Rainbow Bridge (45 page)

‘No. I just like watching them.’

‘I never knew you were a vegetarian, Sage!’ cried the Welshman.

‘Hahaha. I like eating them, too. Long as they’ve been fairly caught.’

‘There speaks a hunter,’ said Simon, pleased. ‘And a countryman.’

‘Perch isn’t tasty eating,’ said Iwan, peering down. ‘I’d have to be hungry.’

It struck Allie and Fiorinda as odd that the Steadmen reverted to old-fashioned black-and-white for dinner parties. Where were those rich mediaeval robes? Luckily Allie had checked up on the dress code before they left London, so Ax and Sage had formal kit, not the famous “best clothes”—

‘Blue and red,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I don’t remember how it started.’

‘Ax’s only suit was red,’ said Allie, ‘back when we were the Countercultural Think Tank. I think he’s superstitious about it. Blue for Sage to match his eyes.’

They giggled. ‘Anne-Marie said those were their colours, aural opposites. Which I thought was bullshit, making a psychic insight out of what was in front of her, but I’ve noticed it’s true. If Ax wears blue, or Sage wears red, it’s creepy.’

‘You know, I can see that. Ax would look
sly
, in blue.’

‘Sage looks like a psychopath in red.’

They’d reached the jetty, but the men were coming back: ginger Iwan flushed and acting confident, Julius Hecht a dried-up, tight-skinned little figure with a bald dome of a head, absurdly dwarfed by Sage and the Master. Allie and Fiorinda glanced at each other, and touched hands. They had stage-fright.

Louisa Hartsfern, Simon’s wife, first lady of the Guild, was a beautiful woman in her forties, with exquisite skin, a gracious smile and a crown of dark braids. ‘I wish I could have invited you to Brantwood,’ she said. ‘There’s a limit to what I will pack onto a mule train. Usually we camp out, when we’re here on the summer circuit.’

The terrace looked over an orchard plot, where flowers tangled as if run wild in the long grass under the trees. Fiorinda praised the garden design,
ars gratia artis
; and admired the hand-painted damask table linen, the rooted floral arrangements, the bounty of artisan
hors d’oeuvres.
Louisa accepted compliments distractedly, as if she too was tired of that game. They all stood behind their chairs while Julius intoned a Bronze Age Lutheran Grace; the servants in a row behind, with bowed heads. Only the philosopher seemed unaware of the subtext of this meal. He lingered over his sonorous psalm, and smiled expansively around the table.

‘How pleasant this is! We dine together, sharing bread and salt!’

‘Someday you
must
make the whole Great Circle,’ exclaimed Margaret Smallwood, Louisa’s sister, the prophetess who had interviewed Fiorinda: fixing Ax with large, slightly crazy brown eyes. ‘It’s our sacred pilgrimage, vital as the
Hajj
.’

‘Another time.’

Ax wondered if the black-and-white clad servants were bonded. The Shield Ring was appalled at labour camps, but their creed allowed a form of bondservice; decent, proper slavery. Right-wing Utopians, why are you so predictable? Another wine was poured. Allie immediately picked up her glass and downed half of it.

Walter Ridley cleared his throat. ‘We’ve been impressed by the way tha survived the walking and rough riding, Ms Marlowe, a city-bred fashionable woman like thyself. Tha’s “a tidy brave lass”, as we say.’

‘We haven’t been on another planet,’ said Allie, shortly. ‘We’ve had hard times. We’ve lived on the road a great deal, it goes with the territory.’

‘How
difficult
city life must have been,’ murmured Louisa, and glanced down the table at the Master, as if waiting for a cue he’d forgotten to give her.

Iwan devoured smoked oysters, uneasily.

Julius expounded on the history of Cumbrian husbandry. ‘This is a land made by human hands, no less than the
Pays Bas
. You’ve seen the pit circles on Brat’s Moss? Evidence abounds of a settled population, as much as three and four thousand years ago. The hill land improves dramatically with lime and dung, of course plenty of dung, but it must be well ploughed in, and the bracken rooted out. Gradually, the soil can be brought to a condition where arable crops can be added with profit to a long rotation—’

Sage, his neighbour, nodded: keeping up a respectable show of interest.

The philosopher paused, a twinkle in his ancient eyes. ‘The fertility of the Land, as we know, is of interest to the Triumvirate. I was
extremely
pleased to hear of the ceremony at Rainbow Bridge! Ritual intent makes all things pure!’

‘You think, professor? I c’n call to mind a few exceptions.’

‘We are
not
Pagans,’ said Margaret Smallwood, in a low voice.

‘Of course not, my dear Margaret, but—’

The servants cleared the
hors d’oeuvres
and laid warm soup plates: a tureen approached, borne with stately deliberation. Sage, contemplating the hell of another five or six courses, decided enough was enough. He exchanged a glance with Ax and Fiorinda, yep, agreed. Fuck the Lakeland gourmet experience.

Let’s put them out of their misery.

‘Carn’ say I noticed the stone circles partic’larly. We have Neolithic debris to burn where I come from. It’s yer famous invisible windfarms I most admired.’

He sat back in his chair, and became Death (he had the body mask on his eyesocket button). Margaret froze. Louisa lifted a hand, and shook her head at the tureen-bearer. The servants, all of them, quietly retired into the house.

‘Where did you get that mirror software? I think maybe I know, but if you’ve made it work to the extent it seems, you’re going to be stinking rich. Not that that would be a change. You have to have forests of turbines up there, an’ this mask works
okay
, but horizons are a problem, I’ve never tried running it indefinitely, an’ I’m oversized, but I’m not a hundred metres tall—’

Louisa and Margaret stared at him as if measuring the success of the bones: slivers of tablecloth and crystal lacing Death’s tib and fib, gently moving apple leaves, Walter’s black broadcloth, between his ribs. Walter and Simon were stone-faced, unmoved: the beards helped.

‘It’s not what you’re
hiding
,’ continued the living skull, affably, ‘because frankly, you are not hiding anything. It’s fucking obvious, excuse me, ladies, once anyone gets close to you, that you’ve ignited the old power station.’

Julius blinked several times, and passed a hand over the liver-spotted gloss of his skull. The creamy knife-pleats of Louisa’s bodice rose and fell, Iwan Turner stared at his empty soup plate. Everything we do is seen, everything we say is heard.

‘Nah, as usual, classically: it’s not the robbery, it’s the cover-up. I’ve been collecting some very exotic signals, up on your high tops. It wasn’t even hard. Anyone equipped to sniff out forbidden tech could do the same.’

The Shield Ring principals, men and women weren’t giving an inch. They seemed filled with hidden excitement: thrilled to be facing execution by slow torture for themselves, bloody massacre for their people—

‘We are
not
Counterculturals,’ declared Margaret, head high, without a tremor. ‘We have no truck with any pernicious delusion. What do we have to fear?’

Simon gave her a look of brotherly resignation: incongruous, very human.

‘Tha’s not turned us in,’ he said. ‘Tha’s at risk thysen, talking like that.’

‘
Can
we talk here?’ asked Ax, casually; addressing his lady.

‘Nothing’s certain, but I think so. Go ahead.’

Everyone looked to Fiorinda, who sat with her chin on her hands, the saltbox on the tablecloth between her elbows. The Shield Ring principals were puzzled, they hadn’t seen where that wooden apple came from. Fiorinda nodded to Sage, and that’s one risky moment passed. Outside chance, but they could have had effective magic. They don’t. She tucked the saltbox away in her green silk clutch-purse.

‘We are not at risk,’ she said to Simon. ‘We are privileged negotiators. Elder Sister wants us to achieve her purpose, which is the peaceful liberation of Cumbria; she trusts us to choose the means. This house is suspiciously well-armoured against surveillance, but as far as we can tell the Chinese have not tried to penetrate your defences. Not yet. They don’t want to “know”. If they “knew”, they would have to act. We can talk.’

‘You must have been shitting yourselves,’ said Ax bluntly, ‘these last ten days. Are you going to explain to us
why
you didn’t shut your operation down?’

‘It’s not like turning off a tap,’ muttered Walter.

‘We’ve been shitting ourselves since last September, Mr Preston,’ said Simon Hartsfern, still with that mysterious light in his eyes, ‘waiting for our leaders to find a way to reach us. Tha’d better come indoors.’

They went into the house, and to a dank upstairs room. It smelled of damp and mice, it conjured up Tyller Pystri, saddened by long neglect. Simon opened a closet door, and they passed from there to a different world.

The upstairs room was still with them, yet they were also standing in a smooth-walled corridor, painted in faded red; a great curve of window in front of them, and out there, under a quiet evening sky, across a field of rough grass, they saw the two square kilometres of Sellafield Nuclear Power Station, humming with life. It was a while since they’d done b-loc. Sage was at ease at once, Ax and Fiorinda had to struggle, for a moment, to reach the state where you’re no longer bewildered at being in two places at once: commit to the remote site, commit to the home site, no different from talking on the phone really, consciousness is a point, not a line… In that dank mousey closet Simon’s material self tapped a control pad. In the corridor at Sellafield lights came on, illuminating the gothic lettering etched into the glass of the observation bay.

THE ONLY WEALTH IS LIFE

The only wealth is life. ‘Oh,
fuck
,’ breathed Ax. He put up his hands, pushed the wings of dark hair from his temples. ‘My
God
.’

His head had been full of how to get what he needed from these people. How to script the Landsturm
exactly
the way it must go, because at the end of this tangled coil there was someone who must not lose face. He’d never had time to visualise what the Shield Ring’s outrageous operation would look like. He was blown away—

‘Nuclear power is very much a live issue in Wales,’ said Iwan.

‘Yeah,’ breathed Ax. ‘We know.’

‘We call the secret projects “Invisible Wind Turbines”.’

‘Oh,’ said Sage, equally riveted by the view. ‘Oh, I get it. Okay.’

‘The Chinese
don’t
see this,’ explained Margaret Smallwood, reassuringly. ‘They
can’t
see it, it’s neurophysically impossible. We have a very large array virtual screen, forming a hemispherical false horizon. Onto which we project a 4D direct cortical stimulus image of the plant, as it was before we took it out of hibernation. We call it the
sleeve
. It’s immix technology, it hijacks the perception of all human receptors, at any remove, as well as deceiving their instruments.’

‘The sleeve?’

‘Yes, Mr Preston.’ The prophetess smiled on Ax, with her shining eyes.

‘
They need, these blossoms of the spring, assailed by winds.

An all-encompassing sleeve to close off the skies.
’

Fiorinda and the Zen Self Champion shared a glance of bug-eyed horror.

‘We’ve had expert, covert assistance from the Wylfa group,’ expounded Walter, ‘all along. This is the modern face of nuclear power, Mr Preston. We have our emissions down to a minimum that would surprise thee, we have realtime tracking of all materials, independent failsafe back-up, and everything’s remote. The people who work inside, work by b-loc. We have a network of live paths set up; of which this is the start of one. We’ve no need for muscle power in any hazardous area. Should there have been concern over the
slightly
raised levels of radioactivity in the local area, we’ve had an alibi ready. There was a moderate semi-permanent storage leak. It’s all logged, happened a while ago, we’ve dealt with it. Our answer to the materials problem, decommissioning and storage is twofold. We’re entirely a reprocessing plant, we shan’t be requiring raw uranium, and we simply don’t plan to decommission. Not until we have a genuine, energy-audited solution. Which we believe, in time, neurophysics theory and mind/matter tech shall provide.’

‘To our mind it was our business,’ said Simon, the Master, unrepentant. ‘Our choice, and when we had to lie about it we did. Tha don’t ask permission to bail, when the boat’s filling up with water.’

Ax flashed, wildly, on the political disaster this would have been. One of England’s
de facto
devolved regions has been producing nuclear electricity, and more than likely
selling
it, labelled as windpower. Well, I’m dead. I’m
crucified.
Oh Crisis Europe, my fucked up, interim and pro-tem lost world, where are you now?

‘Mr Hartsfern,’ he said, eyes riveted to the science fiction, ‘Mr Ridley. I’m a nuclear sceptic, as you know. We don’t need to replace fossil fuels with plutonium. We need to
consume less energy
, can’t you get it through your heads? But that’s well beside the point. If Elder Sister has to know about this, believe me, you’re not going to be making a statement at the public inquiry.’

‘If she gets to know about your “sleeve” technology, she’ll slaughter us all,’ added Sage. ‘Every fucking one of us, without compunction. Do you realise how
military
that sounds?’

There was a strange pause. Walter and Simon looked bewildered, as if they suddenly wondered whether they had been speaking English. Julius Hecht gazed through the curve of strengthened glass, lost in his own thoughts.

‘This
is
a military operation, Mr Preston,’ said Walter Ridley. ‘We’re not ready to go, but we soon will be. We aren’t building submarine missiles, but we found Vickers had left plans and
materiél
behind when they closed down at Barrow. We’ve been able to cannibalise those reserves for battlefield, guerrilla-oriented purposes.’