Rainbow Bridge (21 page)

‘So will I,’ said Fiorinda. ‘If I must, I’ll defend little shoot with lethal force.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said the bodhisattva. ‘Tha’s a relief to my mind.’

‘D’you want to get sorted
now
, maestro?’

‘Nah, that would be dumb. Wait til war’s declared. We are
so fucked
if we’re caught with weapons by our mentors. Jus’ wanted to know.’ He hugged Fiorinda, arms and legs, attack of the giant cave spider: ‘How long do we have to go on calling this baby Shoot, my brat? Ain’t you afraid a handle like that might warp a child?’

‘It’s a small green thing, growing.’

‘
Green
?
Oooh, that’ll cause comment around the font.’

‘If you’re determined not to commit yourself as to sex,’ reasoned Ax—

‘Although we know you know,’ mumbled the spider, nibbling her throat.

‘Fuck off, I
do not
know.’

‘Well, anyway,’ said Ax. ‘What’s wrong with Jocelyn? Or Hilary, or Esmé?’

‘You think you’re so funny. Listen, it’s MY baby and—’

Sage let her go. Both warm bodies retired, Fiorinda was left abandoned.

‘I didn’t mean that!’

‘That’s okay,’ said Ax, distantly. ‘I know where I stand.’

‘Me, I’ve never been in any doubt.’

Ouch, fuck. Fiorinda trembled, terrified. ‘I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it, you know I didn’t, please, please—’

‘Hahaha.’

‘Heeheehee.’

‘You bastards!’

Someone knocked. Sage went to open the door. A real soldier, not Norman’s orderly, stood there. ‘A call for Mr Preston,’ he announced in English.

‘Well, do come in.’

The soldier, junior lieutenant by his insignia, marched smartly into the room, laid a tablet in a slipcase on a small table, saluted, and marched back to the corridor.

Ax took the slipcase over to the windows, noting the protocol. He couldn’t have anything placed into his hands by an inferior; we’re getting very formal.

‘Ah, Mr Preston,’ cried General Wang. It was a different office, not the one in Reading: might even be Whitehall. ‘I wanted to consult you about free range sheep farming
.
This is surely wrong. Wouldn’t the animals be
happier
in cosy barns?’ Inscrutable as fuck.

‘General Wang, I’m not the expert. I’m repeating what I’ve been told in Select Committee. Soil fertility in the south and west of England has been strained nearly past recovery. The sheep are muck carts; they may win us back some arable, at the moment they’re the best use of the land. I know it’s hard to recognise local expertise. Africa and India are littered with fine-tuned farming and drainage systems wrecked by the British, meaning no harm, just convinced they were in Norfolk—’

‘Ah yes. Your loess belt, the fertile bulge. The east
must be
recovered, or England will starve. This becomes very clear to me.’

‘It’s very clear to me, too. Since you ask, General, we’re doing fine but I’m not sure it’s a safe idea to go over into Suffolk.’

‘Nonsense. Recalcitrant activity is on the Line, not in the hinterland. We are watching over you, rest assured. At the least sign of trouble we’ll have you back in Peterborough in half an hour.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. But—’

‘It’s out of my hands, Ax. Ah, a call waiting. I must take this, excuse me.’

Blank screen. Ax returned the tablet to its slipcase and set it down: the lieutenant recovered it and departed. Sage and Fiorinda were staring at him—

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I didn’t get onto the climate change crop shifting.’

It was two in the afternoon when they were summoned to the street. In a chill drizzle, soldiers were piling baggage onto the wind-up motor sleds, and arranging photogenic inmates for a happy farewell. Other soldiers, out of shot, held a rabble at bay; Toby Starborn stood aloof, hugging his fur. ‘My God!’ howled Norman. ‘There you are! This is intolerable! Where’s Joe? We should have been away by first light!’

It was petty, maybe, but a rockstar moment seemed called for.

‘Excuse me. Remembered something I have to do.’

Mr Preston glanced at his partners in apology, and strolled away.

He found the Learning Resource Centre; couldn’t remember how to find the drinking club venue. He chose a door labelled ‘book library’, and walked into a big, quiet room. A group of primary-age kids were muttering; around a table scattered with paper and coloured pens. Grown-ups in a row, plugged into the Warren Fen datasphere (hey, no fair, that’s not
books
—). Older children browsed the stacks or sat reading. And there was the black cat, curled on a chair. He squatted down to stroke it, looking around at the battered paperbacks, coffee-table remainders, musty bindings (the Volunteer Initiative’s not proud); feeling the presence of a lonely little girl for whom books had been a refuge. Fiorinda made this haven.

‘Can I help you, Mr Preston?’ The learning resources manager had come out from behind her counter and was hovering beside him.

‘Er, yeah. What’s the cat’s name?’

She bent for a careful look. ‘That’s Monty. His brother Winston will be around somewhere: they’re both so black it’s quite hard to tell them apart.’

Ah well. Winston or Monty, thanks. One of you did me a good turn.

The cat tucked its paw tighter over its nose. The woman, neither old nor young, waited there smiling. Something in her stance brought a puzzle to the front of his mind:
Jiejie.
When Ax was at Reading, right at the end of that ordeal he’d heard Wang speak to Lieutenant Chu, the young
aide de camp
, calling her
jiejie
. The sliver of memory, lost and found, tugged at him unaccountably. Was that a joke? A convoluted family relationship that put her in a senior generation? Who does Wang Xili, Marshal of China, address as ‘
elder sister
’?

‘Is there anything else, Mr Preston?’

‘No; no, thank you. You, er, you’re doing very good work here.’

‘I hope we can continue,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘I’m proud of our library.’

The lighters, linked together bowsprit and stern by rattling chains, made their departure from Warren Fen Quay an hour before dark, with four members of the Swamp MC as crew and native guides. Swamp’s bright-painted gang of five lead the way. The other gang, hired by Swamp for the military escort, followed behind. The night was cold, uncomfortable, but not too bad. There were hooped shelters, that could be raised like tents over the open boats. The Triumvirate and Joe bunked together, Norman and Toby had secured a boat to themselves. Pity the soldiers, their boats were working freighters: no provision for passenger comfort.

Over breakfast there were transports of fury, as Norman finally grasped that the journey of a hundred or so kilometres was going to take
days
. This had not been fully explained! It wasn’t in the least
obvious
! Joe Muldur’s phone call villainy was revisited, and the Triumvirate’s intolerable, insolent delay; but the kids got the worst. By noon they’d reached the Great Ouse basin, and the tow-horses had to swim for quite a distance: Norman, vengeful, refused to believe they could be taken onboard.

At the first dry halt Swamp MC jumped out and strapped rope around the braking posts, without waiting for permission. The gang jostled to a standstill: there were yells of panic from the PLA, coming up too fast behind—

Not much harm done. Fenland’s lighters, river barges with sail and oar, modern take on an ancient design, were built for rough treatment. Fiorinda decided to stretch her legs, while the collision was post-mortemed. The river was higher than the flooded land, water on both levels; an eerie effect. Water over water, that’s
K’an, K’an
, The Abyssal. What does the superior man (huh!) do in this situation? Something poetic and unintelligible, of course… Large soft flakes of snow began to fall, vanishing when they touched. Frosty and her best mate (not boyfriend), a very hench black lad called Nel, former street kid from Nottingham, had also escaped. They were giving the horses a feed and a rub down beside the halt-hut.

Rusty, the bay who pulled the soldiers, was a working stiff from Warren’s horse labour pool. The iron grey mare, known as Gator, belonged to Frosty; or at least, she
would
be Frosty’s in a year or two, when Frosty’s dad had finished paying for her. Not untrammelled property, since Frosty was not free, but good enough, and a much more reliable earner than the boats. She was the kids’ pride and joy; money in the bank, liquidity on the hoof.

‘Is she okay?’

‘She shun’ter had to swim that far,’ muttered Nel, eyes down

‘Miss.’ Frosty was anxious to unburden her mind. ‘We
did
tell him. We told Cyril Mao from the Unintelligence Office,
an
’ we told Colonel Soong. We said four days, minimum. They’ve
paid
for four days, in advance. It don’t make sense complaining!’

‘People hear what they want to hear,’ said Fiorinda, soothingly. ‘It must be linked to a survival trait, because everybody does it, all the time.’

‘Uhuh.’ Frosty stared at a line of sails that moved along another waterway in the distance, pale brown winter butterflies. Silver gilt hair escaped like froth from her parka hood. ‘I’m getting out of this. I don’t believe in God, I swear by
you
, Miss. I’m getting out of the camps, an’ out of Fenland, it’s a dump. No one’s going to speak to me like that. I’ll have respect.’

Maybe you should think twice about the music biz, kid, thought Fiorinda. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘He was really yelling at himself, not you. Hang your head and say
very sorry
, it’s the Chinese version of smile and nod.’

Nel removed the feedbag and rubbed Gator behind the ears, almost cracking a smile, not sure he was allowed to laugh at a joke against the conquerors. They were too young to have spotted that Norman was furious because he was scared. The flooded emptiness was intimidating, health certificate or not. Read between the lines, it’s the insurgents who dictate the terms for things like this Peace Tour, and Norman knows it. That’s got to be hard on the nerves.

She looked up into the falling snow. ‘Hey, what if it freezes hard?’

‘It won’t. The thaw’s good for another week, my dad says.’

Nel rolled his eyes. ‘Your dad don’t know. It’ll be okay, Miss. Mr Colonel Soong will send for a land ship. I mean, this boat trip is for a video, innit? It’s not
real
.’

Along a straight cut on the Little Ouse, Gator plodded the towpath, steady on the beat. Nel walked by her head, Frosty slouched astride, singing to herself, bare blue sections of leg swinging, between her baggy shorts and her wellies. Loryan, the oldest of the kids, maybe seventeen, stood in the bows of the lead boat with a long oar, which she occasionally poked at the bank or into the water, apparently at random. The nun and her missionaries sat up front, as of right, enjoying marshy vistas. Sage and Fiorinda were taking turns to steer: the top job, and they were proud.

‘What’s that one?’

Fiorinda had the bird book, a veteran of their travels.

‘Common reed bunting.’

‘You’re kidding, it’s blatantly a cock sparrow, ’cept it can sing.’

‘It says here sparrows
are
reed buntings, country boy. That went to town.’

A flight of ducks rose from the reeds, with a superb rush of wings and a violent burst of quacking. One of the monks looked round, beaming, to share the pleasure, his pleasant face ageless under the dark cap, with the earflaps like turned-up wings. They had never been known to speak English; they rarely seemed to speak at all. Fiorinda and Sage beamed and nodded back.

Swamp MC bunked in the lead boat, Toby and Norman in the second; Toby had hardly been seen. They insisted on keeping their shelter up, day and night, which was a grievance with the kids. If Gator had to pull harder she ate more, which spoiled her audit for the trip. The crude expedient of cooking the work-horse’s logbook had not occurred to the kids, and God forbid Ax Preston should suggest it. The third boat belonged to Joe and the Triumvirate: it was also used as daytime common room. Joe and Bone, the fourth Swamp MC, were in there, feet up, eyeless, locked in some virtual game of blood-spattered hide and seek. Ax pondered ordering them to quit that, and enjoy the wonders of Mother Nature, but decided to let be. The tail boat was where the missionaries bunked; if they ever slept. The fourth was the one with the flash cabin conversion. The Daoist nun shared it with the Tour’s baggage.

Ax ducked inside, and looked around. The low-roofed space was painted in peach and blue, glass windows along the sides above cushioned lockers. The famous ‘floating studio’, an old Behringer mixer, a cannibalised Conjurmac; other components worn to anonymity or homemade, was choked off by a heap of Norman’s airline cases. A curtain concealed the nun’s private quarters.

He counted off the company in his head, making sure he knew where they all were. Why was he here? To see what he could find out. Who is she? Why is she with us, and what’s her relation to our Norman? Face and hands are readily disguised by tech: gait and silhouette not so much—

He drew back the curtain. The space beyond held a neatly rolled sleeping bag, and a small rug, smaller than a prayer rug, laid in front of a camphor-wood travelling desk, set on one of Norman’s cases. The desk was antique, Eighteenth century? The rug was a work of art. A slipcased tablet lay where the blotter would have been on a European desk: it looked familiar. The nun was a calligrapher too. Beside the tablet lay a fine ink stone, a brush case inlaid with flying birds and ‘reed writing’ in silver, a jade brush rest; several sticks of vermilion ink. Ax looked at these things from where he stood, getting a strong intuition that he should take this invasion no further.

He let the curtain drop.

Back in the third boat the game had broken up. Bone had gone away: Ax sat down by Joe, who was staring gloomily at the passing reeds.

‘Hey,’ said Ax. ‘Did any of the monks take notice, when I was out of sight?’

‘No,’ said Joe. ‘They’re in the front. What have you been up to?’

‘Spying on our masters.’

‘Fuck!’ Joe thrust his hands into his dirty hair, making it stand in greasy brown spurs. ‘Are you crazy! We’re already between the devil and fuck—!’ The mediaman went pink. ‘Uh, shit, sorry Ax. I, um, didn’t mean to speak out of turn.’