Rainbow Bridge (2 page)

They measure famine differently in China.

There was something people had started to say, at the height of the invasion, one of those mystery obscure expressions that is suddenly everywhere, and everyone knows what it means.
Is China going to take a card?
The Chinese had leapt around the world, with the tech they’d been nurturing in secret through the years of chaos. Within a week they’d had Europe in a box, England and Roumania overrun. Almost at once, the English had known that their only hope was if the rampage went on. If China attacked again—say France, or Ireland—the world would’ve
had to
muster some kind of protest, some kind of refusal.

The hope was gone, the moment had passed. China had taken a card. Fred Eiffrich, the same US President who’d compelled the English government to accept Ax as Head of State two years ago, had given the rape of England his blessing. For their next move the Chinese would take over the world. The whole, entire planet. It was horrific, a nightmare, your brain couldn’t take it in, yet it was going to happen. There was nobody left to stop them.

But
I am here
, thought Dian, watching the seconds. With the Commander in Chief… Wang had been the public face of the invasion, the sexy one you saw all the time. He was tall and handsome (a man’s height was important to Dian). He looked just as good out of uniform, and the Four Commanding Generals were supposed to be equals, but it was obvious that Wang was top dog. The so-called General of the Capital, Hu Qinfu, was nowhere when Wang came to town.

As a journalist she was dead meat. It didn’t matter how close she’d been to Ax Preston once upon a time. At the end, Dian’d been the willing servant of the ruthless occult
junta
the Chinese had deposed, and everybody knew it. She couldn’t get a job as a toilet cleaner… But I can still follow the money. It’s what I do best. Recalibrate, recalibrate (that’s such an Ax Preston word). Survival is the new success.

Time’s up. Most of her make-up was permanent: the face in the mirror above the basin looked back smooth and bright, thank God. She added a dash of gloss to her lips and adjusted the neckline of her glittering tunic, worn over narrow quilt-stitched trousers, Allie Marlowe style. Looking good. No man can resist a superb pair of boobs… A row of photos on the wall behind her. Was that Fiorinda again? She turned, in the narrow space, with a strange tug of dread: looked closer, and saw a child in school uniform. It was Fiorinda, but she was about twelve years old. The room was differently decorated, but it was the one Dian had just left.

‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘Oh my God, where am I?’

The space capsule walls pulsed, black waves rippled across her vision. She found herself sitting on the side of the bathtub, clutching the silver charm of the Three locked in congress; that she kept on her keychain. She stuffed it back into her bag, horrified. I must chuck that. My God, why haven’t I thrown that away?

Now she had to go back to Wang. It felt like the most terrifying thing she’d ever done in her life. But food and shelter were at stake, comfort was at stake.

She didn’t hesitate.

The gold-curtained windows of the little living room were shimmering lamplit screens. General Wang made shadow puppets: a dog, a rabbit, a butterfly pursued each other into oblivion. He experimented quietly with the different tones, each with its specific meaning, of the most English of all words. Aggressive:
Soh
-ri; humorous, Soorrree; inquiring, So-ri?; and the incessant, barely articulated whisper of social lubrication:
s’ry, s’ry
… Mechanical fluency in a language is nothing compared to the power of one perfectly natural sound. Dian was taking her time. He wondered if she had spotted the
other
photos, the ones he kept discreetly out of sight.

As soon as she reappeared, he knew she had.

‘Ah, Dian. Have we finished with the food? Shall I have it cleared away?’

‘Sorry about that, I suddenly felt ill. I’m not used to such rich dishes.’

‘You’re all right now, though? Good! I was wondering, while you were gone, what exactly is the meaning of that Western expression
heart of darkness
?’

She stared at him, her command of the situation shattered.

Wang nodded. ‘I’m curious, because, of course, in a deluded sense, the “heart” of England’s “darkness” could be right here where I am sitting.’

General Hu had taken possession of the Triumvirate’s modest home on Brixton Hill. That was his prerogative, and the best he could do, since Buckingham Palace had been gutted by fire when the siege was broken. Wang, with a different brief and more imagination, had located a more potent shrine. An orderly silently cleared the dishes. Wang waited until the man was gone. He sat upright now, relaxed but stern, his authority emerging from behind the playful indulgence. ‘Yes, Dian, you’ve guessed it. This flat was the love nest where Rufus O’Niall, a brutally successful old rockstar, brought his young girls; and the last of them was Fiorinda Slater, his own twelve-year-old daughter. Whom he believed could bear him a child with “magical” powers.’

‘Oh my God. You can’t be living here. This is
horrible
.’

‘Close the door on the past, Dian. It’s only superstition that makes you afraid of a place where something ugly happened once, to one of your rockstar royals. Rufus O’Niall was an unpleasant lunatic, and a war criminal. He’s dead; that’s all.’ ‘I’m n-not superstitious! I kept away from all that. I
hated
all that.’

‘Good.’ He watched her, with a gentle, urbane smile. ‘This is re-education, Dian. This is how it works. First you will learn to feign indifference, because you are an intelligent woman, you understand your position and you want to live. Then indifference to these delusions will become genuine, and your self-made troubles will be over. Why don’t you sit down?’

Dian sat down.

‘Let’s continue our conversation. Dilip Krishnachandran, although by far the senior, was Aoxomoxoa’s disciple. Were they also lovers?’ He laughed at her expression. ‘Speak freely, I’m not easy to shock. Actually I’m thrilled by all the Reich’s Bohemian couplings. Life must have been so exciting.’

She fled into the past. It was Boat People Summer, a year of disasters overcome: which had begun with the monster hippies in charge and an Islamic Separatist war in Yorkshire, and ended with the country at peace; storm and flood defied, the Rock and Roll Reich established. But this was a night in June. A tv studio, as glamorous as such places ever are: a cluster of prefabs in a Wandsworth car park. Dian had interviewed Aoxomoxoa and the Heads on her live show; Fiorinda and veteran rock critic Roxane Smith also appearing. He’d waylaid her after the show, in a makeshift corridor that smelled of carpet glue. He was eating hothouse grapes, tossing them into the open gullet of the living skull mask. Most rockstars are sad munchkins in the flesh. Dian was six foot, but Aoxomoxoa was easily six foot six, and
hench
. His shoulders in that fuck-you white singlet, sleek and massive and perfect. His nearness was making her head spin, and he knew it.

Possibly the hottest rockstar
on earth
, and she could feel his body heat.

‘London’s so different now. I love the anarchy but I miss the neon—’

‘How about a fuck?’

‘Augh!
Sage!
You can’t
do
that. It’s outrageous. You can’t just, just—’

‘I jus’ did,’ he said, reasonably, in that slow, insolent Cornish surfie accent.

‘You’re such a clown.’

‘Not many people realise that.’

He took off the mask and smiled, with the bluest eyes. His naked face wasn’t such a prize as it should have been. Sage and his brother Heads had taken off their skull masks on the show, a rare treat for the punters. But my God how
sexy
. She’d imagined this moment with better trimmings, she told herself the hearts and flowers would come. He wants me, possession is nine-tenths of the law, he thinks he’s smart but I’m smarter. No way she wouldn’t get the rest.

‘Your place or mine?’ she wondered, with a bold grin.

‘Yours. I don’ like sharing my own bed.’

The band came trooping by, with a few mates. Big George Merrick, Sage’s second-in-command, cast a stone-faced skull glance of disapproval, then they were gone, and the blond bombshell moved in like a firestorm. His crippled hands, that she didn’t like to think about, were all over her. Everything blurred, the sharp edges of reality vanished.

She had to recall the scene at the studio exactly as it had happened, down to the sting of George’s little disapproving look, or she didn’t get the shock of his first kiss, her most reliable sex aid, an aphrodisiac that
never
failed. Now she was free to improvise. Sage whispered tender things, how he’d dreamed of this moment, how he longed to spend his life with her. They went back to his place, after all, because he really loved her. He didn’t even want to do it on their first date, he wanted to wait, but his passion was unstoppable, he was feverishly undressing her—

Wang had no occasion to resort to fantasy. He was in bed with a splendid, willing Amazon, in the capital of the most romantic country in the world; which he had recently conquered. Sometimes the moment is enough. But when she was sleeping he put on a robe, and sat looking out between the golden curtains (the bedroom had the same décor as the living room) into the quiet of Chelsea. He had visited London before the Crash: a sad disappointment, all bling and guns and the most repellent spiritual poverty. He preferred Ax Preston’s version, albeit ravaged by grandiose ‘Green’ redevelopment; and Hu’s somewhat careless treatment. He liked the
darkness
of these English cities. The frugality of street lighting that mapped human movement, little networks of fire, ever-changing—

The courtesan slept like a baby in the haunted shrine; which allayed his own nagging disquiet. Disquiet? Call it fear and dread, if you must… But fear made this distasteful address worthwhile.

She would be his litmus paper; her responses would be his test-bed.

‘And if there’s any secret gold in these clouded hills,’ he murmured, with bravado to match Dian’s, ‘it’s Chinese gold now.’

Ashdown

One Rainy Wish

The festival stages were going up, in the midst of a picturesque heathland known as the Ashdown Forest, some forty kilometres south of the 18
^th
October Line. Scaffolders mounted the mainstage towers with a merry clangour and hammering that sang of better days; of the Reich in its glory. Around the margins of the broad hollow that formed the arena, rolls of doubled baling plastic were being stapled down for flooring, in the shelters for tentless campers. The big tents for smaller stages had been raised, the designated campground was filling up. Word had gone out and the faithful had made their way to Sussex, from raw battlefields and freshly occupied cities; some with Chinese permissions, some travelling on the underground; some from as far away as Yorkshire. They drifted, watching the crews, buying hot drinks and pies from concession stands, clotting into groups; meeting the locals.

No motor vehicles. True to its code, the Reich wouldn’t have sullied the protected heath with chicken-wire track, also they had very little fuel to spare. A line of roustabouts, backs bent like Egyptian slaves, laden like donkeys or hauling great obelisks on handcarts, stretched from mainstage away out of sight, towards the road. Dogs and lost children fretted; ancient shopping trolleys ran aground. An enterprising local could be heard roaring out his wares, ‘
Skids! Get yer skids here!
’

Up on the stage a team of sound and light engineers were taking stock, reading the prospective ’scapes on gadget-belt screens, discussing their difficulties in a private world, oblivious of the scaffolders’ row. A lanky individual in scarecrow jeans stared out at the arena from under the hood of a shabby grey fleece. He was looking, without much hope, for a man called Doug Hutton—last seen several months ago, on the night Ax Preston and his partners had been arrested as they tried to leave the country. But the crowd itself caught his attention. They had finally lost it, the indefatigable ravers. They had lost control, they were falling-down helpless, not a leg to stand on. They’d come here to be found, uprooted children clinging to the familiar “traveller’s joy” logo on battered marquees. To the shards of the Reich’s life raft, flotsam and jetsam on the grey waves of the heath—

‘Was’ that rubbidge Caro?’

‘Appropriate, healthy, social and political comment.’

‘Sounds like arsing
culture
ter me,’ complained a hefty fellow with a mane of curly black hair. The tall engineer in the grey hoodie shivered and gobbed into a nasty-looking rag, causing the team to yelp and gag, clasping their ears.

‘SAGE! Don’t fucking DO THAT! That’s DISGUSTING.’

‘Carn’ help having a cold, can I?’

‘It’s the “Slaves’ Chorus” from
Aida
,’ admitted Caro Letwynd, a pigtailed woman with a serene broad face, long-time chief lighting designer for Aoxomoxoa and the Heads. Her colleagues jeered. Ooh, art-for-a-cause, the old Italian connection. Ooh, she’s an intellectual in’t she. If Caro was such a suck-up, someone inquired, did she have ‘The East Is Red’ in her catalogue? ‘You bet I have. Coming soon.’