Rainbow Bridge (39 page)

‘Forget it. You’re a rockstar. Summer is not your own time.’

Sage came out of the house, folded down and looked at the grass babies. He’d been working on Lance Buckley’s digital modelling; immersed in his look-through-you, obsessive coding mood for days. It was nostalgic, but it made him daunting company. He hadn’t yet told them anything, and they feared to ask.

‘Why isn’t there any blue?’

‘Blue is for a boy,’ said Fiorinda. She didn’t care for the colour pink herself, but there was a very appealing fuchsia-coloured romper suit, with hand-embroidered flowers. The sun was in her eyes, she lifted the baby as a wriggling parasol.

‘What crap. She’d look excellent in blue.’ He picked up the stripy hat and switched it with the four-cornered cherry-red one.

Ax knew they’d been ahead of him on the surprise coda to his meeting with Elder Sister. He wasn’t so dumb that he took Fiorinda’s calm reaction at face-value, but she’d been known to play away, as had Ax, when it was just the two of them. She’d scratch, she wouldn’t bite. His big cat was a different problem: a coldness just in the way he sat on the grass, which Ax felt with painful exactness. It’s horrible to be in love with someone who cuts you no slack—

‘Did you get somewhere?’ he asked, humbly neutral.

‘Yep, think so. I’m running it.’

Sage relented, reached out and removed Ax’s hair from grabby little fingers. ‘Lance’s hardware, Oh Chosen One, may have been daylight robbery for ghost catching, whatever that means, but it’s a beast of a virtual modeller of the non-supernatural. So, a b-loc self is not solid but something is really there, an’ leaves a trace in a full scan of a volume of information space. I picked up fragments of 0s and 1s that didn’t match any phase point in Lance’s reference model, and wouldn’t hybridise with his model of Dian. I’ve been building on that, it’s slow work but I’m cooking now.’

Ax and Fiorinda sat up. Coz, freed from the corral of their bodies, set to work on her own treasured project: the great rolling over trick.

‘I’m getting something that matches the b-loc signature for DK, the one I have in my board’s cache.’ Sage stared at the baby clothes. ‘This is what I’m guessing, so far. He was on firewatch, when the place went up. He’d taken the Few’s set, and loc’d out of the firestorm. Maybe trying to get through to say goodbye, or crazily thinking he could escape like that. Or not thinking at all. The Chinese captured the signal, and it was the same
signal
, months later, that Dian made contact with.’

‘My fucking God,’ breathed Ax. ‘You’re saying they can hack b-loc?’

‘I’m saying maybe the Chinese are master experts at the atrocious, world-destroying tech they forbid anyone on earth to use.’

‘But it’s
not
magic?’

‘None of it’s “magic”, Ax,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Not the way you mean. It’s just the way things are.’

The back garden at Tyller Pystri shivered like a windblown veil.

They took the baby and went indoors, to Sage’s study: the damp old cottage parlour overrun by hardware. They saw the recovered 4-D image of that room, the dying woman and the shadow,
in dark, close-fitting clothes
, which had the signature of the virtual self stored in Dilip Krishnachandran’s somato-sensory cortex (the basis of b-loc). ‘I think of you all,’ said Fiorinda, rapidly; trembling. ‘I count you over, to make sure you are all right. I have counted DK dead, is he dead? Is he alive?
How
could Dian have called that signal up? How could she have made contact?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Sage. ‘Dead or alive? Neither.’

If Dilip had been interrogated they were dead. But they were not dead, they were riding high. The Emperor summons Ax Preston to her bed, appoints him her emissary to Europe, grooms him for ever-higher honours—

‘So now we go to Cumbria,’ said Ax, at last. ‘On a very complex mission.’

What to tell Allie, they wondered, as the truth sank in.

It was chilly that evening: Sage lit a fire. They cooked and ate together, gave Cosoleth her bath; sang to her, read her a story, settled on the sofa for the bedtime feed. The baby sucked first at one sweet, naked breast and then the other, music from long ago playing on the sound system; the men rapt in devotion, mother and child in their arms. But already Coz hardly seemed like a baby, no longer an extension of their own bodies. Soon they’d have to give up this intensely sensual, if not sexual, ritual, and that would be a goodbye—

In the night Fiorinda got up, wrapped a shawl over her nightgown and went to look for her tapestry bag. She brought the saltbox to the hearth, holding it in her palm: a wooden apple that held salt in one half, flint, steel and tinder in the other. When you commit magic (and for Fiorinda it was still
commit
, as in crime, no matter what she understood about the science) you use a focus, a talisman, a channel; it gives you some protection. She thought of the huge drains under Rainbow Bridge. The light dies, the roof ahead touches the water, you’re going to have to fill your lungs and dive, go under without knowing if you’ll ever breathe again.

‘
Fee?
’ Sage slipped out of bed and came to join her, a shadowed, naked tiger, slippery muscle gliding under his pale hide.

‘I don’t want to go under,’ she whispered. ‘I thought it was over.’

‘So did I, my brat. But we did for your old man… I don’t believe we have another boss fight on our hands. If we do, fuck it. We’ll just have to win.’

They clasped hands. ‘C’mon, sweetheart. Back to bed.’

Before she slept Fiorinda made puja in her heart, although she did not believe in God. She remembered Dilip on England’s night of the long knives, when she had barely known him, the two of them clinging to each other, smeared with other people’s blood, on the steps of that dreadful building in Whitehall.
We’re still alive, we’re alive, hang onto that
. Are you still alive now, DK? Lord Krishna protect me, help me to remember that I’m not really afraid, let me not become the monster
…
The divinity she invoked had Dilip Krishnachandran’s face, blackened in flame.

The Lantern Bearers

The little Lakeland town was
en fête,
the streets decked in organic bunting, spacious old car parks and cluttered pub forecourts overrun by guitar bands, choral singing, prophetic poets, firebrand puppeteers, mad preachers. Big screens on street corners and walls relayed events from the tents and stages of the Fairground; digital masks and other virtual toys (banned on pain of death in the Occupied Zones) were openly on display. Death himself sat cross-legged the parapet of Church Beck Bridge, a tall and limber skeleton, transparent between the charnel bones—keeping an eye on the throng of pilgrims who poured through the gates of St Andrew’s churchyard.

Alain de Corlay and Naomi Erhlevy (aka Tamagotchi), leaders of the French Techno-Green delegation, had just made the obligatory visit Ruskin’s grave. The former Eurotrash Deconstructionists of Movie Sucré stopped to pass the time of day, and to wax satirical. They’d reverted to their popstar personas for the fest: Alain Jupette wore his trademark miniskirt, in Royal Stuart plaid. Tam wore one of her Courrèges Moon-Girl suits, and silver platform boots. John Ruskin’s sexual nihilism met their approval, likewise his nature sketches. For his charming pet rock collection they would pass over a multitude of crimes—

‘The man had talent,’ pronounced Tam. ‘His description of falling into madness, through the grain of the polished wood of his bedstead, is
admirable
.’

‘Naturally, one despairs of his political naïveté.’

‘Mm.’ Death watched the uniformed constables, who were marshalling the graveyard queue in flower-decked boaters and yellow vests. Cumbria Police didn’t yet have their Peace and Love heads on. There’d been some bullying, some trigger-happy use of non-lethals. Maybe it was understandable. They must be terrified that Occupation was inevitable, if they let the slightest thing slip.

‘Why not send the filth back to their kennels?’ suggested Tam. ‘We can police ourselves, we’ve had experience; remember Amsterdam.’

‘Wasn’t there,’ said the Minister for Gigs. ‘Nah, they’ll get the hang of it. Sacking the coppers would be an incident in itself, and there must be no incidents. This is Elder Sister’s wild, uncontrolled rockstar radical event.
Nothing
goes wrong.’

‘How stupidly paranoid you sound, Aoxomoxoa.’

‘I am.’

‘
Moi aussi
,’ said Alain, placidly. ‘Life in Paris, with the Chinese on our doorstep, has been frightening enough. Now here we little birds are between the dragon’s jaws, picking her teeth… Your blood sugar is low. Come to lunch.’

Tam dropped her cheroot and boot-heeled it, giving the constables the evil eye; then stooped to pick up the butt like a good girl. ‘We’ve found a place called the Snow Pudding, authentic artisan food,
unbelievable
fresh ingredients—’

‘No thanks. I’m good.’ Two Shield Ring Hearthmaidens approached, caught Death’s blood-dark empty sockets fixed on them, and crossed the street in a hurry. Yeah. Be very afraid, long frocks. Sage had forgotten how effective the avatar mask could be. He’d spent the first day overdosing on sombre menace, had to tone it down.

Chip and Verlaine leaned over the bridge, watching the preparations for a Duck Race. They were in Morris costume, ready for a show in the yard of the Black Bull: black breeches, red sashes, white shirts, stockings, buckled shoes, bells on their gaiters, coloured ribands in their hats. A distressing sight.

‘Nobody asks
us
to lunch,’ complained Chip. ‘We are not chic enough.’

‘Nyah, they only asked because I won’t annoy them by accepting. I’m gonna regret this, I know: but Chip, why are you in blackface?’

Chip rolled his eyes. You have to ask? ‘I’m a
miner
, Sage. A dirty, black-legged miner… Tho’ not in fact a blackleg.’

‘Makes perfect sense. So, er, why isn’t Ver in blackface, seeing he is white and it would work a little better?’

‘Because
I
am Margaret Thatcher,’ explained Verlaine, as to a slow-witted child. He retrieved a sneering mask on a stick from the pavement.

‘We auditioned,’ said Chip. ‘They said I couldn’t act for fuck.’

‘Whereas I make a superb Iron Lady,’ said Verlaine, modestly. He pulled a gilded scroll from his waistband. ‘Would you like a sample of the voice?’

‘No!’

The ducks arrived in a net in the back of a four-wheeler, and clattered off to the starting gate upstream. Punters surged the steep banks, where ragged July flowers tumbled, between the stripling trees and the wild raspberry canes. ‘It’s no use throwin’ theselves in, ladies and gents!’ roared a steward. ‘Them ducks won’t be let out unless the course is clear—

The Adjuvants hooked arms and cut a merry caper, waving their hats.

‘Go away,’ said the living skull. ‘You’re making me look cute and harmless.’

‘D’you think he’s going to start talking in capital letters?’

‘Get out of here, before I THROW YOU TO THE DUCKS.’

On the Euro Cultural Congress Fairground, at the head of Coniston Water, Ax and Fiorinda exited the media tent and walked around: greeting friends, saluting enemies; rewarding gophers with personal chat. They could not get used to the fx, and were both liable to jump a mile if a light-hearted flight of virtual fire-spouting basilisks suddenly blossomed in their view—

my God, we’re all going to get massacred.

Movie Sucré’s rayguns had been impounded: the absurdistes took this very seriously. A dance ensemble from Poland had been hospitalised
en masse
after a terrible crossing; they were full of praise for the way they’d been treated in Occupied Tyneside. Delegates from the Nordic Alliance, including the Crown Princess of Norway, had been held for questioning; but it had ended reasonably happily. Young activists of the Reich-in-Hiding, encouraged to cross the Line, had leapt at the chance, which was making their leaders nervous. There’s Areeka and her pals, exchanging autographs with a Bavarian Pop Idol Collective. Post-Italians from Turin and Milan, Czechs, Slovenes, Baltics, Iberians. Most of the covert government agents had been turned back at point of entry; but word was that some had been allowed through, no one knew on what grounds. Unofficial political observers?

The Chinese say one thing and mean another. The radicals and utopians had obeyed the summons in popculture drag (it wasn’t a stretch); believing they had licence to be something else. The story was that Elder Sister, the recently unveiled Supreme Being, was showing her august enthusiasm for Europe’s and culture… Presumably that’s what would get onto the official coverage, but the questions from the floor were openly critical: the atmosphere was fear and adrenalin.

‘It’s going to be tough,’ said Ax. ‘The neighbours want to be on board, but there’s uncertainty, a sense of loss, and they’re going to take it out on someone.’

George and Peter passed by, wearing policemen’s boaters and soberly skull-headed. And there’s Bill unmasked, Clio from Jam Today firmly affixed to his side. The Powerbabes and Rob, Pearl Wing in tow. Good to see that little monster herself again: dressed to the nines, glowering at being dragged away from London. Marlon and Silver must be around, but we won’t see them. Not if they see us first—