Rainbow Bridge (40 page)

And here’s Ax Preston, revered rockstar guru of Crisis Europe, morphed into an unashamed apologist for the prospective Chinese World State. With a Celtic tattoo, and a dappled cat the size of a young ocelot pacing beside him. Here’s Fiorinda, wild-cat diva and Protector of the Poor, re-invented as a feel-good pro-Chinese celeb, with a baby in a candy-stripe sling. They caught each other’s eyes as they strolled through the fair, in rueful appreciation. Just be glad we’re still standing.

By the pavilion of the Guild of St George they stopped to let Coz admire the great embroidered standard of the Shield Ring.

METAL MEAT CORN AND WOOL

Metal, Meat, Corn and Wool: we don’t need you, leave us be. That’s corn, in the old English sense of the grain you grind for bread. Probably not wheat these days, certainly not maize. A tall, broad-shouldered Steadman, in Gortex walking shorts and a
Don’t Shoot The Gardener
teeshirt under his robes, came up to greet them: Simon Hartsfern, Master of the Guild. Gleaming blue-black beard rippled over his oak-barrel chest, concealing Ax’s face on the tee and half-smothering his chain of office.

The Shield Ring had harboured no actives, their Futuristic Artisan creed was not judged Countercultural. Their Unoccupied status was crucial for this conference. But their eventual fate would have to be tackled, on the back of the Euro issues.

‘Thee had a rough reception in there, Mr Preston.’ Simon bowed graciously to the Reich’s young queen. ‘My lady—’

‘No bad thing,’ said Ax. ‘There are opinions that need to be aired.’

‘To
my
mind the news that we have a mighty Empress is not an issue; all power to her. It’s whether the nation of “Europe” exists in any form. If it does, how shall it be governed? Shall we foster the Well-Being of the Land, as we were vowed to do, under thy former rule? Or shall we return to the factions, the petty sterile debates, the Satanic Mills of Crisis Europe Politics—’

‘Many contentious issues shall be raised,’ said Fiorinda, edging towards escape.
Eeeh,
said Coz, and reached for the beard with her most coquettish chuckle.

‘I understand thou intends to join us on the Landsturm, young lady,’ said the Master, beaming. ‘May I offer thee and thy mama the hospitality of the Shield Ring Ladies’ Mountain Goat limo?’ He smiled hopefully at Fiorinda. ‘Thee’d be very comfortable, and my wife and sisters would be honoured by thy company.’

‘Thanks,’ said Fiorinda. ‘We’ll bear it in mind, but we’re planning to do the walk. Something for her to tell her grandchildren.’

‘Excuse us. It’s time for her feed, and that won’t wait. You know what it’s like. Slap the popper on your throat, in ten minutes you’re pumping.’ Ax raised his eyebrow at Simon’s very blank look. ‘I thought you had kids, Master. You must have done the dad’s instant lactation trip, it’s
so
futuristic.’

‘Idiot,’ said Fiorinda, when they were safely on their way.

‘I’ll have to tell Sage, d’you think he’ll back me up?’

‘I’m absolutely sure he will.’

They were prejudiced against right-wing Utopians, for reasons that were hard to set aside. She glanced back at the Guild encampment, where some kind of Bronze Age hymn to the lunchtime sun had started up. ‘Promise me you’ll keep those under control. You
can’t
treat them as the enemy, that’s a fucking stupid gambit.’

‘Hahaha. They’re a sophisticated bunch of reactionaries, running a very successful experiment. They can take a few Lennonisms; but I’ll keep ’em down—’

They gave Coz an oat rusk to mumble and wandered, leaving the crowd behind. Down on the shore, boulders made an armchair in the green shade of a stand of sycamores. Min collected a pebble and took it up into the branches, like a leopard with a rather small goat. The baby sucked, kneading like a kitten; Fiorinda’s head on Ax’s breast, his arm around his girl, in a haze of oxytocin; a nagging gap where Sage ought to be. Such is life on the summer circuit. The Triumvirate would be lucky if they ever slept in adjoining bedrolls, for the next couple of weeks.

‘Maybe I should accept Master Hartshorn’s offer,’ mused Fiorinda, in a martyred tone. ‘Get the inner circle long frocks’ girltalk.’

‘Hartsfern.’

‘Speak for yourself. He looks a lot like a Victorian lady’s pick-me-up to me.’

Let a hundred flowers bloom, then chop their heads off when they say things you don’t want to hear… The Danube delegates had brought and discreetly delivered a little real news, and it was a warning. The
other
occupied European nation had been lurching from crackdown to crackdown, apparently, and contrary to Elder Sister’s report, nothing was ‘settled’ there. On this side of the continent the vulnerable people had stayed at home. No Scots or Irish because of the ‘Celtic’ misunderstanding, no Greeks. The strength of the Welsh Shield Ring connection, on the otherhand, was a little worrying. But every delegate had been approved by Wang Xili as well as by Ax. You have to relax, as far as possible. Trust the Chinese to have screened out the suicide warriors. Treat the Shield Ring as light relief, because the air has ears.

Cosoleth swiftly drained her lunchboxes, left and right, and butted her head around for more. ‘She needs solids. I’ll be pleased to have my tits back, but it’ll be a wrench. Bugger of it is, the more solids she eats, the less milk I have.’

‘She’s getting too big for her sling, too. The stitching’s coming apart.’

‘Oh, woe is us.’

The baby fell asleep, Min rattled his pebble.

‘What d’you think about
beards
?’, wondered Ax, idly.

‘I think you can’t either of you grow one.’ Fiorinda swiftly cut this notion off at the pass. ‘Sage’s is so blond it’s pointless, and yours is straggly.’

‘Well, thanks. Shall we go an’ see how the big cat is getting on?’

‘I want to practise being lonely as a cloud. You go, and have a nice talk about galley slaves with beards and big milky tits. Probably getting whipped.’

‘Hahaha, fuck off. C’mon Coz. C’mon Min, thy lady wants to be alone.’

My tiger and my wolf are at odds. Sage hasn’t forgiven him for Elder Sister, oh, shivers of dread. Why is it that terrifying anxieties make tiny insecurities
worse
? It’s so unfair. John Ruskin’s Brantwood, a white house with a little turret and green lawns, stood small and far away across the water. I fear our Victorian Godfather would run screaming if he were confronted with the Reich. Hope he’s better pleased with his current tenants. Brantwood could have been a problem. Fabulously beautiful ancestral Utopian gaff, who gets to stay there? Fortunately the Bronze Age futurists had cunningly offered their HQ to the Chinese Observers: she felt that this boded well, it showed a cool nerve and a rational attitude. A small boat approached, tacking against the breeze, a dinghy with a three-cornered tan sail. Oh, look, Coz. See the blue bird on the flag, I bet that boat is called the Swallow—

But Cosoleth had gone with Ax and Min, little shoot would never listen from the inside no more. Fiorinda was alone with herself, thinking again of the profound revolution that she had struggled so hard to forestall. There is one code uniting mind and matter, the perceived world and the consciousness that perceives it, and we can learn to read it. And this is a model, like all the models before. It opens new vistas, stranger than imagination could devise, but it changes nothing. The trees, the stones, Coniston water, and the fells that brooded over it, were charged with
meaning
, a veil over the same matrix that had thrilled William Wordworth: which now had intelligible form. Which could be taken apart and remade.

The dinghy with the swallow pennant had come inshore. A young soldier in olive green was carefully reading aloud from a little book, while his companions downed the sail. Tourists! Who the hell else. Wordsworth fans, sailing a boat called the Swallow? The Observer Team aides saw Fiorinda and grinned shyly, like kids surprised at a stolen game of make-believe. She grinned back: hey, compadre culture vultures. You and me both, but excuse me from fraternising…

She left them to enjoy their First Class Treasure experience in peace.

‘There was a stall selling baby-carriers,’ said Felice, wrapping a carry-cloth firmly around Fiorinda and Coz. The candy-stripe sling was dead. ‘We can find the long frocks who were running it, they’ll be around here somewhere.’

‘Mm.’ Fiorinda resolved to get this cloth-strapping thing down, for the duration. She didn’t want any neo-Bronze Age artisan-crafted baby gear. She wanted shiny tubing and bright-coloured nylon—

‘How old is she
now
?’ asked Dora, as people do, when they have forgotten. ‘Is it, um, four months, where does the time go?’

‘Seventeen weeks on Wednesday.’

‘Wow, she’s huge—’

When they had something important to discuss the Free Cumbrians gathered and went for a long walk together—a tradition founded in the depths of the Crisis, a good decade ago now, imagine!—when Simon Hartsfern and Walter Ridley had tramped the fells: gathering followers, preaching self-sufficiency and the Well-Being of the Land. Mr Preston’s pro-Chinese message was getting the treatment. The Fair had been dismantled and packed on mule trains. The marquees, stalls and stages would be raised again twice, in Langdale, and then on Eskdale Moor. The hike itself was not obligatory, but it was hardcore, so naturally the Reich had signed up.

Chip and Verlaine, ostentatiously at home in their boots, guarded the packs and talked about ale with hairy-stockinged locals. Cherry Dawkins stood alone, immemorial sorrow shadowing her pretty face, turning
pretty
into grown-up beauty. The spiritual quest had seemed so real and pure. Now she was lost, in a situation where there’s no way forward, no way back. Measuring herself and coming up
worthless
, without ever going near a scanner—

Allie wondered if they’d made the right decision. The Chinese Observers were walking, but significant Euros and the entire mediapack (along with the non-Reich bands) had opted for limo-standard motor transport, gorgeous food and soft beds. What if Ax missed a vital conversation held in a gourmet hotel spa?

Cumbria’s luxuries frightened her.

But she could see the Berlin Foreign Minister (they were openly pro-Chinese in Berlin), incognito as a flugelhorn expert, and there’s an important Portuguese parlimentarian; also
fadista
. She walked around Cherry, who managed a tight-lipped nod. Poor eye-candy baby. Everyone knew what was going on there (except the obvious person), and nobody wanted it to happen. Breaking up is hard to do.

The maidens and the wives wore shorter skirts for walking: pinafore-cut linen shifts in glorious colours; mantles in very fine wool folded, exquisitely casual, on their shoulders. They did not look like Amish, they looked like a fucking
Vogue
shoot. God, the bloom on these people, they make us all look like scarecrows. How can the Chinese
not know
there’s something weird about this economic fucking miracle? She hated the sight of the Shield Ring. Broken glass in her throat, terrible images, guilt twisting the knife, oh why do I have to know this? Why couldn’t I mourn and move on—

Death came thumping up on horseback wearing a steward’s vest, an ecstatic little boy in front of him on the saddle. He was leading a second mount.

‘Mama!’ shrieked Mamba. ‘Look at ME!’

‘Ohmigod!’ howled Dora. ‘
Sage!
What are you doing with my kid? He’s too little! He’s supposed to be in the Mountain Rescue jeep with Fer!’

‘She’s not in the jeep, she’s with Rob. The safest place they can be is with us. Hey, Allie, you can ride. C’mon, you’re hereby deputised.’

Around eleven in the morning they started to move: Steadhusbands and Hearthwives, maidens and manchildren, radical rockstars, EU delegates, rank and file Techno-Green Utopians; and of course the Chinese Observers. They tramped singing through the town and up into the Coniston Fells, with the larks shouting and the stony trail echoing under their tread, until the Reich favourites you could march to, some of them inexplicable (‘Bohemian Rhapsody’?) gave out; and it was
Ich bin ein froher Wandrer… Und hab’ ich auch kein Geld…

Death and his companions watched from above as the Landsturm crossed the flank of Great Intake, ‘Ilkley Moor’, the Islamic Campaign song, making the fells resound. Someone capering ahead of the Shield Ring banners, a satirical plastic duck impaled on a stick. Banners and standards had become a
thing
on the campground in Coniston, rousing mysterious passions: captured and defended, joyously destroyed.

Norman, you should be here, thought Sage. But Norman Soong was currently in mild peril, having been discovered in possession of a copy of the sex show, which he was supposed to have erased. He wouldn’t get dismembered, but he wouldn’t be on Elder Sister’s first team for a little while. What’d happened to the guilty copy of that
very impressive
sex show was anybody’s guess—

‘Fucking glad Jiang Jieshi isn’t after them,’ remarked Rob.

‘Who?’

‘Aka Chiang Kai-shek,’ said Allie. ‘Chased the Communists around.’

‘Oh yeah, what scholars you are. The Long March.’

Rob took a firmer grip on his daughter. Ferdelice, the five-year-old, had been thrilled to be riding until Mamba got to share the privilege: now she felt betrayed and wouldn’t stop wriggling. That ambling mass of humanity looked so naked. He looked up, almost afraid to see a flight of purple UFOs.

‘Sage,
are
there any actual ex-barmies in that lot?’

‘Fraid so. But they’ve recanted, and none of them were active in Anglia.’

‘Tell me there are no concealed weapons.’

‘I do not know. Fucking hope not.’ He shook the reins, one arm around Mamba, ‘C’mon Mr Pie, let it out.’ The little boy whooped for joy, the mighty steed thundered away. The horses were Fell Ponies, crossed with some big work-horse marque in the case of Sage’s mount: they were tireless, and built for the kind of ground where humans longed for a ski-lift.