Rainbow Bridge (49 page)

‘Hm.’

‘If I am to go on believing you are truly the person I want you to be.’

‘And who is that?’

‘The rightful son of heaven.’

Her phoenix eyes opened wide. He glimpsed the outlaw hunger of a young woman in soldier’s uniform, studying battles between dance rehearsals. The angry, enduring shame Wang Xili had warned him about; the whole story of Li Xifeng, which he could never know. That charming three-cornered grin broke out.

‘Well! It’s true what they say about you, Ax Preston.’

Ax reached for the hookah again. Good at spotting resistance, and very good at signalling when the imperial audience is over. ‘Oh yeah? What do they say?’

‘That you are an
inspired
flatterer.’

‘The golden rule is you can never be too blatant.’

Elder Sister burst into delighted laughter, and collapsed on her side, the robe falling open. ‘Oh dear. I am a child! The words “son of heaven” go straight to a centre in my brain! I have never taken heroin, I think it may be something like!’

Please God, nobody ever introduce this woman to smack.

She was a wanton dancing girl with sparkling eyes and dewy lips, giggling up at him, brass-nerved, wicked as if she’d been born English. He took her in his arms, the chemistry between them blossoming again, and kissed her parted lips. He was aching hard, extremely turned on, a very strange state to be in, but genuine. I saw you coming towards me, in the night garden—

The moth’s kiss first. ‘But I mean it.’ The bee’s kiss now.

Just before four a.m. Ax left the clouds of her bed, shrugging the robe provided for him over his shoulders. He located his clothes, tossed on a chair, and took his suit jacket through a looming maze of furniture to the open floor in front of the Fu dais. It was a relief to change his orientation. Her bed faced south, the dais faced south: but in Reading Arena everything should flow from east to west. Ax’s sense of direction was strong, and boosted by years of having had a brain implant. When he was aligned wrongly it nagged him. He sat with one knee up, the other leg folded under him, staring across the shadowy space, and listened to a thrush that had begun to sing, practice notes, an isolated phrase repeated, and then another…wishing he had a cigarette, his phone on the rug in front of him.

It was a toy he’d picked up at the fair in Cumbria, a sleek, curved haematite pebble, with no outward sign of tech. Just a phone, no features. Thoughts of the long, bewildering struggle drifted through his mind, fragments of the catalogue of failures and mistakes he rehearsed to himself when he was low. But it was all one now. In an hour or two it would be time for the
Fajr
… He felt very close to his religion tonight, strange as that might seem.
To be
the presence of God’s compassion on earth.
To know
that the world is a mosque; to walk in it humbly, reverently, as on holy ground. That’s all you need to be, that’s all you need to know. The rest, all the plotting and scheming, working the percentages; it’s so worthless.

But he didn’t think he would pray, not this dawn. Maybe not even in his heart. He wondered where the thrush was perched. Down by Travellers’ Meadow, where the great oak tree used to stand, that fell in the storm in Boat People Summer? No, the ragged wilderness down there was gone, like the lovely trees that used to grow beside the Thames. The bushes and briars ripped out; the river culverted.

He had spent the night love-making with a beautiful woman, at least twice his age; and she was an adept. He had received, he hoped he’d given, a great deal of pleasure. And now what? Hollow and empty as the hour, not even terrified, just tired and sad, he listened to the birdsong until his phone rang, bang on time.

Fuck! He dived for the pebble.

‘
Hi, Scheherazade, how’s it going
?’

‘I’m good. How are you?’

‘
Ooh, we’ve had a great night. Didn’t miss you at all. We reached the fourth V, solved that, got some stuff, an’ Aeris, Barrett and Tifa all home free and clear
.’

Aeris, Barratt and Tifa were characters in a classic Fantasy game, a great favourite with Fiorinda and Sage. The fourth V was Dilip. Not that Ax was ever going to be explaining this conversation at a public inquiry.

‘What about the big boss fight?’

‘
Turns out there isn’t one
…
Ax, don’t stay too
long, it’ll look bad. If I were you I’d leave before office hours.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’ll do what I can.’

The phone was dead, and there was someone watching him.

‘Who was that?’

‘Sage,’ said Ax. He dropped the pebble into the pocket of his jacket.

‘What did he want?’

‘To tell me that he couldn’t sleep, I think. I’m sorry, Elder Sister. I should have had the phone switched off.’

She knelt close by him, with a dancer’s grace, warm from the bed, an incense-breathing shadow. The thrush was singing clearly now, flight upon flight of defiant joy, flung against the dark. ‘I’m not an ogre. You have a baby, suppose she had been taken ill. He was making you feel guilty, that’s not very dignified. Well, you may tell your partners I have no designs on their boyfriend.’

‘They know that. I’m sorry I gave you cause to have to say it.’

‘Though I
would
like to see you again.’

He nodded. He wasn’t about to say no, he couldn’t find the words for ‘yes’.

‘Elder Sister—’

‘My name is Li Xifeng,’ she corrected him gently.

Ax shook his head, smiling in apology. ‘I’m sorry, but you are
jiejie.
To me it’s your name, not a title. It reminds me of the Daoist Nun, and the way she came towards me in the night garden, that night in Anglia. When you called me friend Mohammad, because I’d given my coat to a cat. I’ll switch if you insist, but—’

‘Gracefully put,’ she said, ‘if not up to your own peerless standard.’

Fuck, now he’d insulted her. Better not dwell on it. Moving on.

‘Elder Sister, do you recall our conversation last night? About Europe?’

‘Of course.’

‘When you look back on it, I hope you’ll understand that I meant every word, and that I truly want to serve your cause. I’ve been thinking. I would like to arrange a meeting—if you’d be interested in talking privately to some Utopians, some of the significant delegates from the Landsturm. Would that be appropriate?’

She pondered.

‘Yes. I like the sound of that. We must see about arranging for them to come back to England, we should meet in London. Who would I meet?’

‘I’ll look into it, and send a list of suggestions to your office today.’

Last night there’d been nothing between them but random chemistry and the thrill of playing their roles. There was something more now; an orphan regret. It changed nothing, on either side. The emperor studied him from behind those beautiful eyes. He saw her putting his offer together with the phone call, and the alarming news Ax had delivered, so discreetly, a few hours before.

Taking it in, and deciding to let it go for the moment.

I will leave in good health, thought Ax. Even if she gets the emergency call. But viral pneumonia might be on the cards.

‘What is that bird?’ she said. ‘He sings every morning, from about this time until dawn; he was very loud in the spring. I am ignorant. Is that a nightingale?’

Another insomniac. Hey, compadre. ‘No, that’s a songthrush. Nightingales only sing for a short season in England, they’re pretty much over by now.’

‘Not so steeped in romance, then,’ said Elder Sister. ‘But he’s a fine, strong singer, and good company.’ She reached over to touch the bullet crease, smiling. ‘I don’t keep those souvenirs. My body is a peeled almond, its memories quickly fade. You should leave before sunrise, or people will talk, but that leaves us with an hour or so to spare. Why don’t you tell me the story of your heroic wound?’

The Sting

Ax returned to London, and sent his list of names along to Elder Sister’s office. It was received as if nothing untoward had been discovered. Days passed; still no reaction to the Sydenham strongbox raid, and this looked hopeful. As a rule, the state arrests you, gangsters come round and kill you. Rational big business keeps quiet about getting hacked, and waits for the ransom note. The geeks didn’t poke around too much, but they didn’t detect any increase in encrypted traffic between England and China. A week after the V team had freed Dilip, Ax sent a request to Wang Xili, Could the Triumvirate have a meeting with the Generals and Elder Sister, to discuss the unofficial Europe talks?

A response came within the hour: certainly, what a good idea.

They’d been staying at the Snake Eyes Commune; the old same place—which had become once more the HQ of the revolution. Cornwall was too far away, the Few and their leaders had felt like sticking together. They went to Chelsea on a warm, still afternoon, and walked from the Underground. The neighbourhood where Fiorinda had wandered, twelve years old and pregnant, looking for the address she’d somehow never learned, was quiet. The only people on these streets of slightly raffish privilege were Chinese soldiers. There were plenty of those: London was still an occupied city, and one of the Five Generals had his quarters here. At the armoured checkpoint, at the end of Wang Xili’s street they were greeted with beaming smiles and eager goodwill.

Wang himself received them, in the flat’s tiny hallway.

He was in uniform, elegant as always, but stiff with them: no sign of his lively charm, or his customary urbanity. No question the Chinese knew of the raid. Perhaps the collaborators were here to disclose, for their masters’ ears alone, the details of a conspiracy they had uncovered? From his manner, Wang didn’t appear to go for this explanation. He showed them into the gold-curtained living room.

‘I will inform Elder Sister that you have arrived.’

The Fiorinda gallery stared from every side, insistent on being noticed.

‘I’d forgotten it was this bad,’ said Sage. ‘It went out of my head.’

‘Don’t worry about it. I don’t care.’ Fiorinda wondered what she was doing up there. Standing in for Elder Sister? Maybe in China
jiejie
was everywhere. In England the personality cult behaviour that had begun to break out was severely discouraged. Perhaps Wang surrounded himself with glamour shots of a foreign rock babe, and thought of his own inamorata. She thought it didn’t matter much. She was deposed, dethroned, no longer
the awful problem
, and it was a very good feeling.

She had her tapestry bag, Sage carried his visionboard. It was okay that Cosoleth and Min were back at Snake Eyes, but it was a shame that Ax didn’t have his Gibson on his shoulder: because here they were at the end of the trail they’d embarked on as demoralised fugitives, clinging to their last treasures. They’d been in rags at Ashdown. Today they were rockstars, Sage and Ax in very fine pastel suits, Fiorinda in designer shalwar kameez: Eau de Nil green, with a silvery cobweb scarf over her hair. Not going to make a habit of it, but sometimes my prince
deserves
the solidarity of a little touch of hejab—

They belatedly realised they’d been standing in a dream, staring at each other like idiots: grinned ruefully and sat down. Ah remember Paris in the the springtime, in the long freeze, when we had nothing to do but be in love? They knew they’d been left alone in the faint hope that they might let something slip. They felt this boded well. We have them in a tizz.

‘Do you remember anything?’ asked Ax.

Fiorinda shook her head. ‘I don’t
think
it was all gold and shimmery like this, I have darker colours in mind. But it’s a blank. Oh, the bedroom was through there—’

She pointed, and memory stirred, faint and oddly poignant.

The door she pointed to opened. Wang held it wide for Elder Sister; Hu followed her. Imagine the Fifth Element, the world-conqueror, sitting in her General’s bedroom in this poky little flat, waiting to be summoned. But no doubt Li Xifeng had seen worse foxholes. She was not in uniform: she wore a crisp white shirt untucked, and blue jeans; her feet were bare. The Generals and their beloved leader sat down opposite the English Triumvirate, the low table between the two parties.

‘The meeting will be conducted in English,’ said General Hu.

Elder Sister looked long and hard at her Chosen One, and kept her eyes on him as she held out her hand to Wang, who swiftly opened the briefcase he had brought from the bedroom, and gave her a sheet of paper.

‘Now,’ said Elder Sister. ‘This list. Alain de Corlay, Naomi Erhlevy, Dominic and Mathilde Hategekimana, Märtha-Louise Behn, Fausto Lattani, Gerhard Bessard. I will not go on. All the names are well known to me, prominent in the decade of Crisis, some of them currently in high office. Have you anything to tell me about this clique, Ax? Something more than the rather vague remarks you made last time we met? About discontent, and what you called a
backlash
?’ She was not pleased with the word
backlash
. She bit it out, with a snap of her perfect teeth.

‘Not really,’ said Ax. ‘It’s as I said. Europe is in a poor state of repair, as a coherent entity, but there’s infrastructure that can be pulled together, and the will to join the Sphere is there. Those are some of your strongest supporters, people I think you should be talking to. What we’re hoping for is full partnership.’

‘There’s also a petition,’ said Fiorinda, ‘which so far comes only from us, and which we’d like you to consider, informally, this afternoon. We’d like the peaceful applications of neurophysics, the mind/matter tech you call
shū,
to be distinguished from the appallingly dangerous development which you call the “pernicious delusion”, and we have called the Neurobomb. We’d like to be able to share our
shū
technologies freely with other Sphere members.’

The Generals and the planet-destroyer took this on board. Wang and Hu were not quite stone-faced; it seemed they had thought of worse possibilities. Elder Sister showed neither fear nor relief. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘I suppose this list—’ she whipped the paper with a flick of her wrist, ‘of “my best supporters”, is also a list of potential supporters for your petition. Is that all you have to say?’