Fairyland

by Paul J McAuley

  Alex lights a cigarette and says, ‘I admire you, Mrs Powell.’

  ‘They were once intelligent creatures,’ Mrs Powell says. ‘The butchers at Butrini turn fairies back into dolls. Worse than dolls, for they do not live long, and suffer terribly. What else could I do, in all conscience?’

  Alex says ‘What does Butrini have to do with the shrine?’

  Mrs Powell says, ‘Butrini was a Roman colony, and perhaps two thousand years ago this was an outpost of that colony. It has exactly the same vibrations, you know. Vibrations do persist if they are undisturbed. They are faint here, but quite unmistakable.’

  ‘Before then, it was sacred to the triple goddess,’ Alex says. ‘You’ll find a grove of laurel further along, the tree sacred to Daphne.’

  ‘You’re interested in the old stories.’ Mrs Powell waves at the midges that dance around her head. ‘Very few are, these days.’

  Alex is pleased to show off the results of his research. ‘Her real name was Daphoene, the bloody one. The Maenads, her priestesses, were supposed to chew laurel leaves to help them achieve an orgiastic frenzy. In Africa they called her Ngame; in Libya, Neith. She is also Hecate, and Graves’s White Goddess of Pelion, Keats’s Belle Dame sans Merci, and Mab, Thomas the Rhymer’s Fairy Queen. Apollo tried to rape her, and when she turned into a laurel, he made a wreath of her leaves as consolation. We still remember that, every four years; but perhaps we forget that she never died.’ He looks at Mrs Powell. ‘I hope that we’re going to meet someone who claims her place, soon enough.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Mrs Powell says. ‘I must say that you are a dark horse, Mr Sharkey. Who do you really hope to meet here? You never did tell me.’

  Alex says, ‘The people who took us over the border were anxious to move on before darkness. Humans only rule by day. This is no-man’s land, quite literally.’

  ‘Quite dangerous,’ Mrs Powell says. ‘So I’m told. Mr Avramites let slip that you are interested in the Children’s Crusade.’

  ‘Mr Avramites let rather too much slip for his own good.’

  ‘Mr Avramites said that the Children’s Crusade will not be allowed across the border.’

  ‘Oh, it will. That’s the problem. It will cross from Albania into the neutral zone, but if I’m right, it will not survive to cross the border into Greece. That is why we have to meet it. I think Glass’s girlfriend wants something from it, and so we have a chance to bargain, her and me.’

  Mrs Powell says, with a shrewdness that surprises Alex, ‘Then this is about the woman you knew so long ago. Perhaps you will tell me about her? I see you as the parfit gentil knight, seeking your long lost love.’

  Alex smiles. He’s happy here, in the quiet, immemorial ruins. He has only just realized it.

  He says, ‘Who is she? She wants to be thought of as a lineal descendant of Daphoene, the huntress of the moon, the triple goddess of air, earth and the secret waters of death. It’s symbolic that the stones here were raised in triumph by men over a site originally sacred to women. They overran the goddess’s shrines, killed her Pythons, and shackled her sacred horses to their war chariots. They cut down the laurel groves, too, but the laurel has grown back.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Powell murmurs, her eyes half closed. ‘It’s true enough.’

  Alex says, really getting into it now, ‘The Age of Reason was almost a fatal blow to the triple goddess, but in its ending is her new beginning. For the last century saw the deposition of the paternal God who was set on the throne of Zeus, which was once her throne. The Age of Theocracy in the West was already in decline when in our country Cromwell forcefully rejected the ceremonies that obscured the godhead from the common man. He couldn’t see that the Age of Reason, in which every man was entitled to read and interpret the scriptures, would bring about the death of the idea of God. The god of science and reason, Apollo, was raised up in His place, and at either side of Apollo were Pluto and Mercury. I worshipped Apollo and Mercury when I was young, but it is Pluto who is in the ascendant now. Pluto, the hoarder, god of the geezers and the babushkas, god of all the people who hide away in the ribbon arcologies and in virtuality, jealous of the young and denying death, for that would mean losing all they’ve accumulated.’

  ‘But I think Apollo will have his revenge. The last spurt of technology engendered the dolls, the slaves without souls, animals become like men. The woman I’m seeking—although she was only a crazy clever little girl then—raised them up, gave them souls. And I think that now she wants them to worship her. She believes she is the triple goddess returned. In Catholic countries the triple goddess never quite went away, for the cult of Mary was little more than a dilution of her own cult. Crusaders brought back a version of this story to Britain, although Mary quickly became Marian, the companion of that Jack-in-the-Green, Robin Hood. She is waiting, a seed in the bitter earth.’

  ‘Some of us never lost our faith,’ Mrs Powell says.

  ‘Of course. At the end of the twentieth century it was thought that a new goddess was raised up: Gaia, the Earth herself. But Gaia is the world, not the meaning of the world. Gaia existed before us, and will exist after. She needs no worship, for we are already part of her. It is the triple goddess who interceded with Gaia on our behalf. It was she who ordered the lives of our ancestors. Without her there was no sacrifice of the temporary kings; without her no seasons, no harvest. And here she is again, incarnated as the self-appointed queen of the fairies. She marked me, you know. Long ago, when she was making her first fairy. I’ve been trying to understand ever since. I think I’m beginning to understand. I think I know what she wants to bring back, and I don’t like it, or the way she’s trying to do it.’

  ‘I think that the Children’s Crusade was a first step. A test to see if she could spread a religious meme. But she doesn’t own the fairies. They’ve grown beyond her control. Strange things live again, not just because of the war, but because they can. Fairies can remake things at will. They can directly control the fembots that course through their blood. I believe that Glass wants to make use of that ability for his own ends, and that’s why he made his offer of sanctuary to the Children’s Crusade. But I’m not so sure that he should. I don’t think he has the right.’

  Mrs Powell says, ‘We really do have a lot in common.’

  Alex says, ‘Not really. You believe that’s the literal truth. I believe it’s a metaphor my dark lady has been playing with. Now she’s lost control, and has enlisted the help of this technocrat.’

  ‘And will you wage war on the Children’s Crusade all by yourself? I would like nothing better than to help. The existence of the Crusade is used as an excuse to justify the hunting down and destruction of fairies.’

  ‘I only want to defuse the Crusade, not destroy it. The human component isn’t important. It’s what’s changed them that’s important. I do have help. That’s why we’re here. But perhaps you can help, too.’

  Mrs Powell says, ‘I thought I saw something. It is watching us from behind those pillars.’

  Alex looks carefully, but sunlight dancing through leaf-laden oak boughs dazzles his eyes. He tells Mrs Powell that she has the better eye-sight.

  ‘I bought new corneas on the grey market five years ago,’ Mrs Powell says. ‘For what I paid, I should not see things that aren’t there.’

  She has been squinting into the bright sunlight, at the line of broken pillars that stand amongst the weed-grown stone walls. Now she looks at Alex and says, ‘If she wants to be the fairy goddess, what are you, Mr Sharkey?’

  ‘She called me her Merlin, once upon a time. We were much younger then, but perhaps there’s a grain of truth to it. Well, if I’m Merlin, then she’s Nimue. I’ve given her my secrets, and she’s left me locked in the cave of my skull. I suppose I’ve come here to be freed, but I’m not without gifts, or allies. I fully intend to live through this, but it will be dangerous.’

  ‘You’re trying to tell me that I could walk away. It’s well meant, but I’m so thrilled to be
here, Mr Sharkey. I’ll do all I can. I think I’ll take a reading of this place. It is absolutely throbbing with energy.’

  Alex unpacks his computer and, while it extrudes its ferrite antenna, eats a bar of chocolate and smokes another cigarette. Then he sends a one line message to Max, confirming that all is well, and checks on the progress of the Children’s Crusade. It is right where it is supposed to be, just to the north of Corovoda, no more than two days’ forced march from the border. There is only one way it can go now, up the Vjoses valley towards the abandoned town of Leskoviku and then across the wild Grammos Mountains. Katrina will be pissed: Ray was telling the truth.

  Mrs Powell is taking her time setting up a series of dowsing rods—bits of wire bent over at the top, with a thread weighted by a crystal teardrop—and adjusting a laser diffractometer to measure the crystals’ movements. Alex dozes in the warm sunlight of this late afternoon, and dreams of Milena as she once was, although he’s chasing her through the wreckage of the Magic Kingdom while fairies, blue-skinned, red-eyed, nip at his heels. It’s a silly, trivial dream, but its claustrophobic urgency is real enough. Time’s running out.

  6 – In Trouble Again

  Todd Hart wakes, headachy and dry-mouthed, in hot darkness that’s filled with the noise and vibration of engines. From their laboured rumble, and the way the ribbed steel floor cants beneath him, Todd realizes that he’s in some kind of vehicle climbing a long slope. The mountains—but which ones? There are so many mountains in Albania, and it’s surrounded by mountains, too. Christ, if he’s being taken across the border then he’s either truly fucked, or on his way to the biggest story in his life. Either way, he feels as if he’s fallen over a cliff.

  Todd makes the bad mistake of sitting up. It appears that someone has cut off the top of his head and fixed it back on with a bunch of nine inch nails. He can’t help groaning. Close by in the noisy darkness, a familiar gloomy, gritty voice says, ‘Welcome to the shiniest taxi service in the world.’

  It is Spike Weaver. He was taken at gunpoint from the hotel, he says, and put in the back of an armoured personnel carrier with Todd already lying unconscious on its floor. He has his watch; it is just past nine in the evening. They’ve been travelling about two hours.

  Todd checks his jacket pockets, then goes through them again in a kind of panic when he realizes that his wallet with his accreditation, and his notepad, which contains all the information he needs, as well as an expert system translator, a historian and a travel guide, are gone. And he’s lost his bush hat and one shoe—he remembers the firelight in the narrow street, and struggling out from under the dead soldier’s weight. He tells Spike what happened when he talked with Antoinette, and Spike says that he mostly figured it out already.

  ‘The thing is, I don’t even know it was her,’ Todd says. He has to shout to be heard above the clamour of the engines, which does nothing for his headache. ‘It could have been anyone morphed to look like her. Well, I guess we’re in trouble again.’

  Spike grunts. ‘I think we’re in a shit-load of trouble. The only thing that makes me feel hopeful is that I have my drone.’

  ‘Good. If we keep calm we won’t blow this. We’ll get our story. Meanwhile, let’s have some light in here.’

  ‘I was saving the batteries,’ Spike says, but tells the drone to switch on a single light at low gain.

  They are in a steel can. A ribbed steel floor, bulkheads of riveted steel, a braced ceiling of steel plate about a hundred and fifty centimetres above the floor.

  ‘Fuck,’ Spike says, staring at Todd, ‘are you hurt bad?’

  The front of Todd’s jacket is stiff with dry blood. ‘Someone else,’ he says, taking it off. ‘I was knocked out by a hornet.’

  Spike has a bad cut on his cheekbone, and a lump on the back of his head. They weren’t subtle when they took him. ‘Worse things happen at sea,’ he says mysteriously. He almost seems to be enjoying this. It confirms his belief that the world is a shit-storm, and happiness can be found only in those moments when someone isn’t actually dumping a load on your head.

  When Todd mentions his headache, Spike produces a couple of paracetamol from one of the zippered pockets of the flakjacket he wears every waking hour of the day—Todd believes he sleeps in it, too. There’s a chemical toilet in the corner, with a spigot and a chained steel cup beside it. The water is flat and warm and tastes of metal, but after a while the paracetamol kicks in and Todd feels a little better, even a little hopeful. Maybe he really is riding towards his old-fashioned exclusive scoop.

  Spike isn’t so sure, and Todd tries to talk him round. ‘She trusts me,’ he says, at the end. ‘That’s the point. She chose me. That makes us safe, doesn’t it?’

  ‘You’re the only journalist in town that isn’t from Europe, and the only one sniffing after Glass. Of course you were chosen. People like that still think the States count for something. And you do have a reputation. Maybe she’s a fan.’

  ‘There’s a story here, Spike. Be positive. I can feel it.’

  Todd has Spike shoot some footage, a quick impressionistic account of why he’s locked in this steel coffin of a personnel carrier that’s labouring its way up some godforsaken mountain to an unknown destination. Illuminated by light bounced off blued steel, with the rumble of the engines and the lurching ride, it will be crudely and urgently realistic. Todd tries to emphasize the urgency and hide his fear, and does it in a single take.

  ‘Not bad,’ Spike says. He tries to patch into the vehicle’s systems, and at last the drone’s parasitic cable finds a place where it can interface with the inertial navigation system and, through mat, one of the navstar satellites. Ten seconds later, the report is in the Web, a coded squirt worming its way from node to node until it can download itself into the editor’s desk.

  After that, Spike turns off the light, and they sit in the clamorous, swaying dark. Spike lights a cigarette. Its acrid smoke quickly saturates the air conditioning, and when Todd complains, Spike says that he should try one. ‘It’ll calm you down. You have to be calm around these trigger-happy hyped-up goons.’

  ‘I’d rather deal with whoever’s giving the orders.’

  ‘If anyone is.’

  ‘Someone wants us, Spike. We can work with that.’

  ‘They better not touch my fucking gear. That’s all I ask.’

  Spike draws on his cigarette. Its glowing tip briefly illuminates his booze-reddened nose and sets a tiny star in each of his spaniel eyes. In the jouncing roaring dark, he explains his theory that as long as he’s behind a camera, he’s invulnerable.

  ‘This old dead bloke, Isherwood, had it right. You become like a disembodied observer. You aren’t part of the scene. Shit only happens when you lose concentration. It’s like a zen thing.’

  ‘Give me one of those cigarettes.’

  ‘There you go,’ Spike says, lighting two in a brief scratch of flame and passing one over. ‘It’s not as if they give you cancer. The thing is, when you’re in an intense situation, you have to relax into it, sort of thing.’

  But it’s hard to find any comfort, on cold steel, in the noisy darkness. When the armoured personnel carrier finally stops, and switches off its engines, their roaring runs on inside Todd’s skull. It’s as if he’s become part of the machine, the idea of the machine travelling on forever.

  The hatch is opened with a hydraulic thump, and a trio of giant adolescent soldiers rout out Todd and Spike. Spike starts to swear at them, saying they’re not to touch the drone, he’ll fucking take on the first fucker who fucks with his drone. The armoured personnel carrier squats under a row of arc lights like a toad constructed of angles. Its black skin absorbs light and gives nothing back. Volumes of air blow out of the night and move through gnarled trees. There’s a crashing noise, an endless falling roar—slowly, Todd realizes it’s the sea.

  The trees are olive trees. The APC is parked on a road with groves of olive trees on one side and a sheer drop to the sea on the other. There are o
ther vehicles parked here and there, and their headlights add to the general glare. A half-moon is tipped high above. The tall soldiers march Spike and Todd, who’s half-shod and limping, away from the APC. They go past a jeep with the UN symbol on its hood, and then Todd sees soldiers wearing powder-blue berets and shouts to them.

  ‘American! I’m American!’

  One of the UN soldiers, an officer, turns. His mahogany skin gleams under the arc lights.

  ‘American reporter! I’ve been kidnapped!’ Todd struggles as a soldier buffets him with quick hard taps, trying to turn him away. ‘American reporter! CNN. ABC. CBfuckingS.’

  The officer says, ‘As I understand it, this is a local thing.’

  Todd feels a surge of righteous anger. The UN is supposed to protect people, and he wants protection. ‘I’m a reporter! CNN! You make them let me go!’

  But the UN officer shakes his head and walks away. Todd swears at him, and the tall soldiers laugh. They know American swear words. One tells Todd, ‘That man no good. Stay with us. Give us cigarettes.’

  ‘The UN is operating within local restrictions,’ Spike says. ‘What can you expect?’

  ‘Light me. I’m doing a field report right here!’

  ‘Fuck off. These people are nervous enough as it is. Let it go.’

  ‘That fucking Marku. He set me up!’

  ‘Of course he did,’ Spike says, ‘but don’t take it out on me.’

  The soldier who has a little English runs a finger across his throat. ‘We kill Marku dead. Try and sell us out. We kill him dead. We look after you.’

  Todd kicks off his remaining shoe. He says, ‘Are you working for Antoinette?’

  The soldier shrugs.

  ‘The woman I was talking with? That’s who told you to kidnap us?’

  Spike offers around his cigarettes. ‘Where are you boys taking us?’

  The soldiers grin and nudge each other, happy to be smoking these fine imported Camels. They are like eager nervous colts, their skins quivering with internal lightnings, their eyes rolling at sounds Todd can’t hear. Their hands never leave the stocks of their Kalashnikov Mark Vs. Swollen nail-bitten fingers tap at taped stocks, the worn guards of filed-down triggers. They keep glancing up at the black night sky.