Midnight Lamp

by Gwyneth Jones

  ‘Greevus,’ said Sage, ‘It’s greevus, next time you say it in public. The king is doing fine. If you have something to pitch, pitch it, Mr Loman.’

  ‘It’s Lopez.’ He reached inside his jacket. Oh, shit, one of those. Instead of a firearm he produced a gracious-looking square, cream-laid envelope. He held this with a curious reverence, (maybe he just liked quality stationery). ‘Harry Lopez. What I said last night… I would love to offer you a recording deal. The three of you, it’s a fantastic concept. But actually this is about a movie.’

  Ah, so it’s that. Sigh. ‘Oh really?’

  ‘You do know about the movie?’

  They knew about the movie. Some virtual-movie company was making a feature about the Rock and Roll Reich. They didn’t need permission, the story was public domain. They’d tried to get co-operation, they had been told to piss off. The Few and friends, Ax’s core organisation, weren’t mad about featuring in a Hollywood cartoon; and if there was money, it made no difference because the fucking Second Chamber government would get it.

  ‘Just the Bugs Bunny thing? Damn. You had us all excited.’

  ‘Sage,’ said Harry Lopez, with dignity, ‘Er, Mr Pender… I’m a great admirer of your stuff. But with total respect, you’ve been stuck in data quarantine for years. Big things have been happening, out in the real world. You don’t know what you’re turning down. Cartoon animation is a genre I admire, but a virtual movie is nothing like the same thing. I’m the producer. I have my heart and soul invested in the project. If you’d let me explain what—’

  Sage was looking over Harry’s shoulder. Mr Preston had reappeared: the ex-Dictator of England in shabby running shorts and singlet, the sleek wings of his dark hair bound back by a red headband, pearled silver by the mist. ‘Sorry,’ he said, sitting down beside Sage. ‘Momentary fugue. What’s he want?’

  ‘Mr Loman here is from Digital Artists. He wants to put us in the movies.’

  ‘It’s Lopez… You wouldn’t be acting. It’s a one off uh, recording. The studio would make virtual masters of you guys, and the Few. We’d bring them over, all expenses. That would be it. Of course we’d prefer you to do promotion. But before we get to terms—’ Harry reached into his jacket again. He stopped dead in the act, and said carefully. ‘I am not taking out a firearm, Mr Pender, sir. Or any other kind of weapon.’

  ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t.’

  ‘I am taking out this small electronic device. It’s a signal jammer. I’m setting it down here where we can all see it, and turning it on… Now, in case anyone was eavesdropping, which is possible anywhere, these futuristic days, we’ve moved into a secure area, very reasonably, for our business meeting.’

  Sage and Ax looked at each other.

  ‘I had no idea the movie business was so paranoid,’ said Ax.

  ‘It is paranoid as all fuck, but this part isn’t movie business,’ said Harry, dead straight. He held out the cream-laid envelope. ‘I have a letter for Mr Preston, from Kathryn’s uncle Fred.’

  Sage took the envelope, opened it; held it for a moment without glancing at the text, then passed it to Ax. Harry blushed and nodded. The king accepts nothing from a stranger’s hand, that’s risky, that’s how he was taken hostage. Ax read the letter, which was short, and handed it to Sage, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘How do you know Kathryn, Mr Loman?’

  Ax had met Kathryn Adams, the president’s niece, at the Flood Countries Conference in Amsterdam. She was the one who’d brought him over to do the data quarantine deal. She’d also been responsible for the persistence of the search that had located him and rescued him, after a year held hostage in the jungle.

  ‘Lopez. I’ve known her all my life. We were in kindergarten together.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ax, with a faint smile. ‘I see. Do you know what the letter says?’

  ‘Yes, it says Fred wants to see you. He wants you to do the movie promotion. It’s a worthwhile project, he believes in my work, and it will raise your profile in the US. It’ll also give him the chance to see and talk with you again. I’m here to tell you a couple of things that were better not written down.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘The Pentagon is running a “Zen Self” Weapons Project, though we don’t call it that, which you Europeans believe is not going to work, but you could be wrong. Mr Eiffrich doesn’t want them to succeed, in fact he wants them taken off the air. As you know, he’s in principle, and publicly, against the development of fusion consciousness weapons; while in practice he accepts the neccessity of deterrence. But he’s found out that it’s possible there is a Fat Boy candidate. It’s possible they are on their way to the “It’s a good life” scenario.’

  The young man paused to see how they were taking this: stone faces.

  ‘Mr Eiffrich wants you to help him stop them. The movie is going to get you into the US, and it is personally important to me, but…it’s Fred who’s asking.’

  ‘I thought you said you were a producer,’ remarked Sage, mildly.

  ‘I am, but this is a historic-level weird situation and there’s no orthodox way to deal with it. The President of the United States can’t accuse the Pentagon of…of trying to create another Rufus O’Niall, not without unimpeachable evidence. You guys have the experience. He wants you to help him get the goods to close them down.’

  Stone faces.

  ‘If I understand anything,’ said Ax, ‘there’s some basic misreading of the Zen Self premise in the US military project. Are you a weapon of mass destruction, Sage?’

  ‘Not just now.’

  ‘This is not about Sage,’ said Harry. ‘It’s not about the mystical aspect, and it’s not about Europe. I don’t agree with them, maybe Fred doesn’t agree with them, but our military see a new superweapon, which our enemies could develop or get hold of, and therefore we need to have ours. To an extent, it’s a valid point. That’s my opinion, by the way, I don’t speak for Mr Eiffrich. But the military could be way over their heads, vis-a-vis fusion science consciousness, without knowing it, it’s all so new, and maybe they are being poorly advised.’

  They watched him, non-committal as two timber wolves.

  ‘Okay, I’ll shut up. Mr Eiffrich will talk to you. We want you to come to California norte. I have a car waiting… Mr Eiffrich thinks you’ll like the car, Ax. He knows you like cars. There can’t be an official meeting, that would work against us. But you would meet privately with the President—’

  The deadpan reaction shifted: Ax showed a trace of amusement.

  ‘We know Sage killed Rufus O’Niall,’ said Harry. ‘And we know why. He was an American citizen, no matter what else he was. Did you think about that?’

  Stone face from the assassin, very faint sardonic smile from Mr Preston.

  ‘Let me recap,’ said Ax. ‘We’re to come with you to California.’

  ‘Hollywood. You’d be coming to Hollywood.’

  ‘Right. Where they don’t make real movies anymore, and haven’t done for decades. We’re to pretend we are promoting a cartoon, so that I can meet the President on the backstairs and discuss whether the Pentagon is financing something loony. Meanwhile Sage will be arrested for murder, in a state that makes liberal use of the death penalty, last time I looked. And we get a free car. No offence, but this is your best offer?’

  ‘Virtual movies are not cartoons. I shouldn’t have mentioned Rufus like that. I’m sorry, it was a misstep. I meant, forget the ignorance of global affairs for which we are famous, the US does have something called intelligence, and US Intelligence knows what happened, we know what you guys did and why. We know why to be afraid. I’m saying, please. Of all the people in the world, you three know the fathomless, endless nightmare we could be falling towards. You know why you have to listen—’

  They let this impassioned plea hang for a while.

  ‘I see a practical difficulty,’ remarked Sage.

  ‘Uh, right. I want to hear it.’

  The Zen Self champion held up his
hands, palms forward. ‘These. What happened to Aoxomoxoa’s fucked-up hands, eh? Say I wear masks, which I won’t, I’ll still get caught out, and then what happens? I’m fucking Superman. Which I am not, and I’m not going to play that game. What was your solution?’

  ‘It’s been ten months,’ said Harry. ‘You went to China, you finally had reconstruction, like you swore you never would. Okay, it doesn’t look like any recon surgery or regrowth known to man, but the term Pac-rim is magic, er to coin a phrase. It’ll be believed.’

  ‘We’ll think about it,’ said Ax.

  Harry nodded, intensely relieved. ‘Okay, that’s all I ask. So, well, I’m going to stick around for a day or two. We’ll talk again… Uh, there’s a couple of things from the studio. I should run them past you, because they may influence your decision. Mr Preston, you’re a Muslim. We have to be careful how we use that. If you were promoting the movie, would your faith have to be in the foreground?’

  ‘What’s the other thing?’, said Ax.

  ‘Please don’t take this as an intrusion, but the relationship. The ménage á trois. I’m not asking for a personal confession, I’m clarifying what we say to the public. Is it that you share the girl, or is there an actual sexual relationship between you two?’

  ‘No,’ they said, in the same breath.

  He seemed disappointed. ‘But there could be ambivalence?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Sage. ‘Ambivalence is fine.’

  ‘We can do ambivalence.’

  ‘Well, that’s it… When you discuss this with Fiorinda, could you tell her how much I love “Yellow Girl”? It’s the best female solo album ever recorded.’

  ‘She’ll be thrilled,’ said Ax. ‘Except for the “female” bit.’

  Harry got to his feet and hovered in the pearly gloom, as if baffled by protocol. Maybe he thought he should retreat backwards. ‘Sage,’ he burst out, ‘I know what the Zen Self is. I know that you are not a weapon, I know something about how it works. If you can change the world for the good, if you can end some of the horrors, why don’t you do that—?’

  ‘You don’t get it, Harry. Why don’t you eat your hat?’

  ‘Brace yourself, kid,’ said Ax. ‘To the Zen Master here, this is the best of all possible worlds, just the way things are. It’s not a bad idea about the hat though.’

  There was a piano in the back room of the disused bar. Fiorinda had found out about it from the kids, and been given a key by Señora El Pabellón, so she could practice. They locked themselves in there the next day, to discuss the unwelcome development. The room, lit by dusty sunlight falling through a row of Moorish arched windows, had the air of a despondent, derelict English village hall. A stack of Seventh Day Adventist leaflets lay on the cocktail bar in the corner, getting flyblown. Fiorinda sat at the piano, her ragdoll head bowed over the keys. She had not brushed her hair for a month, and was oblivious of this. She refused to let them touch it. She wouldn’t eat, if they didn’t put the food into her hands. Little things gave her away, though she so valiantly tried to pass for normal. Little things like the neglect of her own body, and the look in her eyes.

  They sat at a bentwood table, glancing at her often; talking it around. They had told her Harry’s story, because they would never shut her out. She’d taken it calmly, but today she was very withdrawn.

  ‘It was the b-loc,’ said Ax. ‘Fuck. I knew I should have thrown it in the sea.’

  The bizarre b-loc signal, unknown around here, would have pinpointed the English like a radio beacon, for anyone who knew what they were looking for.

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up. They’ll have tracked us since Mexico City. They probably fixed up our trip with your friend the Justice Minister. Harry’s probably listening right now,’ He poked a dead fly with his finger. ‘There you go. Surveillance is everywhere.’ He felt Ax recoil, remembered post-hostage stress, and changed his tone. ‘It’s not worth worrying about, babe. Let them listen. Fuck ’em. Insult the flag.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s going to help.’ Ax read the letter over. ‘Call me paranoid, but I think you’re right. Fred Eiffrich arranged for me to be summoned to Mexico City, so he could pull this. He was pissed off when I resigned. He wants me as his goodwill ambassador in the fuck-up that is Crisis Europe: he thinks I’m the pick of the mad dogs, which I do not consider a compliment.’

  Sage knew not to get into that conversation… ‘Well, we can’t stay here.’

  ‘’Fraid not. We can make Harry Lopez go away, but we’d just be waiting for the next gadfly. It makes you realise how atrociously vulnerable we still are.’

  ‘We’ll be old news soon. We just have to weather it.’

  They looked at Fiorinda. She plonked a piano key, and didn’t look at them.

  ‘What do you make of his story, maestro?’

  ‘Well, it’s true there’s a team of US military-financed neuroscientists trying to build a human weapon. They’re at a place called Vireo Lake, out in the desert in Southern California. Olwen’s been tracking their progress, she has contacts.’

  Olwen Devi, the Zen Self guru, had been Ax’s chief scientist in the days of the Reich; while also pursuing the goal they called fusion out here in the real world. Sage had been the first to achieve the Zen Self, and prove that the wildest of post-modern scientific ideas was absolutely true. It was possible to break the barrier between mind and matter, free a human consciousness from time and space, and fuse that four-dimensional subset with the whole of the information. Briefly, Sage had been ramped up to that state, and had possessed the power to change the code of reality; and he’d defeated Rufus, the natural-born magician. The US theory was that if you could stabilise ‘fusion’, you’d get a phenomenally powerful, clean and humane weapon of mass destruction.

  ‘This I know. But no one in Europe thinks it can be done?’

  ‘Mm. Bearing in mind “no-one” means the handful of people, theorising right out on the edge, who have even heard of the idea… If you want my personal opinion, I think they wanted to do the work, fusion consciousness is incredibly sexy, so they emphasised the mass destruction idea to get Defense Department funding. It may not be the most ethical route, but it is well-trodden. They have the biggest, fastest hardware, they have license to whack a team of military volunteers full of nasty, scary, wrecking-ball neurosteroids. I expect they’re getting somewhere, but probably not the so-called Neurobomb.’

  ‘D’you think it’s true that they got hold of Rufus’s head?’

  The ‘Green Nazi’ European Celtics had planned for Rufus to decimate the population of Europe. When Fiorinda and Sage had brought back the magician’s severed head, from his Irish stronghold, and presented it to the enemy, the bastards who’d taken over in Ax’s absence had found this a convincing argument. Resistance to Ax’s come-back invasion had collapsed, peace had ensued: but the severed head had vanished in the shuffle.

  Sage glanced at Fiorinda. ‘I don’t think it will have done them any good.’

  They’d spent seven years on an insane roller-coaster, and ten months licking their wounds, oblivious of the world. Maybe they’d been fools to think they could cross the ocean and leave it all behind: but they were disconcerted. In Europe, the death of a senior Irish/American celebrity, (known ‘Green Nazi’ sympathiser) had been quietly buried, by everyone including the Gardia.

  We know how to handle these things at home, what’s this Harry Lopez doing, doesn’t he know when silence is best?

  ‘I remember a Fat Man,’ said Ax, after a pause for thought. ‘It comes back to me… Wasn’t that the nickname they gave to one of the first atom bombs, devices, whatever? And there was a Little Boy, too. But Lopez said, Fat Boy.’

  ‘It’s another nickname. It’s what the Celtic “druidic science” lunatics were aiming for with Rufus. Fiorinda knows.’ They looked at the babe, but she was still idly plonking keys. ‘You take a natural-born magic psychopath, of which thank God, so far Rufus is the only example. You pump up the volume with the rocket
fuel he gets from human sacrifice, and he goes critical, like a nuclear pile.’

  ‘And the “‘It’s a Good Life’ scenario?”’

  ‘Same. “It’s a Good Life” is a classic science fiction story, about a little boy, born with a mean mutant brain. Whatever he wants, he can make it so. Everybody has to grovel to this kid, because if he tells you to turn inside out, then you will. If he tells the sun to explode, then it will. It’s what happens when the Fat Boy’s up and running, it’s the doomsday, runaway chain reaction. It isn’t proven, it’s just a weird possibility.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘Well, there you go. Fiorinda and I thought we were assassinating Adolf Hitler, to prevent the Holocaust. It turns out we were making a futile attempt to suppress the discovery of nuclear fission. What a bust.’

  ‘Shit. So much for Rufus as our private nightmare.’

  ‘It’s private enough. There are millions or billions who’ve heard of Ax Preston and the Reich, my dear. Very, very few who know what happened to the world last summer; or what’s going on right now at Vireo Lake.’

  ‘And a kid cartoon-movie producer is one of them. I find that most bizarre.’

  Sage nodded. ‘Most bizarre.’

  ‘Can’t help wondering what’s behind it.’

  ‘I suppose we’ll find out what’s behind it when we get to Hollywood,’ said Fiorinda.

  Both men started, and turned to her, shocked and guilty.

  ‘Oh, no sweetheart,’ protested Ax. ‘That’s not what we’re discussing.’

  ‘No, no! We aren’t thinking of taking the gig, we’re just talking—’

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’ Fiorinda brought both hands down on the keys with a jarring clangour. ‘You want to go with your Harry Lopez, I can hear it. You just don’t want to take me, because I’m in a bad state. I killed my own father. I used my m-magic, (God, how I hate that word), which I had vowed and sworn I would never do. How can I live with myself, if that was all for nothing, if there’s another monster?’

  ‘Fiorinda, hey, there isn’t another monster.’