Sam had been missing for the past six days. Jeeves was trying to sell it as if he’d left of his own volition, Oh my birdie’s flown the coop, should have known, should have known. Sailor played his own game, pretending Sam was just down at the pub this whole time. Just passed out somewhere in his own vomit. He’ll be back when he sobers up and finds himself sick of himself, he’d said, though his trembling voice betrayed him. It was bullshit and she knew it.
Though it was certainly possible Sam had simply run away, her gut told her it was much more likely that the authorities had finally taken action, responding with zeal once desperation had sunk in. They’d done a piss-poor job of defending their precious dynasty from the get-go, and now their fat arses had no choice but to get off the couch in a last-ditch attempt to keep the nation locked into slavery in the form of debt.
Their lack of response to the movement’s initial strikes must have been typically British, Oh dear, why isn’t that unfortunate. In reality, it hadn’t been that long. It felt as though GGcoin had been in operation for ages, but it had only been about a month since Janus Jeeves pulled Benson Bridges’ universal trigger.
If Sam had been abducted, it wasn’t as if he could tell his captors what they wanted to know. He’d be just a celebrity bargaining chip, the son taken hostage to lure the king out of his ramshackle castle. If Saint Fox and The Independence’s loyal fan base heard that their beloved rock n’ roll messiah was being held captive, would they turn on the Arcana? Where did their loyalty really lie?
All she had wanted was to make music, maybe save the world a little. Live life on her own terms, be no one’s puppet. Now she wondered if she’d just been fooling herself all along. Lies on top of lies. There’s no such thing as utopia, not here, not amongst the cleverbands and intertalks and Fall fashion trends, not where people have forgotten how to decide for themselves.
We had to make the choice for them, Jeeves would say. Just a little coaxing in the form of rock n’ roll.
The door to her flat buzzed three times, but was drowned out by the noise inside. The quick, repetitive pounding on the door finally broke through as a new disturbance that wasn’t self-made.
She slid open the door to reveal a jittery-looking Benson Bridges on the other side. He poked his head in, glancing over the flat’s wreckage before his gaze returned to Kit who wore black jeans and a Bowie t-shirt, her kinked dark curls standing on end as if she’d been electrocuted.
Benson was equally without sleep and disheveled, eyes darting back and forth, his tongue planted firmly in the hollow of his cheek. He opened his mouth and closed it a few times, trying and failing to make words.
He’s looking for the den mother, Kit realised.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, stepping aside abruptly as he entered without invitation.
“What are you doing?” Benson countered, his voice nasal and wavering. “It looks like a tsunami hit in here.”
“Whatever I want,” Kit said. She edged in on him with her arms folded across her chest. “I’m busy. What’s up?”
“You haven’t seen him either?” Benson flopped down onto Kit’s mass-produced couch, its black fabric torn and frayed.
Kit dropped her arms, sitting down beside him. “Did Jeeves send you?” she asked, staring distractedly out the window.
“Nope. Just me, lookin’ for him.” Benson took off his narrow glasses, wiping them on the edge of his t-shirt before putting them on again.
“Don’t tell me you’re in love with him, too,” Kit said. “That boy has enough admirers.”
“He’ll have even more if he’s dead.”
“Dark. Rock n’ roll immortality?”
Benson shook his head. “I’ve always kinda liked ya, you know,” he said flatly. He coiled up tensely, poised for imminent rejection.
“That can’t be true,” Kit said, looking through him. “Smart guys don’t like smart girls. They don’t like to be challenged.” She ran a guitar pick back and forth over her knuckles, eager to get back to playing.
“Well, I like smart girls. And who said you were smart? People throw around the term ‘musical genius,’ but let’s been honest here. They shouldn’t do that. That’s not what genius means.”
“You have a strange way of talking up a gal.”
“Thought you might like a bit of honesty for a change. Anyway, if there was such a thing as a musical genius in the simple genre of rock music, you’d be one.”
“You’re just saying that,” Kit smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Maybe.” Benson was quiet for a moment. “Do you believe in the movement?” he asked.
Kit thought about it for a moment. Her doubts, she figured, were best kept to herself. “Yeah, I do. I’m not sure it’s the best way to go about it, and I know it’s hard to trust Jeeves sometimes, but look what we’ve done so far. Tons of businesses are using GGcoin. They’re just that little bit freer. That’s worth something, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise. Jeeves drives me crazy, but the reason I worked with him so closely on this was that his ideas made feckin’ sense. He’s actually really clever. Once he stops gesturing around and gets down to business, he knows what he’s talking about, it’s just no one hardly ever sees that side of him.”
“He’s a performer at heart. That’s why he acts the way he does. He can’t help it. He needs the attention, needs other people’s focus to energise him.”
“D’ya think Sam’s a performer at heart?”
“I think he fakes it well enough. I think he’s whatever other people want him to be.”
“You think we’ll find him?” Benson stared at his knees, fiddling with the zip on his jacket.
“I don’t know,” Kit said, her expression turning dour. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’d prefer to be alone right now.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Benson said. “I’m not him.”
“It’s not that. I just need some time to process.”
“I’ll leave you to it then. Just be careful.”
“I’ll be however I want, genius,” she said without malice. “Nighty night, Bez.”
She shut the door behind him and set the lock, returning to her stack and turning the volume up two more notches, continuing to drown out everything and everyone with electricity and steel, a tried and true method that always worked. For a little while, at least.
Chapter Thirty-Three
THE MERCY SEAT
Sam drove a stolen neon-green hydroelectric car at top speed, past a sign that read Next Rest Area: 87 km. The tires squeaked like wildfire against the pavement and he was low on petrol. The air around him swallowed him up in a warm chill, a barricade, a temperamental prison with its own working mind.
He decided to take a detour down an unpaved road, spotting an old-fashioned American diner in the distance. The car screeched to a halt.
The diner was decorated like the 50s—red vinyl seats, round white tables, a neon sign reading ‘Dusty’s’ and a jukebox. He smelled greasy burgers and chips, heard Roy Orbison playing over the tinny restaurant speakers. The song was Blue Angel—Oh blue angel, don’t you cry, just because he said goodbye, and Sam ordered a Dusty’s Famous Bacon Cheeseburger with jalapeños and barbeque sauce from the busty brunette waitress with killer legs whose nametag said ‘Brandi: Serving You With A Smile.’
The record screeched to a halt. A few quiet skips. Then, the song began again from the top.
He waited and waited for his order to arrive. All around him others were being served—a table of jocks and cheerleaders in their stars and stripes, a man and a woman who must have weighed two hundred and thirty kilos each, a lonely little fellow in a shallow-brimmed hat who ate only chips and salad.
His food never came. The patrons around him grew old and grey. The red vinyl seats morphed into uncomfortable aluminum chairs that weighed less than half a kilo and were made for five pence apiece in Singapore. The pretty brunette waitress grew freakishly t
hin, bones practically jutting through her face, rosy cheeks replaced with pallor. The music changed from Roy’s earnest song about loneliness and heartache to a catastrophic din with no melody, just loosely rhyming words shouted over a beat from a 1970s rock song that had been regurgitated and defiled. A fine layer of white dust settled over the furniture, building up in snowlike piles around the jukebox.
Sam exited the desecrated diner, unfed, into the black night. He jogged, he flew, he rode a bicycle. He landed on the moon and played a very special edition of Celebrity Countdown: Rock Stars on the Moon. He lost to the resurrected ghost of Ian Curtis, who he tried to argue had cheated by using incomprehensible German words. But the rules of Celebrity Countdown on the Moon were looser, as was the gravity. Contestants and letters floated in vast emptiness, faintly illuminated by fireflies and vertical industrial-sized fluorescent rods.
He awoke in a plush velvet bed. He awoke with naked groupies entwined across him like a spiderweb.
He awoke alone in cold and darkness.
Sam rolled over to his side and fell straight out of bed onto the dusty floor, catching himself on all fours. His palms bracketed against the cold pavement left sweaty handprints.
Here in this prison—wherever here was, physical torture took the form of:
1. Food and light deprivation.
2. Getting tossed around like a ragdoll by men twice the size of him until they drew blood or got bored.
3. Acute opiate withdrawal.
Psychological torture took the form of:
1.Interrogations and accusations, mostly from Simsworth, who asked the same questions over and over, told him he was a worthless piece of shit, pretended to be his friend, then questioned him again, spat upon him, and left him in darkness.
2. Being ignored for long periods of time.
3. Acute opiate withdrawal.
His stomach rumbled a nasty rhythm inside him. He wished someone would feed him something, anything. He thought of the time Sailor had tried to cook a three-course seafood dinner on their meager budget and they’d both gotten food poisoning. It had tasted good at the time, however, and he doubted it had truly been the culprit; it must have been the kebabs they’d had for lunch. He would sacrifice his firstborn son for a kebab right about now.
Tonight, Simsworth had invited him to a banquet. Sam would dine with the Prime Minister himself, he’d said.
What new form of torture could this be? Sam wondered.
He was given decent clothes, shoved towards a basin and told to wash up. From what he glimpsed in the foggy mirror, he had to say it wasn’t half bad given the circumstances; he didn’t look nearly as horrendous as he felt. He was too thin, and hadn’t shaved in weeks, his hair all shaggy in a way that would have Sailor fussing about, threatening to give him a haircut. They’d given him a freshly pressed, dark grey suit to wear. A size too large but still it looked smart, making his eyes chameleon to a green-grey to match the fabric.
Guards led him down the hall to a room that from the outside looked like any other in the building, solid off-white double doors, dirty, painted over several times, reinforced with steel and a security clearance panel—scratches around it on the wall indicating it had been recently replaced—perhaps formerly Dot-operated, now merely a reverse-retrofitted touchscreen.
Inside the room was a transformation, a scene like something out of a Victorian novel. Fine oak furniture, sofas and chairs lined with plush gold velvet. Antique cabinets filled with white China and polished silver. Indoor plants that looked slightly too green to be real sat in blue Oriental pots against the dark hardwood floor, soft yellow light filtering through their artificial leaves. A faint strain of classical music played—Chopin, or Mozart perhaps. Sam wasn’t so adept at recognizing his classical composers by ear.
A long, walnut-stained table flanked by eight chairs with high backs and thick cushions sat in the center of the room. The smell that greeted him upon entering made him slightly nauseated—a dizzying array of roasted meats, freshly-caught seafood, the acrid, delicious waft of alcohol—various libations no doubt aged for decades in oak barrels, in steels casks, with notes of honey and vanilla, juniper and smoke, jasmine and oranges.
Without hesitation, Sam sat down and immediately reached for the nearest glass, a lightweight crystal tumbler filled with sweet, smoky amber liquid. He guzzled down the contents in one gulp, not caring if it made him sick. It made his head spin and his empty stomach turn over itself in endless flips.
“My, my. He dives right into the good stuff, doesn’t he?” Prime Minister Harold Waterman entered the room with quiet footsteps, his hair neatly combed, dressed in a custom-tailored three-piece suit. Beside him was General Simsworth clad in his severe grey and maroon uniform. The two men sat down on either side of Sam at the long table where he was seated at the head. Waterman was taller than both Sam and Simsworth, yet somehow appeared the most diminutive of the three whether seated or standing.
Waterman unfolded his cloth napkin and placed it across his lap. Simsworth tucked his napkin into his collar, the crystal chandelier hanging above the table reflecting broken light patterns across his shiny bald head.
The spread laid out before them was magnanimous—a large, spiced, sizzling roast on a silver platter, fishes in delicate sauces, exotic vegetables wrapped in bacon, various culinary delights from around the world that Sam had never seen before.
Waterman reached a pair of silver tongs across a plate of meat, serving a portion to everyone.
“You must try the lamb, Saint Fox,” Waterman said. “It’s absolutely delicious, my own personal recipe.”
Across the table, Simsworth said nothing, opting instead to partake in every aspect of the feast without appearing to enjoy it. He had that ability to consume massive quantities of food without anyone ever seeing him do it. In between courses he would pause to glare at Sam, staring disdainfully as the lithe revolutionary sampled glass after glass of the finest whiskey, gin, vodka, twenty-six-year-old single malt scotch, Sauvignon Blanc, and a pint of dark beer. Sam ate little—only enough to settle his long-neglected stomach so that it could process more alcohol.
“Impressive,” Waterman said. “You’re a true countryman.”
“Why are you feeding me all this good stuff?” asked Sam, “after practically starving me for weeks?”
“A man of your status should be well-treated,” came Waterman’s reply. “Our early attempts at gaining information from you were obviously unsuccessful. My colleague here, Mr. Simsworth, doesn’t understand the nuances of the human psyche as well as I do.” Simsworth glared half-heartedly at the Prime Minister, but said nothing as he served himself a large portion of beef Wellington.
“Ah, a bit of good cop, bad cop, then.” Sam said, his lip resting on one of his many now empty glasses. “That’s the oldest trick in the book. But I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
“You can tell us where to find Janus Jeeves and his code men,” Simsworth spoke, his forehead knotting where his eyebrows ought to be. “As you know by now, we can be very kind, or, we can be very cruel.”
Sam chewed bites of food slowly, sampling this and that in between furtive, suspicious glances volleyed between his two captors.
“Do you have any idea how many have died already?” Simsworth asked, folding his hands purposefully and leaning forward, an ugly grin spreading across his face.
“No one’s died,” Sam answered, after another hearty swallow of expensive liquor. “You’re making that up. I don’t believe a word either of you gentlemen say. Why, it’s practically in both your job descriptions to lie—Mister Prime Minister, Mister General Fuck-U-Up.” Sam blinked steadily, mustering his courage despite several of his body’s systems beginning to protest their abuse.
“Oh, but you’re wrong, Saint Fox,” Waterman chided, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “Casualties have begun. We’ve used relics, you see. Had to practically acquire our weaponry from museums in order to teach you a lesson.
I’m sure Mr. Jeeves is positively livid.”
Sam swallowed heavily, setting his glass down. “What’d you bastards do, shoot some kids? That makes you right big and bad. I’m sure you’re very proud of yourselves.” He dropped his utensils on the table and pushed his plate away, no longer hungry. “Tell me something…why do you do it? Why does anyone do it? I mean, I just don’t get it, you’re paid good salaries, you have enough money, and yet it’s never enough, ain’t it? Somehow there’s always a significant enough portion of the population without any sense of right and wrong, so it don’t bother them any. They don’t lose any sleep at night if how they increase their annual revenue causes other folks to lose their jobs, takes food out of their mouths, denies them necessary health care, keeps ‘em from getting an education, keeps ‘em from making ends meet, makes ‘em depressed, suicidal—they top themselves, their wives top themselves, their kids are orphans, they become criminals, then you ask taxpayers for more money to fund our prisons to lock up folks who don’t need to be locked up and you, you go out and buy a yacht! I just don’t get it, don’t get how anyone could be that selfish. It’s like every year a set number of folks are born with some huge deficit in the humanity department, and those people are always the ones who end up runnin’ the goddamn country.”
Sam’s colour-changing eyes were practically black. They shined with the faint gloss of tears kept at bay by anger.
Simsworth said nothing, but his hand had instinctively moved to the weapon located at his belt. Waterman looked almost impressed, but his raised eyebrows and pursed lips conveyed no true emotion. Sam stood up from the table in one swift motion, hunched over the arm of the chair with dead fire in his eyes.
“Take me back to my cell. I don’t care if you bring me wine that costs a thousand quid. I won’t help you, I can’t. You might as well just let me go, and if you won’t do that, at least let me shake and shiver in peace, detoxing on that hard cot, let me sweat and freeze my arse off and cry and vomit but don’t give me any more ring-around-the-rosy talk or any more feckin’ top dollar ham imported from Spain while you’re fighting to keep normal people from exchanging bread and butter in a decent human manner.”
The Rise of Saint Fox and The Independence Page 21