Authors: Gwyneth Jones
He was alone, the crew must be up front. He had the choice of facing east, or space for prostrations. He chose to face the sunrise, and prayed for protection and mercy: with a remembrance, as always, for the Saudi prince and his household in Charles St—who’d given Ax refuge when he was in a very bad place. Ah, glory days. The English Caliphate, enlightened, benign, multicultural. Ax had never bought that dream, but he’d felt the tug of it… The slow, helpless journey had released him; like setting out for Yorkshire, long ago. What do I want out of life? Me, myself? He felt within him an untapped capacity for simple happiness; somewhere, somehow.
Automatic rifle fire rattled, a mortar shell boomed. He realised, with a shock, that there were
other
big vehicles around him, not far off, but bearing no lights. What the fuck? Have we got half a division for an escort? Suppose that might explain why this is taking so fucking long—
Ax hadn’t been able to get hold of any decent intelligence in London (he hadn’t dared to try). Was it possible that the 2
nd
AMID army had completely lost control up here? They had swept from Asia to the gates of Bucharest like the Mongol hordes, but the only plan the PLA’d ever had for subduing an offshore island had involved Taiwan and they’d never tried it in anger. You have to trash the resistance
quickly
, Wang. Be brutal. Or this will go on for fucking ages, and you will
never, never
win the hearts and minds.
Richard Kent’s bewildered face took shape on the bruised darkness, and Cornelius, the fearless old man, with his terrible, suicide eyes. They’d been made to look like fools, but they were right: Ax had changed his allegiance. He didn’t want to drive the invaders into the sea. He wanted the Chinese to win. Hands down, and soon, and why isn’t it happening? Thank fuck I have foresworn the path of violence, he thought. At least I won’t find myself accepting an imaginary rank in the Chinese army, just to get my hands on the wheel. He made his way along the flank of the amphib, and stood in shadow. Lieutenant Colonel Soong was talking with his officers, their faces lit by orange stutters of fire. Ax couldn’t follow the conversation, it wasn’t
putonghua
: sounded like Cantonese, probably Norman’s native dialect. An occasional word came clear. The taste of tobacco was in his mouth, an awakened craving he could have done without. Norman spotted him. His big head loomed, stiff ringlets framed in the snood of his raincape. Ax glimpsed the puzzled, bear-like woman the rock director had been, and it made the man seem more human.
‘Ax! You came out to see the fireworks. It’s perfectly harmless, we’re just having a rest break here.’
Ax nodded, though it was obvious they’d taken cover to keep out of trouble.
‘You slept, I hope. How do you feel this morning?’
‘Like an artist of the floating world. Norman, do you happen to have a common or garden old-fashioned cancer stick on you?’
‘Hahaha. The nicotine urge! That’s my fault! No, I won’t corrupt you further. Let’s go inside. There’s not a
scrap
of danger, but the soldiers want us inside.’
At daybreak the passengers were on deck to see the white walls of Peterborough Fort, flashing in the midst of a vast steel-grey mere. Shards of rubble, slabs of tower block rose from the waters, where urban sprawl had been demolished; as was the Chinese policy around their major bases. The convoy forged its way to a mudbank above the Nene’s winter domain, and the Peace Tour disembarked: Norman had arranged local, native transport from here on in. The military element unloaded a heap of crates, boxes and airline cases, the missionaries cheerfully lending a hand. The amphibs reversed, churning ochre-coloured foam, and headed for the fort.
Soldiers surrounded the boxes, clutching rifles, infectiously uneasy. The nun and her missionaries spread a plastic sheet and squatted on their heels. The mudbank was featureless, aside from a ragged metal placard on a pole, bearing a daubed blue Noah’s ark, and a number 15 in red. The rain had stopped, clouds were scudding; an icy breeze tugged their coats and set Fiorinda’s curls whipping around her head. Toby hugged his fur rug and stared at the distant nanotech wall, as if longing for the tough love of Chinese Occupation, in preference to present company. Norman made a phone call. Presumably he had the deluxe service, without demons.
In general, the world must unite when it has been long divided—
The water bus arrived: a flat-bottomed boat without sail or engine, drawn by a two big work-horses, a bay and an iron-grey, harnessed in file and guided by a teenage boy; or maybe girl. The Chinese officers had an animated discussion with the rock director, it sounded as if they’d expected a much bigger craft. The Peace Tour embarked. The boxes, and most of the soldiers, stayed behind.
‘Now then, who’s got the travel warrant?’ said the bus driver, a stubble-headed bruiser in perished neoprene shorts, dive shoes and a National Express jacket.
‘I do!’ Norman proffered a slip of coloured plastic, smiling nervously. The bruiser looked it over, selected a spot and bit it. He winked at Ax. ‘Mind you keep hold of that, Mr Soong. You’ll need it if an inspector gets on.’
‘Interesting start,’ murmured Sage. ‘We spend the night dodging firefights in slomo, then we take off for hostiles’ territory minus most of our safety net. Do you know where we are, Ax? Have we crossed the Line yet?’
‘I think we’re on the A15. The horses seem to have hard standing.’
‘Why do I keep hearing “The Ride of the Valkyrie”?’ muttered Joe.
‘Telepathy artefact,’ said Fiorinda. Norman was gazing eastward into the breeze, the hood of his raincape tossed back, chin up in a mad, martial pose.
‘I just hope he doesn’t expect us to go surfing in these temperatures.’
Norman, the human camera (he had eye-socket tech, obviously) panned around slowly to face the four of them, his back to the horses. His gaze checked the Gibson’s hard case; glanced off Sage’s visionboard, grazed the tapestry bag that Fiorinda held on her knees. ‘You look like children,’ he remarked. ‘Clutching the teddies you snatched from your burning house.’
‘It would be cruel to part us from them,’ said Ax. ‘We’re trying very hard to get better, but we still feel more like refugees than megastars.’
‘I understand, and I won’t snatch. I
want
your homeless vibe. You are the cultural icons of this refugee time. The most famous rockstars in the world, though hardly for your music—at least not at the moment. I’m going to change that. I want to combine, to
fuse
the naked, bereft humanity that I see, with your immensely high profile. I won’t take the teddies, but metaphorical bones may be broken, wounds torn open, it will be superb. You’ll love what I make of you, I promise that.’
The refugee icons nodded, warily.
‘The labour camps were established in the dictatorship?’
‘Some,’ said Fiorinda. ‘We had a big problem with the people we called the drop-out hordes, the lost souls who’d given up and taken to the roads—’
‘Itinerant workers, ah yes, a global issue.’
‘More like a terminally redundant underclass. At first we moved them around, wherever gang labour was needed; mostly on the land, but it wasn’t sustainable. You can only do that with seasonal volunteers who have lives to go back to. The drop-outs needed security, so the permanent camps went up. We tried to make them into communities, and get in there, and claw back the children—’
‘Under the Neo-Feudalists this became a system of reform through labour.’
The horses plunged into a deep pool. The teenage jockey whooped, the boat rocked, the draft animals became swimmers. Ax glanced behind them. A couple of small landing craft had left the fort, and were headed for the mudbank bus-stop. The soldiers and that mountain of boxes would travel less romantically.
‘Nah,’ said Fiorinda. ‘The Second Chamber’s police state rounded up so-called political criminals, but not enough to change the character of the camps. They stayed what they always were, the post-modern version of an institution called the workhouse. Containment for the people who can’t, or won’t, take care of themselves.’
‘They are sheltered, they have useful work. It’s a moral solution, enlightened capitalism. Why do you object?’
‘I don’t. I’m the one who set the camps up.’
‘Oh,’ said Norman, taken aback. ‘I, ah, I didn’t fully understand that.’
‘I don’t like the armed guards and locked gates, Norman. Policing doesn’t have to be like that. And I objected very seriously to the Second Chamber idea that the homeless had become property; and could be sold into private ownership.’
‘Hm. Well, this is supposed to be about the
music
, Fiorinda.’
‘Sorry. It’s been a hobby of mine, the last few years.’
The guitar-man and Aoxomoxoa, on either side of their lady, said nothing. But Norman could see why they were called the tiger and the wolf.
The whole countryside was under water. The route they followed was sometimes marked only by a double crest of leafless hedgerow, bristling above the flood. Nothing moved except the squalling gulls that crossed overhead, beating away north, to the Wash. Norman resumed his
Apocalypse Now
pose. The bus driver left his mate to handle the steering oar, and came and sat by Ax.
‘Mr Preston?’ he said quietly.
‘Yeah?’
‘The guys want to meet you, at Westberry, Sir.’
‘Oh really? Which guys?’
The driver tugged on the gold hoop, traditional National Express accessory, in his right ear; and jerked his head in Norman’s direction. ‘Don’t you worry about the luvvie. He knows bugger-all, an’ he’ll come to no harm, nor will the military. We know that would be fuckin’ counter-productive.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Tucker. They call the jockey Frosty, she’s my kid. Me mate’s called Ed.’
‘Tucker, tell your guys Ax is here strictly to win the peace.’
Tucker grinned, revealing a gold tooth to match the earring; a sign of considerable status. ‘As long as we’re winning. I like winning.’
‘We’ll win,’ said Ax.
The white light was still with him. Some of the time.
The camp stood on an island, surrounded by the birch scrub for their biomass generator. The last time the Triumvirate had visited here, the spiked stockade and the watchtowers had been new. They’d seen Auschwitz planted in the fens, and they’d been frightened. Today the gates were open, and a crowd had come to the landing stage. The campers—motley in Volunteer Initiative clothing supplies, virulent in Second Chamber-issue green overalls—waved homemade streamers and cheered as the water bus came in. The teenage jockey pulled off her baseball cap, releasing a mass of hair white-blonde as a dandelion puff, sprang onto her hands on the grey’s shoulders, and back-flipped to the ground. The crowd hooted, the male Warden took a swipe, yelling, ‘Get out of it, Frosty, ye’ pushy disrespectful—’ He recollected his dignity, and bowed.
‘Welcome to Warren Fen, Colonel Soong.’
‘Delighted, delighted,’ said Norman. ‘You must be Warden Fisher, and this will be Madame Warden Flagg—’
‘Commandants,’ corrected Jack Fisher. ‘We prefer commandants. Wardens was what the Second Chamber fuckers called us, couldn’t take a joke, that lot.’
Norman frowned. ‘You are wardens. I don’t appreciate ugly humour.’
‘Right, of course sir,’ said Hester Flagg, seeking the eyes of the Triumvirate, and ducked a little curtsey. ‘An’ we’ll make sure the disruptive element stays out of shot,
we
know ’ow to do this. Now, where’s our inductees?’
‘Ooh, I’m not having that lanky yeller-hair,’ exclaimed Jack. ‘We know ’im, charge sheet a mile long, had ’im under me before. He’s a right troublemaker—’
Cousin Caterpillar drew himself up, shocked. ‘Aoxomoxoa
has already been an inmate
? I was not fully informed of this!’
‘It’s okay, Norman,’ said Sage. ‘Jack’s referring to very ancient history.’
The landing craft had caught up and the soldiers were unloading. The crowd made a rush, correctly identifying a bounty of Chinese aid supplies, and were repulsed with reversed rifles, panicky vigour. The Triumvirate saw this out of the corner of their eyes, and kept smiling. At least no shots fired, thank God—
‘Oooh yeh. Long,
long
time ago, he come up here with the barmies. It was when we were burning out the monocultures: we lived on this isle, it were an eco-warrior camp then. We’d cook up a big tun of napalm, you know that stuff? Burns like fuck. An’ this great tall mad rockstar lad was a pilot, on the crop-spraying.’
‘Ah, you were rooting out the blight of western globalisation agribusiness, good, that’s different. Did you say
napalm
? Hm… Oh, but I’m afraid Aoxomoxoa cannot have been a
pilot
, that’s quite impossible’ An expression of pure panic assailed Norman’s broad face, over the brink of a dreadful
faux pas
, unable to recover.
‘You mean because it was before I spent a fortune getting my hands fixed?” Sage grinned. “Nah. You don’t need ten fingers to fly a crop sprayer. It’s a piece of piss. I could do stuff. It was more of a metaphor, me cack-handed fuck-up.’
‘Yeah. We uster love the ugly mitts, it made him one of us. But they all sell out, rockstars, get their problem areas fixed, teeth white an’ that.’ Jack Fisher looked at Sage’s hands, and nodded. ‘It’s a weird thing. But it’s cool, trust me.’
‘Didn’t know you cared, Jack.’
‘We should get on,’ Ax broke the moment. ‘No offence, Norman, but I think your soldiers would be happier if we were inside.’
The boxes were piled on wind-up sleds, the crowd eagerly followed them. Norman stood gazing at the vast sky, the shining waters. ‘
Napalm
,’ he murmured
.
‘What a scene that would make! We could CGI it, Aoxomoxoa has a flashback—’
‘Yeah, it was in
Rivermead
. Harry did a big sea of flame sequence.’
‘Oh.’ Mention of the virtual movie about the Reich by Harry Lopez, decadent Hollywood charlatan, did not meet Norman’s approval. ‘
Rivermead
is proscribed, and artistically worthless. We will forget the napalm. Please tell them not to script themselves,’ he added, glowering. ‘I do not need unsolicited memoirs, teenage acrobats; or female staff
curtseying in boiler suits
. I’m not a talent scout, but I can see I’m going to have endless trouble.’