Rainbow Bridge (30 page)

‘Sage is always there,’ Chip reported. ‘He told me.
Always
. When the secret police were torturing him, he was t-touching the beautiful void—’

Chez and Ver were immediately very jealous. Sage was their idol.

‘So George said, what about when you go into one of yer mammoth sulks—’

They stirred in relief. Aha, so you weren’t alone with him!

‘What did he say?’

‘He said
yeah
,
then too
. George and Bill were disgusted.’ The yurt was more beautiful than practical. It had no sewn-in groundsheet, just rucked plastic tarp. The cold crept through their rugs, they sat close, barely short of touching each other.

‘I can’t believe the Chinese think Sage is ugly.’

‘They don’t appreciate Whiteitude,’ said Verlaine. ‘They don’t like blue eyes.’

‘They don’t appreciate me much, either.’ Chip launched into a rueful anecdote about an AMID squaddie he’d tried to chat up. Verlaine and Chez accidentally caught each other gazing, she at he, and he at she, and looked away, embarreassed.

It could never happen.

Allie lay awake, half-drunk, thinking
no, I don’t want another body in the bed
. We weren’t lovers like that, that’s not what I miss. For weeks, months, after the breaking of the siege, she’d seen DK’s face, in dreams and sometimes in daylight. Blackened and twisted by fire, but the eyes still living. Here at Yap Moss, where hundreds of people had died in an afternoon, when that scale of death had been new to them, she realised with a sharper pain, final loss, that she wanted to forget him. What she really wanted to fall in love. With someone new, someone from outside the circle, someone who knew nothing.

Fiorinda was in the van’s other bunk, with Min. Being in Allie’s van made her feel young again: wherever I lay my bedroll, that’s my home. She felt perfectly sane, no monsters, it was just a blip. She wished that Allie could have a happy love song, she wished she knew what was going on with that platonic threesome (give me a break,
platonic
); she wished she could comfort poor Marlon: Silver had done him wrong, again. She wished she knew that Sage was okay in London, swallowing that anger he must not express—

A ripple in her belly. Three weeks, she told herself.

fell asleep thinking of Ax and Sage, burying the dead.

George woke because someone was shaking him, and sat up at once. He was in one of the astronaut bunks, in the kitchen in Sage’s monster van, and he was not alone. The local girl squeaked and vanished under the covers.

‘Oh, ah, G’mornin’ Fio. What’s up? Extremely disconcerted, he reached for his clothes. ‘Are you all right, my dear?’

Fiorinda looked at a slim hand, which had emerged from the duvet and was groping at the floor. She poked the tumble of hejab attire into its reach, with her toe.

‘No, I’m not all right. I’m having real contractions.’

‘Holy fuck.’ George pulled his trousers on, sheet modestly bunched in his lap. He and Lauren, his wife of many years, who was at present living under the Chinese occupation in St Ives, had no children. ‘Are you
sure
, love?’

‘Yes. My waters broke, and I’ve had a show. George it’s a
problem
. I’m supposed to have a Caesarean. I won’t bore you with the details but I just read my medical notes again, which I am carrying with me, I’m not stupid. It’s important I get a Caesarean. I’ve tried using willpower but it,’ she frowned, and drew a sharp breath, ‘it isn’t working. I need drugs to stop this labour and I need a hospital.’

‘Where’s Allie? Did you wake the Babes?’

‘I’ve been here before,’ said Fiorinda. She was holding Min, the young cat looked frightened out of his wits. Fiorinda’s eyes were black stones rimmed in silver, sweat stood on her brow. ‘Haven’t I? Why aren’t things flying around, we’re in space, aren’t we? Where’s Sage?’

‘He’ll be here soon,’ said George. ‘You sit quiet, we’ll sort this out.’

George knocked up Bill, who emerged with Clio, the young muso-techie from Jam Today; Areeka’s band. Peter appeared, and then Marlon. The lacquer incense box that had always held the Heads’ supply of endogenous psychotropics was rifled for progesterone, without success. Plenty of brain chemistry recreationals were eager to
promote
labour, none of the fuckers wanted to put the brakes on. Clio ran to see if any sister on the Jam Today bus had the herbal remedies that might help, dongquai, liquorice extract. Peter Stannen sat with Fiorinda.

I urgently need Sage,
she whispered, knowing Cack would understand.

‘Tell yourself he’s alive, somewhere in the world,’ he suggested, in his serious little voice. ‘That’s what I do. And I close my eyes. I think, if the boss was right here I wouldn’t see him. So it’s okay if you can’t see him, he’s still somewhere.’

She closed her eyes: immediately they flew open again.

‘Oooh,
bad idea. Cack, will you look after Min, he’s Ax’s cat—’

‘I’ll look after him.’

Peter didn’t like to touch animals, but this was an emergency.

The Babes and Allie arrived, with Chip and Verlaine.

There was no fuel. They tried calling a taxi, they tried calling an ambulance. There weren’t even any buses. The Chinese had waived motor vehicle restrictions for the Yap Moss gig, and the whole area had been cleaned out.

‘There’s got to be a doctor somewhere around,’ cried Chip. ‘We could take her in the pony cart.’

‘She needs a
hospital
. Fiorinda, are you timing the contractions?’

are you timing the contractions?

The van windows were obsidian mirrors and her father was in the corner, clear as paint, with his rich curling hair and his red mouth. She should have told Sage that Rufus was bound to come for the baby, but it was too late now. God, he’s trying to claw my belly open, oh, fuck it hurts, oh little shoot,
hide
—

‘She was so normal,’ breathed Allie, awed. ‘She really fooled us.’

‘She’s not
fooling
anyone,’ shouted George. ‘She’s in fugue, can’t you see? Right, it’s time to scream for help. We call General Yen, we call Ax and the boss—.’

‘You don’t get it, George,’ said Felice, low and furious. ‘The big lie is a lie, remember? The Chinese know what magic does, what it did to the A team. They see Fiorinda in this state, in fugue, they’re going to
scan her brain
, find out what’s in there, and it’ll be all over.’

So this is what happens. You get caught, jamming with the people in the New Third World, just when you really needed to be swanking with the bosses. The privileged don’t go to hospital, these days: hospital comes to them. Fiorinda was supposed to have her baby in Lambeth, at the Snake Eyes Commune, everything was laid on for a Caesarean home birth. This time a few hours ago they would have fought
battalions
to stop Fiorinda from being taken to a dodgy public maternity ward.

They were silent, minds racing, failing to connect with any solution.

‘At least we’re sober,’ said Allie. ‘Think, think.’

‘I was thinking the opposite of that,’ countered Chip. ‘I was thinking: one of us ought to take something, I don’t know what. Well, I know what would work (snapshot, of course), and try to join her where she is. To be with her.’

‘You are out of your
mind
!’

Fiorinda sat with her knees drawn up, head bowed, her hair like tight-coiled blood in the pearly ATP light. Her nightdress and her coat, her bare feet, made her look like someone fleeing from a burning building. But the black flames were inside her, the petals of a black rose. They were afraid to touch her. They lived with their living goddess without ever thinking of what she could do to them, but now she wasn’t in her right mind. She would rather die than do harm, but how angry she had been last night, and how close was she to that edge? They had never
dreamed
that they could be in this situation, without Ax or Sage…

Peter put on his skull mask. The Heads had given up their masks, but he always kept the controller on him, in case he urgently needed to take cover. The blank grin of the death’s head made them feel that time had come undone. They were in their own past, and they had forgotten how
frightening
that past had been, until this moment. The Green Nazis, the threat of an occult superweapon; only Fiorinda standing between them and hell. Mind-bending fear, how quickly you forget; until suddenly you’re in the same place again. She cried out, not the furious way a woman in labour cries: more like something inhuman. Ax’s cat got down and slunk underneath the couch with his ears flat.

‘I’m thinking Charm Dudley,’ said Dora. ‘She had a midwife.’

‘What?’ demanded George, distracted. ‘Charm had a
what
?’

‘She had a midwife with her. Yesterday’

blank, in which no time passed and fearful things happened

then there was Cafren Free, DARK’s milk-blonde English rose, wherever she’d sprung from: looking into her face, too close, bringing on such an explosion of memory, oh God, where is Sage, I need him, I need him, a bunch of pink roses with blood-red thorns, a hot violence in her head, clay in her throat, come away with me, child, to the dark, under the hill, let me break you open, let me have that baby.

are you timing the contractions?

Oh, someone’s talking to me. ‘Yeah, more or less. Where’s Sage?’

‘Fio, listen. Birch has fuel in her tank. Remember, the midwife who came to see you? She stayed on site, she had a feeling she’d be needed. She’s going to take you to the Priory, they’ll look after you.’

Bill’s voice, suspicious and angry. ‘The
Priory
? What, is it a rehab place?’

‘It’s a commune,’ said Cafren to Fiorinda, her voice echoing along wide empty corridors, in a very lonely place, where no help could come. ‘They have a cottage hospital, women only.’

Felice, shouting. ‘A
hippy commune
? Are you
crazy
?’

‘They’re not hippies, they’re not like that.’

Fiorinda heard them deciding who would join this party. Charm and the midwife; Allie. George’s ladyfriend, who would help them if they needed local knowledge, and George and Bill, who insisted on coming along for the ride, and wouldn’t listen to
women only
. The Babes would stay behind, holding the fort. The fort must always be held. She would have said
I want Felice
, but the voices were far away, and she didn’t know that they would hear her. The back of the van had no windows, she craned forward to peer out of the cab. A point of light grew smaller and smaller, while the dead roses crawled up behind her, squirming like the bodies in the red fighting ring. Soon she would have to kill herself and the baby. They were passing through tall, ruinous gates, through rampant evergreens and trees. If there was a living flower she would be all right. But there wasn’t.

The Priory was a big neglected, Victorian house in its own bleak grounds. Gables like frowning eyes peered through naked branches. Birch told them to wait.

‘I don’t like this,’ muttered George. ‘The Babes were right, this is trouble.’

‘Countercultural’s not a hate word, man,’ Charm reminded him. ‘Wi just pretend it is, te satisfy the new bosses. Anyhow, they’re not witches
,
it’s just a women’s refuge. The Chinese like that.’

The deer-skinned midwife returned. ‘George and Bill may come into the hall,’ she said. ‘But they can’t stay. Holy Mother’s coming to greet Fiorinda.’ George carried the rock and roll brat indoors: even with the baby onboard she was feather-light. She felt like a paralysed child in his arms, rigid and helplessly contracted.

‘You’ll be all right, love, you’ll be all right now.’

‘You have to be okay,’ Bill stuck close, glowering at Charm Dudley, who might think she could muscle in. ‘Or he’ll kill us.’

‘He can flay me alive,’ said George. ‘I’ll hold his coat.’

The Heads had watched over this blazing girl since she was fourteen. The woman she’d become meant more to them than any wife or lover ever could, she was their queen. They would die for her, but that wasn’t going to fucking help now.

Allie brought Fiorinda’s bag. They hurried into a wide front hall, and immediately saw the figure of the Goddess Apparition. Three metres tall if she was an inch, swathed in grey drapery, crowned with a wreath of dead flowers, dead birds; a face of sombre majesty, great dark eyes hollowed by mourning.

She was Gaia, mourning the death of the living world. She had been seen first in Amsterdam, at the Flood Countries Conference. Attested by many witnesses, including Ax Preston—tho’ Ax’d never allowed himself to be drawn on whether she was a projection from the collective unconscious, truly supernatural; or what.

Her worship was utterly proscribed.

‘
Fuck
,’ breathed George. ‘We’re dead.’ He set Fiorinda on her feet.

They would have walked straight out, but then what?

A horde of women, dressed in unbleached fine wool or deerskin, poured into the hall. Some looked like nurses but others were armed, with knives in their belts, quivers of shuriken; metal-bound staves. One of these, a hawk-faced Pakistani, burn-scarred from brow to chin, whipped off the hejabi girl’s headscarf. An older woman, robed in grey, hair and throat hidden by a close, unbleached coif, came through the excited crowd, with Birch beside her.

Fiorinda’s friends looked at each other helplessly. ‘Ms Slater’s gone into premature labour,’ announced George—

‘It’s not premature,’ said Birch, to the grey-robed woman.

Allie decided to ignore Gaia. The place was here, and it looked clean. ‘You have a women’s hospital, do you have a, a maternity bed?’

‘We want drugs to slow the labour doon,’ Charm elbowed Allie out of the way. ‘An’ help te get hor te a non-fucking hippy-dippy maternity unit. Er, please.’

‘The lady will be safe in our care,’ said the woman in grey. ‘You women may stay or leave, except for the hejabi. That girl and the men must go.’

George and Bill looked at each other, and at the Amazon warriors, knee high but so many of the critters, ‘Okay,’ said George, breathing hard, cutting losses. ‘But she needs a Caesarean, can your staff handle that, er, Reverend Mother?’