Rainbow Bridge (15 page)

‘Okay by me,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I don’t like bikinis.’

Every time he came back to them it was a revelation. The responsibilities, the vows, the terrors are nothing: this is the only way we can bear to live. Your mouth, his mouth. Pass me between you. Kiss him soul-deep, while you are driving into me with that power-hammer hunger; and for once nobody had to stay out, on watch. Nobody was on guard except a tabby kitten; and the mysterious presence of an unborn child, watching from the shoreless silence of the 0s and 1s.

The tiger and the wolf slept in each other’s arms. The three quarter moon left their window and the winter stars looked in. Fiorinda lay awake, demons and entrails reduced to a scrabble on the edges of her mind, thinking of the eerie glow that Ax had brought back from Reading, which he had not explained.

Wondering if Shi Huangdi could really save her life.

The Triumvirate returned to London from their protected rural retreat. They did a press conference, aired by Joyous Liberation in a special feature, in which it was implied—CGI—that they’d spent the duration chilling in an Elizabethan manor house, in the tender loving care of the kindly old General of the South East.

How had they felt about the invasion, when it happened?

‘Stunned,’ said Ax. ‘It was truly awe-inspiring. And grateful, frankly.’

‘We knew at once we had to be part of this thing,’ said Fiorinda.

Aoxomoxoa, is it true you were taken from detention and tortured by the Second Chamber junta’s orders?

‘Yes. It was a hideous experience, I don’t like to talk about it.’

Sage had been tortured because the bad guys thought he knew where they could find a pair of real-time cognitive scanners, vital component in the making of an occult superweapon. What was he to do if this line of questioning continued? Okay for you, Ax, but to me it
is
rocket science. I have to work each answer out in my head, I leave gaping pauses… It disturbed him to be called Aoxomoxoa, but he wished he had the living skull mask to hide behind.

The woman (this one was a major, by rank) turned her back, and asked Fiorinda something. Chinese give Triumvirate nice house, evil deposed regime tortures them, point made, moving on. The front row of the studio audience was top brass. Wang Xili sat smiling, carelessly elegant, one leg crossed over the other, his trophy courtesan beside him. Sage wondered how she felt about being there, on the wrong side of the lights. Was this part of her re-education, or did Wang simply like to show her off? His role in the interview was not taxing, Ax and Fiorinda were getting all the questions, but Dian’s white face kept tugging at him. Stay away from me, he thought. We can’t afford to listen to your nightmares, not now; not yet.

Norman Soong’s Peace Tour launch was held at The Bays, Covent Garden, current cool little boutique hotel of choice. Areeka had found out at the last moment that the gemlike salons were being filled with vases and vases of spring blossom. My God. How can anyone NOT KNOW that Fiorinda hates cut flowers? Fiorinda thought that the less the Chinese knew, the better, but she insisted the décor be changed to a winter theme. Bring chrysanthemums, witch hazels, hellebores, camellias, scented daphne, oh, you can leave the snowdrops. Sha had been obeyed. The result was very beautiful, but had a wayward, funereal feel.

The story had got around. Norman Soong sought Fiorinda in the crush, and stood before her in a multicoloured business suit, one large fist pressed to his breast in salute. ‘You!’ he intoned, rolling his full, dark eyes. ‘You!’ He lifted a dark red chrysanthemum from the nearest display, snapped the stem and tucked it into his buttonhole. ‘Superb!’ He nodded mysteriously. ‘Into the unknown!’

Norman walked away at once, fearing that his diva would break the mood with some banal response. By the buffet he was accosted by a large, pale, solemn person who said. ‘I am the Egg Man, you know.’

‘The Walrus was Paul,’ agreed Norman, bored. The jewel salons were littered with Reich In Hiding kooks: a treat for the kooks, traps for the unwary.

‘No, I’m the egg man of
now
. Happy hens free to roam, that egg man. In the shelter of the trees, playing with the bugs and bees. I’m in that song on
Wood Court
.’

‘
Wood Court
has been erased,’ said Norman, forbiddingly. ‘You don’t exist.’

Toby had ensconced himself among very close friends, refusing to say a word to the media pack. It was unwise, but Norman decided to let him be.

Fiorinda wore a sleeveless fleece-lined tunic over layers of empire line indigo taffeta, and grinned at Allie Marlowe across the room: who was also impersonating a Tenniel chess piece, a tame style icon being selfless, what a brilliant asset. Pregnant? I don’t think so, just fashion victim. Oh, it was spooky to be back, and see Reich friends with their snouts in the trough, the Second Chamber celebs swept away. Shelley Brown, being courted for several Reconstruction Committees. Dave Wright, very big comic, chatting up Roxane Smith. The Chinese had only recently discovered Rox, and they loved hir. Transgendered, flamboyant doyenoid of rock criticism, Oxford accent: right up the tourists’ street. Ax hadn’t forgiven hir yet, but he would come round… Cherry Dawkins, the beauty, looking stunningly fabulous, was attracting a lot of attention, while dazzling newcomer Areeka Aziz (where’s Rosamond now, eh?), informally interviewed Ax and Sage, for
Weal,
Chinese approved Futuristic-Utopian zine
.
Sage was busy telling Areeka that the lyrics for ‘Winter Song’ had come from a kiddies’ talking book.

‘“Tarka The Otter”,
Henry Williamson,
you got that?’

‘Is it really about otters, or is that just the character’s name?’

‘Real otters.’

‘Cool! Did it hurt
stupidly
when you had your Celtic tattoo done, Ax? My mum says the pain is so bad people faint. She says I’d throw up.’

Ax took the interviewer’s hand, kindly and sorrowful. ‘Areeka, someone has to break this to you. Your parents, well, they tell lies.’

‘Your feet won’t fall off if you wear spike heels, either,’ added Dora.

‘You’ll just get bunions,’ said Allie, reassuringly. ‘They’re nothing.’

Chinese media persons in spruce uniforms crowded eagerly around, pointing their gadgets. Fiorinda leaned over Cherry’s chair.

‘Must say, you scrub up nicely, outlaws.’

Here we go. Into the unknown.

Rivers And Lakes

Coppola In A Cold Climate

The personnel carrier was a big bugger. It dwarfed the two men who walked around it, staring at the track housing, the gun turrets, the armoured decks fore and aft. Traces of amphibious tank design could be discerned, and some relation to the purple airships. Maybe it
was
an airship, morphed into ground-covering form. Or a module podded from one of them, who knows. Ax watched the
di
of the track, stirring like water troubled by hidden springs. Nanotech has no off switch, only stable iteration; running on the spot. That’s what the Luddites used to scream about pre-Crisis, when the grey goo was barely real. Now it’s here, everything scary is still true, and it doesn’t matter.

‘There are five directions. North, South, East, West and Centre. It may be something they worked out
after
deciding five was vital for numerology reasons, but it makes sense, you know. Without a centre there are no directions.’

‘And this is your argument for the fifth Commanding General?’

‘One of them.’

‘You think numerology is important to them, in the twenty-first century?’

The purple snake was comatose, like a python replete, but these things could move like the clappers if they wanted to, he’d seen it on tv. He wondered how long the journey would take. Half an hour? That would be good, better get it over with, and a damned fine change, after the mediaeval pace of the Reich-in-Hiding—

‘Don’t numbers, the meaning, the feel of them, matter intensely to you?’

‘Well, yeah. But Ax, I’m a geek—’

‘They’re a nation of geeks. China is geek heaven. There’s a centre, to make five directions, and a nominal extra season, between summer and autumn, to make five seasons, to go with the five elements and the five phases. When a new dynasty was established the emperor announced a tutelary season, tutelary element. The Great Peace has done the same, did you know? This a Winter, Water, regime.’

‘Mm… But surely that’s a package dreamed up, for a trifling few billion yuan, by a Hong Kong PR firm. It’s not the truth about China.’

‘It’s what they choose to say about themselves, and that matters. Water’s obvious. Winter is,’ Ax frowned, ‘
modest
, strangely enough. Say this was an emperor, he’s calling himself a forerunner. The new beginning will come after him… It was a very good thing Fiorinda did with the flowers.’

‘She’s a genius.’

‘Yeah.’

It was the second week of January. They were inside a Chinese fort planted on derelict London sports grounds, waiting for the off. Snow and ice had taken a break, the air was wet and chill, the strange vehicles in this parking bay were already shrouded in grey dusk. They’d be heading for Peterborough in the dark at this rate. Possibly planned that way, contrary to the passengers’ information. Rumour said the actives avoided night attacks, as they had no night-sight tech (they only had rumour to go on, recalcitrants barely featured on Joyous Liberation News). Ah, well. At least they wouldn’t be making their first progress as megastar collaborators in the exposure of daylight—

‘I can see why they have to erase immix,’ said Sage. ‘The connection with the so-called Neurobomb is damning. But how can they make a total, clean sweep? The whole virtual movie industry, all the medical apps, bi-location phones? Of course I mean “pernicious neurological division”—’

‘I don’t see why not. The Great Peace Sphere is in full agreement over the ban, and no outside nation is going to argue with the Chinese Inspectors. They don’t have to threaten intervention, the economic weight is enough. It happens all the time, Sage. Your dad’s probably killed a good few big ideas, in his software baron career; without compunction, eh? And without the excuse they were direct from hell.’

‘Hm.’

They took another turn up and down. They’d discovered by trial and error that they were not to leave the bay. ‘Will you be able to get on with Norman?’

‘I think so. Aoxomoxoa has turned over a new leaf.’

It had become clear during the last fortnight that the Chinese were going to snub Sage at every turn. It was a trivial punishment, considering this was the man who
invented
immersion code, and had flirted at length with deluded neuroscience. But grass cuts can be a refined torture, when they never let up—

Playground bully tactics. The Chinese are expert at them.

‘Don’t let it get to you,’ said Ax. ‘They know what works, just take the medicine. We could try asking if you could be called Steve?’

Sage had ditched the cane rows and looked like himself again, except without the muscle bulk of long ago. Raindrops clung to the golden lamb’s fleece; he smiled very sweetly. ‘Nah, no worries. I won’t let you down, Sah.’

‘I know you won’t…“Sage” is a big concept in Chinese thought,’ said Ax. ‘The ideal emperor is a sage, a gentle, wise and morally superior being: and they know of you as a notorious yob. They’ll find out who you really are.’

‘Hahaha.’

A gunner stared down from the narrow deck; the Englishmen glanced at each other. Everything we say is heard. We may be bugged with the most exquisite surveillance devices, but that doesn’t mean every private soldier isn’t observing and reporting. This is rehabilitation, it’s not supposed to be fun.

‘There’s a five-year plan missing,’ said Ax softly. ‘Speaking of numerology. We should be on fourteen, but we’re not. I should have paid more attention to the documents Wang showed me, there must have been an explanation. This isn’t the twenty-first century, Sage. Or the fifteenth, either. Not anymore.’

‘You’re right. It’s the year of 0-1’

A soldier came up, saluted to Ax, made sure Sage copped a dissing glance, and ordered them back onboard. Maybe something was going to happen.

The cabin was austere. Two blocks of hard seats forward, two blocks aft; between them a bare floor space. Utility carpeting, a drinks machine in a bulkhead. There were no windows, the lighting was drab and diffuse. Fiorinda and Joe Muldur sat on the floor, playing gin-rummy. Norman was examining the classic revolutionary posters printed or programmed onto the curved, indigo walls. Toby Starborn, wrapped in a large faux-fur rug, occupied half the front row of aft seats. Personal baggage filled the other half. Ax took off his hat, but not his coat as the cabin was unheated: dug out a towel to rub the rain from Sage’s curls, and caught Toby’s faun’s eyes fixed on this intimacy with smouldering contempt. If you’re acting a part, Toby, under orders to needle us to death, you deserve an Oscar.

Sage had been taking a Chinese synthetic keloide, which had cleared up the pneumonia like magic. (Not magic, some other word!) Think of that, and a decent hospital for Fiorinda when her time comes. Ignore the pricks.