BAND OF GYPSYS

Gwyneth Jones

www.sfgateway.com

Enter the SF Gateway …

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‘Tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.

Henry IV Pt 1; II; iii

The Watchtower

In a bar in Washington DC, not far from Capitol Hill, two smart young fellows met one evening for a little status display and a few drinks: covertly rating each other’s tailoring and accessories while the snow fell thick and fast outdoors, turning all the mighty public buildings into bridal confectionery. They were both in positions to be indiscreet about great affairs, but Frank could see that tonight the other guy had the good story. Without haste, he drew his friend to speak. Businessmen came and went, beautiful women sashayed by; neat, discreet waitresses plied refills, and in due course it came out. Lavoisier. Something about that awful secret bubo on the body politic that the Pres had been revealing to the select behind closed doors, audiences from which Fred Eiffrich’s friends, and enemies alike, emerged grey in the face and shaken.

These two, along with a few other smart folks around the citadel by now, were savvy on Lavoisier, without benefit of one of those solemn need-to-know sessions. A desert nest of terrorists. Manson Familyoids caught on the edge of going critical with the new, weird and scary, occult superweapon. And how about that raid! The FBI and the National Guard were going in with a division of infantry, chemical suits and breathing apparatus, Deep Stealth, Full Metal Jacket, you betcha Bob—

‘—meanwhile these two English guys dress up as cowboys, ride over there on horseback, and shoot up the town—’

‘It’s hilarious,’ agreed Frank: with the air of one waiting to be told something he didn’t know.

‘It’s a scream. It gets better, bro. We have live coverage.’

Frank stared, truly impressed at last. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘I’m not kidding.’ The man with the story leaned forward into the safe space that everyone who talks in bars around Capitol Hill believes can be found, directly above the mid point between their two drinks on the polished mahogany tabletop. ‘This Baal guy, the Black Dragon, had hidden cameras everywhere, and he has the true-life movie of what went down. He’s dickering with our acquisitions guys right now, from his undisclosed place of detention.’

‘Protective custody, mister.’

‘Whatever, he’s open for business. Detainees’ rights are a wonderful thing.’

‘What, he had the stuff when they brought him in? On an eyesocket chip or what? And our great Homeland Security experts let him keep it?’

‘Naw… He knows where it is, though. This is the real deal, Frankismo. I’ve personally seen the trailer. You want to see Mr Ax Preston garrotting a poor misguided Gaia-loving martyr? You want to see the expression on his pretty face, when the kid’s windpipe cracks?’

‘Jesus.’

‘You want to see reformed bad boy Sage Pender dealing with the soft-bellied geeks at the hideout’s back gate? Some of them women?’

‘You have to be shitting me—!’

They contemplated the potential mayhem. It was nice.

‘You know, Jude,’ said Frank, measuring his words. ‘Joking apart, this could be serious for the Kill The Evil Research, Ban The NeuroBomb program. This sounds like bad doody for Mr Fred Eiffrich altogether.’

‘Don’t know about you Frankie, but I voted for the other ticket.’

They laughed, immoderately. Then they had one more drink and went their separate ways, as the hour was getting late.

PART ONE

1: Rue Morgue Avenue

Sage had fallen asleep with Fiorinda tucked against him, his chin on her shoulder, Ax wrapped around his back. In many ways, the best place the world can hold—but they’d moved away in the night. Had to have their personal space, it hurt his feelings. Slighted, and also cold, he lay with the morning light seeping through his lashes, frosting his eyeballs: thinking about his greatcoat, which was on the floor on the other side of the room. In the end it was the pressure of a full bladder, becoming insistent, forced him to slide out from between them.

‘Was’matter?’ mumbled Ax.

‘Need a piss.’

‘Me too.’

The chemical toilet was behind a screen, in one of the garret room’s slope-ceilinged corners. They hunkered on either side of the pot, grinning at each other. They liked pissing together.

‘We could make tea with that much,’ said Sage proudly.

It would be quite a coup to wake her with a cup of hot tea, which they could not otherwise provide until somebody went to fetch the drinking water. Ten minutes in the treatment jug would do it: but Ax was secretly squeamish and preferred a little distance from the details. Let the arrondissement do the instant recycling.

‘It could be cheating, unless we knock it off our fifteen litres.’

‘Oooh, no cheating, can’t have that.’

The cold in the room was intense, but somehow pleasurable once you were out in it. It had been storage space, the conversion for human occupation was minimal. They moved to the window, and sat on dusty boards, peering out through a warped solar insulation sheet that wasn’t very effective. Slate roofs, tumbled together, pigeon-breast shades all crusted in frozen white, rose into a grey, laden sky above Montmartre.

‘Looks like more snow on the way.’

‘Nah, it’s too cold.’

Like London, Paris was shrinking and compacting as the sprawl fell apart. The artists’ hill was crowded. No hum of traffic reached them, only stillness like a doubtful blessing, and the rumble of a single unseen vehicle traversing the cobbles of the Rue Des Dames. But Ax could feel the weight of numbers out there. So many, many people, in Europe and all the world beyond, all of them waiting and wondering, what the hell’s going to happen to next?

He turned from their roofscape, for which they’d developed a profound affection, to the more mysterious beauty beside him. The indigo shadows that lie between muscle and bone on white skin in wintertime; Sage’s yellow curls, not so Boot Camp cropped as they used to be, clustered over his skull like a helmet of coiled gold. Ax had always loved human bodies, never had the time, or the peace of mind, for an idyll like this before. He reached out—asking permission with a glance, and slipped his hand under Sage’s shabby teeshirt, to trace the welted scars where the magician had torn up his friend’s liver, nearly two years ago now. Sage smiling, accepting the caress with the forbearance of a kindly pet tiger. He didn’t like those scars, but Ax felt differently.

They hold your life inside, thought Ax. They tell me we survived.

‘This is a good time.’

‘Really? You do realise, babe, we are starving in a fereezing foreign garret, and looking forward to a tedious career of retired rockstar protests like this here, while bein’ greenwash for a succession of deranged gangsters at Westminster—’

‘Details.’

‘Plus I hate talking French an’ our girlfriend is pregnant?’

Ax stopped laughing, suddenly focused. ‘You think so?’

‘Yes. Forty-six days: she could well be pregnant.’

They looked to the mattress on the floor, where she was sleeping.

‘We need to think about making a living,’ said Ax. ‘We are not condemned to a life in public office, I never said I’d do that. But I don’t see making a comeback as rockstars.’

‘Nah. Codgers’ Cabaret, I never fancied it.’

‘Living like this is good for us, I love it, but kids need security.’

‘Like this?’ Sage looked around, mildly disconcerted. ‘Well, okay.’ He stretched and refolded himself. ‘What are our skills? I veto white collar applications …’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to work for your dad.’

‘Tha’s a relief. We could be mercenaries. We have experience, an’ there’s plenty of openings—’

‘No thanks.’

‘Okay, don’t panic. Well, then, what about sex? We’re good at sex, you and me, I do b’lieve.’

‘You’re not taking this seriously.’

‘Yes I am. I was a crowd-fucking entertainment industry whore for years, why not get honest about it?’

‘I may have said that, and worse, but I now think it was harsh.’ But Ax was intrigued. ‘Could you get into doing sex for money?’

Sage considered, thick stubby blond lashes downcast. ‘Lemme see. You would be there? With me the whole time?’

‘Not on the face of it, big cat. I’d take the money and wait round the corner. I think that’s the more usual arrangement.’

‘You’d be right there watching, Sah. Dunno about otherwise.’

Silence. As a fantasy scenario the proposal had merits, but there were doors that opened onto ugly memory—

‘Maybe we’ll just earn our bread busking,’ said Ax, at last. ‘I like busking, except, this weather, my hands get so fucking cold.’ He checked the white-laced quilt of roofs again. The frozen silence of Paris. ‘Is there any way we could sneakily get her to take a test?’

‘Don’t see how, if she doesn’t want.’

‘Couldn’t we, er, slip it to her, in her food or something?’

‘You have to piss on them, Ax.’

‘I knew that.’

Fiorinda sat up. ‘What are you two cackling about?’

‘My new career.’ They leapt across the room, bringing Sage’s coat (Ax and Fiorinda’s coats were already enhancing the bedding).

‘Once we’ve toppled the bad guys at home, he’s going to sell his arse under the bridges of Paris,’ explained Ax, burrowing into warmth. ‘It could work, he has ex-celebrity cachêt. But I have to be there, holding his hand throughout. The punters will think we’re nuts.’

‘They already know that,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Don’t be stupid. If we’re selling sex, obviously that’s my job. I’m the girl.’

Sage kissed the nape of her neck, through the springing red curls. ‘Not even in jest, sweetheart. Not you, never, never.’

Fiorinda had done her share of that hard labour, and worse. Ax took her face between his hands. He wanted to tell her nothing’s ever going to hurt you again, but there’s demons listening when you say something like that. All he could do was this, drink her up with his eyes, smiling at him, alive and sane; he could drown in these two miracles—

Sage and Fiorinda had never felt the full weight of Ax Preston’s undivided attention before. There’d always been some little task like saving the world to take the pressure off. They were agreed it was a little alarming, and hopefully wouldn’t last. He’ll come down soon—

‘You’ve been ganging up on me,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I can tell. What’s it about?’

Both men withdrew. ‘Fiorinda,’ began Sage, cautiously. ‘We don’t want to crowd you, but forty-six days? Could we talk about this?’

‘Forty-five.’

‘Today makes forty-six.’

‘Fuck it.” She sat up, folding her arms around her knees. ‘My period’s about two weeks late, big deal. Can’t I have any private life?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Let’s look at this. I was de-sterilised four months ago. You two tested good for live ammunition in London, how long since?’

‘Six weeks,’ said Sage.

‘Be reasonable. Is it likely?’

‘We’re sure you’re probably not pregnant,’ Ax temporised. ‘But what if we quietly bought a pregnancy test from a pharmacy?’

‘Oh, right. Mr ex-dictator virtuoso busker and his giant Zen Master bodyguard, in Paris on a Lennonist publicity stunt. So hard to spot. What would you say? We’re making this intriguing purchase for a friend—’

‘I would hide around the corner; he looks ordinary enough.’

‘We’d go somewhere else,’ explained Ax, ‘not right around here, and I wouldn’t take a guitar into the shop, Fiorinda.’

‘I see you have it all worked out.’ She sighed, disarmed in spite of herself. ‘You know how people say, you can’t be a little bit pregnant? It’s bullshit. People get a little bit pregnant all the time, and it fails before they even notice. Three months and morning sickness, that would be worth talking about. Okay. You two go to work. I’ll think it over.’

Ax had thought he knew what he was taking on, when he agreed to return to England as a constitutional “President”, having quit his dictatorship. He would be a figurehead, not an accidental warlord, and working with a suspect government. The occult monster was dead, the Green Nazis had been driven out, but the current junta, known as the Second Chamber Government (mainly Hard Greens from the original revolution, “ennobled” by a former Prime Minister bent on appeasement) were secure in power. It was the way things were going all over Europe: ‘moderate’ neo-feudalists with fake Green credentials, applying blandly brutal solutions to a staggering cascade of disasters. But Ax had leverage of a kind that’s hard to measure, and the mandate of the US President (which impressed the so-called Second Chamber no end, oddly enough). He believed he could do some good: at least claw back some civil rights for the most helpless victims of this world storm, for instance.

But there’s always another turn of the screw. In Ax’s absence his brother Jordan (reserve candidate for the showcase Presidency, if the great Ax Preston couldn’t be persuaded) had meekly accepted the gift of a Preston stately home from the government. Ax had arrived in England to find his entire family—including his mother, his five year old nephew, and Jordan’s wife, Milly Kettle (formerly Ax’s girlfriend) who was heavily pregnant—luxuriously incarcerated in a huge, isolated mansion, behind razor-wire and dog-handlers, and surrounded by minders and armed guards over whom the Prestons had no control. Ax had swallowed his fury (because although Jordan tried the line that he was only living like all top celebrities do, and why not, the fool was clearly terrified), consulted quietly with his own power-bases, and decamped for Paris, as soon as the lavish reinstatement celebrations were done.

It had been November when the Triumvirate returned to England. It was March now, and their Bed In protest (against conditions in England’s new, adult labour camps) was nearly six weeks old. But Ax was in no hurry. The Prestons weren’t in immediate danger. He was happy to go on embarrassing the suits for as long as they liked.

At two in the afternoon, when Ax and Sage arrived on the Ile St Louis, the ironbound sky had given up none of its burden. They were borrowing an office in the antique mansion where Alain de Corlay, of the Eurotrash Techno-Greens, fellow veteran of Crisis Europe’s bizarre adventures, presided over his merry crew. Here the President elect of England, and his gangling bodyguard, entertained proposals from various emigrant suppliants, while Alain, if he felt like it, sat in as a witness, smoking his horrible marijuana bidis and looking disgusted.

Today it was the Restore the Thames Party (massive landscape engineering, as yet undisclosed technology, project: return a moderate sized English river to its pre-Ice Age route, thus convincing Gaia to reverse climate change) Then a few personal sad stories; given greater attention, and a fascinating presentation from the Devon couple who could make wind turbines invisible.

The New Plantagenet Society had been made to wait: neither worthy causes, nor the harmless type of lunatic. They appeared in full reenactment regalia: jewelled badges pinning actual sprigs of broom to their velvet caps; velvet robes over formal business suits. Mr Red, sallow and middle-aged, even bore an eerie physical resemblance to a famous portrait of Henry Tudor. Mr White, a dark-skinned, rubicund and hearty rosbif, didn’t look a lot like Richard Crookback, but he did have a Yorkshire accent! There goes your project, thought Ax, shaking his head at the unseasonable planta genista. Don’t you know we’re soldiers of the queen, and Fiorinda hates cut flowers?

To business. The red rose and the white had settled their ancient differences. Now they all needed was a figurehead, and Ax fit the bill. He was to marry the current Yorkist heir, a young Greek woman, or to be adopted, if he preferred, by the Lancastrian heir (an elderly Canadian). The Hastings family, also living Plantagenets, had surrendered their claim, in view of Ax’s superior qualifications … There were quasi-legal documents, including a declaration that Ax’s Islamic faith was not an impediment. There were fanfold genealogies in oak-gall, scarlet and gilt; a video message from the elderly Canadian, and plans for the ceremony in which Ax would simultaneously be adopted (or married), declared the rightful heir, and consecrated as King Richard Henry the First. It was a job for life, royal prestige, pick of the spoils—

The room was bitterly cold, heated only by a tiny trash-eater stove in the back of a cavernous baroque fireplace, where its heat went straight up a mighty chimney. The former Dictator of England and his Minister kept their coats on. Mr Preston wore grubby, Dickensian, fingerless dark mittens. He took one of the nicotine-free tobacco cigarettes that were proffered (but declined the carton); showed an interest in the ornate paperwork, and asked gentle questions about the dirty business of actually taking over a country. Tall Mr Pender, with the intimidating good looks, spoke only to his chief; murmured asides that won Mr Preston’s flashing smile, and made the negotiators envious.

Alain sat at the end of the table, following the proceedings with exasperated disbelief. Sage gazed absently at curling, satellite image print-outs of London and the south of England, thumb-tacked to the panelled walls. This room had been the nerve centre of Ax’s Velvet Invasion, in the final throes of the Green Nazi occupation and Rufus’s dreadful reign. Why did Alain keep relics of that hellish time? Poor housekeeping? A phalanx of landline phones stood gathering dust, and the stove hissed. At last Ax squared the documents, slipped an ancient vellum into its silk-lined folder, and swept the lot back across the board.

‘Mr Red, Mr White, thank you. You may leave us.’

The delegates looked at each other, nonplussed.

‘You could move that stove out into the room,’ said Sage to Alain, in English. ‘It would be slightly more fuckin’ use than where it is.’

‘Certainly not. It would mark the parquet.’

‘Welsh sovereignty wouldn’t be a deal-breaker,’ announced Mr Red, after a sub-vocal consultation, on throat mike, with confederates elsewhere. (The New Plantagenets were not fanatical about appropriate Renaissance tech). ‘We believe in political union between England and Wales, but we can live with separation.’

‘Well, that’s good,’ said Ax, and raised an eyebrow.

They didn’t take the hint. The pinch-faced older man steepled his hands and leaned forward. His “real” name was Woodville, and he had a straightforward, violent criminal background, of which Ax was aware.

‘Sir, Your Majesty is not certain of Fred Eiffrich’s support?’

Mr White (“Henry Lovell”, of the British Resistance Movement; descendant of the former BNP), already tasting glory, frowned a little.

Ax would never be certain of Fred’s support. The friendship of the mighty is a fickle thing, their priorities are always going to change. But Mr Eiffrich in theory made a good stick to poke at monsters.

‘I am certain of Mr Eiffrich. Could be I’m less than happy about my chances of waking up one morning with a red-hot poker up my bum. Or starving to death in chains in some draughty tower, when you folks get tired of your new toy.’

The Plantagenets were shocked speechless. Ax grinned like a friendly wolf, affable and confidential. ‘Just kidding. Look, I’ll be frank, we’re getting head-hunted all over the shop right now. We’ve been looking at a rather nice package from the Sealed Knot.’

‘They’re lying!’ cried Mr White. ‘Whatever they said, it’s a crock of shit! Those bastards have no money, and no credibility!’

‘They speak highly of you, too. And the Irish are putting out feelers, for Fiorinda as High Queen. She’s an O’Niall you know. The legitimate family’s cool about it. We’re thinking that might suit.’

Sage murmured, ‘nicer climate in Ireland.’

‘Why don’t you try the Mountbatten-Windsors? They’ve a posse of children, they might let you have your pick. Feel free. Just don’t try this game on any other member of my family, or any connection of mine.’

Briefly, the mischief had vanished from Mr Preston’s pretty brown eyes.

‘Is that understood? You may go.’

M. de Corlay sighed, and pressed a banana-shaped yellow buzzer. At its discordant summons Techno-Green muscle appeared, bizarrely costumed but convincingly armed. The Plantagenets donned their robes.

‘Edward II wasn’t killed like that because he was a homosexual,’ exclaimed Mr White. ‘The homophobic element gets unfairly exaggerated!’ (‘Incroyable’ muttered Alain, lighting another bidi.) ‘The issue is to leave an unmarked corpse—’

‘Tha’s our kinda meme,’ said beautiful Mr Pender: with such tigerish affection that the White Rose took a sharp step backwards. ‘Hey, compagnero! You must be one of us.’

When the dangerous lunatics had left the building, Alain delivered an item of secure mail to His Majesty: who glanced at it sharply, and stowed it, continuing to cackle with his boyfriend. ‘You abuse my hospitality,’ said Alain. ‘This hôtel is a serious centre of utopian resistance.’

‘If you say so, Monsewer Jupette.’

‘Very amusing. Mr Preston, who needs nobody to crown him, gets the rabid dogs to come to him, so he knows their plans and can deal with them at leisure, once he’s whipped his bureaucrats into line. What are you doing in Paris, in God’s name? What are you achieving with this infantile game about agricultural camps?’

‘My job, Alain. I’m making the suits look cool, working the margins, and getting something done for my own agenda.’

‘Now you’re talking like a toothless human rights activist,’ snapped Alain, and then stared. ‘You’re reporting back to those devils in Westminster?’

‘Of course.’ Ax retrieved his guitar case, and shrugged it onto his shoulders. ‘What else? I’m a Lennonist, not a Leninist, Alain.’

‘You’re an imbecile. They’ll make you sorry.’

‘I’ve been sorry. Now I’m trying what I always knew I should: the art of the possible. They’ve got my family; I need them to trust me. C’mon, Sage. We have to get the beer-money in before dark.’

‘Thanks fer the warm,’ called Sage, over his shoulder.

In the courtyard, under naked chestnut trees that stood gleaming in the frost like giant, funereal candelabra, Ax stopped dead, transfixed.

‘What’s up, babe?’

‘Sage. Could she be pregnant? Tell me, truly… So quickly?’

Fiorinda had been chemically sterilised when she was thirteen, after giving birth to her monster of a father’s child. As long as he’d loved her, Ax had lived with the knowledge she could never have another baby. Of course he’d hoped, when she plucked up courage to test for the treatment. No promises, but non-surgical sterilisation can often be undone. But it was dizzying to have the news so soon!

‘I don’t know,’ said Sage, with equal urgency. ‘It does sometimes happen, straight off. There’s reasons why—’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know—’

Naturally they’d been researching the topic.

Alain stared at the walls of the gold and brown salon: which was for him a shrine, a time-capsule of the last days of rational materialism. Here we laid our desperate plans, while that lanky blue-eyed alchemist who has just left was turning himself into the New Prometheus, breaking the barrier between Mind and Matter. And how little we guessed what his desperate feat would mean for the future of the world!

What annoyed him most was that Ax Preston, of all people, the Captain Sensible of Dissolution radical rock, had become a perfect character in this farce, while he, “Alain Jupette” (Alain Miniskirt was his stage name, when he fronted a politically motivated Eurotrash band called Movie Sucré), found himself unable to mock a situation that was beyond ludicrous. A world where fossil fuel reserves had been conjured out of existence. Where so-called governments scrabbled to own a magic planet destroyer in human form—

Thank God for Fiorinda. She, at least, still believed in reason.

A knot of Techno-Greens stood at the windows, looking down. He joined them and saw Ax and Sage, stalled under the sweeping branches of the chestnuts and the first difficult flakes of snow. You would stare at those two if you knew nothing, you would follow them down the street. They shone like golden armour.

‘What can they be talking about?’ muttered one of the crew.

‘The exquisite shape of Fiorinda’s left earlobe,’ said Alain sourly.

‘Is it true they’re on the oxy again?’ asked another, hopefully.

The speaker was a government spook, here by agreement, to keep an eye on the Plantagenet delegates, and on Ax Preston. Everyone wants to know how Ax is going to jump. There’d been a time when Ax and Sage had been oxytocin addicts, shoring up the famous three-way love affair with shocking quantities of the intimacy drug. But they were clean now—thankfully (since Alain was genuinely fond of the fools, and that potion is a brain-wrecker). The trefoil infatuation was currently genuine.

‘Drowning in it. But it won’t help you nail him.’

All the real megastars must have crap sex lives, thought Fiorinda; left alone in the nest. Because which of us rockstars, hardwired from birth to be continually starving for love and pleasure, forced by the working conditions to be addicts of excess …Which of us would strut on stage, or fret in a recording studio, a moment longer than it takes to get seriously rich, if we were getting what we needed at home? It would be: make your pile, take a bow and quit. And how often does that happen? How often does anyone get clean away?

Cheered by this thought, and prompted by the on-air buzzer, she brushed her teeth and dressed, briskly and chastely (sorry, mates, no sexy underwear; it’s not that kind of video). It was time to get to work. The global stats that ran along the sidebar of her out-of-shot monitor looked good. And here we go. Cribs of the certifiably insane.

“Hi everybody, and special hi to anyone looking in for the first time. Welcome to the rooftops of Paris. This is our garret, acres of space, which is not exactly realism, but hey, we’re dilletantes, what do you expect? This is our bed, with the personalised coat-bedspread—

Question, is there any heating?

‘Hi, Ian in Rotherham. Of course! We have heating from the arrondissement Renewables Grid, this is our dear little radiator. We’re allowing ourselves the same units per day, per person, for everything, including heat, as we’d have in a camp. If we were getting the statutory ration, which a lot of our vital agricultural labourers do not. But it’s Thursday and we’re on a three-day week here in Paris, so …

Question, do you get fleas?

‘No personal vermin, Alice in Queens, which is great, and not as unrealistic as the wide open spaces. The daily lice powder dustings you get in camp are just in case, and you have to offset little things like that against the glory (and it is glory) of serving on England’s food security frontline. But let me show you round. These are my clothes, hung up on my piece of string. These are my boots. These are Ax’s clothes. And Ax’s other hat, his Ned Kelly hat. I love this old hat; as long as he doesn’t wear it … The mess is Sage’s stuff. I kick it out of the way, oh, I trod on his board, it’s okay, they’re tough. Et voila our tasty if elderly tins, the ATP- battery micro-ondes and the drinking water. My boyfriends fetch the water, which doesn’t get delivered all the way up here. Isn’t that sweet! If you’re wondering if the ag.campers really feed on out of date tins, by the way, yes they do. All fresh produce goes straight out the gates.’

‘Here behind this screen, yes, do come in, is our very own green chemical toilet, which we don’t share with about a hundred other people, unlike most of the folks who feed us all. English viewers, I hope you’re remembering to wash everything before you eat it. The cold winters help to keep infections down, tho’ obviously it’s a problem that the camps are not built for our share of climate chaos—which as natives will have noticed is floods, and at least temporarily a colder climate. I’m now going to empty this downstairs. Come along, please.

Do you always get landed with that job?

‘Hey, Sejer in Sweden. Not always. We take turns.’

(Oh, Hi, M. Jouffroy, Il fait encore froid, eh?)

‘Meet our concierge. He doesn’t like the English, but he’s okay.’

Sploosh, sploosh. Swill, scrub—

‘There, that wasn’t too bad. I really don’t mind the smell of freshly disinfected shit, after about a million post-civilised rock festivals.’

‘Hi, Adinike, not sure where you are? No, I didn’t wash my hands. You just can’t, in camp conditions. The five litres isn’t handed to you as an allowance, it’s per person for everything that consumes clean water, and it doesn’t go far. And yes, well spotted, we’re fully wired: it’d be a bit of a dumb protest otherwise. The inmates also have surveillance, with a lot less control than we enjoy. But we get no canned entertainment! We have to make our own fun.’ Cue charming grin. ‘And no, you can’t watch. Stop asking that. What did Gaia give you imaginations for?’

Next up, the mediafolk. Press? Anybody in the press room today?

Fiona Ward, EBC Breakfast News dolly, had a booked interview: for which a portion of the garret was to be pasted into the EBC Breakfast Show set. Fiorinda settled on her mark, in the midst of the frowsty bed, grubby hands clasped, thinking of studio interviews in days gone by. However it changes, it’s always just a different kind of annoying.

…

‘Yes, Fiona, there certainly were agricultural camps in Ax’s so-called dictatorship. They weren’t locked, there were no guards, and the workers, including all of Ax’s Cabinet at times, were volunteers.’

…

‘You’re right, Fiona, the “drop out hordes”, I’m sorry, “elective homeless” were a problem for us, too, right from the start. I just don’t think sticking them in concentration camps is the decent answer.’

‘Of course you’re right. Human labour must replace agricultural machinery, until the techno-green Utopia we all love has better solutions. That doesn’t explain the slavery aspect. Did you ever think of joining the Initiative yourself? We’re still running, as you know. The outdoor gigs are excellent for body-tone, communing with nature, and social bonding. I’ll email you an application form.’

‘Sparrow Child’ played her out, one of her older hits. (a recording. Fiorinda didn’t sing a note in these sessions, for contractual reasons). She’d have preferred ‘Stonecold’, but punk protest was not the message. Mild sarcasm okay, but no blame game … Oh my darling Ax, have you turned me? Stonecold for years to your puny plans for Techno-Green Utopia, and now, when the situation has blatantly gone to hell and is not coming back, suddenly I’m committed, what’s come over me?

And so, by remote access, to her desk at the Volunteer Initiative Office in London (still housed, for a while longer, in the building once known as Buckingham Palace)—to share with her audience the chore of scraping the barrels of over-production: snagging food and other vital resources for the helpless, even if it meant cooperating with the despicable camp system.

‘Obsolete Sanitary-ware mountain in Bulgaria, I have a customer!’

‘Another cache of Libyan military apricot jam … Oh NO, it’s gone …! So unfair, this was our idea, and you can’t complain about rival aid agencies, but private brokers, bidding for grey-bloomed chocolate hordes, have they no fucking shame—?’

Sometimes as she worked like this, skymining, (and not infrequently coming second in the bidding battles) the terrifying future rose before Fiorinda, like a ghost. Once she had believed that the end of the world was an event. A spray of bullets at a government reception, red flowers blooming on fancy evening dress, smoke of cordite: the Hyde Park Massacre, which she had survived. For years she had looked back on that event, when legal government in England was blown away, as the final fall. Death was instantaneous … Oh no, not at all.

Ruin is the devil’s work, consecutive and slow.

Fail in a moment no man did—

We go on, we just go on, through loss after loss: go on swimming across this dark river into which the modern world stumbled, one night eight years ago: getting weaker, getting chilled, long ago lost our footing; tasting salt on our lips. Guessing the awful truth, there is no other shore, but we keep on keeping on; what else is there to do?

Europe is going to starve. Not this year, but soon.

Dread grew as she worked, the dry mouth, hollow stomach, the tingle of nerves demanding emergency action, fight or flight: and she wondered why, because Ax kept saying it, and he was true: this was a good time. They had made their peace with the Burning World, in a desert ceremony after the battle of Lavoisier. Someone had to live in times like these, turns out it’s us, so enjoy. But exaltation fades, and here’s the fear again, rushing back—

She was more than usually glad when the off-air buzzer released her. Now how shall I spend my free time? Well, it’s very cold and I don’t want to go out. I do believe I’ll go back to bed. You’re supposed to rest.

Fiorinda knew she was pregnant. They’d allowed themselves the luxury of Sage’s First Aid kit, with its futuristic resources (from a time when the future wasn’t a black chute back to the Stone Age). She’d secretly done a blood and urine test a week ago. Ax and Sage, entranced by the mystery of a proper pregnancy test, hadn’t thought of the white box, and she wasn’t going to enlighten them; not yet.

She’d have known she was pregnant anyway. She felt the changes already, subtle but commanding. This lethargy, this unwillingness to leave the den, among them. She’d intended to stay in denial for a good while (denial is safer). But they were onto her, and now the secret was burning a hole in her belly, a tiny wormhole to another universe. How long were you planning for us to annoy the suits like this, Ax? It could become more of a statement than we bargained for.

She retired to bed with her camp-ration lunch, a lump of cheese and two aged, sticky, dried bananas. Plus Peter Straub’s Koko, from a box of English language storybooks donated by a Parisian bookseller. The setting for the maybe-supernatural plot was so alien and entrancing that she started to imagine an alternate reality for herself. The world didn’t end on Massacre Night, and she was someone with a loft in SoHo, and two boyfriends, (call them Richard and Stephen, hahaha). They dated separately, except occasionally the men would turn up together, as if by accident. Then they’d all end up in bed, but nobody would say anything about it afterwards. Frances (… the normal person: Fiorinda was the rockstar) wasn’t sure what was going on. Was it all a cruel game? Or were they as confused as she was? She would not dare to ask. She’d try to find out, uncover disquieting secrets, and still say nothing—

The endless conversation of those two soft, West Country voices, reeling out for years, right back to that sacred water meadow by the Thames at Reading, in the Year of Dissolution. It was the ground under her feet. A stubborn, self-obsessed, oblivious little girl: looking for her father, finding instead these compadres, more than brothers—

Someday, she thought, I want to go back on stage. Not now. Now I’m taking a career break to have my baby. But later. No industrial-sized arenas, fuck that, but I haven’t finished with my career. I’m only twenty-three! How to break this news to her menfolk? Could she convince them it was safe …? The room was very still. There was ice in the air, a deadly, cramping chill. Koko slipped from Fiorinda’s hands. She sat up and drew her knees to her chin, eyes wide and wary: as if listening, intently listening, to a whispered threat—

Outside the pharmacy on the Avenue de Clichy, Sage bent over Ax’s hands, blowing warmth onto the guitarist’s fingers. ‘Good luck—’

‘You’re really not coming in?’

‘Better not. I’ll hold the guitar.’

He almost walked into the little bar next door before he remembered he had no money, not a cent. Ax was holding the takings. But sitting in a warm bar could be regarded as cheating, anyway. He stood in a doorway, reading placards across the street, and watched the snow clear the foot-traffic; thinking of the mysterious way Fiorinda’s grey eyes changed colour when her skin turned winter-pale.

Shattered gold and green striations.

Re-ignite the Nuclear Stations—

Nobody would dare, not now.

They’d be back in England soon, and he was concerned about the effect of that return on Ax. There was a brittle, aggressive Ax never far from the surface now … Always will be, until he quits the struggle, but how can he ever? The suits won’t let him, that’s the awful truth. The dancing flakes and the shadowed air said, you too. You will never be free, you’re in this for the cold and dark duration. He smiled, Ax’s guitar on his shoulder; thinking of her eyes.

I knew that.

‘There are better ways to divine a pregnancy now,’ said the pharmacist fetching the old-fashioned goods from a drawer. ‘Your girlfriend might prefer something more harmonious.’

‘Thanks. This’ll do fine.’

But she was staring over his shoulder. He turned to see Sage, face beautifully framed in the snow-speckled collar of his coat, peering through the glass door. The pharmacist looked from rockstar-features out there to Ax: from Ax to Sage, strangely amazed. In a flash he understood that she recognised them, not as celebrity protesters, but they hadn’t gone far enough from home. They were that English, busker guy-couple—

‘Miracles of modern medicine,’ choked Ax, cracking up, and fled.

They came into the garret laughing, brushing snow from each other. Fiorinda had a covered dish in the microwave, bowls and spoons laid out on the wooden pallet they used for a table. It was their evening live session. They had to go through with it: the stunned, blank look in the back of her eyes had to wait. It’s tomato soup, the genuine Heinz, how about that, only a decade or so past its best-by date.

For dessert, steamed jam pudding with powdered-milk custard; neither item quite so fresh as the first course.

A doubting viewer: Is this really what they eat in the farm camps?

‘Yes it is,’ said Fiorinda, patiently, but with a merry smile. ‘Fresh produce goes straight out the gates, I keep telling you. The custard’s so old the yellow has worn out, but it tastes fine. This is sugar and other quick-release carbs, just right for manual labour. And a desirable product! Would you believe there’s a black market in camp food supplies now?’

And at last, the collection plate. Donations didn’t come to this address, but the figures did: all offerings, however small, to be greeted with personalised delight—

At last they were off the air. Fiorinda went to kneel by the window. Snow fell fast, big flakes tapping on the glass, though all she saw out there was this room, darkly reflected, lit by their single ATP lamp. ‘I was pregnant,’ she said. ‘I was a tiny bit pregnant. I did a test last week, with the First Aid kit and it, the baby was his.’ She jerked her chin at Sage. ‘Not any more, I started a bleed this afternoon. You see, I told you so.’

Sage went and sat on the floor by his belongings.

Ax, shocked and gutted beyond reason, decided he might as well look at the courriel Alain de Corlay had given to him. There was nothing else useful he could do … The envelope looked like a short tube of liquorice, or a scrap of black cable sheathing. It was shape-memory polymer. You could reduce this to its component atoms: it would reveal nothing. Matched with the right male partner, it would recall a former state, and the message would reassemble. No secret where it had come from. The over-determined gadgetry had Internet Commission written all over it. So what new hell is this? The all-powerful Commissioners never bothered Ax with good news. Oh well, it couldn’t spoil the mood.

He dug out a tiny baggie of cypher-jacks from his phone’s cache, screwed one into the tube and jacked the stick into a port One use only, of course … His password went to work, decoding.

Sometimes, he thought, tucking a soundbead into his ear, and staring at the blank, virtual screen that blossomed in front of his eyes, I understand my babe better than Sage does. No matter how wise he is, our bodhisattva. If she says now is not the time to get excited, she’s probably right. It’s horrible now but it’s okay. They’ll calm down and realise Fee can get pregnant, and one of us can do it, which is great news—

He’d have to get rid of the pregnancy test, though he’d almost have liked to keep in for a souvenir, today had been so intense, somehow—

The message was a big fucker, heavily encrypted: what could it be. An email and a movie clip. He read the message without taking it in: watched a little of the clip and froze.

So this is it, he thought. This is what they did—

Last summer when the A team came on stream—

Just a year after Sage Pender’s brief success in breaking the mind/matter barrier, a team of US military neuronauts had also reached fusion consciousness, by a different route. The set up had involved a tank of petroleum buried under the secret lab at Vireo Lake. The team was supposed to disrupt its chemistry by mind-power, if they were successful. Instead—having achieved a state perilously far beyond the experiment’s limits—they had willed the destruction of all the world’s crude oil reserves, incidentally rendering all other fossil fuel resources useless: and died in the act. A suicide note had been found explaining they’d given their lives for World Peace, and urging that all further development of the so-called “Neurobomb” should be abandoned.

Fat chance of World Peace. Oil Wars had been on their way out anyway, Water Wars were far more fashionable … For weeks afterwards, and then for months, nobody had been sure exactly what the A-team had done. Hospital lights had gone out, vital infrastructure had crashed, industries had foundered, millions had died: but still it had been as if the billions were holding their breath, all through this long cold winter of frozen calm.

Ax had a feeling like talons thumping, bang into the back of his neck. This is it, he thought, as the bodies of Gaian martyrs tumbled in the ghost-glow of his private screen. This is what the A Team did, this is what Fred foresaw, and why he fought that project, tooth and nail. Losing the oil was nothing, this is what the A-team did. Black magic has joined hands with the mainstream, and God help us all….

And he remembered, now when it was far too late, how part of him had leapt for joy when he knew the black gold was gone. He’d been appalled, of course, and scared. But still part of him had cried, Yay! The Living World strikes back! So that now, in this cold room (with Fiorinda staring into the night and Sage looking gutshot), he shared the blame. The world is a palimpsest of minds, all bending each other, and all the times when he himself had taken up the blunt instrument of violence, because it would work and he was desperate, he had been one of the hell-makers—

He’d broken eye-contact for too long. The desert ghost town vanished, replaced by a still from Heart On My Sleeve, the Heads’ stupendous dance track video, the summer of the Floods conference. Sage in a white singlet and tight white jeans, the gymnast Mr Muscle he used to be, but without the living skull mask: smiling sweetly, crippled hands open at his sides, and shall we say, looking very pleased to see someone.

Ah, glory days. The fun we had!

Fiorinda heaved a sigh, crossed the room and tugged at Sage’s shoulder. I’m sorry, she muttered, and they hugged. Ax, reassured, turned back to the covering letter. But the text was breaking up.

‘Hey, Sage? I need to fix something that wants to be ephemeral—’