“Jesus? Not a chance. Not to this mess.”
“Still gives me a funny feeling, though,” says Andy. “All those prophecies.”
I look at him with some dismay. “It’s always been a battlefield, man, right through history. Look at the map. Don’t tell me you think . . .”
He laughs uneasily. “If I believed any of that shite I’d be praying like the crazy Yanks.” He fingers his stubbly chin. “Favor? See us your fancy glasses a minute?”
“Sure.” Gingerly, I hand them over.
He uses them for a minute or two. “Jesus,” he says. He passes them back. His hand is shaking a bit.
We stub out our cigarettes and go inside, he to the bench and I to the bar.
The next song is “The Braes of Killikrankie.” Another song about bloody defeat, and you can’t even tell which side the singer was on. Andy catches my eye at the line: If you had seen what I hae seen. I nod, and, as if reminded, put my glasses back on. Damn. I came out to have a good time and to forget, and here I am looking at the end of the world. It’s getting to be like checking email when you should be working.
Sometimes you get a shock in the mail.
I stand there with chills running down my back.
* * * *
THE SCREENS HAVE changed. It’s not the battle any more. It’s reporters outside the White House, the Kremlin, Downing Street. I focus on the CNN feed and the sound comes through:
“. . . unsustainable military situation . . . avoid further senseless sacrifice . . . UN Security Council emergency session . . .”
Over to the BBC’s diplomatic editor, standing in Downing Street outside No 10:
“Yes, Natasha, it does seem from here that we are talking about surrender terms . . .”
Sky News in Red Square: “. . . midnight in Moscow, but already crowds are pouring on to the street . . .”
I can hardly make out the words over the jubilant car horns. I blink away the wall of news and look around the pub. Everyone is looking at each other, or at their screens or glasses. Some people are crying, others look half-pleased, sharing sly grins. Andy, oblivious to all this, belts out the last line—On the braes o’ Killiecrankie-oh!—with a crash of chords and a fine flourish of the guitar neck, then stops, looking around in the unexpected silence.
“What?” he says.
A tall woman with short red hair whom I’ve never seen before, but (like everyone else here) looks like someone I’ve seen before, says: “The war’s over.”
“What?” says Andy again.
My mouth is dry. I take a gulp of my fresh pint.
“It’s over,” I say. “The Yanks and the British are negotiating a surrender.”
Andy rolls a cigarette without looking down at his hands.
“The Russians . . . won?”
Nods all round.
Andy chuckles, then laughs. It’s like he can’t stop. He takes a deep breath.
“The Sassenachs lost,” he says. “They lost fucking Armageddon.”
He looks down at his cigarette, sticks it in his mouth and gets up.
“Ah, the hell with all that,” he says.
Then he sits back down, and lights up. A ragged laugh around the pub is followed by the sound of several more lighters, and, after a moment, of the long-unused extractor fan creaking into action.
Andy lets out his smoke in a long sigh. “Ah well. The end of ane auld song, eh? Now they’re all in the same boat as the rest of us.”
I guess I’m the only person in here who knows exactly what he means.
I wonder what your folk songs will be like.
* * *
Afterword
Like my novel The Night Sessions (Orbit, 2008; Pyr, 2012) this story came out of my darker thoughts in the dark years of the Blair premiership. (And yes, it was Tony Blair in the UK rather than George Bush in the US who was the dark lord.) It's set in the same world as that book, and imagines me living into its back-story.
Re-reading it five years later gives me pause. Was I ever really that angry, to write a whopping military defeat for "the West" as a happy ending? Yes, I was, and I still am. We've all now lived into the future with the Black president and the flying killer robots, and the US and UK are still on course for fighting a major war in the Middle East, almost literally at Armageddon, and quite probably losing. Blair, a vacancy filling a position, still touts his eerie certitudes.
But Seeds of Change is about hope. If we get out of oil and out of the Middle East, if we get faith out of politics and reason in, we can bring the 21st century to a happy ending without a world war or a climate catastrophe. After that, there's freedom.
ARTIES AREN’T STUPID
Jeremiah Tolbert
A FEW OF us arties were hanging out in Tube Station D, in the dry part that hadn’t flooded. Tin men had busted Blaze and Ransom doing an unlicensed mural on Q Street behind a soytein shop, and a small crowd of us watching (too chick-shit to Make with the tin men cracking down) scattered when the pig-bots hummed in from every direction like it was some kind of puzzle bust and not just a bunch of arties trying to wind down. We’d all clustered back down in the Station on Niles’s turf. Tin men didn’t bother below ground. So long as the Elderfolk couldn’t see turd, they didn’t give a turd.
Niles wasn’t there, so some rat-faced kid started posing and posturing about taking a little swatch of wall for himself, doing it up special. Pecking order is pecking order, so nobody wanted to be near the turd-head if Niles heard him talking like that, so every bodies was giving him space and lots of it. Look-outs on the street announced with sharp whistles that Niles was headed down, and the kid shut right up.
Niles was a year or two older than the rest of us. Some bodies liked to say he was a proto-arty, but I don’t know about that. He was different, and it didn’t have nothing to do with his age or Make. All age did was give him a few inches of height to make bossing easier. He bossed good, not mean like Elderfolk, but kept us out of trouble with the thicknecks and just-plains. Something about him was plain special. We few girlies knew it, specially.
He was taller than me by a head, hair burnt umber and long, styled nice with lip-curl and spike. He wore a worker man’s jumpsuit adorned with patches and swatches of fabric that he liked. Very anime, very hip. Arties have good fashion sense, but Niles set trends in our clade.
Boo was with him as usual, a stunted runt of a melodie that Niles had found sleeping on his turf. She wore an old fashioned mp3 player around her neck, earbuds nearly soldered into her ear bits. Whenever you got close to her, you could make out tinny music, but what kind of music it was, you couldn’t figure. Unlike other melodies, Boo never sung, not once. Didn’t speak either. Bum batch, probably. It happens, although most get recycled early. Nobody questioned her hanging around, seeing’s how Niles tolerated her.
“This stuff is snazzy,” he said. “No paint, just water and plant stuff. Nozzle works the same though. Sprays right on.” I recognized the stuff. I’d seen advertisements for it on my Elderfolk’s vidiot box. Moss-in-a-can. They sold it to Elderfolk for the recreation yards, for making everything look all old and natural, whatever that meant. Simple biotech, nothing too crazy, nothing like us arties.
Niles tossed us each a metal can from a satchel that Boo carried, except for the rat-faced kid—Niles gave him zip. “You get out of here, go home to your Elderfolk. I heard what you were saying before I stalked a-on down,” he said to him, wagging his finger, and rat-face’s eyes got all comic and big. Rat-face sputtered something about how his Elderfolk didn’t want him around, but Niles just shook his head.
“No bodies do, Zinger.” That’s right, I remembered, rat-face was a new transfer to the city hood named Zinger something-something. Niles was a lot better at names than the rest of us, but you could see that he had to think real hard for it, sometimes. His face’d scrunch up and he’d just freeze to concentrate past all the shapes and colors that dance in an arties head from wake to sleep.
“Yah,” said Tops
. He stepped up out of the crowd and gave Zinger a short shove on the shoulder. Tops was Ransom’s best friend, and he’d been spoiling for a fight all day, ever since the Tin Men busted Ransom.
“Cerulean,” Niles said, and the color flashed through our heads and everybody calmed down just a little. “Go on, you can come back tomorrow. This is my studio, don’t forget it, ’kay?”
Zinger nodded, then turned and ran up the stone steps to street level. Niles sighed and finished handing out the moss-in-a-can.
“We supposed to Make with this instead of paint? It’s all one color,” Tops said, his voice all whiny like some spoiled just-plain.
“That’s right,” Niles said. “Better mossy than going in the pokey-pokey.” I winced at the word, which was both the name of a bad place and a description of what they did to you there.
I took my can happy, feeling better already. Design-shapes were practically pushing out my ears. My Elderfolk wouldn’t give me any scratch for paints lately, using it all on themselves and drugas to feel better. Was okay with me, Niles gave stuff that he got from trading to the thicknecks and skinnybois for gang logos. Drugas made my Elderfolk less shouty which was just good-no-great with me.
I went up and found some alley space and I Made until it all went away into an eggshell white haze.
* * * *
WE MESSED AROUND with the moss-in-a-can for a few days until the Elderfolk decided they didn’t like the “mess” and the tin men got new marching orders. They started spraying down all the fractals and designs with some kind of ick and it all turned turd-brown and dusted away. Hurt to see it, but what can arties do? Tin men can’t be argued or fought with like Elderfolk.
We were all sulking in Niles’ station, feeling the pain of not-Making like aching all over and Niles got mad and stomped off without even waking up Boo. We were a little scared, because Niles only left Boo behind when he was going to do something that might get him sent into the pokey for a long long time, and without Niles to keep everything straight, we’d all be in trouble. Boo woke up while we were fighting about what to do and came and cuddled up to me. I could almost feel the music vibrating through her into me. It made me feel a little sick.
“Don’t know why she likes you so much,” Tops said with a sneer. “Your Make sucks the big dong.”
I shrugged. Niles knew my Make was okay. Didn’t much care if Tops and the other arties did. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Maybe because Mona isn’t a ‘big dong’ like you,” sneered Tess. She helped whenever the boys thought they could gang-up on me. “And Mona’s Make is okay. You’re just scared because Niles is doing something bad.”
“Shut up,” Tops said and turned away. Tess smiled at me a little. I tried to smile back, but the symmetry felt off.
Boo tapped me on the arm and I looked down. She raised her eyebrows at me, then looked at the steps to the street. I nodded. “He went upside for a while. He’ll be fine.” She didn’t look convinced. Neither was I. We held each other and it made the ache a little better.
I worried sometimes that Boo felt that way all the time. She was a melodie and had to Make just like we poor arties did, but nobody ever heard her sing and bang or anything. Broken little thing made me feel sorry and sad. It was a good thing Niles took care of her, or she’d be used up and swept away just like our mossy Makes.
* * * *
NOBODY WENT HOME to their Elderfolk while we waited for Niles to come back. That was a rule. If Niles never came back, then we wouldn’t have to. Nobody wanted to see the meanies anyway. They had us Made and then hated us afterwards, which wasn’t fair. All arties know you love the things you Make no matter what. But Elderfolk were just-plains all grown up and they didn’t make any sense at all. Some of the younger arties started to talk about going back, but we older arties who knew Niles better said no, that we’d wait.
Three days passed before Niles came back. It was dark and everyone was sleeping but me, because little Boo’s music itched in my brain. He came in carrying big boxes, and I cried big tears of happy at that. He’d brought some new supplies, and we’d be Making again in no time flat. I watched him for a while, carrying in box after box, and finally I fell asleep. It felt good knowing he was back.
* * * *
IN THE MORNING, laughing woke me up. I turned to see what arty could be so rude. Niles was sitting in a corner with his back to the room, playing with something. He never laughed when he was Making so he had to be playing.
I left Boo to cuddle into the pile of other arties and crawled over to see what Niles was doing. He had some weird gadget, a silver disk covered in letter-buttons and it was projecting onto the wall some kind of tri-dimensional animal-thing. It had three legs and one arm and was galloping in place like a creature with three legs would, a kind of hop between steps. I laughed too when I looked at the weird little thing.
“What is it?” I asked in a whisper.
“I Made it, just now,” Niles said. “It’s complicated, but the brainiacs on P-Street showed me how. I only sort of made it. It’s just pretend now, but I can send it into the factories,” he pointed at the stack of boxes next to us, “then it’ll Make for real.”
“Wow,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to speak. Niles was like that, always thinking ahead of the Elderfolk and the tin men.
“Does it help the ache?” I asked, my pulse racing. I almost felt good, even with the hurt, just at the chance.
“A-yep,” he said. “Feels good. Like sculpting, sort of. But you can paint on them too. Paint in texture, scales, hair, you know. All sorts of things. But there’s a sense to it, like how you know good colors going together?”
“Yes?”
“Like that. You can’t just do anything,” he said. He nodded, and pressed a large button on the disk. Words came up and the creature disappeared.
“What’s that say?” I asked.
“Dunno,” he answered. “But the brainiacs said if I push that button, the factory will Make.”
A humming sound came just then from one of the boxes, and then the other arties started to stir and wake.
“Here,” Niles said, handing me the disk. “I’ll teach you how it works. We have to teach everybody. The tin men can’t kill animals besides pests, you know!”
* * * *
WE PRETEND-MADE all sorts of little creatures on the screen, then pushed the button that Made for real. The little factories, we set up in one corner of the station, and they hummed and popped out little eggs of all rainbow-colors every few hours. Niles sent the little kids out onto the street with the eggs to hide them where the tin men and Elderfolk wouldn’t see.
“The eggs will hatch and our Makes will come out alive, and the tin men can’t do anything about it!” he said. His eyes were shiny. It made me ache a little, and I worried that maybe pretend-Making didn’t count for arties. But Niles was always making me ache a little like that, especially when he left. It scared me, that maybe I was like little Boo and something wasn’t right with me. Bum batch.
Pretty soon, we started seeing the little animals around the City. They weren’t good Makes, though. They stumbled into traffic sometimes and got splattered. They fell off of roofs, got tangled in wires and cooked like bad soytein on a hot plate. They weren’t there in the head. And they starved. Not a lot of food out in the city just for the taking. They couldn’t take chits and buy it.
We were stumped. The tin men weren’t doing anything, but our little Makes couldn’t last on their own. I hated so much seeing them laying dead in gutters, in the street drains. Their little selves were all over, stinking and falling apart like wind-worn paints.
“I have an idea,” I said to Niles after thinking as hard as I could. “Go to the brainiacs and ask them for help. They will tell us what we can do right.”
Niles thought for a moment and shook his head. “No. This is an arty problem.”
“But arties are too stupid,” I said, raising my voice so everyone could hear it.
&n
bsp; Niles bared his teeth at me, and I cried out, scrambling away from him. “Arties aren’t stupid!” he shouted. “Arties aren’t stupid!”
But we are, I said to my own head. We are not smart like brainiacs. I ran away, back to my stupid Elderfolks, but even they were smarter than arties.
* * * *
I WAS DRAWING on the sidewalk, just to ease the ache, when Niles found me. I had stolen a little bit of charcoal from the crematorium and kept it in my pocket. I only used it when things were really bad, really really. And now I didn’t know what to do.
“Your repeating . . . patterns?” Niles said. “What do you call them?”
I shrugged. “Can’t think of words for it. Maybe your brainiac friends could guess.”
He frowned. “They could, but who cares?” He sat beside me and took out a piece of old paper. It had shapes drawn on it like my patterns, only more random. I was fascinated.
“Where did you get that?” I asked. I reached out to touch it, and he let me take it. I held it up to the light. The little bits were a faded green, like the moss-in-a-can.
“Plants,” he said. “They’re called ‘plants.’ ”
“Plants,” I said. “Snazzy.”
“A-yap,” he said. “The old world was full of them.”
“Who told you that?” I asked.
“The brainiacs,” he said. I stood up and hugged him tight.
“Make some plants with the factories,” he said. “They’ll be pretty.”
So we did. This time, the eggs were smaller, and we hid everywhere in the city. Niles helped me to make them. He understood the rightness of the animal bits, but to me, plants made more sense. They didn’t move, except to stretch for sun or rain. Wherever you put them, that’s where they stayed, just like murals.
The ache almost went all-away, for a while.
* * * *
THE LITTLE PLANT-EGGS hatched and grew quickly all around the city. We Made so much more of them, and they lasted good. The tin men noticed them. Everywhere, arties were seeing the tin men staring at the little plants growing bigger every day. They didn’t know what to do, but all arties knew what happened then: the tin men asked the Elderfolk.
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