Rainbow Bridge (54 page)

After the abortive interview they’d agreed it was time to quit. They’d hit the wall, at last, that had been waiting for them since day one. Then Sage had been summoned to London—very strange vibes. But he’d called to report what was happening, and nothing had changed except for the worse. So that was it and Fiorinda had asked to see Elder Sister alone. She was waiting here because Sage was back, he and Ax were going to talk to the planet-destroyer first, explain the real situation.

Then the roof comes down and hits the water and I GO UNDER.

The fate of the Snake Eyes Communards was not clear. There was a chance they might turn out to be Chinese, and just get sent for indefinite re-education. The Few were going to be tortured. Not just Chip, all of them. Then the men would be Chinese-style castrated. The women’s external and internal sexual organs surgically excised. Ferdelice, Mamba, Silver and Pearl Wing would live in jail until they were old enough, and
then
they would be tortured, etc. Marlon was old enough now. This was going to happen because at Ashdown, over a year ago, Fiorinda had noticed that Chez was looking sick, and had blessed her. She’d thought nothing of it, or very little of it. Bless. A formula she’d invented when she was in Green Nazi hell, to comfort herself when everything had seemed cursed. Meaning
be good, have a nice life,
or some such fucking harmless thing. She wondered what the torturers would do to Rox, who had been unlucky enough to get caught in the sweep. How do you strip sexual potency from someone who has opted to be neuter? She walked up and down, her arms wrapped tight around her body, thinking of when she’d been kept here as a prisoner by her father. Are we downhearted? Fuckit, no. Angry enough to spit. Just getting a little dissociated, getting scared of what’s going through my mind—

Elder Sister let herself in, and shut the doors. She was in uniform, she looked like a stripling boy, a Chinese Polly Oliver; except for all the damned stars. Fiorinda was wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing when things exploded, oops can’t make a social impression, too bad. They walked toward each other and stood, Elder Sister keeping her distance.

‘So, you are the hopeful monster.’

‘That’s how Sage looks at it. Not me.’

‘Then you are, potentially, a human weapon of mass destruction.’

‘No comment.’

Elder Sister stared and stared. ‘You three have treated me like a child!’

‘You
are
a child,’ snapped Fiorinda. ‘Whatever it is they give you to keep you looking so pretty, it makes you into a six-year-old, and planet earth is your sandbox.’

‘Is this a catfight? Are we fighting?’

‘You tell me.’

Elder Sister was completely impervious. It made Fiorinda mad.

‘You know what? Your so-called “Pernicious Delusion Screening” is a fucking
farce
, if you’ll excuse my rockstar language. You cannot exterminate the leaky mind, it’s always going to be there, it’s a Bell curve, not a disease. You know what you’re doing? Have you ever heard of Fitness Selection? You’re helping the pernicious delusion to grow big and strong, and if you were to snag anyone really dangerous, such as me, you might as well
hook them up to a polygraph
.’

‘We know that. That is why the Few must be treated the same as Chip.’

Fiorinda glared in contempt. ‘You think they’re isolated? I don’t mean your stupid “precursor types”, I mean the neurons in their heads. Fucking hell, you’re a totalitarian leader. Don’t tell me you don’t understand that human information space, made of all the neurons in all of our heads, forms a single population, and fitness selection works on it, same as it works everywhere. It’s like trapping rats, the survivors just get smarter. You’ll create a culture of terror.
If you’re lucky,
that will be the height of your achievement.’

Elder Sister’s hand flew up, imperiously. ‘The raid was a mistake,’ she said. ‘Let me speak in confidence. It was ordered by Hu Qinfu, who is a very old friend of mine. He’s jealous of Wang. Wang Xili made an error of judgement. He had formed a liaison with a high-class hooker, a convert to our cause. She claimed she was a close friend of the inner circle. He thought he could use her to get a response from the “virtual ghost” signal. We knew what it was, we could not activate it, it was frustrating. She was plausible, she got away with crucial information. The consequences were arguably very costly.’

Not least for Dian, thought Fiorinda.

‘I did not punish Wang, so Hu,’ both hands now, palm outwards, a sharp flick of the wrists, ‘took his revenge, though I will never say that to him. He knows he should have handled this differently. But what he did was by the book. The capital is his command, the Screening Office had reported cause for great alarm. It’s done, and I have no wish to undo it. The evidence is damning. It is
not
remission, it is
not
faith-healing, it has the signature. I cannot release anyone involved, I am sorry. The Few must suffer the penalties.’

No use telling her torture is hateful. She knows that but she believes this system of hers works. Fiorinda marshalled herself, trying to be patient.

‘I’m not a doctor. If I’d known that Chez was really ill, I’d have told her she had to see a doctor. I’d have told her we above all have to keep the rules. But I didn’t know. She didn’t seem so bad. I didn’t know about your precious Pernicious Delusion screening, either, how could I? You’re the people who said magic didn’t exist, that the A-team never happened. I’ve always protected them, it was a chaotic time, I was
distracted
.’

‘You offer yourself instead of your friends,’ said Polly Oliver. ‘No, it doesn’t work. They have been “too close to the fire”, as you Westerners say. They must be regarded as a hideous danger, the same as Chip himself.’

‘Listen. Just
listen
to me. The internal world and the external world change places, things of the spirit manifest in the material. What happened in the torture room was one of those slips. You people saw Chip as he is on the inside. INNOCENT AND BEYOND YOUR POWER TO HARM HIM! You thought that was weird? Your precious
di
is making the barrier shakier, are you going to stop using it? He
did not
fix Cherry’s TB. It was me. DO YOU GET THAT? What do you think I should do?’

Fiorinda turned on her heel, paced with her arms wrapped around her body and head down, and came back, bright-eyed, breathing fast.

‘Remember when Ax came here and met you for the first time? Whoa! Elder Sister! The big secret! Suppose we call this the Triumvirate’s big secret? We two agree it should go no further, we are nice people and everything calms down?’

She was close enough to feel that Elder Sister was taller, that’s too close. She backed off. The woman in uniform was shaking her head, immoveable.

‘Well, scratch that. It wasn’t likely. So it’s up to me. I won’t let my friends be tortured. There’ll be different solutions, I’ll have to pick one. Suppose I make it so that the first covert scan, where Chez had TB, disappears, somehow, accidentally? Once I’ve done it everyone including me will be living in the world I made, and we’ll never know the difference. It should be okay.
The world changes all the time.
Usually we’re not aware of it, no more than we’re aware of the dancing atoms in a tabletop, but my father could hack the game and so can I. Okay, I’m not my father, I don’t smash and grab. Every circumstance has to agree with my little change, back there November before last. I’m going to solve this in the information, the way Sage would do it, in the code, in the 0s and 1s. The volume is unbelievable, but I can get there if I let myself flow, except, whoops, I see a mistake. I have to focus on that mistake but ohmigod there’s another, so I hit that… This single point phase mistake business is not local, this is
full of holes into other places
. Oh shit, oh shit, I’m going to have to leap to another level, oh fuck, maybe I need to be where the A-team were to get at this. Maybe I’m in danger of becoming the Fat Boy!’

She bared her teeth. ‘Do you see what I mean? You know that the A-team were schizophrenic when they died. The Neurobomb is a human weapon that has to be insane to exist. Do you notice how my voice is changing, my mood is changing, when I think about doing what I need to do? I can do it, but it’ll drive me crazy. Crazier. Don’t make me do it.
Don’t make me
.’

‘This is an empty threat,’ said Elder Sister. ‘First you confess to a healing miracle, clearly committed by the viper Chip Desmond. Now you tell me you “could do” something spectacularly evil. Then you say you won’t do it, and if you did, I would not know that anything had happened. Am I supposed to be frightened?’

‘You’re a very stupid damned fool if you are not.’

‘Please calm down and think before you speak. I notice that you are talking as if I believe that your father, the possibly psychic Green Nazi leader assassinated by your lover, really was a natural “Neurobomb”. That is quite unwarranted!’

‘Give me a break,’ snarled Fiorinda. ‘You’re not just knocking out A-team potential. You’re looking for another Rufus with that screening, and I WONDER what you plan to do if you ever catch one!’

Silence, five-star Polly Oliver’s infuriating cool unbroken.

It was all going away from Fiorinda, except for the need to speak. ‘Let me tell you about me and my father. I met him when I was twelve, if you don’t count that I knew him until I was three. He’d always taken an interest. He gave me my name: I am Fiorinda, the flower-bride the magician made. I thought I’d chosen it myself, but I don’t care. It’s my name now. It means me. I didn’t know who he was, I thought he was a cool older guy. He made me pregnant but my baby died. When I was eighteen he came for me again. He tried to initiate me. It happened over there.’ She pointed through the great window, with a sweep of her arm. ‘Over there, long ago, in Traveller’s Meadow, in Sage’s big van. Sex and drugs and rock and roll, friendship like an ever-fixed mark, that looks on tempest and is never shaken. It’s gone, my starry meadow, you annihilated it out of existence. But that night is still happening,
sub specie aeternitatis
, as my friend Chip would say, you Chinese have another name, but it’s science now, call it
in the state of all states
. I’m there, right now, this is called simultaneity. I had friends, thank God. I fought him off. I always fight him off.’

At last some expression in that smooth girlish face, but she couldn’t tell what it meant. She had lost the ability to read expressions. What did I say? wondered Fiorinda. What was the magic word? Maybe it was the aura of black light she felt gathering around her, the feeling that Rufus was terribly close, watching her, waiting for her, oh please, somebody help me.

‘When I heard about you I thought you could save my life. I thought you could make it so that magic didn’t exist. But you’re no good.
You’re no good
.’

She waited for another insane, state-police riposte, and the room seemed very big, echoing and vast, with just the two of them, suspended in its space.

‘What is it like?’ asked Elder Sister, softly.

‘What is it
like
?’ wailed Fiorinda. ‘How would I know? Right now I can’t remember being out of this. Sometimes it’s fine, sometimes it’s not, sometimes I have to go to where Sage has been, it’s my only shelter. But I don’t want nirbhana, I want to live. With Ax and Sage, and my little girls.’

Another silence, that seemed very long.

‘Suppose there was another case like Rufus, a vicious mutant mind with access to billions of eager fans. What do you suggest?’

Fiorinda said nothing, feeling this might be a trick question.

No use, Elder Sister was onto it. ‘Ah,’ she breathed. ‘There
has
been another. We suspected that might be so. There was a Rufus in the USA? In the desert stronghold, where the Gaian martyrs were holed up? What happened?’

‘I killed her.’

‘I see… All right. All right, Fiorinda. Let me think about this.’

‘Make it something quicker than the bonfire. Let my friends go,
including
Chip, and bring on the summary execution.’

Outside the doors Li Xifeng’s most trusted personal servant was waiting, placidly sipping tea with her feet up. Nobody else. ‘Ta-chieh, in a few minutes, tell Ms Slater we are in Wang’s office, if she wishes to join us.’

‘Why not tell her right now?’

‘I said
in a few minutes
. Give her time to compose herself.’

‘Boyfriend trouble,’ judged Ta-chieh, with satisfaction. ‘I told you so. You shouldn’t screw another woman’s husband under her nose, it’s indecent.’

Fiorinda crouched on one of the shiny benches, doubled over, head in her hands. If you hurt someone they will always, always hurt you back, what did I do to you, Chez? Was it because you’re prettier than me but you had to grow in my shadow? Was it because I is not black enough…? But she was still able to laugh at herself. No, no, no. Get out of my poor brain, rotten little crawlers, taking you for serious is the road to the bad place. It was no one’s fault. She wiped her eyes, feeling slightly better than she’d felt for the last few days. If I have to do it, I have to do it, that’s all, and go under, into the dark water. There is no armour against dumb luck.

Li Xifeng went from the solar to Wang’s inner office, where she found the two other members of the Triumvirate waiting. Wang himself had stayed in London with Hu, both of them fully occupied in containing the lesser repercussions of this. She sat down quickly, and didn’t speak until she’d brought her breathing under control. They watched her, the tiger and the wolf: Aoxomoxoa all cold blue eyes, loose limbs and lazy threat, Ax watchful, poised, preternaturally alert. She remembered the wild tales that these two could actually transform into savage animals. It seemed quite possible.

‘Fiorinda must never,
never
perform on stage again!’

‘With respect,’ Sage’s accent exaggerated, a very tigerish blank stare, ‘I’d like to see you try an’ stop her.’

‘I know about the Hollywood Conjecture, I know that psychic power feeds on the adulation of the audience. She could become a Neurobomb!’