Castles Made of Sand

by Gwyneth Jones

  Olwen spoke with Serendip. The Zen Self mainframe must go with Sage: a facet would not be enough this time. ‘You may not come back, my lady.’

  If the jewel were destroyed, ‘Serendip’ could be recreated, but a clone is not the same person. It was hard for both of them.

  Our friendship will remain, answered Serendip, calmly. In the state of all states, where nothing is lost. We are together there.

  ‘Thank you for this, Stephen,’ said Joss, as the rotors began to turn.

  Sage was surprised: his dad had called him ‘Sage’ for years. Not in any friendly way, either. He’d believed Joss was very glad to pretend that Stephen, the sick child from hell, the teenage junkie, had never existed.

  ‘For what? I should be thanking you.’

  ‘For trusting me. For letting me help you, for once in your life.’

  Sage took off the mask. ‘Thanks for being my fixer.’

  They embraced, tall Sage very awkward with the transaction. Olwen gave Sage the ring. He put Serendip on his finger, hugged Olwen, and climbed into the machine. It rose and soared away. The pilot turned and smiled shyly as Sage put on his helmet. ‘Hi, Sage. It’s good to have you back, Sir.’

  ‘Hi,’ said the Minister for Gigs, smiling in return. He relapsed into silence and they soared, they flew westwards. Sage thought of his band, of Ax, of his friends.

  All over now.

  Fiorinda slept for twelve hours, woke feeling almost human and persuaded the barmy whitecoats she was fit to get up. She ate a big bowl of lentil soup, with some very tasty brown bread, to prove it; while they found her some clothes. Showered and dressed (her hair charred at the edges and still stinking of smoke, but never mind) she went in search of company. Easton Friars was buzzing. Everyone was too busy with the war effort to pay attention to a rescued princess. This put her out a little, but she found the Heads eventually, doing nothing in a bare, echoing games room on the ground floor. When they saw her they shot to their feet, their mouths open.

  ‘Fiorinda!’ gasped George. ‘You’re unbelievable. You aren’t supposed to be—’

  ‘I’m not ill,’ said Fiorinda. She perched herself on the arm of a scuffed and balding leather armchair. ‘I was nearly burned at the stake, which was quite an experience, and I’ve no doubt I’m going to crash horribly when the reaction hits me. But for the moment I feel wonderful. It’s amazing what not being in prison, and getting a little good news, will do for you.’

  George and Bill and Peter sat down slowly, nodding.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Incredible good news.’

  ‘We was just saying that to ourselves,’ Peter assured her, with transparent guile.

  ‘Where is Sage?’

  Three guilty faces. She discerned that Peter, at least, had been crying. Oh, God. Crash horribly. NO! This is not the moment to crash.‘Where the fuck is he,’ she snarled, ‘What’s he up to? Don’t piss around. Just tell me—’

  ‘He’s gone off to do something important,’ said George, unhappily.

  ‘Oh yeah? Like what kind of important? Does Ax know? What is Sage doing?’

  ‘Ax knows,’ said Bill, ‘er, some. He may not have the complete full details—’

  Fiorinda set her teeth. ‘Oh fine. Absolutely fine. So, he’s doing something stupid and he has not told Ax. Shit…has he gone off to assassinate Benny?’

  ‘No!’ The Heads looked relieved, though no less unhappy. ‘No, no,’ said George, reassuringly. ‘He’s not daft. Fuck, what’s the use in assassinating Benny?’

  ‘Much as it would be a result,’ put in Bill.

  ‘It would be politically untenable,’ said Peter, ‘an’ it wouldn’t work either.’

  ‘No, no. Fact is, he’s gone after your dad, Fiorinda.’

  ‘He’s always wanted to,’ Peter explained. ‘An’ he reckons now is the time.’

  There was a well-hammered dartboard across the room, flanked by equally pockmarked portraits. Nineteenth-century hoorays. Did they come with the house, all these tatty old pictures? The world was shaking around her. This world which is still in blissful ignorance of what Rufus O’Niall is.

  ‘Oh God. Oh, God. He can’t do that. He has no idea—’

  ‘Yes he does, Fiorinda,’ said George, looking her in the eye. ‘He knows about your dad. He’s got a plan. An’ he wouldn’t let us go with him, but he’s taken Serendip. I mean, not a facet, Serendip. Olwen’s lent him the ring.’

  ‘Sage has a plan!’ wailed Fiorinda, jumping to her feet, beside herself with rage and terror. ‘Oh, great. You know fucking well Sage never had a plan in his life, beyond go for it until you got no armies left. He has Serendip, oh wonderful. What can a fucking computer do? He doesn’t need computer—’ Suddenly, she quieted. She stared at them, in wondering certainty. ‘He needs me.’

  They stared back, her guardian angels. Big George. Aquiline Bill, so aloof from the whole vulgar rockstar business. Peter, wrapped in his strange innocence. They were determined, but in their dreams they could keep her out of this.

  ‘Okay, how bad is it? I was on that bonfire yesterday, and I know he was here last night. Has he left the country?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Peter, eager to say something positive. ‘Not ’til morning tide.’

  George and Bill glared at him, disgusted.

  ‘Thank you, Peter. Right, I want the details. Everything. Come on, now.’

  TEN

  The Elephant’s Child

  Padstow Harbour at first light, one morning in July. The boats moored at the quayside, several ranks deep, were stirring with the dawn. The harbour was a more workmanlike place than it had been a few years ago. There’d have been people about at this hour, but Mr Dictator’s invasion was imminent and every port in England was under curfew, nobody allowed near.

  Sage however, had had no trouble getting on board. He moved round the deck, making ready to cast off. The sound of an engine speeded him up, but didn’t distract him. He could deal with anything Padstow’s Coastal Security could suddenly mobilise.

  The car turned and headed up New Street. Fiorinda stepped between crates, cables, and stinking puddles of rape-seed engine oil: dropped from the harbour wall and crossed quickly, from deck to deck, to the sleek, dazzling white hull of the Lorien. Sage looked up to see his rock and roll brat coming over the stern, dressedin barmy army urban camouflage trousers and a drab teeshirt. He straightened, horrified.

  ‘Fiorinda. What are you doing here? How did you—?’

  ‘I talked to George, stupid. I’m coming with you.’

  The look of sheer horror turned to deeper distress…‘Oh no, Fiorinda. You can’t… He’s your father.’

  ‘Sage,’ Fiorinda advanced with menace down the deck, ‘I don’t know if you ever noticed this, but the word father doesn’t mean a whole lot to me. Fear not. If the Furies decide to come after me, they will get a piece of my mind. I know Rufus is my father. If I knew everything that had happened to him in his life, maybe I would even pity him. Maybe I even do. But leave aside what he did to me long ago, when you were gone, he took me in the body of a dead man, held me under threat of destroying everyone I loved, and he raped me in the body of a dead man for seven months. Trust me. I do not need to be protected from the trauma of helping to take him down.’

  He didn’t seem to know what to do with his tall body, whether to stand or kneel, or jump over the side.

  ‘I wasn’t there,’ he gasped, between flight and desperate abasement, ‘Oh, God, I wasn’t there, and there’s no excuse, nothing explains that—’

  ‘You weren’t there. So what? You would only have got yourself killed, and I’d have had to do exactly the same, stepping over your dead body first.’

  He nodded, tears spilling, taking every word like a well-deserved blow. ‘I knew that. I knew he was coming for us, and I couldn’t beat him. I knew the only way I could save you, save anyone, was to reach the Zen, but I didn’t know he was already there. I left you alone with him, I told you to trust him—’


  ‘Oh, brace up. You didn’t know, I didn’t know. We were fucking stupid, we couldn’t see what was staring us in the face, because we were having our guilty love affair. You weren’t there and I got raped, but you’re alive, you came back in time to save my life, and then you fucking RUN OUT ON ME AGAIN! Instantly! I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it! And how is Ax is going to feel, you bastard, when he finds out?’ She had reached him, shaking with fury and terror. ‘Sage! You can’t kill my father. You cannot kill him! You—you have no idea. He will tear you to pieces!’

  ‘No he won’t,’ said Sage, pulling himself together. ‘It’s okay, Fee. He won’t.’

  On his tanned right hand he wore Olwen’s ring. The jewel flashed sunlight. ‘Oh yeah, they told me,’ she yelled, and leapt at him, so he was forced to catch her in his arms. ‘You have Serendip. Fucking wonderful! A computer isn’t going to help you—!’

  ‘Fiorinda, no, it’s not like—’

  She pounded at him with her fists. ‘He’ll tear you to pieces. He’ll tear you to pieces and that will only be the start—’

  ‘Fiorinda! Look at me!’

  ‘You bastard! How can you do this? You fucking idiot!’

  ‘Look at me. Look.’

  He finally managed to get her attention, to get her to look into his eyes.

  She stopped fighting. The time that passed was very short, but when they returned Fiorinda was smiling. They were kneeling, face to face, his arms around her, her hands pressed to his chest. She laughed, they both laughed, hugging each other, without a care in the world.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, tugging his head down to kiss him, kisses all over his face, ‘forget all that, it’s all stupid. We’re together again, let’s just be happy.’

  ‘Good plan.’ Fiorinda pushed her face into the hollow of his throat, breathing in his warmth. This is Sage, this is my Sage—

  ‘George said you didn’t make it.’

  ‘I didn’t go all the way, but I got far enough that you’re not alone any more, my brat: and Rufus is going to get a surprise. Now—’ He unclasped her arms from around his neck, and kissed her hands, ‘let me go, not for long, but I have things to do.’

  ‘Don’t you dare run away.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  She followed him around in the daybreak, uncertain whether she’d made her point or not. He’d given way a little too easily. Not that she’d know, but this seemed to be quite a toy. The silvery masts were arrayed with strange gleaming futuristic vanes that didn’t even look like sails, the wheelhouse held so many winking instrument desks it was like the bridge of a starship. ‘Who’s is the boat?’

  ‘Friend of my father’s.’ He grinned over his shoulder. ‘Can’t help the name.’

  ‘Do you know how to work all this stuff?’

  ‘Nah, but I have a facet of Serendip in the system. She’ll sail the Lorien; I’ll be taking her orders. C’me here, lemme show you. You just have to follow the prompts.’ Charts and radar, windspeeds, homeostatic systems… She leaned against his side, saying ‘yes’ occasionally: loving the mere sound of his voice, the beautiful mobility of his face. The laughter lines around his eyes and mouth were deeper than they had been. His hair was cropped and he was cleanshaven, but she had the feeling he’d been living rough, outdoors, gone through the second-degree-burns stage to get that tan; and a winter too: what happens at Caer Siddi? He was wearing a nose-ring, something she hadn’t known him to do for years. But what a lot of information—

  ‘Hey,’ she said, suddenly, ‘why are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Ooh, just making conversation.’

  Somewhere underfoot there was a sigh and a murmur. Sage grinned at her. She looked back and the quay was moving. Padstow Harbour retreated, the trees above that pretty jumble of buildings still dark under a depthless sky.

  ‘We’re leaving! What changed your mind?’

  ‘Can’t think of what the fuck else to do with you, my brat. I carn’t just leave you standin’ there, and who’d help me? There aren’t too many people in Padstow, off the top of my head, would piss on Steve Pender if he was on fire. Let alone hold Fiorinda down, screaming, while he runs off without her—’

  ‘Again… So you agree we’re going after Rufus together?’

  ‘We can discuss it. Let’s get up the front, I want to watch this bit.’

  She sat on the rail in the bows while the Camel River slipped by. Sage, his arm around her, his cheek against her hair, counted off the landmarks of his misspent youth—which she’d never seen before, because he’d never wanted to come back here. The Doom Bar, Brea Hill, Hawker’s Cove, Trebetherwick: names that had fascinated her when she was a pre-teen Heads fan. There are the dunes where Aoxomoxoa lived in the famous beach hut, when he was writing Morpho. There’s where the Hoorays used to have their parties, and Steve Pender used to sell them drugs, and experiment on their tiny minds with his proto-immersions.

  The river opened into the expanse of Padstow Bay. The murmur of the Lorien’s engine cut out. They slipped down together to the deck, hugging and kissing, until Sage was on his back, Fiorinda lying on top of him, propped on her elbows.

  ‘What am I going to do with this horrible Sage?’ she crooned, ‘I’m going to eat his strawberries, nibble bits of his dinner, I might even tidy his room. Oh Sage, what idiots we were. The moment Ax had gone we knew how desperately much we loved him, and we were such fools we thought it was a disaster.’

  ‘Instead of being the best news we ever had in our lives. Fiorinda, what do you think? Do you think he still loves us?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, of course he does. That was just a spat.’ She put her head down on his breast, and they lay in silence, just breathing. She slipped her hand under his teeshirt, to feel the warm beat of his heart. ‘How thin you are. What happened at Caer Siddi, Sage?’

  ‘I don’t know what I can say. I was out, of this body, for a very long time.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me how long?’

  His left hand gently massaged her spine. ‘When it scares me less to think about it… I had no idea. It felt like a single perception, there was no illusion of duration, no anxiety for what I’d left behind. I could have been gone for hundreds of years, Fee. I would never have known the difference—’

  ‘But you were there, where you are complete.’ She propped herself up again, to look down into his face. ‘What brought you back, my pilgrim? Miles to go and promises to keep? If it hadn’t been for Rufus, would you have stayed?’

  ‘No!’ He grabbed her, bone-cracking tight, arms and legs, showering her with kisses. ‘No! Don’t you ever believe that! I came back for you and Ax, a whole life that would not miss one second of. This is, this, this, holding my Fiorinda—’

  ‘Okay, okay, I believe you! Knock it off, you’re breaking my ribs!’

  He relaxed. Side by side they gazed at the sky.

  ‘Serendip says we’ve left the bay,’ said Sage. ‘Let’s have a look.’

  The Lorien had entered a vast, transparent world of blue. Not a sign of human activity, only the seabirds. Hardly a sound but the slap of the waves against the hull. Sage looked up at the complex planes of the sails, shifting and adjusting to catch every lick of breeze, and consulted silently with the mainframe. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Everything’s fine, perfect conditions. Nothing happens now for hours, except more of this. The next incident should be Fastnet. There’s food, how about breakfast, d’you want to eat?’

  She did not want to eat. She wanted to sleep, she felt as if she had a year of sleep to recover, but neither of them wanted to leave the blue world. Sage fetched a rug and they lay down again, indifferent to the hard bed, the way they always slept when they were alone: Sage wrapped around her back, Fiorinda holding his hand tucked against her breast.

  ‘Sage, can I tell you the worst thing?’

  He steeled himself. ‘Tell me anything.’

  ‘I think I killed my baby. I’m afraid I killed my baby, to stop Rufus from
getting him. I didn’t know I was magic, but I knew what he wanted. I was only a kid, but I’d spotted he didn’t leave me until he knew I was pregnant. I wouldn’t have known I was doing it, I would have been just wanting to keep him safe, but I’m afraid…’ She started to cry, hiding her face. ‘Oh, Sage it was okay. It wasn’t as bad as you think, even the worst. I had my plan and I was taking it a minute at a time. But I would lose concentration, and then I would remember that there was no other side, because I knew from the start I could bargain for other people but not for me. He kept on at me and on at me, even in prison. I—I would be with him for ever, with the dead man, fucking me, oh dear, oh dear—’

  ‘Hey, ssh. Hey, sweetheart, look at me, look—’

  They escaped together, again, to the refuge she had found or created long ago, which she had dared not visit since she’d known the truth about her father.

  What will happen now? she wondered. What will we do, Sage and I?

  What a strange thrill, to think that perhaps they had a future.

  ‘That could get addictive.’

  ‘Mmm. Certn’ly a pleasant kick.’

  ‘But I prefer to stay in the unreal world. Only, my head is so full of hateful—’

  She cried and he held her, telling her, you did not kill your baby. You looked after him, you loved him, he died of pneumonia, accidents do happen. Hush, my brave girl. You did amazing. You did fantastic—

  ‘Am I spoiled meat? Will you and Ax never want to fuck me again?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. But I don’t want to because Ax isn’t here—’

  ‘Yes. We want Ax, we won’t fuck without him. Say everything real is good?’