Rainbow Bridge (51 page)

Sage and Fiorinda picked him up at Bodmin in the old black Volvo. Fiorinda was driving, she did not move over. Sage was folded up in a knot in the rear seat, staring out of the back window. He didn’t speak, or look round.

‘Well,’ said Fiorinda, after several miles, ‘did you enjoy yourself?’

He’d thought about this conversation and contemplated lying, but there was no point, they’d be onto him at once. ‘Yes, in fact. I did. Very much.’

‘You going back again?’ asked Sage, dispassionately.

‘No. The dalliance is over.’

An orphan regret, a fear in case their future peace rested entirely on a planet-destroying ballet dancer’s infatuation for ‘Ax Preston’; and something that told him it would be okay. She is
jiejie,
she speaks to me as if she knows me, she came towards me in the night garden. She’s ruthless, but she won’t let me down.

They stopped at Ruthie’s to pick up Cosoleth. Ax had a flash, as he walked up the garden path in rich evening sun, between Ruthie’s dig-for-victory front beds of courgettes, tomatoes, bean tepees, spinach, onion sets, of a little girl in a blue dress and bare feet running towards him, a little girl of four or five years old, pearly teeth, eyes like stars, a bouncing mass of jet-black curls. The baby was a shock, but the grin was the same; except for a slight deficiency of teeth. The twin beeches were turning dark when they parked. The light had gone, September again already, and England’s still occupied; but wait, next spring. Wait.

Fiorinda took Coz indoors, at speed.

‘Sage?
Please—
?’

Sage had been loping for the back porch with a bleak, wounded expression, laden with the food trove he and Fiorinda had queued for in Bodmin Town. He dropped the bags, and grabbed the guitar-man. ‘Very fucking weird,’ muttered Ax, head down, shaken by afterburn, stung by the truth of what Elder Sister had said: I think my shit don’t stink…‘I swear I’ll
never
be a bastard to you again.’

‘It wasn’t your fault. Ssh. Whole thing,
very
fucking weird.’

But here we are.

Ah, summer, summer, always some kind of hell. Thank God it’s over.

Not To Touch The Earth,
Not To See The Sky

The Red Deer

In the hollows of the moor there were bald patches, dun and grey, but it was a white world, asleep under the cold low sky. The hinds moved through the landscape in a fairly tight bunch of twelve, with two outliers and a leading dam. The hunters had their eye on the smaller of the outliers. She was their lawful prey, and she was the easiest target. Lying in Darwinian ambush, Fiorinda tried switching between the decent distance of her own eyesight and the indecent close-up of the cross-hair, to see how it would feel to aim at this stretch without aid. If I had an eyesocket gadget, I’d be able to flip to and fro by blinking. I could have movies; I could watch mtv.

‘
Don’t do that
,’ murmured Sage. ‘
You’re gonna only get one chance.
’

She was chilled and bored and tired of being ordered around; although she had asked for it. She did not
want
to know how to shoot a deer. She pleaded guilty to the crime of wishing her meat could be killed by a nice kind butcher and bought in a shop. But Fiorinda ought to be able to do things like this: me with you in same winter boat, masses. Make do and mend, scav’ food where can. Also, personal agenda, what kind of no-good mother predator can’t bring back dinner to the den?

You just told me not to talk, she thought.

‘
This is NOT my world
,’ she hissed, ‘
but I’m coping. Leave me alone.
’

The deer came on, placidly. Don’t want an eyesocket gadget, ecch. How did creepy intimate tech like that become
ordinary
, when you can’t drink the water that comes out of the tap? I just don’t get this modern world. This reminded her of when Sage had predicted they’d be like Edwardians watching television, and she turned, incorrigible, to tell him so. But the big cat could move very quietly when he wanted to. He was gone. Oh well. She settled to wait for the shot she must take, and the deer came on obediently, into her sights, straight down the line.

A blast of sound both sharp and diffuse, a dagger in bright cloud. The other hinds scooted, their January ration lay on the snow. Now that’s a
strange
feeling. Maybe I won’t chuck our only high-powered rifle in the Chy after all… She shouldered the gun and the game bag, and trudged down. Where the fuck is he, what did I say that was so bad? There was no sign of Sage, but he could be in the little larch wood below their ambush. Clean dead. She heaved the hind over, looked at its belly, and opened the DEFRA Living Off The Land page on her phone. The diagrams looked nice and clear, idiot-proofed. I bet I could do this, I can do rabbits. How long should she wait for him? It would be a major coup to start the field-dressing, a disaster if she screwed up. Be careful when you remove the bladder,
do not
let urine spill on the meat. Hm… I can sharpen a knife or two. That’d be something.

She tugged a handful of the deer’s coarse coat, tried the edge of the biggest knife; and
another time, another place: this action
. Violent emotion, sensation, swept through her, leaving her desolate with a pounding heart, and in a cold sweat of terror. Sage was coming out of the little wood. She set the heels of her hands to her temples, and fought for context. When you get a snapshot seizure (yep, they are seizures, yep, it is brain damage), you’re plunged, it’s like an adhesion, into the brainstate of another place and time. It’s usually a scary bad place, because that’s the charming way the brain works, and you
pray
it’s not from your future, oh please—

She had never taken snapshot, but she had the same problems.

Thick hair, weight behind it. I picked up my father’s head by the hair, on the beach at Drumbeg. I stuffed the mouth with salt and sand, and set it where I could see the fucker. He was still mumbling. Oh, he took his time dying—

So that’s okay. Can’t complain about flashbacks of horrible traumatic events in the past. It’s only when they come at you from you don’t know where. But she was still trembling so she called Ax anyway, just to hear his voice.

‘Ax?’

‘Yeah, what is it? Did you do it?’

‘Yes… Is Coz all right?’

‘Depends what you mean by all right,’ said Ax dryly.

‘What’s she done?’

‘Several things, I need to sit her down and make sure our stories agree, before you two get back. My cat is cowering under Mar’s bed, I can’t yell at this bad baby without Min being convinced he’s doomed, and Coz just laughs. Wolves, sledge, all over it. I’m trying to collaborate on this song, my brother’s not picking up the phone. I might have to do a virtual house invasion to catch his attention.’ No rest for the President-elect. Elder Sister had decreed that the Chosen Few must produce an album (not a rez, the Chinese Top Brass squares didn’t like that term). All new material, and at once if not sooner.

‘She’s here, you want to talk to her?’

Blood on the snow, Cosoleth talking animatedly, in what sounded almost like English. Ax on the voicephone, cheerful and wry, everything’s okay.

Sage sat down beside her, grinning white and wide as the living skull—

‘Was I pissing you off? It’s just I thought I’d be buying my venison from a Chinese-owned supermarket chain by now. What’s taking them so long?’

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘You weren’t. I realised you wanted it to be your own kill.’

‘Oh.’ She thought about it. ‘I suppose I did. I am a sick puppy.’

‘D’you want to dress her with me?’

‘Yes. I have to be able to do that.’

A steaming pile of offal in the snow. Sage dragged the sled to the road, where they stowed the body into the back of the Powdermill Inn’s Land Rover. So this is how we live, a year on from the Reich-In-Hiding. Killing Bambi’s mother, butchering her and parcelling her out to our Chy Valley cadres. Hoping the fuel ration won’t be cut again, bracing ourselves for the new job; getting attached to this interim life.

Bambi’s mother had to be hung by her heels in the back porch, with a clean bucket under her nose. The insides deemed fit for eating had to be cleaned, packed up and deposited in the fox-proof cold-box. Finally the hunters stumbled indoors and plunged down by the hearth, keening and nursing their fingers. Cosoleth was napping in her new, grown-up cot (handed on by Ruthie’s family).

‘Got some long-distance email for you, Fio,’ said Ax.

It was from Norman Soong, who had served his time in the punishment of obscurity. He had a lot to say. The best bit was when he got down on his knees in his gorgeous robe and chanted at full volume, kowtowing vigorously—

I SWEAR THERE WILL BE NO NUDITY

I SWEAR BY ALL I HOLD SACRED

I SWEAR BY MY OWN,

BELOVED,

BEAUTIFULLY CONSTRUCTED

MEAT AND POTATOES!

THERE WILL BE NO NUDITY, OH GODDESS OF ROCK!

He wanted Fiorinda to tour China.

‘What’s he talking about? Does he mean
just me
?’

‘Sounds like it, my babe.’

They sat on the hearthrug looking at Norman, frozen on their tv screen, in the act of thumping his liondog head on a gaudy carpet.

‘You should do it,’ said Ax.

Fiorinda wrapped her arms around her knees, hid behind her hair and shook her head, meaning give me a moment: but Ax was barely started.

‘Listen. The music biz hasn’t changed because the centre of the world moved to Xi’an. Art for a cause is a blip on the balance sheet, big-name rock musicians are still the same shallow fools as ever they were. You’re not an idiot, you’re not a cash cow, you’re the voice of these times and
you’re a woman
. You can’t let that go.’

‘He’s right, Fiorinda.’

The tiger stretched at length, Ax with his timber wolf look of concentration, were looking at her so nakedly it made her blush, and went straight to her sex. She thought of blood on the snow, that overwhelming snapshot flash—

‘Shit. Where’s this coming from, all of a sudden?’

‘It’s not sudden,’ said Sage. ‘It’s the way we feel.’

‘What if I… What if I want to, but I can’t even remember how it felt to be ambitious, and don’t know if I can handle it?’

‘We’ll be there. First time out, anyway. We can take a couple of weeks off. You don’t want to stay too long, just whet their appetites.’

‘We’d be there any time you needed us,’ said Ax. He grinned. ‘Except later on you know, we’d have to think of Coz’s schooling—’

They cracked up. Fiorinda stuck her fingers in her ears, and stared at the fire. ‘You’re wrong. There’s been someone exactly like me. Rufus O’Niall, remember? He fed on his fans until he had the power to rip the world to shreds—’

‘That’s not relevant, sweetheart. You’re
not
Rufus.’ Sage swooped on her, kissed her nose and drew back, grinning. ‘An’ it’s a little late to worry about
you
getting boosted to critical. Isn’t it, Fiorinda?’

She stared at the fire. A feeling like wings, cramped from disuse, beginning to unfold. But that dry red pelt, the dead weight resisting her will, the shock of terror—

‘I’ll think about it.’

The threat of the Guangdong camps, held over foreigners of Chinese ancestry, was being stepped down. It had proved invaluable, particularly when the satellite countries were first annexed. It would continue to be deployed against dangerous extremists. But Ax had persuaded Elder Sister that it was a terror tool, its time was over; and he was right. She was still glad she had expedited Ax’s own National Citizenship papers. Systems of the re-education camp kind have a life of their own, and are often most dangerous when they are dying. The psychosocial screening of his associates continued, however, in the remorseless depths of a secret bureaucracy. Ax and his partners had been declared blameless and above suspicion by Elder Sister and her Generals: but this fiat made it all the more important that the routine vetting of the smaller fry should be seen to be thorough.

Li Xifeng was with Wang in his office at Rivermead. It was mid-morning. They were talking about the withdrawal of the 2
^nd
AMID army, which they both called ‘the Retreat’, for modesty’s sake. In reality they were delighted with their achievement, despite the trick that had been played on them. The ‘liberalisation’ of forbidden tech had been left in Chinese hands, while China’s own secrets stayed under wraps. In time China would reap a splendid harvest; and it was a bonus that the Zen Self Champion considered immersion code and bi-location harmless (Sage’s opinion meant more to them than they cared to admit). There were voices in Europe muttering that the English had been too modest in their demands. Elder Sister and her Generals were aware of these elements, and would take no action against them unless it proved necessary. The truth was, the Triumvirate had been looking for
England
’s best advantage, and they’d known where to stop. Very sensible! But the mutterers were ungrateful. The conquest of Europe, which had presented such terrors, would prove to have been almost bloodless: the little country they both found so romantic had taken shocking casualties, relatively speaking. But there had been no way to avoid that, and it had cleared the road.