was just tender… Later they heard urgent conversations in Gaelic; perhaps triggered by radio messages. No one told them what was going on, and for the moment they were beyond caring.

All they really noticed was the quiet that interrupted the sound of the reivers’ voices. It was very quiet that September day, in the unknown countryside a few hours’ minor-road driving from Wallingham. The stillness, and the dying fall of summer’s end.

The van set off in the rain, as soon as it was fully dark. By this stage the three were completely indifferent, just longing for the journey to be over. To be alone together, to speak freely to each other, for the first time since June. They weren’t thinking any further. The van bounced along, neither faster nor slower than the night before, keeping to neglected roads and presumably heading north: though it seemed to make some strange turns.

It pulled up again. The back doors opened, Neil hopped in and spoke to the men in an undertone. Then he said, ‘Take your gear, English, and get down. This is free, gratis, you are free.’

They took what they were carrying and got down onto the side of the road. It was still raining, softly. Neil handed out Fiorinda’s guitar case, and the visionboard. Fiorinda had her tapestry bag, Ax had the Les Paul.

‘The white box!’ cried Fiorinda. ‘That box, could you hand it to me—’

One of the men in the van picked up Sage’s First Aid kit, and hefted it thoughtfully. Neil jumped down, and slammed the doors shut. He looked at them without speaking, then got back into the cab and the van drove away.

It drove away.

What the hell’s going on?

‘We’re back where we were,’ said Ax.

He was right. The dark mass he pointed to was the wood behind the ruined cottage where Ax had been tattooed. They led Sage between them along grey, ragged black-top: through the charcoal-shaded night, between bracken-scented banks, until they reached a turn-off. This must be the track the van had taken the night before. Soon they saw the ruin. The lean-to kitchen had enough of a roof, mainly brambles and ivy, to give them shelter.

Sage took Fiorinda in his arms, with a wordless sob, and reached out for Ax. They hugged each other in inexpressible relief. There was nothing to do but wait for morning. They made Sage a pillow from Fiorinda’s Kashmiri shawl, and he lay where the Scots had cleared the stone floor for the tattooing ceremony, with his bandaged head still—which was another great relief to them all. Ax and Fiorinda sat on either side of him, backs to the house-wall.

‘Was that you, on the phone,’ said Ax. ‘Saying you were fine?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why the fuck did you say “relax”, when you were being tortured?’

‘It was for the best. I was coping, an’… This is superficial: true.’

‘We’re going to have to change that arrangement.’

The night was mild and faintly moonlit, though there was no definite break in the cloud. They could see the rain falling straight and fine, and hear the faintest silver whispering.

‘Ax?’ said Sage, after a while. ‘What does Iphigenia really mean?’

‘Oh, yes,’ murmured Fiorinda. ‘I’ve wondered about that, too.’

‘It means Poland.’

‘Poland?’

‘It’s a secret codeword for Poland, used by FDR and Winston Churchill in the lead-up to the Teheran conference, during World War Two.’

‘D’you know what it means, in this context?’

‘I think so.’

Poland. Now there’s a koan. But Ax didn’t seem inclined to enlighten them. Ax and Fiorinda divided the utterly mysterious, ominous and peaceful night between them. When it was Fiorinda’s turn to lie down she pillowed her head on Sage’s shoulder—at which he murmured without waking, freed his arm and folded it around her; and remembered that she had dreamed of this. Not a premonition but a dream of longing: when she had been held hostage by Fergal Kearney, who was really dead, and his body inhabited by her father. That she might find Ax and Sage again, that they might sleep together under a hedge, in the wind and the rain, on the open road; like so many others in these Dissolution years. Without a house or a home, no direction known.

EIGHT

Wood Court

At five the rain had stopped, and the starless sky had taken on a grainy transparency. Ax lay down beside Fiorinda and kissed her gently: the hollowed curve of her cheek, her parted lips. She opened her eyes, and smiled. A hard bed but a sweet wakening. They lay nose to nose, holding hands, no surveillance, no walls, no lies, only the air above them, the earth beneath.

‘I’m going foraging,’ he said. ‘You’ll be all right?’

She looked at him soberly. ‘Ax, before I forget, I am truly sorry for all those horrible things I said, which were lies. Will you forgive me?’

He smiled, a rueful gleam in his eye. ‘All of them lies?’

‘Especially that one.’

‘Well, same here.’

She knew she hadn’t entirely fixed the damage, blame it on stress but that had been a bad fight. Ax’s cruelty would linger too. Sage’s visionboard lay on the cleared floor, with a panel removed, showing its innards.

‘What’ve you been doing?’

He showed her the transceiver, and tucked it back into his jacket pocket. ‘Cannibalising, don’t worry, I can put it together again. I’m going to try and get hold of some news. And we have to eat. I won’t be too long.’

He bent to kiss her, once more. She put up her hand, and briefly laid the palm against his chest.

Such a whirling, terrifying blank when he thought about the future, he had to quickly cauterize that whole area. Do this, only this. Bag on my shoulder, fill it with food somehow. Blackberries, if nothing else. But where am I heading? He stopped to look around. The track to the ruin skirted a valley full of trees. Beyond the treetops, and ahead of him, to the south, a bare heath, punctuated by clumps of tall pines, stretched endlessly into a vista of wooded hills. Not a house, not a mast, not a telegraph pole. Not a sound, apart from birdsong; and the clatter of a wood pigeon, suddenly bursting from the trees. We left Wallingham, we drove…north, no, more like west? Cumulatively, take out the turns, he thought west. This was our first stop, but how far had we driven? How can there be a place like this in the crowded south east?

Where the fuck am I?

Ax had once had a brain implant, a datastack of useful information about England, including full Ordnance Survey; the works of long dead Greeks and Romans as a freebie on the side. Because of that, he knew his country uncannily: things came to him, like direct intuitions. But he couldn’t name this landscape. He gazed for a long time, the beauty of it filling his heart and stinging his eyes, and then set off, walking softly, swiftly, alertly, to the lane: where he turned right, downhill, keeping to the shadows, an animal with a spurious air of purpose.

Half an hour later he found a milk halt at an unmarked crossroads. A stack of crated bottles stood on the white rimmed concrete platform, a flowerbed planted in the bank had the name of the dairy co-op done in seaside pebbles across the middle. WEALDEN AND FOREST. So that’s a mystery solved. He broke into a pallet—not the one with Volunteer Initiative stamped all over it, not so low we have to steal from the Poor Box—; stowed six cold half-litre glass bottles in his bag and downed a seventh. It filled him with strength and courage. As he stood staring along the road, wondering if the milk would be collected, a liquid gleam appeared at vanishing point. He dropped between the platform and the bank, and retreated under the hedge. Time stands still in country places. There is an England quietly going about its business. A bio-burning milk lorry drew up: yellow plastic roses and a battered Barbie doll in a ballgown tucked into the radiator grille. A snatch of music as the driver and his mate got down. Ax felt something like worship: but he realised that he was a thieving tramp, and he’d better move on.

From the field on the other side of the hedge he saw the roofs of a substantial farm. No slave barracks attached, there weren’t any camps in the south: serf labour only on a domestic scale down here. Two fields further and he was watching a herd of black and white cows return to their pasture, after a dawn trip to the pleasures of the milking shed. A burly young man and a boy closed the gate behind the herd, and ambled back to the yards, sniping at each other idly—brothers, he guessed. He followed like a ghost, hid himself among the farmyard derelicts and old tyres, and stole the signal as they watched tv over their breakfast. He couldn’t get a picture, must be doing something wrong, but he could read the datalines and the sound was fine. He ran through the channels, picking up different versions of the early news.

On the way back he had his bearings and was able to make a circuit of it: first rule of guerrilla life, never take the same route twice. The sun was nearly up as he struck across the uncultivated heath, but he felt confident that he would not meet any company. He’d found no solid food, and now there were no blackberries in sight. About half a kilometre from the wooded valley of the ruin he struck a big house, with cypress hedges around the lawns and the remains of a hard tennis court. It looked as if it had been derelict for years, casualty of the Crisis, or the Crash. The cypresses cast an ugly shade: but there were apple trees behind the house. He filled his bag with fruit, and sat in the rank grass by a garden shed. I must take hold of myself, think. What to do now, what next?

Make a list.

Look after Sage and Fiorinda.

Stay put. Moving targets may be harder to hit but are a fuck of a sight easier to spot. (Simple unless we’re being hunted, but it doesn’t look like it.)

Try to find out what’s going on. (Harder.)

…

…

The tattoo was stinging. He touched it, very gingerly. If that gets infected, I’m fucked… Déjà vu: I have been here before. A hateful, sweltering room rose up around him, the cell where he’d spent a year, the hostage of a crazy drug cartel—invoking the consolation of dangers passed, terrible ordeals safely endured. But the fetid room became Lady Anne’s study, timeshift vertigo became that moment when he had known that he must hand England to the Scots. He fell into a dreadful spin of shame and bewilderment, in which the word Iphigenia rolled like thunder.

Which act had been fatal? The mad instant when he’d punched Jack Vries in the throat? Or the moment when he decided he would never again take up the blunt instrument of violence? The conversation after dinner with the President at Camp Bellevue, in the San Gabriel mountains, when he’d agreed to come back to England? Or the day he’d fixed, incorrigible fixer, an amnesty for the Lavoisiens, thus ensuring the Black Dragon lived to sell his video? All of that history was irrelevant now, and he didn’t mourn it, but he needed to know and he would never know. He needed to assign the turning points because he had to make a judgment.

He’d have given a lot for a glimpse of the utter self-conviction he had once known. A compelling sense of destiny (eventually some little Hitlers realise this), can lead you straight to hell without telling you a word of a lie. But it would have been better than nothing.

Somebody’s house is burning, hell fire red—

oh God help me. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know.

He heard a faint mewling sound.

The shed had once been padlocked, but the door had been broken in long ago. He shoved his way through clinging ropes of goosegrass, and peered around. Could it be something human? There was nowhere for anything bigger than a baby to be hidden. The cry came again. He moved aside a slab of cobwebbed composite and discovered a nest, hollowed in the dirt floor, occupied by an emaciated dead tabby cat and her kittens. Two kittens were also dead. The third stood on swaying legs, and mewled again, imperiously. Never say die, little scrap, but I’m afraid she can’t hear you—

He picked the kitten up and held it, wondering whether the cat had been a pet, or feral, and what had killed her. Better get back.

There’d been a bed of herbs outside the kitchen: lavender, rosemary and mint, blue-eyed borage, slug-eaten comfrey. Eyebright, crept in from the heath, but that’s a signature herb, we’ll leave that one alone. Beyond the herbs there were yellowed potato plants, a tangle of tomato vines that held shrunken red fruits. Rock hard runner beans, a menacing-looking marrow. Straggly rocket and spinach. The gable end of the cottage was adrift on white spume, that ran like a river over the trees in the valley, and lost itself in an ocean of rust and wine… Whenever she looked up, to see if Ax was coming back, she found her eyes washed again by a void of light and sweet air. Carried out of herself, into peace. Sage was still asleep. She’d built a fire, on stone, using only bone-dry dead grass and broken laths, but there was no reason to light it.

The ruined kitchen had a sink, and a mixer tap. Verdigrised copper plumbing pipes dangled in space, with no obvious gaps. Never know your luck… She attacked the tap, and managed to dislodge some flakes of rust.

Sage turned over, and lay looking at her with his bandaged eyes.

‘Good morning.’ The bandage frightened her: it was a dirty lie to say he was her daddy-subsitute, but she couldn’t cope if Sage was helpless—

‘Good morning.’ He seemed to listen. ‘Where’s Ax gone?’

She knelt and gripped his hand, possibly it was true she leaned on Sage too hard…‘Foraging. It’s okay, my baby. He’s all right.’

‘Oh.’ Sage listened again, to the depth of silence. ‘Where are we, Fee? Do we know? Did the Scots tell us?’

‘They didn’t tell us anything, but I think we’re in the Ashdown Forest, in Sussex. In it, or on it… We are surrounded by a hundred acres of wild wood and a very beautiful blasted heath, and the distances would fit.’

‘Is there heather?’

‘Yeah. It’s pretty much over, it’s faded, but it’s nice.’

‘Hm. Let’s try taking the bandages off.’

She had closed her eyes, to be with him. She opened them again.

‘There’s quite a lot of light.’

‘I know, my brat. I can see it through the dressing. I want to see you.’

He lay with his head in her lap as she unwound the layers, and looked up. There was an uncanny, fugitive awareness of effort (oh, fuck: what happened to Peter?), but his vision was better all the time, the bloodclots at the back of his eyeballs safely dispersed. I got away with it again, he thought. One day I won’t. Fiorinda was glowing like a beacon fire.

‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’ he whispered.

Fuck. He had not meant to say that. But the message in Anne-Marie’s care parcel had been with him in the torture chamber, a guardian angel and a fearsome burden, oh, God, if I let that slip… It had been trapped inside him, speechless, all those days in the red room. He felt the shock run through her, the mingled terror and delight, and the world became new.

‘Yes I am. Ax knows because I told him, how did you—?’

‘By looking at you, my brat, you are shining with it. Well, also there was a cryptic parcel from AM, at the Insanitude. She’s onto you, somehow. I left it with Allie.’ He started to sit up…and the white tiled room attacked. He went under, clinging to her, pressing his face into her belly, oh fiorinda, oh fiorinda, I was so frightened of the dandy man, he hurt me, he hurt me. Sssh, she whispered, sssh, little Sage, you’re safe now, I have you safe… He pulled himself together, mugging apology, and lay back, quietly gazing.

‘How is it? Don’t lie.’

‘Not bad. Don’ think I’ll try reading anything just yet.’

His yellow lashes stood out weirdly bright in the raccoon mask of bruising, the whites of his eyes were still suffused, but not so horrific. She stroked his eyebrows, what a nice texture. ‘Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news, my hero. The good news is the Scots let us go, the bad news is we have no idea why; except Ax knows, and it’s so awful he won’t tell us.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I was there.’

‘Also we lost the First Aid box. I left it in their van.’

‘Ah…’ A stern frown. ‘Now, tha’s unfortunate.’

‘But fear not. The good young witch remembers much of the wise lore the evil old witch once tried to teach her, although she never paid attention at the time. Got to be Hedgeschool GNVQ Herbalism equivalence. I shall boil leaves and make poultices, as soon as I have fashioned a pan from something, and found some clean water.’ She grinned. ‘No frowning at me. Don’t get too sane, Captain Sensible. You’ll find it doesn’t suit the mood.’

He hadn’t been thinking of his eyes, he’d been looking ahead. She was right, better not. ‘Hahaha, okay.’ He sat up, stretched, and ran his fingers through his dirty hair. ‘Gagh, I need a haircut very badly. You’re being unusually positive about all this, my brat. Any special reason?’

‘You’ll have to bear with me. It’s the feel-good hormones.’

They hugged each other at last, and she yelped because her breasts were tender. How fabulous to hold her, in freedom. But Sage let go, and sat back on his heels. Shades of sepia and grey, sharp angles, green and earth tones, better all the time—

‘What’s up between you and Ax?’

‘Oh… N-nothing.’

‘Don’t bullshit me. I know there’s something. I haven’t been on another planet, Fiorinda. Just blind and helpless and in pain—’

‘All right, all right! You see, I, er, I found out he had volunteered for those expiatory rites, to stop them doing whatever they were doing to you.’

Ouch.

‘Shit.’

‘So, I screamed at him, and I may have said things such as it was his fault we came back to England, and that we had ended up in Wallingham—’

‘Oh, Fiorinda.’

‘—I know, I know, the Terrible Word. Please don’t oh Fiorinda me. He said evil things too. I wish I hadn’t done it but you’re out of date. I said I was sorry this morning, and we are all right. He didn’t ask me or tell me, Sage, just unilaterally went and offered to be their fucking human sacrifice—’

‘That’s Ax. If he’s going to jump off the cliff he jumps, you get no warning.’

‘Sage, you don’t suppose he’s doing something terrible now—?’

‘No… Hey, what happened to my board?’

‘It’s okay. Ax took the transceiver out, that’s all.’

‘Fuck. You didn’t tell me he was foraging for information.’

The earth bowed, the sun rose up. Veined ivy leaves shone as if waxed and polished, copper gleamed in slashed verdigris. With full daylight the spell of dawn was broken, and they were plunged into anxiety. The issues came crowding, none of them good. Sage chewed the joint of his right thumb.

‘You didn’t hear from my dad, after that one call?’

She shook her head. Of course not, stupid question.

‘George and Bill didn’t turn up at the club again. You don’t know what happened to them?’

‘I only saw Peter. I was told they’d be left alone if I co-operated.’

For what Jack Vries’ word is worth.

‘Mm…’ She stared at the dirt on her feet. ‘You think it was always about the scanners?’

‘Yeah. I think as soon as he saw the Lavoisier video—whenever that was—Greg Mursal put the same reading on it that Ax did.’

‘That we three were screwed.’

‘Exactly. No value in humouring the bleeding-heart rockstars no more, an’ every reason to get hold of a Neurobomb: fast. When we ended up under house arrest, all they had to do was set me loose, so I didn’t vanish from their custody, and pull me in off the street. Jack did the robust interrogation, but I don’t think Greg took much persuading.’

‘We were in even worse trouble than we realised.’

‘Nah, we knew. No offence, but I think tha’s you believing your own propaganda, sweetheart. The things Greg and Jack thought permissible, that culture in government, went way back. It was in place before Dissolution. Remember Paul Javert? The Home Secretary who arranged the murder of about thirty people, on Massacre Night? We never managed to root it out, never even tried, we just kept clear, an’ made appeasement work for us. While we nurtured the young shoots of the Good State—’

‘Except when my father took over.’

‘Apart from that blip. The fucking A team, and then the fucking Lavoisiens, left us with no place to hide: but we were always going to collide with the bad guys, in the end. An’ whenever it happened, we were always going to be outgunned.’

‘No,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Not outgunned.’

Ax came into the ruin quietly. His foraging bag clinked as he set down his bundled jacket. They jumped up, and would have grabbed him: but he shook his head, recoiling from their touch. ‘Hey,’ he said to Sage. ‘Look at you!’

‘No thanks. I’m staying away from mirrors for quite a while.’

He brought the bag and they sat down together, under the ivy and bramble thatch. ‘Milk and apples. Best I could do, for a start. There’s no sign of a search, in the sky or on the ground. I think we’re okay for the moment.’

Sage and Fiorinda cracked a half-litre each and drank.

‘Did you pick up the news?’ asked Sage, wiping his mouth.

Ax saw where the raiders had laid him down two nights ago: he remembered the little man with his briefcase, the vivid lamplight, the darkness. It seemed like a fever dream.

‘I siphoned off the tv at a farmhouse. Apparently there’s been a break-in at Wallingham. Nothing serious but the club’s to be closed this week, because it upset us. “Merry We Meet” will be a previously recorded programme. I suppose too many people were involved, they had to release something. But they haven’t admitted we’re gone, and that’s good. It suggests they’re hoping to cut a deal and get us back, which implies there’ll be no full scale hunt yet. Not unless the Scots have told them where to look, which is possible… The international situation is where it was, headline story still Roumanian and Belarus militias aiding the Uzbek resistance: China protests to Brussels… For what the English tv news is worth.’

He spoke briskly, calmly. He might have been reporting on another disaster entirely, one of those terrible situations of the past, that they would beat, of course, because they always did. But he didn’t look at them.

‘Why did the Scots let us go?’ prompted Fiorinda. ‘Will you tell us?’

‘You’ll think I’m insane,’ said Ax, still not looking at them, ‘but all the time were were in Wallingham I meant to stay in office. I knew things were ugly. Not what Fiorinda had to face in the green nazi days, but almost worse, because it was sustainable. I wanted the Few to get out, and you two, if you would go. But I would have stayed, been the tame President, if I had to live and die in that prison. To do some good in a bad situation, same as we were at the beginning, when Pigsty was in charge. When they had tortured you, Sage, and when I knew Fiorinda was pregnant… Shit, I don’t know how you can ever forgive me, either of you, for what I d-did, for getting you into—

‘Shut up.’

‘Leave that out, babe.’

‘Well, there was no question we had to cut and run. But right until then I would have stayed. Dig a little hole to the light and air from under the landslide. There have to be people who do that—’

‘Yes,’ said Fiorinda, dead straight. ‘That’s what I signed up for.’

‘An’ me. All my own idea, not your persuasion.’

He looked at them wonderingly, as from a great distance.

‘Okay, so now I have to tell you about Iphigenia. I have to go back to last summer, in California. Fred talked to me about a scenario where China decides to annexe Europe, and the USA lets it happen—’

‘Oh, really?’ Sage grinned indignantly. ‘Good of him!’

‘Yeah, really. It was one of his top bad possibilities. I didn’t…have a handle on China at all. I just knew some Pan-Asian Utopians, chat-room buddies: and the stuff everybody knows, knew, about the Great Peace Sphere. Fred’s people were watching this huge country, that somehow came out of the Crash even stronger than it went in. With a new leader, or leaders, hiding behind a façade of old geezers, and a mission to unite Asia; or maybe more. Fred’s scenario had the US abandoning the last of the Central Asian fuel reserves in a decade or so’s time, and China taking that as a cue to expand westward. They wouldn’t meddle with the Russian Feds, they don’t like the Feds but they have a stable stand-off there. They’d see the chaos of the former European Union as a rationale they could use (Fred didn’t think the EU would survive, can’t imagne what gave him that idea): they’d announce that something must be done. In they would go, shock and awe, and Europe would collapse before them. I didn’t believe it, and I thought it wouldn’t be my business. I’d be long gone. Of course, the ‘A’ team speeded things up.’

Ax drew a long, painful breath. ‘Before we left, Fred told me that if he knew it was coming he’d get word to me—me personally not the English government—using the codename that means, sadly we’re going to have to let the Soviets rape Poland.’

They stared at him, riveted.

‘All right,’ began Fiorinda, at last. ‘All right, I get it, but—’

‘But, Ax, it doesn’t seem possible,’ said Sage. ‘The Chinese were taking over Uzbekistan when I was in London, and I was having a hard time getting distressed about that… That’s a hell of a blitzkreig.’

‘I don’t know what’s possible,’ said Ax. ‘Anything we think we know could be months out of date or plain lies. The Chinese could have invincible post-fossil fuel military technology. Or something. All I know is that last year, a staggering new weapon was so to speak detonated. And the hidden superpower on the block, the China nobody knows, didn’t react at all. All I know is that the Scots were given orders to dump us, last night, and somebody, probably Fred, sent me the word Iphigenia three months ago.’

He put up his hands to sweep back the wings of dark hair from his temples, a gesture aborted as his fingers brushed the raw needlework—

‘Could there be such a complete embargo?’ said Fiorinda, acutely.

Ax shook his head. ‘I dunno, Fio. The tv and radio felt normal, what passes for normal. No strange gaps. Of course it’s easier without a free press, but we never managed to keep a wall up, not for more than a few hours. But I’m sure Fred never knew about my cry for help when we got arrested. Iphigenia couldn’t have been his response, you both spotted that. So it was something else, and it doesn’t make sense he would use that code for anything but what we’d agreed… I’m sorry, I know should have told you about the China Takes All scenario. But it was so far fetched, and you two get so pissed off when I try to tell you the details—’

Sage said. ‘This is what was eating you, all the time, in Wallingham.’

He shrugged. ‘Yeah. I suppose.’

‘I knew you were in some kind of extra hell.’ Sage reached out, but Ax still didn’t want to be touched, he flinched away, shaking his head.

‘What were you supposed to do?’ asked Fiorinda, who had grown very still, very concentrated. ‘When you got the warning?’

‘Nothing. Europe’s going down, so go quietly, go to earth, that’s the best chance for modern civilisation… Fred tells me, unfortunately I’m going to have to sacrifice you guys, to get a fair wind, I’m supposed to keep it to myself. Make what secret preparations I think useful, but don’t take the warlord route, be nobody’s figurehead. Lie low and say nothing.’ He grinned, without humour. ‘What I have been doing, basically.’

Oh, those quiet conversations with Fred Eiffrich, both of us knowing he was just a big puppet really, and I was a little puppet. But though we were wood and pulled by strings, still trying to get beyond that, still trying with all our might to hold up the falling sky—

‘That was then,’ she said. ‘This is now. Fred’s plans are gone with the winds… Are you thinking we should turn ourselves in and tell all?’

Ax wanted the others. DK and Allie, Rob and the Babes, Rox, and Chip, and Verlaine: George and Bill and Peter, Smelly and Anne-Marie too. He could see them, in his mind’s eye: very vividly. Sitting around on the debris and the broken timbers, in their flashy rockstar streetclothes, the way he’d last seen them on St Stephen’s Green. The inner circle of the Reich, listening while he told them the bad news. Terrified, tearstained, bloodsmeared faces around a table, on Massacre Night, the night the old world ended. We were prisoners, then, expecting to die within the hour…Déjà vu comes thick and fast. He had always been here before. Been in this exact same ruined room before, facing the last stand with his friends. Strangely, it had been a happy dream. But Fiorinda had been missing: oh God, where’s Fiorinda?

She was not missing now. She was right beside him, rock steady.

‘I need to know something, Fio. Do the Chinese have a Neurobomb?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I could be wrong, but… No, I’d say not.’

Birdsong rose in a vertiginous silence, a silence like falling into space.

‘I can’t decide,’ said Ax at last. ‘I have no decisions.’ He tried again to rub his aching temples, and flinched again from the needlework. ‘Okay. I don’t think we should turn ourselves in, not right now, not yet. I think we should stay here, it’s as good as anywhere, for a few days. See if we can get a better idea of what’s going on.’

Fiorinda nodded. ‘Agreed. We’ll do that.’

Sage remembered other times when he’d watched these two divvying up the world between them, moving the plastic armies of a game of Risk, on the kitchen table at Tyller Pystri, in lamplight long ago. A boardgame has swallowed us, he thought. But I have my beautiful guitar-man, and my rock and roll princess, and we are out of jail. This lifted his heart, dumb and personal though the shelter might be. He noticed that Ax’s bundled jacket was moving.

‘What’s that you got under your coat, babe? Something alive?’

‘Oh… It’s a kitten. I found this kitten.’ Ax went to the jacket, and brought out a scrawny tabby kitten with bat-wing ears. It sat looking very small in Ax’s big hands, stared around boldly, and yawned: displaying a fine set of white needle fangs. ‘The mother was dead, and there were two dead kittens, but he’s all right. I… I’d like to keep him?’

They realised that the person telling them about Iphigenia hadn’t been Ax. That had been an Ax Preston automaton, saying the lines. This was Ax, this piteous little boy, bereft and frightened, hiding a kitten in his coat. It reminded them how bewildered they were themselves. How lost.

‘Is he old enough to lap?’ asked Sage, keeping it steady with an effort.

‘Yeah. I’ve given him some milk. I’d say he’s about five weeks. And he’s strong, and seems pretty healthy, considering.’

‘Has he got a name?’ asked Fiorinda. ‘May I hold him?’

‘Min. I’m going to call him Min. Dunno why, it just came to me.’

Much later, records revealed that GCHQ at Cheltenham had picked up the same dramatic intelligence that had caused the Edinburgh Assembly to abort their deal (an order Neil Cameron had interpreted freely, and thereby put the Triumvirate of England forever in his debt). It had been set aside, along with an accumulation of data that had pointed in the same unlikely direction for weeks. Rumour had it, after the records came to light, that intelligence officers had deliberately kept quiet, either in righteous despair—or because nobody dared to tell Lord Mursal his house was on fire. But that was probably nonsense: appalling blunders happen all the time.

The weather continued calm and fair, unusually calm for the time of year. Early on the morning of the twentieth of September a domineering old man, once a Methodist Minister, was sitting in the glassed gallery at the top of a cottage on the Coastguard path. Or South West path as the tourists had called it—but it belonged to the Coastguard again now. He liked to watch the ocean from up here: he plagued his housekeeper to help him dress, and work the lift for him, at ungodly hours. He sat like a mummified giant, his limbs withered but hardly shrunken by age, dressed in old tweeds and a Gortex jacket, gazing at the western horizon. He was a hundred and two years’ old, but his eyes were still giving good service: glinting blue from cavernous sockets.

A swarm of little purple clouds appeared, popping up above the line between the sea and the clear, apple-green sky of dawn; in a very curious manner. The old man applied his right eye to the telescope that stood by him on a brass swivel stand. His jaw dropped. He felt no fear, he was too old to be afraid of anything: but his blood turned to ice water in his veins from sheer astonishment. Other witnesses of this sight were convinced the fleet was extraterrestrial. The old man wasn’t fooled for a moment. He sat back, frowning, trying to remember something, ah yes.

‘For I dipt into the future,’ he declaimed, with satisfaction,

‘Far as human eye can see…

Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales.

Heard the heavens filled with shouting and there rained a ghastly dew

from the nations’ airy navies—’

He didn’t have to press any buttons. He didn’t need to shout, either, but he always did. ‘Chesten! CHESTEN!’, he yelled, swinging the motor-chair around. ‘Where is the woman, is she deaf. CHESTEN! Bring me the red phone, I need to call Joss. NOW, not next week!’

He couldn’t get through. The South West Peninsula was cut off, excised from the telecoms world: as comprehensively silenced as Western Europe had been, when the Internet Commissioners imposed their lightning-strike quarantine, to contain the Ivan/Lara virus, years ago.

In the dusk before dawn Ax came face to face with a countryman, and a shotgun, on the path by the little stream in the valley. They both retreated, silently. Ax waited a while, and continued on his way. It wasn’t the first time he’d been seen (he insisted on doing all the foraging), but it was the first close encounter. The very few people who were out and about kept their distance, just as Ax himself did… On his way back he found a brace of rabbits slung on a post. He looked up and saw that Wood Court was just visible through the trees, though there was no sign that it was occupied. He brought the rabbits home, and laid them by the bed of cut heather and bracken that now covered most of the kitchen floor. The invasion was forty eight hours old. The EBC said English forces in the South West were ‘fighting like cornered rats’, but they were being rolled back at such a speed that you could hope the rats weren’t dying much.

‘I’ve just heard a statement from Washington. The US government has come clean. They’d ceded Pacific and Eastern Seaboard beachheads, some time ago, in secret talks. That’s how the stunt was done. The Chinese came around the back of the world in three hops: up beyond the atmosphere, down to the NorthWest Seaboard, up and down again: they crossed the Atlantic from Nantucket or somewhere.’

Sage nodded. ‘Any word on the design; or how the ships were fueled?’

‘Nope, but they had some pretty graphics of the flight plan.’

Ax could get pictures now: Sage had fixed that. He saw a new bundle of hazel rods, which had not been there when he left. They’d been raiding the coppice-farm again. It filled him with terror when his darlings left the den, but he couldn’t stop them. He had to go out and fetch news, and forage: he couldn’t be on guard all the time.

Fiorinda had been whittling the end of a hazel pole to a point, with Sage’s pocket knife. She returned to this task, smoothly detatching a long shaving, which Min the kitten danced and jumped to catch.

‘What now? Are the Chinese going to take a card?’

‘I dunno, maybe. The US are saying their Chinese allies have no territorial ambitions. They’re going to occupy England and Roumania, purely to contain the dangerous mess that is Crisis Europe. They’ll brook no resistance, but nobody gets any trouble unless they ask for it.’

‘Good of Fred to give us three months’ notice,’ remarked Sage.

Iphigenia: now it all makes sense. The ultimatum China had delivered to Brussels, over the Uzbek resistance, had expired at midnight on the nineteenth, making that stunning attack on the South West of England a legitimate act of war. So that’s all right, and if the remaining world powers had needed an excuse to do nothing, they had one. Not that anybody seemed fussed. Ax just wished he knew when those secret talks about the beachheads had been held. When exactly did you sell me out, Fred? But he bore the man no ill will. Never judge until you know the whole story; or even then.

Min approached the rabbits, quivering with excitement. Sage scooped him up, and dropped him on the heather bed; fairly gently.

‘Any news of the Few?’

‘Nothing… I’m still hoping they got away, out of the country.’

It was strange. England had been invaded, but when Ax came back from his forays they struggled to think of questions, and he struggled to form answers… Sage resumed knotting strips of birchbark into a long string: hippie guerrilla skills coming in useful again.

‘Where’d you get the rabbits?’ asked Fiorinda, at last.

‘Oh…yeah. Not so good. Some one saw me in the wood, a bloke with a shotgun. I thought it was okay, just a chance encounter, but when I came back those were on a post. What are we going to do?’

‘Eat them.’

Ouch. Ax must get better at foraging. They’d had nothing to eat in two days but the apples, some milk, a few crumpled tomatoes and the last of the bar snacks. He was afraid to make too many raids on the milk halt, and they couldn’t cook the garden vegetables, because of the smoke of a fire.

‘Of course.’ They’d just have to risk the fire. ‘But, listen, this is serious, someone knows we’re here—’

They were shaking their heads.

‘It’s beyond our control, Ax,’ said Sage. ‘Someone knows we’re here, and he gives us rabbits. Let’s take it as friendly.’

‘What else can we do?’ asked Fiorinda gently. ‘We have to face it baby, either we’re among friends, or we’re not going to last long.’

‘Okay. But we could get further out of sight. I’ve been thinking, about that big house? Place where I found the apples?’

‘NO,’ they said together, instantly.

‘No walls, I veto walls,’ added Fiorinda.

‘What about cannibalising the house? There’s bound to be stuff.’

‘Now tha’s a good idea.’

Ax cleaned the rabbits and spitted them, wrapped in herbs. Fiorinda lit a fire, and they devoured a feast, rabbit with tomato and marrow kebabs, and salt from the birchwood saltbox which was her talisman.

Later that morning, Sage decided to start a video diary. When they raided the empty house he took the visionboard with him. Then Ax and Fiorinda decided to join in. They helped Sage to map Wood Court, for sound and vision, and the three of them became auteurs. Styles emerged. Fiorinda recorded home improvements and created installations (which the kitten wrecked, but the destruction was equally valid). Ax made narratives. The maestro let his camera eye rest on details that took his fancy. His diary entries were turning leaves, gosammer spider threads. The dusty, mourning flowers of summer’s end, goldenrod in fallen sheaves. Knapweed, fumitory and purple vetch, fading by the track to the road.

The Few could have been safe. But the time to leave had been when Fiorinda told them it was over in a voicemail. Once the Wallingham situation was established, nobody was going to quit. Sage’s ‘disappearence’ had dashed their fragile hopes, but they’d been reliably informed that he was okay, just back in Wallingham, having ‘violated his parole’. No one believed Sage had got into a brawl with some ex-barmies of his own accord: Peter’s story (when the search parties had found him), suggested entrapment. But “Rick’s Place” was still running, although Bill and George couldn’t get in. So hopes were dashed again but it wasn’t the end. What else could they do but hang on? Then the police informed Allie about the Wallingham break-in, early on the morning of the eighteenth, and they were in another crisis.

On the twentieth she was in her new office, doggedly trying to contact everyone who might have been at ‘Rick’s Place’; and who might talk to her. Were you there on the seventeenth? Did you see Ax or Fiorinda, did you speak to them? Did you see Sage? Do you know anything more about this break-in? Dilip arrived with his current squeeze, an emigrée Vietnamese ceramics artist called Nathalie Qu. Chip and Verlaine turned up on their precious bicycles, and started trying to make a drama out of the South West Peninsula’s telecoms crash. Allie’s assistant, a quiet young man called Charlie Middleton, was in his cubbyhole with the longer list of non-hopefuls, Rick’s Place regulars who certainly wouldn’t talk to Allie Marlowe. He was sending them personal emails, to leave no stone unturned.

‘I grasp I can’t get through to anyone in Cornwall to Somerset today,’ said Allie irritably. ‘Other than that, what’s the difference? Wake up, Chip. Thing fall apart, it’s normal. It just doesn’t get reported any more.’

‘Perhaps it’s more significant that the European Union is technically at war this as of morning,’ said Dilip. ‘Isn’t that something we should discuss?’

Allie wished they would all leave, but wanted them to stay, just for the company. ‘How can that have anything to do with Wallingham? It’s not that I don’t care, DK, it’s just there’s fuck all I can do about it—’

Verlaine groaned. ‘The ultimatum? Come on, that’s a canard, the New Masters of the Universe know Brussels has no control over us Rogue States.’

Reflexively, he glanced out of the window: the bikes were still there, locked to the Courtyard railings. They were Giffords of Wiltshire Roadsprites, semi-AI and much loved. Chip’s machine was green and Ver’s was blue, with detail in mauve and acid-yellow. Their names were Cagney and Lacey.

Allie rolled her eyes, and stuck her finger in her free ear.

‘Allie, who are the “masters of the universe”?’ asked Nathalie, timidly. ‘I never understand what Chip and Verlaine are saying.’

Nathalie was tiny, beautiful and very chic. She tried to make friends with Allie, whose history with Dilip she knew. Allie couldn’t look at her without thinking, I’ll probably see you at his funeral: but she knew that wasn’t fair. DK was in reasonable health, at the moment. It would more likely be some other young girlfriend by the grave.

‘They mean the Chinese.’

‘Oh.’

‘They’re talking about the Uzbek Ultimatum, darling,’ explained Dilip. ‘It ran out at midnight.’

(when did DK start calling people ‘darling’, so unlike him?)

‘Listen, I appreciate you all being here, but I need to make these calls, and Charlie’s busy too. We are trying to establish whether Ax and Fiorinda are okay.’ Allie hardly dared hope she might hear anything about Sage.

‘It’s a Reich issue,’ Chip informed the new recruit, helpfully. ‘Ming the Magnificent might even now be attacking Roumania, and we’re not “queer for Brussels” but the Dacians are our ancient allies.’

‘Ming?’

‘The Emperor of China. Playfully identified with vintage scifi fictional alien despot. You must have heard of Flash Gordon?’

‘N-no?’

Wish Fiorinda was here, thought Chip. Jokes are wasted on this infant.

‘It’s Ming the Merciless,’ corrected Allie’s assistant, from his hole in the corner.

‘Whatever turns you on, Charlie—’

‘Sit up straight and pay attention, my child,’ said Verlaine to Nathalie. ‘If you want to join the gang, these things you must know. The Roumanians, and we use the ‘u’ spelling so as not to confuse them with the Roms, who are different, are in trouble because some of their guerrillas, that’s g u e, r, not g,o, were aiding the Uzbeks. We are their allies ever since Ax went to Bucharest, and arbitrated for some other vampire hippies to blow up the Danube dams. This makes us responsible for their fate—’

‘Ax blew up the dams! That’s not true, is it?’

‘Of course it is, Nathalie. We are ruthless eco-warriors.’

The little Vietmamese looked terrified: Dilip hugged her.

‘Ignore them.’

Chip and Ver turned Allie’s upright desk screen to face the room, touched it on and found the Channel Seven News. Chip whooped. ‘Hey, this is the UFOs! Pay attention, this is so cool! Someone videoed a flock of UFOs, leapt on a motorbike and zoomed out of the mystery zone at dawn. Nothing has escaped from there since—’

‘If you’re going to talk about UFOs, I’m really thowing you out—’

Verlaine checked the bikes again. ‘Here’s Rob and the Babes. Plus babies. Cool beenz! We can play with Mamba, he’s such a great kid—’

‘Anything, so long as it gets you out of my office.’

Rob, Felice, Dora and Cherry came rapidly into the room. Dora held Mamba in her arms. The toddler was looking sullen and tearful, a child who has been frightened by adult disarray. Ferdelice, the tall, slim four year old, caramel complexioned like her mother, clung to Chez’s dark hand. Felice checked the company and said urgently, ‘Someone ought to call Rox.’

‘Oh shit,’ gasped Chip, instantly sober. ‘What’s happened?’

It was the end. So they are dead. Fiorinda’s dead.

On Allie’s screen, a spray of purple teardrops flew across the ocean, looking like nothing on earth. Rob assaulted the touchpad. A vintage movie mix of Liszt’s ‘Les Preludes’ leaped to ear-shattering volume—

‘Fuck, sorry, how d’you change channel?’

‘I don’t, I don’t watch tv on my machine. Try the number keys.’

‘Got it.’

A row of men and women in olive green uniforms, sitting on a stage under a ribbed, shiny, purple dome. They looked pleased with themselves and serious, as if posing for a proud school photograph. In front of them a tall, good looking man, in similar uniform but smarter, stood at a rostrum. A mixed crowd looking up, with blank faces.

What’s wrong with this picture? The audience looked English, all ages, all dresscodes: some in military uniform. The people on the stage didn’t look English at all… Chip and Verlaine, Allie and DK were silent in bewilderment, slowly noticing the text that ran across the bottom of the screen; slowly grasping that the tall man wasn’t actually speaking English, it was instantaneous translation, following his words like an echo—

The invasion was eight hours old at this time. The airships had arrived in waves, in rapid succession, each wave bringing thousands of troops: plus political officers, support staff, and the technicians who had instantly assembled mobile fuel generators, armoured transports, and armoured shelters like the purple dome. Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset were overrun, Bristol and Bath had been taken.

‘Is this real?’ said Allie. ‘Are you saying this is real?

‘He’s called Wang Xili,’ said Felice grimly. ‘He’s the General in Command of Subduing the South West.’

‘It’s real,’ said Dora. ‘It’s an invasion. The dome is in Bristol, they pulled people off the street to listen to them and this is live.’

General Wang was telling the masses that they were in no danger. The Chinese Commanders would not target civilian populations, they respected non-combatants and had vowed never to deploy immoral weapons. He listed the immoral weapons, starting at the top with strategic or tactical nuclear devices. Nerve gas, biological weapons, chemical weapons other than crowd dispersing tear gas, several of the more vicious ‘non-lethals’. Weapons of direct cortical illusion using the forbidden “immix” code—

‘But how?’ demanded Allie. ‘How do you mean, an invasion?’

Mamba began to cry, in piercing wails.

Nathalie pressed white-knuckled fists to her mouth.

—Expressed solidarity with the English people, and assured them they would be freed from oppression, disorder, torture and tyranny. Freed from the delusions of the Counterculture, free to practice in any style the three Approved Monotheisms, or the five Approved Pantheisms; or to practice Principled Atheism.

‘What’ll we do?’ cried Chip. ‘What are we supposed to do?’

‘Get hold of Rox,’ insisted Felice, as if this were the vital move that would annihilate the Chinese Expeditionary Force.

‘You’d better go home, Charlie,’ said Allie, hearing her own words time-delayed, echoey; like someone talking in a dream. ‘Tell anyone else who’s working today they should go home too. It’s going to be chaos.’

Charlie got his things together and left. Who said, but we should all stay at the San? Maybe nobody said it: it was so obvious. This was where they had always gathered to face trouble. They had to stick together, how could they not? Dora and Chez took Chip and Verlaine back to Notting Hill, in the Snake Eyes people-van. They loaded up, then they drove to Lambeth, loaded up again, and said goodbye to the communards. The round trip took hours. Anyone who had wheels in London had scrounged some kind of fuel. There was a mass epidemic unauthorised personal transport hypocrisy, with hardly any police, and the added value of a generation of drivers who’d never had to deal with traffic before.

Rox wasn’t answering hir phone. They swung by Queen Anne Street on the way back, but s/he wasn’t there.

By the time they reached Buckingham Palace Road again it was dark. The concourse around the Victoria Monument was heaving. The permanent campground in Hyde Park had broken up, and many of the campers were trying to take refuge inside the Insanitude. A crowd of them, laden with hippie regalia, banners and bundles, besieged the Building Management Office. Further crowds had flocked to the old Reich Headquarters as if to a Big Screen, convinced that here, somehow, they would get the real news.

It was a humid, autumnal night, the air was still, noise deadened. A handful of mounted police with lanterns appeared and disappeared, like rocks emerging from the choppy human sea. Police on foot were holding a lane open for authorised vehicles to enter the Courtyard; with great difficulty. As Dora inched through the turmoil, and the two Snake Eyes cats yowled, distressed to be uprooted, it may have crossed the party’s minds that this was not the best idea they’d ever had. But once they were inside it was okay. A bunker mentality took over, they felt safe.

Allie secured a good set of rooms for Rob and the Babes and the kids and the cats. Chip and Verlaine had a room to share with a window facing an inside courtyard (thinking ahead, don’t want to be on an outer wall); it was reasonable sized and had a decent bed. They could use Allie’s bathroom and kitchen. Nathalie would stay with Dilip. She was afraid to go back to her place. She believed the Chinese would be in London in a day. She would be picked up for re-education; and she was terrified.

Which did not bode well.

If they’d expected to be in charge they’d have been disappointed: but it hadn’t crossed their minds. The Few had never been in charge, and they knew they would never sit around that circle of schoolroom tables again, giving advice and consent. The Balcony Room had become an emergency shelter for Hyde Park campers. They made Allie’s office their headquarters and spent most of their time in there, kids and cats underfoot, watching the disaster unfold. Allie moved into the new general office on the first floor, for the Reich work she needed to do: closing things down, wiping hard drives, making sure paper was shredded. No one had been able to locate Rox.

They watched Australian channels, and the Radio Delhi webcast, to find out what was really happening, more or less: English State tv for loony disinformation. They found out about the beachheads, and spluttered at President Fred’s perfidy. They heard Crisis Europe described, from all sides, as ‘a tragic and violent backwater’—which warned them not to expect much from the international community; and they saw the most momentous event of the world’s recent history calmly airbrushed out of existence.

The Chinese did not believe in the ‘A-team’. The few and vague statements that had come out of China in the past year had cast doubt on the nature of the event—without going into specifics. Now they had their story sorted out. The ‘so-called event’ was an ‘absurd mystification’ of the simple fact that the world’s reserves of polluting fuels had collapsed more steeply than Western forecasts had expected. The Chinese people, who had already made a successful transition to the post-fossil-fuel era, saw no need to attribute the decline to black magic! US science colleagues had admitted the shameful truth, Chinese investigators having uncovered irrefutable evidence of how the Big Lie had been perpetrated. Absurd “Neurobomb” research had been abandoned, as Mr Eiffrich had wisely decreed.

Aoxomoxoa’s so-called, pseudo-spiritual ‘Zen Self achievement’, wasn’t even worth discussing, and the Reich had more or less disappeared. Wang Xili, when asked directly about the fate of Ax Preston, had difficulty placing the name. The English President?, prompted the interviewer. Famous guitarist, former ‘rockstar dictator’? Last heard of under house arrest?

‘Mr Preston has nothing to fear from us,’ said Wang Xili. ‘He will be treated like any other private citizen.’

The goodlooking South West General was spokesperson for the invading forces, the one you usually saw on camera. Which didn’t mean he was in charge but it was a start. Get an impression of the guy, thought Rob. Ax would be taking in everything. But he felt that the task was hopeless, the Reich was nowhere, this disaster was too huge. Ax Preston, who he?

The Few, naturally, made no attempt to contact Greg Mursal, or Faz Hassim. Before the invasion was a day old you’d have had to be mad to want to be associated with the government. For about forty eight hours, after that casual aside from Wang, they really hoped that the Triumvirate would be released by the Chinese and allowed to join them. Then the lightning strike reached London. Hu Qinfu, the General in Command of Subduing the Capital, made his first appearences—and there was a broadcast from Wallingham. It went out live (allegedly) on all the State-controlled media. Ax spoke to the nation from the Yellow Drawing Room, Sage and Fiorinda silent on either side. He praised the English people for their calm, and the armed forces for their courage. Lord Mursal walked into the shot to join him. The two men clasped hands, and looked soulfully into each other’s eyes.

Sage and Fiorinda sat and smiled.

The Few, who had not known what to expect, moaned in horror.

‘Oh, God,’ whispered Allie, ‘Oh shit. The bastards!’

‘I can’t look, I can’t look,’ wailed Chip.

The door of Allie’s office burst open. A wild-eyed heavily-stubbled North Wing Desperanto marched in. He wore dirty urban-camo ‘fatigues’ from a defunct fashion chain; homemade Roumanian colours, blue and yellow and red, roughly stitched onto the breast.

‘You!’ he yelled at Rob. ‘You, you you…!’ He jerked his rifle at the other males. ‘Out! Report for duty.’

You don’t argue with an armed ex-Boat Person gangster.

‘Okay, but what’s going on?’ asked Rob, politely. ‘Who are you?’

‘The Insanititude has become a Republic.’

London had fallen. The Countercultural rebel MPs had fled to Reading, where they would form an emergency government in the Palace of Rivermead. The ‘ringleaders’ of the Second Chamber regime were in custody. Hu Qinfu was arranging to accept Mayor’s surrender, in Central Hall. The former Buckingham Palace had become a magnet for every diehard partisan, and the Few were trapped.

In the quiet of the Forest at sundown Ax stood barefoot, having washed in a pan of stream water; recited the praises of the Lord of the World, prostrated himself and twice repeated the Sura. Guide us on the straight path… The fifth day of the invasion begun the best he could, he climbed into the fork of the sycamore tree by the East Gable, with his guitar. The stars came out in a tender depth of sky; bats flickered, a hunting owl cried. Ax touched the strings of the Les Paul, composing images of Yap Moss, that winter battlefield. The empty spaces of blonde dead grass, the clusters of scuffling men; orange darts of fire, cordite smoke. All the men had Ax’s face, because who else can you really speak for? They stopped firing, they laid down their arms. In other parts of the moor the shooting, fighting, dying, would go on. You can only speak for yourself make your point and leave thes stage.

On the sixth day of the invasion, the former staff officers of the barmy army convened at their old Yorkshire HQ. Easton Friars, outside Harrogate, had been derelict long ago, when it was taken over by the militarised hippies. It was derelict again. Plans for its restoration, and the creation of an Islamic Campaign Experience, had been shelved at an early stage.

Nobody had ever bothered to remove the furniture. The Council of War was held in a common-room where someone’s Victorian ancestors still looked down, pockmarked by barmy darts games, spotted with damp, on mildewed leather sofas and chairs. Richard Kent, the former British Army Major who’d commanded Ax’s army during the dictatorship, presided. West African by ethnicity, Midlands born, he was thicker round the middle than he used to be, but still in trim. Beside him was Cornelius Sampson, another retired soldier, Richard’s lover of many years—

There were several proposals on the table. First, that the army should go to Reading, and put itself at the disposal of Faz Hassim’s government. Second, they should find their way to wherever the fighting was still going on, and join the regulars… Third, they should volunteer their men for bomb disposal, ambulance and stretcher bearer work; as conscientious objectors. Fourth: organise. There were Islamic militias, and unaffiliated armed groups. The barmy command should take control of these disparate forces, go underground and prepare an army of resistance.

Fifth, do nothing and wait for Ax

The Reading option was quickly dismissed. They’d be joining the fish in the barrel, the rats in the trap, and Faz had enough mouths to feed. Nobody felt like fighting under Greg Mursal, either, and it would be another suicide mission. The morale of the regulars had disintegrated. They believe that the denial of the ‘A’ Team was a smokescreen, and the Chinese actually possessed occult weapons far worse than the Neurobomb. It was known that some troops in Yorkshire had been forced onto the transports at gunpoint. The third suggestion had some merit, but they couldn’t believe it was what Ax wanted. The barmy staff had been with Ax all the way in the House of Commons. Of course, in the Good State, violence would be reduced to a minimum! But that didn’t mean Ax would not defend his country!

And whatever’d happened that night in Berkeley Square, probably nobody knew, but ten to one Ax had broken the evil fucker’s neck. Which proved the non-violence speech was not to be taken literally.

The fourth option was discussed at greater length.

The barmy staff were better informed than the Few. They knew Ax and his partners had not been secretly executed: the most popular theory with the public, since that horrible mock-up ‘appearance’ with Greg Mursal. They had reason to believe that the Triumvirate had escaped and were still free. But that was all. They didn’t know where Ax was, and they could not account for his failure to make contact.

‘Each of us here speaks for thousands,’ said one dreadlocked Islamic campaign veteran, somewhat optimistically. ‘My lads want action, and we’re ready for casualties. We’re a finely honed weapon, England’s last line of defence, same as we ever were. Suppressed by the fucking Second Chamber, we’ve remained hidden but intact, like an oiled rifle in the thatch—’

‘Yeah, Marsh. So what’s the good of diluting that finely honed strength and political will with untrained, criminal mad-dog rag-bag wannabes?’

The staff officers had turned up in barmy uniform: which was crazy of them, in the circumstances. But Richard couldn’t blame them. He himself was wearing the battledress tunic he’d worn in the Campaign, with the pink triangle, and his campaign buttons. It was too tight, he looked a fool, but he couldn’t have borne not to make the gesture.

He’d been getting a small salary from the Reich, as nominal ‘Colonel’: sorting out the problems of the ex-barmies in civilian life, and dreaming of the glory days. He hadn’t liked the Second Chamber, but England could have survived Greg Mursal. Ax’s reforms would have come, if only the world had given them time. Why couldn’t we have had a few more years? Every sane projection gave us a few more years… He felt blindsided, dumped on from a great height, outraged and heartbroken.

‘I’m not here to give orders—’

‘We don’t work like that,’ someone agreed. ‘We’re consensual.’

‘But I agree with Marsh. The Chinese are an Expeditionary Force, far from home. If we take our time, dig in and manage to string this out, I think we can dislodge them, get them to come to terms—’

But not without leadership, and where was Ax?

The chiefs of staff were unsure, silent and divided.

‘All right, let’s come back to it. Anybody want to tell me why the invaders don’t use those incredible airships? Why no bombing raids?’

The purple fleet had not been seen in action since the landings.

‘Our distances are negligible,’ suggested someone. ‘They don’t bomb populations, they’ve walked over the regulars. They don’t need air power.’

‘An air strike might take a chip out of somethen’ mediaeval.’

The men and women laughed, bitterly. The Chinese were ruthless with resistance, the few times they’d met any: but they were obsessivly careful with ancient monuments.

‘That fuckin’ Royal Message was a desp’rate mistake,’ offered a West Country voice. ‘All Mursal did was convince the whole countree, includin’ the regulars on the front line, that Ax is dead and Lord Mursal killed him. Wonderful encouraging, that was.’

Cornelius leaned back in a musty armchair, tossing the amber komboloi he favoured, in place of the pipe he’d given up. ‘You’re right Hawk. As it turned out, we were a walkover. But what if Shi Huangdi had tackled Europe the conventional way, from east to west? Albeit with the same overwhelming post-fossil fuels technology?’

Officially, the new China was ruled by the old men. Most experts believed there was a concealed junta, a ‘gang of four’ behind this façade. Cornelius, who’d spent some years as a Beijing watcher, preferred the ‘one man’ theory. He called the hidden leader Shi Huangdi, First Emperor, for obvious reasons.

The young man known as Hawk, thought for a moment. ‘Lemme see. East toWest, you move from the old Soviet empire hardscrabble countries to the big soft populations with high expectations. You do your rough fighting while you’re relatively close to home. You meet technically superior forces when they’ve seen what’s coming, and their civilians have panicked. They’re less eager. The Crisis hasn’t changed the basic situation: it’s hardnuts then soft. I think he’s a risk-taker, this guy. He plays high, to win high.’

‘They psyched the entire world with that trick,’ agreed someone.

‘Like the Wang guy says,’ added a much-tattooed elective slaphead, one of the two females in the command tent, ‘they don’t want to annexe Europe. They want to box it. After the airship stunt, they’ve no need to make their point, nation by nation. It was cheap at the price.’

‘Plus they were establishing dominance over the real rival, the US,’ added Marsh, the proposer of armed resistance. ‘Up the back passage, without a fight, by getting them to cede those beachheads.’

Cornelius tossed his beads. ‘All good points. But Shi Huangdi has not been a risk-taker in building up his Asian sphere. I think he’d have taken the East-West approach, once he’d decided that Europe must be pacified… If it hadn’t been for Rufus O’ Niall, and Sage Pender.’

The barmies frowned over this.

‘You think they’re shitting us? That they have magic?’ said Hawk.

‘I think they hope there’s no such thing. But they’re not sure, and that makes England incalcuable. That’s why we were targeted, in such spectacular style—and why the invaders are so careful of life and property. I believe Ax has realised this, and is reserving his options, waiting to see what happens.’

A shock of relief went through the little band.

Gone to ground! He’s gone to ground.

Silence is an answer, thought Richard. His only plan had been to hold the army in check, let them talk and wait for orders. He had not known how cruelly Ax’s defection (it felt like defection) had been weighing on him. Suddenly he could breathe.

‘Ax is telling us we’re guerrillas,’ exclaimed the muscular blonde who was the other token woman. ‘Not the buggering Light Brigade!’

Marsh and the Hawk were not convinced. ‘I know you, Corny,’ Marsh said, ‘You talk around corners, like an old tortoise. If you two say wait and I’ll wait. But me and mine will go kamikaze when we have to.’

Cornelius nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

They put it to the vote. They would wait for Ax.

On the tenth day the Insanitude was under siege. The Republic had rejected a safe-conduct for non-combatants offered by General Hu, and declared martial law. It was summary execution for any traitor caught trying to escape. Non-combatant ‘citizens’ were living in the North Wing, under guard. They had water—hard to run out of water, in the sodden London Basin—; but the quality was poor. They had sanitation, likewise. Food, cooking fuel and medicines would last for a while. Supplies were not fairly rationed, but there were reasonably fair barter-markets. It was rough, not terrible.

The Few had a piece of floor in the largest of the havens. They had to occupy it all the time, or they would have lost territory instantly: but that was okay, there was nowhere much to go. Dilip was on firewatch in the State Apartments. Felice was with another couple of parents, supervising a finger-painting session; under the grand piano that stood, mysterious survivor, at one end of the big room. The rest of them sat around on rolled up bedding, or lay dozing on their portion of a large Turkish carpet; another random survivor. Chip and Ver, propped on their elbows, were monitoring the San’s remaining external cameras on a palmtop with a virtual screen. An assault was due this afternoon. The ‘citizens’ knew about it because there’d been a Chinese announcement. They still, eerily, had access to the media.

Nothing was happening outside, as yet.

Everyone missed EBC, which had died when London fell. It had been fun jeering at the lies, and there’d been the faint, undying hope that suddenly Ax would appear. The real Ax, not a stupid fake, smiling with his eyes, having the Chinese eat out of his hand, making everything come right.

The piano room was warm and dim: the tall wooden shutters were never removed from the windows. The air was stale from the exhalations of about forty bodies (not counting the children), and days of cooking smells. Rob lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. He was dead tired, nobody could sleep in here. Fear for the kids was breaking his back. Remorse and guilt, too.

Why did we walk into this trap? Why didn’t we get out of the country?

‘I keep thinking the next meeting will do it,’ murmured Chez, lying beside him, equally heavy-eyed. The Few were trying to organise a surrender, preferably without getting themselves shot.

‘I’m still sure the barmies can be turned.’

She took Rob’s hand, and kissed his blunt fingertips.

The best of the San’s security forces had left before the ‘Republic of Europe’ took over, or else they’d been killed in the takeover. The remaining squaddies had been recruited by the Republic. They were conflicted. They did not see how defending the Insanitude could be wrong.

‘You know where that leads?’ muttered Rob. ‘A gun battle indoors.’

‘I hate the firewatching.’ Dora was absently stroking Toots, the big fluffy black and white cat. The Babes’ other cat, the notorious Ghost, who had once eaten two of her own healthy newborn kittens, had not been seen for a day or two. ‘It’s so scary. But this is not so bad. I keep drifting off, and thinking this is some other, ordinary disaster, you know?’

‘Nothing’s happening in the Forecourt,’ reported Ver.

‘The tourists will be disappointed,’ remarked Chip. ‘No Changing of the Guard. Maybe they’ll go away and come back tomorrow.’

The tourists were the Chinese, so called because of their passion for historic monuments and natural beauty. They had been true to their word. They respected non-combatants and eschewed ‘immoral weapons’. But what if they had to choose between Buckingham Palace and the citizens of the Republic? General Hu had proved he had no patience with recalcitrants. None of the Chinese did. Inevitably you thought of nerve gas—

Allie sat on one of her suitcases, huddled in her beloved red Gucci jacket. She had brought all her clothes with her when forced out of her flat. This had turned out useful, good clothes fetched high prices in barter (though you wondered why); but she would never part with this perfect jacket. It was her lover and her child, she slept with it cuddled in her arms. She looked down at little Nathalie: fast asleep, curled in a foetal ball. So thin, brittle insect limbs… Natalie had begged them to kill her rather than let her be taken alive, and you start thinking, get a grip kid. How bad can re-education be?

We have no idea.

‘I thought it would go on for years,’ she said. ‘First I couldn’t believe it, then I thought we’d be fighting them forever, like a normal warzone.’

‘Maybe it will go on,’ said Chip. ‘Just not for us.’

‘I know why the Republic keeps it up, they’re nuts and they can’t count. But why are the Rebels still resisting, and the campers at Reading? It’s ridiculous, they’re just prolonging the agony for everyone.’

‘Hippies, Allie.’ said Dora. ‘They’re all mad dogs.’

She knew it wasn’t that simple, not for anyone trapped at Reading: but she had compassion fatigue. She wasn’t proud of it.

‘Thank God we’re on our own,’ mumbled Rob. ‘If Mursal had won armed support from the Celtic nations it would’ve been carnage.’

‘Never a chance,’ said Chez. ‘Why would anyone support him?’

‘Nothing’s still happening.’ reported Ver.

The other citizens lived their lives; watched the external cameras on small screens. Picked guitar, played cards. Anyone who passed, crossing the floor to visit the bathrooms, the water cooler or the kitchen burners, stooped to hi-five Rob, or squatted down for a few words. He was the uneasy leader of the non-combatants, he hadn’t been able to stop it happening. He felt like a corporal in the trenches, promoted faute de mieux, and resented the women’s slippery ability to dodge the draft. What became of women’s lib around here?

Chip and Ver lost interest in the watch on the Rhine, and rolled over on their backs. ‘Pippin,’ said Chip, ‘d’you remember a sci-fi story called “We Who Are About To”? They’re stranded on an alien planet, no skills, no hope of rescue and the argument is, why build shelters, seek for water, when—’

‘It’s just a question of how long, days or weeks?’ finished Verlaine. ‘“We Who Are About To Die Salute You” From the Latin, Morituri te salutant, which gladiators never really said, when about to get killed in the arena.’ He stroked Chip’s nose. ‘I think we’ve been playing that game since Massacre Night, young Merry. We should compile an artefact called ‘Morituri’.’

The Adjuvants compiled artefacts, they did not write songs.

‘It sounds like a Japanese condiment… Hey, d’you remember when Ax and Sage had that huge, huge fight, and Sage stripped down the Heads’ banner from the gates and walked off with it, stalk stalk, the Heads behind him, down Buckingham Palace Road in the dark?’

‘Yeah. Off he went, shining like Achilles. I love it when he stalks.’

They didn’t know what had happened to Rox. Cagney and Lacey had been requisitioned, probably boiled down for ammunition. They were almost sure their leaders were dead, because Mursal would have produced them if he could. Or the Chinese would have produced them by now. But it was comforting to reminisce. If they could get away with it—

‘Knock that OFF,’ snapped Allie. ‘I’ll kill you if you talk about them.’

‘Well, what are we allowed to talk about? Suggest us something.’

‘I don’t care. Rimbaud’s Illuminations, Blackpool Illuminations, multicoloured hedgehogs, WHATEVER YOU LIKE.’

Allie believed that she had sent Sage to his death. She hadn’t told the others, but she was certain he had not been returned to Wallingham. He had been killed. She’d known what was going to happen when he was talking to her, he had been fey that afternoon. But she had ignored the premonition and she’d let him go… Chip and Ver sat up, shocked and contrite. They got on either side of Allie, patting her shoulders awkwardly.

‘Hey, Allie, don’t cry. We didn’t mean anything. You’re our tower of strength. You look out for everyone.’

‘You know what? You’re the new Aoxomoxoa, that’s absolutely true.’

Rob snagged the palmtop, checked the screen, blinked: scooped out an earbead and inserted it. Gunfire exploded in his head. ‘Good news. They’re not in chemical suits, and I see no gas masks. We may be okay.’

In ways Dilip missed the edge that living with HIV had given him, the long effort to keep on dancing: but he had lost the feeling since California. High spots like the Mayday concert, and his b-loc trip to low orbit, but it was over, it was over, time to quit the departure lounge, head for the gate. The fate of the Triumvirate had taken him painfully by surprise. Has anybody here seen my friend Abraham? I just looked around and he was gone. The Chinese invasion, not so much. How instantly, how naturally, the Few had become to the besieged palace what the Few had been to England. Unskilled paramedics at the road accident, bodies in the bucket-chain, an accidental chivalry of butterflies, and now back to where it all began. Just like yesterday, take up my guitar and play. Except that DK’s instrument had always been his own body. Not the machine code, but the dance.

He felt he knew everything; and regretted nothing but those things one always regrets, misdeeds, words spoken out of turn. He was ready: but it was sudden and strange, in the State Apartments, when the attack burst through. He passed in seconds from the frightening chore of smothering incendiaries to the realisation that the siege was over, and that this was where his plane was going to take off, here, where he had been the mixmaster general of Immix, with sea-green Fiorinda, one perfect night in the DJ’s box above the whirling, shrieking, Ballroom—

He burned the books and buried the scholars

The sacking of the Insanitude brought a wave of reaction. The survivors fled to the Tower, where they holed-up impregnably in a far more precious, far more ancient building. The people of England came out on the streets, for the first time since the invasion. They gathered, in protest and mourning, at the forbidden Big Screen sites: singing and playing, dancing and making speeches. A second Deconstruction Tour broke out and raged. This time the targets were not giant supermarkets, car lots and fast food outlets. Mobs of desolate lads and girls attacked Utopian Science wherever they could find it: smashing and burning b-loc development labs and immix studios. Trashing technology parks and gene-infusion clinics: all so that Ax Preston’s legacy should not fall into enemy hands. The Warehouse on Battersea Reach was burned out down to the annexe. The Zen Self scanners did not escape. Joss had ordered them moved three times since his son had disappeared. The chain of command had become too long to be secure, they were found and trashed by the despairing kids. Disks and hardware; books and documents at the hedgeschool science centres, at Reich-friendly universities like Cambridge and Sussex, went onto bonfires heaped in tears. In a few days, about ninety percent of the seedcorn Ax had guarded so faithfully was gone.

The Rebel Countercultural MPs held out, in the Palace of Rivermead, making fruitless appeals for international intervention, while the historic city of Reading was patiently taken, street by street. The bricks and mortar citizens had fled, with the co-operation of the Chinese: but the campground by the riverside had been allowed to fill to bursting, with fugitives from places like Glastonbury—which had fallen on the first day.

The wise-women and gentle-men of Rivermead had performed a great deal of ritual magic in the shock of the invasion. About the third day, they’d given it all up. They couldn’t help noticing that no signs from Gaia, no wonders, were supporting the resistance. Whereas the presentiments of disaster (of which there’d been plenty) had been consistently reversed. Now there was a dearth of any visions at all—except the kind easily explained by strong medicine or the lack of it. The belief that the Triumvirate had escaped from Wallingham and were alive was strong: but nobody tried to conjure their survival. Something like that comes as a free gift, it’s insanely costly otherwise. They had to conclude hope must die to be reborn.

Anne-Marie set her fiddle in its case, wrapped the case in silk and laid it in the safe-hole under the floor of the bender. She arranged her other treasures around it, touching them all with love. Several bars of gold, a velvet bag of uncut gemstones, a withered wreath of traveller’s joy. The children’s umblicals; an iridescent black shirt that Sage had given to Silver, when she was a little girl. A cut aubergine with the name of Allah written in the seeds (given to Ammy by a Muslim wise-woman, who found it in her shopping the day of Ax’s inauguration); which Ammy had sealed in perspex. Photographs of her parents. The kids’ Hedgeschool Certificates, all gilt and glowing colour.

Her eldest daughter sat on the bench by the firepit, hunched over folded arms and scowling. ‘They’re dead,’ said Paradoxa: meaning Ax, Sage and Fiorinda. ‘Don’t be so numb. If they weren’t dead they’d be here!’ She was eighteen. They’d hoped she would be a vet, but Para wanted to recover from the disease of being human. She’d been living in an extreme Gaian community in Brighton, without clothes, abandoning language; fucking like dogs. She’d come home because of the war: angry and contradictory as ever. Anne-Marie shut the hole, replaced the bacterial damp-proof membrane and smoothed down the rugs.

‘They’re not here because this is not the fight. The fight’ll be keeping the flame of what Ax did alive. An’ even that’s not important, neither, because there’s always another Ax. It’s the cause that matters.’

Paradoxa tugged the plaited scalplock, her one vanity, that dangled from her dirty naked skull. ‘Mum, you’re not making sense. If you believe that why are you still here? They’ll kill us all, you know. Go into hiding!’

‘I’d have to stay in hiding then, wouldn’t I love?’ Anne-Marie applied her fingertips to the outer edges of her narrow black eyes. ‘Or they’d send me “home” for re-education. I can’t be tossed with that.’

‘They hate women. The females we see are trannys. They’ll rape us with dogs before they kill us. There are no real women in China, because of the One Child Policy. They grow babies in vats.’

Anne-Marie wasn’t into dehumanising the enemy. It would be daft, when all she had to do was look in a mirror. She let go of her Chinky eyes, and spread her hands on the bender floor. Earth and stone rose up into her veins, through the layers of bright silk and the dpm. The myriad weaving of little creatures that makes one soil different from another became united with her blood. Come England, come…conquer the conquerors. I know you can do it. But if you’re wise, my country, don’t you ask anything of magic. Magic isn’t to be used, it just is. You leave it alone.

‘What’s right for one person isn’t right for another. I wish Ax was here, but I know why he isn’t. This is my home, pet. That’s all there is to it, reelly.’

Paradoxa took her crossbow and went to look for her father in the town. Anne-Marie finished straightening the bender, putting fragile ornaments out of the way, as if she were preparing for a visit from her old man and his drinking buddies. At last she burned lavender and rosemary to sweeten the air, and sat watching the flames, seeing faces there and singing softly under her breath, I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, as live as you and me…

She never found out what happened to Paradoxa, except that the girl hadn’t hooked up with Hugh, by the last time they managed to talk on the phone.

The younger teens and the children of the campground had been living in the Palace, where they were thought to be safe. When Rivermead burned, they were evacuated back to their homes in the tented township. There were no safe places. Wang Xili, the General in Command of Subduing the South West, had warned them. There was no such thing as a non-combatant Countercultural, old or young; this had been policy throughout the invasion. They could have reneged, they’d been given time. They knew they if they reneged they would be spared, that had been policy too.

He had warned them.

Down by the river, wild clematis had turned to silver elflocks in the hedges; the michaelmas daisies stood in starry lilac sheaves. Travellers’ Meadow, where Aoxomoxoa’s van had been a rock and a refuge for Fiorinda, was trampled and bloody—littered with bodies as if a night of Dissolution revels had ended in a huge deranged brawl. Anne-Marie ran around turning up faces: looking for her second and third daughters, Silver and Pearl, who had not come home from the crêche. Now it was here she couldn’t believe how she’d got into this situation, by what degrees, by what mad stubbornness? She ran all the way back up to the hospitality area, through the confusion and the smoke and the racket: took little Safire, who was howling, in her arms, and screamed at the boys to follow her. Forced to abandon Ruby, dragging Jet, the six year old, by the hand, she rushed to the washhouse, a substantial building of recovered brick and timber; served by a borehole and a biomass generator.

‘Stay here!’ she screamed, and ran to get Rubes.

The laundry was seething with mothers and sobbing children, but there were islands of quiet. Jet looked around, and with decision led his sister to a counter where a row of wicker baskets full of washing stood, abandoned on the last halfway normal day. ‘Sit on the floor,’ he ordered. The chubby little girl sat, obediently. He tipped a basket over her, so she was buried under an avalanche of socks and pants and teeshirts. ‘Stay there. Don’t make a sound!’ He waited to see she didn’t immediately crawl out. Then he took his knife, a kitchen knife he’d secretly been carrying around with him, big in his small hand, and went to help his mother.

That day was the end of any organised resistance. Ax’s England, the nation of Dissolution, was no more. The dream had lasted, from Massacre Night to the fall of Reading, a little less than nine years. Shocked and saddened reactions went flying around the globe. A Radio Delhi newsreader reminded listeners that this was the first successful foreign conquest of the UK since 1066, and quoted (brave man) the judgement of a Norwegian chronicler of that time: cold heart and bloody hand, now rule fair England. The virtual movie called Rivermead, buried by the Lavoisier scandal, was swiftly put into distribution. Sales and downloads of the Reich’s music rocketed. But though the tributes were generous, the protests were muted. Ax had been a romantic dictator but his Presidency had failed, his vision no match for the realities of a corrupt and brutal regime. His country was in better hands now, and it was to be hoped that Crisis Europe would accept the object lesson calmly. England’s close neighbours made the most conciliatory moves they could think of, and prayed that the New Masters of the Universe would let them be.

NINE

The Ploughshare and the Harrow

The blackberries were stripped. The horse-chestnuts had dropped their freight of spiny conker-cases, and rustling, rusty-edged leaves, into quiet Sussex lanes. Hazel cobs were fattening. One misty morning in mid-October the bonded girl who worked in the dairy at Towncreep Farm, and lived over the garage, glanced out of her window and saw someone in the yard. She wasn’t alarmed. There were a lot of travellers about, because of the war. They were mostly harmless, just hungry; and if they thieved a bit, she tended to sympathise. But this shabby intruder was acting strangely. He squatted on his heels by the wall, looking intently at something propped on his knees. It was after milking time. She’d usually have been having breakfast with the family, but she’d come back up to her room. Her bondholders had felt they had to watch the news: the girl had felt she couldn’t.

She went quietly down the wooden steps that led to her loft, through the cluttered garage where the farmer kept a vintage BMW (up on blocks; it had a petrol engine, never converted) and looked out. He was a slim man, and quite tall. Straight, sheeny dark hair, with a few threads of silver, fell past his jaw. He wore a brown velvet jacket, he had a ring with a red stone in it on his right hand: and now she could see it was a palmtop or pocket-tv sort of thing poised on his knees, and a fine black earphone lead disappearing under a wing of his hair; so she understood what he was doing.

She must have caught her breath. He looked up. Completely fearless. That was her first thought: as if she’d met a wild animal, a fox or a deer, in the woods, and instead of scooting it had faced her, uncannily, look for look. His skin was milky-tea colour, he had high cheekbones, a straight nose, a fine-cut mouth and almond-shaped clear brown eyes; a graceful keel of midnight blue knotwork tattooed above and below the left one. She recognised him at once, of course: except for the Celtic tattoo.

Completely fearless.

He put his tv thing away, unhurried, and stood up: smiling a little.

‘Will you give me some milk?’

‘Oh yes,’ gasped the bonded girl. ‘Oh, oh yes—’

She had to give him yesterday’s milk, because everything was behind; which mortified her. ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Please, wait, er, Sir…’ dashed into the back kitchen and came out with a loaf of fresh bread from the crock. The family were in the big room beyond, riveted by the public executions. She thrust the loaf at him, and didn’t know what else to do or say.

‘Thank you,’ said the fearless man. He put the loaf in his bag, jumped at the yard gate and he was gone, over it, into the wood.

‘So that’s him,’ she whispered, staring after, her heart thumping. ‘That’s him.’

Up before dawn, shivering in the dim chill air, Sage and Fiorinda had groped their way to the summit of Camp Hill, the highest point in the Forest. Sage had the visionboard, Fiorinda carried Min: the kitten was too young to be left alone. They found a hollow close to the base of the one remaining radio mast: an antique, once belonging to the Diplomatic Corps Radio Station, code-name Aspidistra. They knew about things like that. Starved of connectivity, they surfed the tourist information boards in deserted carparks, feeding on scraps of nature lore and local history. Mist dripped from the yellowed leaves of the brambles: Fiorinda spread a sheet of baling plastic, Sage set down the board, and pulled out a length of slim cable, looping it hand over hand. They sat with their knees drawn up. The kitten wriggled and settled, purring til he shook with pleasure. Silver drops ran together along the rim of Sage’s hood, like a string of pearls.

‘One more look?’

‘Yeah.’

They were about to send their video diary to Paris; where they’d established radio contact with Alain de Corlay. They loved this piece of work. It reminded them of Bridge House, the famous multimedia residence created by the Few and friends during the dictatorship. But their diary of the invasion (it had no title) was a leap beyond Bridge House. Fragmentary but coherent, hallucinatory but stripped down. Nitpicking in detail, with a perfect finish. Songs come, it’s a habit of mind. The tech to dress them is the other dimension, equally vital, difficult to assimilate: and they knew they’d done it, found another level of their game. They’d used the 3% immix, developed by virtual movie makers, for the arousal triggers. Sage’s much stronger immersion code for the qualia—

‘Any requests?’

‘Anything, I don’t mind. Oh, wait.’ The rough-cut came in packets of twelve seconds, it was not, as yet, retrievable except by numbers. She closed her eyes, and rattled off what she thought of as a bar-code. Sage grinned to himself, the coding is childsplay these days but damn it, she catches on fast.

‘Coming up.’

A needle-thin sliver of colour appeared in the air, flickered and unfolded like a Japanese paper flower. Fiorinda imagined the noughts and ones flying into her eyes, a swarm of tiny bees, creating something in her brain that was fractally descended from the painting on the walls of a cave, thirty odd thousand years ago. It was September, in dusty sunlight, we were fixing our roof. Ax and I were on the rooftree, Sage pitching bundles of heather thatch up to us, which we would lash and peg in place. They had their shirts off; their arms and shoulders and breasts, embossed with muscle like living armour, how I loved watching them, how beautiful they were—

Brief as the swallow’s flight,

It’s hard to realise

There are those who do not live for love

Drawn to the heated thread

Of human flesh and blood

See this

Turn all my fires on

They say it’s a mark of sanity, to know people don’t see the world you see

To know everyone around you, is living under stra-ange skies

I want to be insane for this, I want to see your coloured stars

Touch you when I touch you take your mind into, your body into mine

We were talking, you can hear us through the music, about that time Ax and Sage did Liquid Gold for the Hoorays, and my, I felt naked.

The intimacy of what we do, it’s like a disease. Sometimes it spooks us. There I am, in rags that were my red and blue chiffon print, over the remains of a plum tailored skirt, ripped off to the knees. I wear my clothes like memory, hate to see them go. I’m filthy, we’re all filthy, a patina of grime over sweaty tanned skins where the sun slips: 3% works beautifully on all that. But what you’ll feel most is the dull red of the broken half bricks in the gable. A sycamore leaf, piled with blackberries, a shaving of white birch. They’ll be burned into your brain, because that’s where we put the immix.

‘She needs a tambourine.’

Clearly, then Sage laughs. That was it, paper flower folded, gone.

‘You still happy with it?’

She nodded. ‘I’m extremely pleased with where my career is just now.’

‘Me, same,’ said the maestro, equally without irony.

Ax’s ‘Lay Down’, the Yap Moss song (he wanted to call it ‘Untitled’, they’d stopped him) would be the first single, obviously. They didn’t mind.

What did you do in the invasion, oh fallen idols? We slept with the spiders, and cut ourselves a homemade immix album, which our friend Alain will produce, without massacring it, we hope. We can’t consult him much.

Was that appropriate, when your country was in its death agony?

Don’t know, it’s just what happened.

Like cream poured over the back of a spoon, a layer of smooth over stinging liquor, every track is laid over pain. When your country is being invaded, and you are far from the frontline, you find yourself just staring, at whatever stick or stone is in front of your eyes: and that’s where the bodies are buried.

‘Did you know, in World War Two they used to transmit fake German Forces radio from here? Sex scandals about their High Command, to demoralise the Hun.’

‘Only the English… Yes, I did know that, my pilgrim. I read it on the same noticeboard you did.’

‘Hahaha. Well, since Ax has the tranceiver, I shall now knock-up my software, digital radio station again, and bare-wire it to the Aspidistra Mast.’

‘How long will it take to upload the goods?’

‘’Bout ten minutes, if all goes well. Say twenty.’

‘If we took out enough components to make a cavity, could we fix your board so it would work as a microwave oven?’

‘Leave my fucking board alone. My board has had enough.’

‘Only joking, poor Sage. We have no pizza, anyway.’ She leaned against his shoulder. ‘Sage, would you mind taking the kitten?’

‘Yeah, sure, hand him over—’

‘I want to go for a walk. I’ll see you back.’

She disappeared quickly into the mist. Sage held the squirming kitten. ‘You don’t want to run off,’ he said to it. ‘You think you do, but you don’t, you’d get wet feet an’ Ax would fucking kill me’. He stuffed Min inside his hoodie; and bent, almost with a shrug of dismissal, to his work.

She’ll come to no harm.

Camp Hill was pocked with Neolithic-looking lumps and hollows, a usefully messy digital landscape to hide in, if he’d been worried about what he was doing. He was not, but he could feel the fatalistic blank of these strange days slipping from him. I’m going to be afraid, soon. I’m going to have to think about my dad, my son, and all the others whose fates we don’t yet know… Refreshingly, the bumps were not Neolithic. They were the traces of an army that had camped here in 1793, to meet the threat of the French Revolution… Read that on a board too. Facing the wrong way, as it turned out, because in so far as those blood-daubed compadres of ours ever made it, they landed in Cornwall and Wales—

It was an excuse you got tired of hearing. Oh, we only got trashed because England’s military might was facing the wrong way. The air defence region assumes an attack from the north or north-east. To avoid false alarms, the system filters out exactly the kind of profile, storm of hail, flock of birds, that the Chinese fleets would have most resembled… And otherwise it would have been a different story? Do they listen to themselves?

The board slung on his shoulder, Min the kitten a warm lump against his ribs, he trudged off down the hill. He was sour, irrationally so, because his own homeland had been overrun, and Sussex, so far, had not.

Ax had found himself a hiding place further off, and made do without a picture. He listened until the hard news broke up into talking-heads, verbiage, and then decided to quit. The fields and woods south of the Forest were ghostly, haunted by the munch, munch of looming cattle. He crossed the old B road, and took the footpath onto the heath. As he climbed towards the Airman’s Grave he saw Sage waiting for him: a cut-out figure on the mist. He was sitting right out in the open, on the wall of the stone enclosure that marked the spot where a Wellington had crashed in 1941.

And this seemed right, just as it seemed right that Ax was out in the open himself, not skulking helpless in some cellar or attic hidey-hole: being kept like a troublesome pet, until he was found and dragged out. Fuck that. They watched each other, soberly. As Ax came up, Sage slipped down and they turned to lean against the wall, side by side, looking south.

‘Well,’ said Ax. ‘That’s it, officially. Now the unofficial situation starts.’

Sage nodded.

‘Where’s Fiorinda? Back at the bothy?’

‘Gone for a walk, wanted to be by herself. Don’t panic, I have your kitten safe an’ cosy.’ He unzipped his hoodie, to prove it. ‘I’m not going to be branded a tramp and a no-good, not fit to be a father.’

‘I’ll take him.’

‘Nah, you won’t. He’s keepin’ me warm.’

The woods beyond Fairwarp made a crumpled dragon shadow on the sky. The shoulder of the South Downs was a grey washed line on grey.

‘What about the executions?’

‘That’s over too.’

‘You saw them?’

‘Not really. Either they changed their minds about the live show or they never planned it. The executions were yesterday, at Croydon. Only the Generals and Chinese officials present, but it was recorded, that’s what was on the news this morning. I watched some. I only had sound for the rest, had to move out of the yard. It seemed to be the whole list, no exceptions, Lady Anne included.’

‘So Jack Vries is dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’

Ax glanced at him, and saw an odd, fleeting expression cross Sage’s face, almost bewilderment. There’s a need to confront the person who tortured you. You feel you won’t be whole again until you’ve faced them down. He knew about that from his experiences as a hostage. It’s an illusion, nothing will ever make it so those things didn’t happen… He wanted to talk about the shootings, how hurried and brusque they had been. No ceremony. A handful of people. The executioner is some menial, a shock-headed minor officer. He fires at arm’s length and the body is hustled onto a stretcher, while the next in line’s already being hustled, blindfold, to the mark. No, he thought. Lay off. My big cat doesn’t need that.

A red admiral butterfly flew up from the walled garden. Ax watched it settle on a stone by the path, its fresh, enamelled wings folded above its body. He wondered if it was unusual to see a butterfly in October. He knew so little about nature. The grey and brown patterns on the hind wing were like the marbling on the end papers of an old book.

‘They stopped being moderate when they got to the top.’

‘Yeah. Very rational people, the Chinese.’

There’d been no moderation at Reading Site, either… And now Faud Hassim, who had survived that holocaust: Faud, who had kept his word, and protected the Preston family at great risk to himself, and gone on to lead England’s last government; he was dead. He had been dead when Ax got up this morning, and prayed, and went down to Towncreep to watch the Chinese do his dirty work. Ax had not even witnessed it.

Everything seemed muted and far away, under the pale, shrouded sky.

‘Sage? D’you still think about the Zen Self?’

‘Yes,’ said Sage. ‘All the time.’

‘What’s that like?’

‘I dunno what to tell you. It was like lucid dreaming. Being there again, there again, there again, at different moments, myriads on myriads of them, each of them carrying a whole world, layered together, interpenetrating, past present and future. And it’s fractal, so that the first complex four-dimensional object, my entire self, was a gateway—unless I was daring to try and resolve the unresolved shit—to more and more, drawing you to the point where everything turns inside out and you’re here again, but totally aware of the ways beyond. But none of it, what I just said, is strictly conscious, it’s more what you come back knowing, except—’

He broke off, embarrassed. ‘Sorry.’

‘No, don’t be. Please tell me.’

‘It’s not the same now. Say my simultaneity levels are close to normal again. Some little thing like the Lavoisier video can make me tackle the unresolved stuff. But tha’s different, jus’ fucking hard work—’

Ax nodded. Some little thing, yes. The Lavoisier video didn’t seem like much, now. ‘Could anything take you all the way back to where you were? Not the peace you have, which I know about, but to that bizarre brainstate?’

Sage thought, with dread, of a clear glass on a red-gold velvet tablecloth.

‘Say it’s latent.’

‘I can’t get off on your abyss of non-being,’ said Ax. ‘It’s not for me. But I’ve been thinking about what I tried to do. My deluded attempt to build a better world, my great discovery that people should live a certain way: a high tech culture of re-creation, where our purpose in life is to be ourselves, and to look after each other, like the social animals we… You know that thing Isaac Newton said, about the seashore?’

‘Subsistence living, community service and futuristic toys. I remember. I was sold, babe, I still am. Yeah, I know it. Newton said he’d been like a boy playing on the seashore. “Now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”’

‘That’s how I feel. When I got my big chance, when England first fell apart, all I could see was my pebble, my pretty shell of a grand plan. Now I see everything that happened to us, tiny on the shore of history, and the enormous ocean of human possibility is out there untouched. It’s not consolation, it’s something else. Silence. I gaze at that ocean, it’s my abyss. And he felt like that, he had reached the silence, maybe more my way than yours; and everyone knows Newton was an absolute shite. I—I find that comforting.’ Tears had come to his eyes, he wiped them. ‘I’m not making sense, I’m sorry. I’ll shut up.’

‘You’re making sense.’

They stood, heads bowed, on the shore beside vast silence, under the milk white sky, the naked heath all around. At last they turned to look over the wall: at the garden where the aircrew were remembered. Several wreaths of weather-worn scarlet poppies were propped at the foot of a white cross. Salute, compadres. You were young, you died, and it’s all over now.

‘I am so fucking sorry I got you into this.’

‘Ax, I’m tired of that line. Allow me to know my own mind. I got myself “into this”. You rescued me from the miserable state I was in before Dissolution, an’ I have been right by you of my own free will ever since.’ He grinned. ‘Well, ’cept for the slight interval when I was screwing your girlfriend.’

‘You scamp.’

They checked each other over. God is good, Sage’s eyes were clear and bright, and not a shadow left of the bruises: at least, nothing you could see through the gypsy tan and the dirt. Sage returned the compliment, smiling: looking very fine, my guitar man. ‘You’re going to keep it, aren’t you?’

‘You mean the tattoo?’ Ax touched the knotwork: it felt like nothing, like skin, but he knew it was there. ‘Oh yes. I’ll wear this as long as I live.’

Right, thought Sage, resignedly. Because you deserve to wear the badge of shame, doncha, ya’ stiff-necked puritan. Ah well, that’s Ax.

‘Wandering Billy did you proud. It’s beautiful. It suits you.’

The kitten woke, and squeaked. ‘C’mon. She’s probably back by now.’

Crow’s Nest Clump

Fiorinda walked and walked, blindfold by the mist, until she struck a stand of Scots pines. She passed between an outer circle of the rough brown pillars, into a very quiet place. Pine trees never look English: whenever she saw one of these clumps, on the horizon or close up, she thought of the Mediterranean, which she had never seen. But the quiet in here was deep, and not foreign at all… She’d been delighting in her creation, the intricate, seductive layers of code in a video-diary track, and the guilt and grief had crawled up inside her, because playing with the 0s and 1s was what it was all about. Just once, when there’d been no other way out of a minor but very tricky situation, she had taken hold of reality that way, handling the code almost casually. But once was enough to tell her how different it was, and how the same it was. Fuck, fuck, fuck, all those people died for me. Anne-Marie, all the campers at Reading. They died for me, because I’m the one the Chinese were looking for, when they slaughtered a forest to kill a leaf.

What if she lost it again? Parietal lobe damage, the world dissolving into a fitful glimmer, it’s frightening when you recognise what the casualties try to describe, when you think: ah, I have been there. But I won’t. I have solved my equation, I have people who love me, I am earthed. She set her back against a pine bole and slid down until she was squatting on her heels. A robin flitted and clung to a stub of a branch close by, checking her out. Mist dropped in dew from the fisted needles—

Ammy is dead. Dilip is dead, the Wing children are dead.

The mist falls, I feel myself breathing. So this is where I am, and I can’t pretend to be surprised. Our revolution was boiling with corruption from the start, they always are, it’s a crying shame. Now the clean-up crew has arrived, and the finer points about how the Reich wasn’t actually guilty for the mess that is Crisis Europe, we were only trying to help, none of that matters. But they came to England, like a thunderbolt, and in some sense, it seems, with Fred Eiffrich’s blessing. Fred, who would have done anything, sacrificed anything to kill the Neurobomb. What are we to make of that?

There was a phrase General Wang used: awakening from delusion. China had come to Europe to waken people from delusion, no more grim fairytales, no more dancing in the streets… Ax said it was a stock expression, a cliché, don’t read too much into it: just basically means (Chinese not being Mother Nature’s democrats) that if the emperor doesn’t like the facts he can change them. But the words had set something ringing in Fiorinda’s soul, like the first time she’d heard Ax’s techno-Utopian manifesto. Is there someone else who believes we are not helpless, before the monstrous forces we have created? Someone else who thinks it’s possible to stand in the way of destruction’s tide, and turn that bastard around?

Someone who might free me?

How amazing, people like that are so dangerous—

Longing for the impossible made her shiver. Oh, God, what if I have a miscarriage, the way I lost that pregnancy in Paris? My baby, please don’t leave me, dear little baby, please, please don’t leave me. Shit, I must not get frightened. They pick up on your emotional state, of course they do, we’re sharing a blood supply: so calm down.

…

I won’t lose this one, she thought. It’s the stubborn kind, it will hang on. She sat so quietly that a young rabbit came nibbling at the turf, almost to within reach of her hand. Hey, little Shoot (she called the baby shoot, it was a small thing growing). See the baby rabbit. Maybe it will let us stroke it. She held her breath, feeling as if she were her baby’s eyes. Come here, bunny, I won’t hurt you. But the rabbit knew a hungry predator when it saw one. It gave her a dark look, wise little sideways look, and scooted.

Fiorinda laughed.

She came through the thorns that shielded the ruined cottage, breaking its outline even now the leaves had begun to fall; seeing their shelter with fresh eyes. An upturned bird’s nest suspended from gable to gable, where the kitchen floor had been open to the wind and rain. Heather thatch and hazel-withy walls. What a lot of work. We did this, we wrote songs, and all that code… When did we sleep?

Well, admittedly the tech did most of the coding, far as my stuff and Ax’s was concerned: bless it.

Other shelters she had known rose around her, drawn up by nets of fire. Her bedroom in the cold house. The smoky basement in Lambeth where she’d first shared a bed with Ax Preston. The annexe in Travellers’ Meadow, dancing shadows of oak leaves on sunlit canvas. A trailer park cabin on a cold beach in Mexico, the red bedchamber at Wallingham… The front door of the bird’s nest, a basketwork screen you could shift aside, was open. She tugged off her boots, stowed them under the eaves and ducked inside.

‘Is it over?’

‘Yeah,’ said Sage. ‘All over.’

‘Any more for the casualty list?’

‘No,’ said Ax, quickly: he knew she meant their personal casualty list, not the executions. ‘One to take off. I saw Rox.’

‘You didn’t tell me that!’ exclaimed Sage.

‘It went out of my mind, sorry. It was a glimpse, but s/he seemed fine. Getting out of a taxi in Queen Anne Street, straight indoors, through a Press pack, declining to comment.’

‘How…how normal.’

‘Yeah, it was strange.’

They made room, she sat between them on the heather bed: enhanced by blankets from the empty house. Everything looked different. The water-still, their single blackened cooking pan, the equally blackened kettle. No fireplace, they made their fires outdoors. The generous body and taut-strung throat of Ax’s Les Paul, glowing in shadow. Her tapestry bag; the coloured rags, formerly clothes, stuffed into gaps in the basketweave. Rabbit skins, bones, feathers, ogre debris like a fox’s den. She felt that she had woken from an eerie, compelling dream. Where was I just now? What day is this? The Scots dumped us by the side of the road, and then…?

She knew her lovers were feeling the same. They had fallen asleep, they had been in another world, now it was time to wake up.

‘There’s bread and milk,’ said Ax. ‘Let’s eat.’

They shared the milk, tore up the bread and devoured it. Min dragged his piece off, killed it elaborately and wolfed it down with gusto. He ate anything, and he had weird bower-bird tendencies: he brought pebbles and sticks indoors, hid them in a secret cache and went bananas if anyone touched them. Outside the mist turned to rain. They spoke of the weather-proofing they’d need to do, if they were going to stay here much longer.

It was time to talk about the choice they’d made, and what they should do now. But not just yet. Fiorinda tried to convince Sage to let her at his hair.

‘I’ll do you cane rows, I’ve got a good comb.’

‘You don’t know how.’

‘I’ve seen it done. How hard could a few little plaits be? All right, let me cut it. I have nailscissors. C’mon, it’ll be an improvement on the greasy yellow afro—’

‘Fuck off, evil brat. I am nurturing dreadlocks.’

Ax lay with the kitten on his chest. He felt hollow and exhausted, and for a moment wondered why. Memory cuts out, you live in the present with a vengeance. For in my day I have had many bitter and shattering experiences, in war and on the stormy seas. He had a glimpse that this, here and now, was what it might be like to reach the Zen Self. The world is a terrible place, and that’s not going to go away. It’s all still got to be there, in the sweetness of the brimful cup.

We have to decide what to do next, my cats.

Someone coughed.

The rainlight at the doorway was blocked by a stooping figure, a face peered in. ‘Morning all. I was passing, thought I’d drop by, er—?’

It was the poacher, one of those friendly locals they depended on.

‘No problem,’ said Ax.

‘Good to see you, mister,’ added Sage

‘It’s Dave, name’s Dave, Mr Pender.’

‘Come in,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Have a seat. We’re not busy.’

‘I brought some black tea,’ said Dave the Poacher. He ducked indoors, like someone well used to living in a bender, and handed over a paper twist: about a hundred grams, a substantial present. This was the man who had left the rabbits on the post, back in September. Who had made Mr Preston effortlessly at that first encounter, because he had once been in the barmy army, been within an arm’s length of you, Sir. He’d served in the Velvet Invasion. Since when he’d taken to living rough and found he liked it.

‘It’s raining a bit.’ He drew out a packet of biscuits from an inner pocket, doubtfully, as if afraid he was overdoing it. ‘Thought I’d say hallo.’

‘We’ll brew up then,’ said Fiorinda. ‘We were just going to.’

The poacher had spoken to Ax, in the dusk of dawn or nightfall, and left his gifts of game, but he had never let himself be seen near the bothy; never come to their door. Nobody referred to the novelty of the visit, or hazarded a guess at the reason for it. Sage boiled a kettle out in the ruins, and they shared a brew of hot Rosie Lee.

The pain and pins and needles of returning life

Dave’s gingernuts didn’t go far. More visitors arrived, by ones and twos, until the headcount had passed thirty: which was a shock. They’d known they had protectors, who might become betrayers; or pay a heavy price for staying loyal. They’d accepted this as fate, but you wondered just how far the whisper had spread. Ah well, too bad, we more or less knew what we were doing. Most came for a few minutes, bringing gifts of food, as is traditional. Others stayed longer, some made a session of it. No one stated what was happening, or why. Conversation was about the Forest, the weather prospects, the habits of wildlife, local affairs. A little, at last, about the events this morning in London, and yesterday in the prison yard in Croydon.

The hosts kept the tea kettle going. Milk and sugar arrived with the company. Cups and mugs were shared, which caused good-humoured problems over differing tastes. Later, the poacher offered to top up the brew with ‘something’. He meant vodka, but finding Fiorinda and Ax demurred he just passed the bottle round. Ax took down his guitar, and started picking. Nobody paid any attention. The visitors behaved as if it was perfectly natural to have Ax Preston playing guitar like that. Sage and Fiorinda acted like it happened all the time; which indeed it did. People spoke more boldly: about the astonishing speed of the invasion and how far away it all seemed.

Degrees of separation. I could have been in London that week, but I wasn’t. My wife’s cousin was killed in Cornwall. My grandad saw them coming in. What about those amazing semi-orbitals? What d’you think they use for fuel? Somebody had heard that the rocket fuel was made out sea-water. The Chinese run everything on sea-water and shit. ‘I think that’s a joke,’ said the younger of the two boys from Stanger’s dairy farm, one of the places where Ax went to siphon news. ‘Hu was making a joke. He meant brackish water, worthless water, only he didn’t know the word.’

‘Oh yeah,’ countered his brother. ‘And how many Chinese words do you know, smartarse?’

‘I know the name for England. It’s Yingguoren, it means, “brave country”’

That cracked everybody up.

‘They’ll have to think of something else,’ said Mrs Brown from the Anchor at Hartfield, where Ax had gone begging, basically, at the kitchen door; and been treated like a king. Which had impressed him very much, from an infidel, until it dawned on him (duh) that she knew who he was. Mrs Brown’s teenage daughter, Alison, had been doing a Hedgeschool Maths and Physics degree. ‘If you had the exact flight plan,’ she offered, trying her best, ‘you could work out some parameters for the fuel, couldn’t you?’

‘If I had the exact flight plan,’ snapped the egg man, going red in the face. ‘I’d beat you over the head with it. Callous little bugger!’ he exclaimed, in general. ‘It’s not a pub quiz! It’s people’s lives, it’s—’

The Forest Ranger, the one who’d caught Sage and Fiorinda nicking hazel poles, nudged him sharply; and he shut up. Apart from that outburst no one showed any distress except the railway linesman, who was a little weepy. But there were long pauses, in which Ax’s guitar came up singing.

At nightfall Fiorinda lingered over putting her fire to bed. The chimney in the west gable had proved functional, once they’d removed the starling nests. They’d cleaned it, by dragging bunches of heather through the flue. Just leave us alone, she thought. Let us mend our house in peace, we don’t care where the government lives. The rain had stopped, a few stars were coming out. Sage and Ax emerged from the bothy with the poacher, the last guest.

The three men stood gazing at the sky.

‘I’d better be going,’ said Dave. Then he looked so solemn and daring that Ax wondered what the fuck was coming: but he just thrust out his earth-coloured right hand. Ax shook it.

‘Thank you,’ said Dave, very chuffed. ‘Well, now they’ll find out.’

Ax grinned, and nodded. ‘Now we have to win the peace.’

The poacher was maybe no older than Ax and Sage, but one of those people who moves quickly to a permanent ageless state. He looked at Ax as if calculating the behaviour of something wild, and maybe dangerous.

‘Ah. Is that what we’ve got to do, Sir?’

‘It’s the only way.’

They stood looking after him, til he’d vanished between the thorns. Their eyes were adapted to this time, the half-light that animals live in. ‘I didn’t think I’d spend today celebrating a wake,’ said Ax. ‘I had no idea I knew how to do it,’ said Sage. ‘The awkward silences and everything,’ agreed Fiorinda. ‘We did well on the food.’

Ax had not realised how much he’d missed this state of mind, the cream poured over the bitter shot of liquor; you think you remember but you forget, until you’re back in the same situation. I have the light of destiny in me again, he thought. I’m going to find a way out of this snare, and I don’t give a damn, right now, if believing I can do it is dangerous medicine. ‘One more Shakespearian moment,’ he said. They nodded: yeah. The king and the queen, and their lover, the great Minister, stood in the courtyard of their last castle, at the nadir of their fortunes. Now out of this nettle, danger, we will pluck the flower, safety.

Let the sun come up tomorrow

Let the sun go down tonight

Let the ploughshare and the harrow

Work and rest, work and rest.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Epigraph

Contents

Prologue

The Watchtower

Part One

ONE Rue Morgue Avenue

TWO The Doors Of Perception

THREE Small Ax

FOUR Careless Love

FIVE The Way It Is

Part Two

SIX Insanity

SEVEN The Walls

EIGHT Wood Court

NINE The Ploughshare and the Harrow