Authors: Gwyneth Jones
‘But on the land of Lorien no shadow lies,’ added Verlaine, wryly.
‘There is that.’
‘If you two
quote Tolkien
,’ F’lice threatened, grinning, ‘I’m authorised to have Death throw you to the ducks, you guys know that. You’ve been warned
plenty
.’
‘Shame on
you
for knowing when we’re doing it.’
They were alone at last. It was time to talk about the real news.
The Shield Ring situation had been scaring the Reich for a long time. Elder Sister’s Congress should have been their chance, the Triumivrate’s secret mission should have been to knock some sense into the Free Cumbrians, tell them they had to
strangle
their appalling economic miracle. But Sage had read the trace of Dilip Krishnachandran’s virtual self, in the 0s and 1s of a trophy courtesan’s last hours, and the agenda had changed dramatically.
Chip came down from his lookout. They formed a circle on the green fellside: unconsciously taking the same places as they’d taken round the old schoolroom tables in the Office at the Insanitude. Except that Allie was sticking close to Sage, which would never have happened in the old days. She was their fashionplate again, having acquired beautiful Shield Ring britches and a
perfect
crocus-yellow linen smock, and this seemed right; but she looked shattered.
‘The Chinese can see us sitting here,’ said Ax, getting straight to it. ‘They can zoom in on a woodlouse crossing a square centimetre of Scafell Pike if they feel like it. Maybe they can hear us too. One of us could be tagged with a transmitter, we know it happens. Everything we do is seen, everything we say is heard. That’s the Chinese assumption, and the only safe way to behave is if we never forget it.’
‘But they’ll see and hear nothing untoward,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I can’t tell you how I’m doing it. Knowing how is expensive, I’ll save that for when it matters. Just take it from me, their surveillance is not working and they won’t blame us.’
‘We believe you,’ said Rob. The others nodded, very soberly.
A real hex twists the world, insidiously, like a whisper of malicious gossip. Ruin falls on the victim like diabolical bad luck. When Rufus O’Niall was starting out, before the global audience boosted him to critical mass, very bad things happened to people who crossed him, but never anything you could pin on Rufus.
‘Hopefully they’ll blame the opposition back in Xi’an,’ said Ax.
‘Does Elder Sister have opposition?’ asked Verlaine, incredulous.
Ax shrugged. ‘Give me a break.’
Of course she does. Everyone has opposition.
‘This doesn’t mean you can relax,’ Fiorinda went on. ‘I can protect you, because I always do. If I have to make it focused and intentional they
will
notice something, and we will be totally screwed. Don’t take risks.’
The Few nodded some more, nervous tremors. They were in uncharted territory, Fiorinda was doing what she must never do, and her distant, crystal-spoken calm was not reassuring—
‘We should’ve known the Chinese have mind/matter tech,’ said Sage. ‘It was staring us in the face, an’ I was maybe the only person left alive in England who could’ve checked their credentials. I was too fucking scared. I wouldn’t listen to Dian. I couldn’t see questioning anything our new overlords chose to tell us—’
‘Don’t beat yourself up, big cat,’ said Ax. ‘You got that from me.’
‘Same here,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I was just waiting to be found out, or to find out that
they
had the same terrible secret; until the day we went to Dian’s house. As far as we can tell, they don’t know we’re onto them. They don’t know about the apparition, they don’t know Lance Buckley recorded the evidence and gave it to us. They know we visited Rexborough, but we couldn’t help that—’
‘It’s okay,’ put in Ax. ‘If Wang’s uneasy, let him sweat. No harm in him knowing we’re nosing around a potential scandal, a suspicious death—’
‘Industrial espionage on the masters of the universe may sound bad,’ Sage grinned. ‘Okay, it sounds insane. But the situation has a hint of promise—’
‘We can
see
that,’ protested Dora, passionately. ‘We’re with you all the way.’
The rest added their assent; Ax moved on. ‘We knew what had to be going on up here, same as we pretty much know what’s going on in deepest Wales. We didn’t realise that the Shield Ring had to be using forbidden tech to shield themselves. Sage can now confirm that’s what they’re doing, big time. The only
mystery
is why the fuck it’s all still running, with the Chinese Observers right on top of it. I find that very scary, but I’m hoping for the best.’
‘Ruskin will protect them,’ said Sage. ‘They sing to the sun, don’t they?’
‘Maybe they’re convinced the Chinese believe in the invisible wind turbines,’ said Chez. ‘So they’re safer hiding in plain sight, showing no fear?’
Fiorinda nodded. ‘Could be.’
Free Cumbria’s miracle had been powered by offshore wave and wind-rafts; until the A-team event revealed (the world over) how much fossil fuel support the oceanborne wind and wave renewables needed. Undaunted, the sturdy Cumbrians had switched back to the mountain windfarms, that they’d just finished dismantling as an affront to the Land. They’d hauled the masts out of mothballs, mounted them with mirror-routine boxes so they were to all intents invisible: and it was business as usual in this enclave of plenty. That was the story. It had passed, at a distance, so far as anyone had even wondered, in the confusion of the last few years. It didn’t stand up very well at close quarters.
‘The Chinese
must
know,’ muttered Allie, unhappily.
‘Obviously,’ Fiorinda agreed. ‘That’s why the AMID force stayed out of here, same as they stayed out of Anglia. They don’t deal with entrenched opposition, not unless they feel they must: and the Cumbrians aren’t the Counterculture. The way we read it, she’s giving us a chance to convince the people of their error, before she moves in and mows them down.’
‘They must have started this years ago,’ said Ax. ‘Who was paying attention? The Irish have never complained, and the Welsh weren’t likely to. David Sale’s government was glad to let them get on with it. Maybe the Second Chamber was getting paid off, I don’t know. As far as the Reich was concerned, they wanted to be let alone, and that was fine. The Volunteer Initiative put a couple of camps on the Furness Peninsula—’
Fiorinda nodded. ‘Local opposition, but they backed down.’
‘Then came the invasion, and suddenly a politically incorrect secret was—’
‘Something that could cause the Chinese to slaughter every man, woman and child.’ finished Sage, grimly. ‘An’ they froze, they went into collective denial?’
‘Either that, or Chez’s version. They don’t seem very fucking worried.’
‘So that’s where we are.’ The baby kicked and chuckled in Fiorinda’s lap, grabbing at copper curls: she disentangled the tiny fingers and looked up. ‘We were going to shut them down. Now we’re planning to ask them for a loan of their b-loc—: we don’t think they’ll refuse—so that, with some higher geekery, we’ll be able to contact DK the same way Dian did. But b-loc ghosts have limited powers, and anyone who took the trip would risk getting caught. We need to capture someone digitally and get them to materialise
physically
at the remote site, a trick that’s only been tried once, on me, by my boyfriend here, and it didn’t really work. But we can fake it.’
She kissed the baby, and handed her to Ax. I will hold you again before the actual performance, but in my heart this is where we part, maybe forever, little one. Mama got to go to work… Sage opened his board.
The Few now looked as if they were staring at a horrific road accident.
‘If I have grown two heads,’ said Fiorinda, tartly. ‘Then we are in trouble.’
‘Sorry,’ they muttered, and tried to look cheerful, which was worse.
The tiger and the wolf on either side of her, the mountain at her back. A huge mass of 0s and 1s, local point phase conservation, and they must be in order, at least to four dimensions, map on map, a staggering number of connections, like an impossible task in a fairytale. I have to do it right or I am like my father, a wrecking ball, ripping holes in
la grande illusion
, the necessary barriers. And here goes, before I see some little tiny error, before I start to drown.
Fiorinda vanished. She reappeared, instantly (a paradox, perception is not instant), beside the boulder she had picked out, about five metres away.
‘Gotcha,’ said Sage, quietly. ‘Looking good.’
‘
What
do I look like? On the screen, what do you see?’
‘My b-loc virtual Fiorinda sig, lining up, spot-on.’
‘But I’m not. See, I can touch the ground, oooh, I can feel the grass, I’m solid. But if I
felt
like it, where I am now, I could walk right through this rock!’
‘Let’s not get carried away, sweetheart,’ His fingers stumbled a little on the toggles, but he kept it steady and light. ‘Time to go home, c’mon.’
There, she’s back where she was.
‘It’s very seductive,’ said Fiorinda, with a glittering grin. She ducked her head, vanishing behind the curls. ‘Talk among yourselves. No one touch me for a moment.’
‘Eh?’ said Cosoleth, struggling to get to her mother. ‘Eh, eh!’
‘No, no, no,’ said Ax, cuddling her. ‘Be a good kid, we’re busy.’
Cosoleth had a sense of emergency; an excellent thing in a baby. She sighed and lay quiet. ‘We’re going to find out what happened to Dilip,’ said Ax, his chin on the baby’s head, ‘and find out what the Chinese are really up to, the lying bastards. We’ll keep the
actual
pernicious stuff to a minimum. But we’ll do what it takes.’
‘Yes,’ said Fiorinda, from inside her huddle.
‘There are people at the Congress who know what we’re doing, they’re with us for the next stage if we succeed; of course they won’t know us if we fail.’
‘Sage is my alibi,’ Fiorinda sat up, white under her summer gold, p[inned pupils in eyes like grey stones. ‘If we get caught, he did it by higher geekery. If we end up claiming responsibility, he can have the glory. I’ll settle for keeping my head on my shoulders.’ She smiled, she glowed with a weird mixture of horror and bliss, brought from beyond the veil. The Few didn’t manage to smile in return.
‘Just for completism,’ said Sage, ‘now we’ve got you proper terrified, may as well tell you the upside. We think the Chinese are experts at forbidden tech, and we know the Cumbrians are right-wing lunatics. We think that’s it, nothing worse. No A-team, no hell-monster waiting to pounce. Everything says not.’
‘But we could be horribly wrong,’ added Ax.
‘Well, yeah. Tha’s unfortunately true.’
Then no one knew what to say, or do, until Dora reached out and gripped Chez’s hand. Chez reached for Rob, Ax set the baby down. Coz lay on the grass while they all clasped hands. A hard, no-nonsense grip, musicians’ hands are strong. All the breaking up and moving on put aside for the duration. They let go, and sat in silence.
Chip thought of Rox, who’d been Kevin Verlaine’s mentor and lover when the Adjuvants first started gigging. The non-ego way that the great Roxane Smith had bowed out, when s/he knew that three had become a crowd. What goes around comes around, yeah… No, karma’s not like that. Karma is like this: whatever wrong you do, you will be offered a chance to right the balance again, so that when you die your heart weighs less than the feather. Is that mixing my mysticisms? But they’re all the same; love God and love thy neighbour.
Keep me sweet
, he thought, if this is my last day on earth, or if I live to be a hundred. Let me do this the way Rox did it.
And okay, I lied. I was angry… It’s probably true I’d never do it with a girl, but the idea does not make me sick, an’ it would have been nice to be
considered
, Cherry-baby. Feeling their eyes on him he looked up, and mugged a silly smile.
‘Time for the summit dash?’ suggested Fiorinda.
‘Not me,’ Rob squinted at the upward path. ‘I’m staying here, it looks horrific. You fuckers—’ (meaning Chip and Ver) ‘I bet the other way is the easy way.’
‘You bet wrong.’
Chip and Verlaine wanted to preserve the memory of their first ascent, the Powerbabes elected to stay with their boyfriend. They were not daunted, they’d just had enough exercise; fine with the picnic spot. ‘We only pretended we wanted to bag the peak,’ said Dora. ‘We are not so crass.’ Allie said she honestly didn’t think she could make it. It was a little strange, undercurrents in this, but the Few wouldn’t be moved. From this high place (such an English molehill of a high place), the leaders must go on alone.
Everyone watched as they headed off, unashamedly fascinated by Sage’s lean, athletic grace, and the maybe-President of Europe with a baby on his back. Their living goddess, despite her girly whining, bounced from stone to stone as if on springs.
‘That girl’s waist,’ remarked Dora, reflectively, ‘was twenty-four inches again,
three days
after she had a baby by Caesarean section.’
Nods, and groans of agreement, from her sister Babes and Allie.
‘Who told you?’ asked Rob, intrigued. ‘Did Ax tell you?’
‘Nobody told us,’ said Allie. ‘Ax wasn’t there, remember? We measured her.’
Women, thought Rob. Why’d you do that, if it was going to annoy you?
‘They treat their baby like an exotic pet,’ complained Felice. But she knew why Coz came everywhere. No safer place for her to be, and she prayed Ferdelice and Mamba were okay back on Eskdale Moor, protected by the Heads, by the crews; surrounded by our people. Anxiety clutched her stomach, she thought of Anne-Marie on Reading Site, in that welter of blood, dying with her babies—
Put it out of your mind. Smile, it’s a beautiful day.
Chip and Ver decided to lay out the luncheon, which should be good, it had weighed a ton, stubbornly chanting the proper incantation: coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssantwidgespottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater—’ despite of heckles that this was crypto-Tolkien by stealth.
There genuinely was a glistening roast chicken, succulent potted beef. And boiled eggs, a herby salad, tomatoes, butter in a crock, Beauty of Bath apples; a big loaf of fresh white bread.