Midnight Lamp

by Gwyneth Jones

  ‘This happened last night.’ said Fiorinda, not a question but a realisation.

  Roche nodded. ‘On the night of your reception. But don’t alarm yourself: the date was prob’ly fixed before you left h’England. H’it’s Beltane in three days.’

  ‘They follow the so-called Celtic calendar?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. We t’ink they repeat the English procedure way a scientist would, not knowing what is essential, an’ what is jus’ old wives tales.’

  Fiorinda was tallow pale, but she studied the tableau in silence, without flinching. At last she turned from the bodies, and considered the FBI man.

  ‘Do you believe in magic, Mr Roche?’

  ‘The LAPD don’t. Their experience is, evil always turns out to be of mean, ugly living human origin. At the Bureau we are divided. Me… I was never so sure that witchcraft doesn’t exist. You tell me, Ms Slater. Is what happened here part of a new science, ugly as gunpowder? Or is it straight from hell?’

  ‘Agent Roche,’ said Ax, ‘Could we continue the discussion further off?’

  ‘You’re right.’

  They had been standing in the warm miasma of death as if before a carved alterpiece, a brutal sculpture that required hushed voices, but no revulsion. They followed the walkway again, and stopped by the white vans. The crowd had moved off. The silence, the stillness, where there should be busy police: the absence of the ritual that was the opposite of murder, was uncanny.

  ‘Ms Slater,’ said Agent Roche. ‘A straight question. Was that magic?’

  Fiorinda raised her eyebrows. ‘It looked like murder to me. What was the writing? The stuff about washing in lamb’s blood? And a little child shall lead them? That’s not Celtic, that I know of.’

  ‘H’it’s from the Bible. They leave all kinds of scriptural quotes, we think it’s done to confuse. Christian scripture, Muslim, Neo-Aztec, Irquois: also Satanist, Voudoun. It seems they want the police to believe they’re some homegrown, neighbourhood blood-cult… You don’t know your Bible, Ms Slater?’

  ‘No. I don’t like religion.’

  Sage, who hadn’t said a word, glanced at his brat, and smiled.

  ‘But you know the purpose of the rite that was performed here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Roche sighed. ‘Will you tell me?’

  ‘Human sacrifice is taboo, of course, but the forbidden is always powerful. The blood scarifice is committed when you need a big result: if you dare.’

  ‘So every time it’s performed, this ceremony would make some leader or sacred person stronger in evil magic?’

  Fioirnda shrugged. ‘Evil, you could safely say. “Magic” only if there’s potential in the group. A million times nothing is nothing.’

  ‘Would the magican, or magicians, need to be present?’

  ‘Where’s Harry?’ asked Fiorinda, looking around. ‘Where did he go?’

  Harry was no longer with them, and they didn’t know when he’d left. Fiorinda’s question broke a spell. Roche seemed to realise the distress that her frosty manner belied. He took out a phone, and turned away to speak.

  ‘Harry’s back at the street,’ he reported, ‘I should let you join him. Mr Preston, Mr Pender, and Ms Slater, I apologise for havin’ put you through this. I t’ought it might be our breakthrough. If I did wrong, I’m sorry.’

  He almost offered his hand, thought better of it; and simply nodded.

  ‘You won’t see this reported. We’re not allowing the ritualists any publicity, and I know you’ll respect that. I’m glad to have met you. I’ll be in touch.’

  Karen Phillips walked with them, making sunny conversation. Harry was staring through the wire mesh of the fence around the playground: which was empty now. Phillips asked him in an undertone. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll take over.’

  She shrugged, and headed back to the butcher’s shop.

  Harry said, ‘Oh, shit.’ He stumbled to the kerb, and sat there, head in his hands. The few passers-by looked at him curiously. Sage tried to put his arms around Fiorinda, but she evaded him, shaking her head, and tugged on the door of the automatic limo. It wouldn’t open.

  ‘Shall we go?’ said Ax, ‘Mr Loman? We’re a little conspicuous here.’

  Harry turned on him, wild-eyed. ‘How can you believe in the existence of a good God?’

  ‘How can you believe in the American Dream?’ inquired Ax. ‘Each to their own.’ He took out a cigarette and paced up and down, rolling it between his fingers. He had no sympathy. He was furious with Lopez; and with himself, for getting suckered into this.

  ‘Ax,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I don’t think he’d ever seen anything like that before.’

  ‘Oh, really? Welcome to our world, Mr Loman. What’s the problem? I’d have thought bloody human sacrifice was just the thing to get bums on seats.’

  ‘It’s LOPEZ,’ wailed Harry. ‘Could you bastards fucking at least give me my right fucking name when you insult me-’

  A message passed between the Triumvirate partners. It said, this is where we turn him… Fiorinda settled on the kerb by the A&R man, and dug in her bag for her smokes tin. Ax and Sage sat on the other side.

  ‘Did he give you no warning?’ asked Fiorinda. ‘The bastard.’

  ‘He’d had you called. He said I mustn’t say anything. I am so fucking sorry you had to get that call. I am outraged that you were treated this way. The bastard outranks me, and I should say sir… Is that cannabis, Fiorinda?’

  ‘English Government approved. It’s a gentle blend, it really does calm your nerves. They let me keep them, remember, when they searched us before the injections thing. For personal use.’

  She handed him a green-skinned Ananda. Harry accepted, with a shaking hand. ‘You, you can get Maryjanes on the grey market if you run out. I can do that for you. You don’t understand. I could have known them.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us, Harry?’ asked Sage. ‘You didn’t say anything about butchery when you pitched your pitch. You only mentioned a movie.’

  ‘I did tell you!’ Harry wailed. ‘I told you there was evidence. There’s strong rumours of a Fat Boy from inside sources, and there are these sacrifices. Same as in England, and we all know why that was happening… I didn’t know you’d be shown dead bodies… I didn’t know it would be so soon, so crude. I’m a movie producer. I know Kathryn Adams. I believe in the power of the entertainment industry, I wanted to use that power for good. The President asked for me on his team, would I say no? I was a courier.’ Harry wiped his eyes. ‘I could have known them. The victims are Hollywood scruffs, the kind of kids who’ll follow the bogey-man down any dark alley if he says I can get you this invite. Oh, fuck, they knew it wouldn’t stop until they were dead. I can’t. I’ve—I’ve—’

  ‘Why is your friend Roche so sure there’s a connection?’ asked Ax, taking the Ananda. ‘The police fail to solve things all the time, in our country.’

  ‘Nobody’s sure. If we were sure, my God, we wouldn’t be here, the Vireo lab would be history. You heard him. The FBI are blocked. I don’t know everything, but I think the kind of thing that happens tells them it can only be the Pentagon. And the sick truth is, Vireo could have a use for the dark force of things like this. We know that. You know it.’

  ‘Who are these people?,’ wondered Fiorinda. ‘Who are you working for?’

  ‘The Committee. It’s called the Committee. There’s Roche and his partner. An FBI chief, who is Fred’s man. Some high-up guy in the funding establishment, who is scared to death but can’t go public. Others. They answer to Fred Eiffrich, nobody else.’ Harry caught up with himself, ‘Uh, I shouldn’t tell you.’

  ‘The feeling you have now,’ Sage passed the illicit cigarette, ‘As if someone just tore a limb from your own body: hang onto that. It’s your sanity talking. Let it guide you. Don’t start thinking you should shrug and accept.’

  ‘I wanted to make my movie,’ whispered Harry. ‘I’m sorry I did this to you
, I’m sorry about that bastard Roche… I just wanted to get you guys over here.’

  They finished the Ananda. Harry signalled to the limo, which opened its doors like a servant in a fairytale: they entered the freezing interior.

  As sunset blanked the distant windows with an apricot glaze, they sat together on the bed in their oversized master bedroom, at sea in a creamy ocean of designer-linen. Sage had slept all day. Ax and Fiorinda had been out with Harry, discovering a different Los Angeles, a human city of funky streets, organic food stores, antique clothing markets. They’d searched for and found a special edition import of the Heads pre-Dissolution album Bleeding Heart, in a secondhand and rareties music store. Sage loaded it into his board and opened a place between the credited tracks. A shamelessly pretty confection of sound and light, edge and hue, rose around them: a castellated house with a tiny orchard, a stable inhabited by silver-maned, candy-coloured ponies. Indoors, enchanting furniture, hidden items in all the rooms, candy-coloured monsters to fight.

  The hidden immix track was called ‘Fiorinda’s House’, built by Aoxomoxoa when he was pretending he had only big brotherly feelings for his brat. Fiorinda, a well-hard fifteen-year-old punk diva when Bleeding Heart came out, affected to find the dollhouse mortifying, but loved it dearly.

  Ax thought (a guilty secret) that if he’d seen ‘Fiorinda’s House’, in those ancient days, he wouldn’t have been able to kid himself he wasn’t stealing Sage’s girl, when he made his move. But things happen as they must.

  Sage tweaked the immersion so the house jumped in scale for their perception. They sat on a green marble floor, in a room with a fountain full of perfect little goldfish: they were tiny software people, hidden in the code.

  ‘We need a place of our own,’ said Ax. ‘I can’t stand hotels, anyway.’

  After this morning, surveillance in the suite was not in doubt.

  ‘Yeah. We can’t be overheard now, but it’s fucking obvious we’re talking secrets. Whoo. This thing unfolds. Are you okay, Fee?’

  ‘I’m okay. Well? Now do you believe me?’

  She ducked her head, retiring behind a matted veil of hair.

  ‘I believe what we saw,’ said Ax. ‘But this is unreal. Are we supposed to believe that Fred Eiffrich knows a team of scientists financed by his Defense Department is practicing ritual human sacrifice to help their project along, and Fred can’t pull the plug? We should never have come. I’m very, very sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  ‘Do we believe in Harry’s secret cabal?’ wondered Sage. ‘What did we see this morning? A couple of badges. Petty rivalry, which could have been staged for verisimilitude. Do we know those were FBI agents? How would we check?’

  ‘I thought I was supposed to be the paranoid.’

  ‘I’m just saying we’re out of the loop. We know nothing, we can only go by how it feels, and my feeling is that Roche was treating us like potential suspects, not visiting dignitaries. I started to think I was fucking glad we had an alibi.’

  ‘Me too,’ muttered Fiorinda.

  ‘No, no, I think Roche is okay. He’s in over his head, he’s stressing out, that’s what we were getting—’

  ‘Actually we don’t have an alibi,’ said Fiorinda. ‘My father was in Ireland when he was running Fergal. The Fat Boy candidate could be anywhere.’

  ‘Vireo Lake lab could be a blind? The real lab could be elsewhere?’

  ‘Vireo Lake?’ Fiorinda pushed back her hair. ‘Forget it. The bear said “kill me”, that’s our only clue. Except that we’re here… Did you get that the victims have been Hollywood scruffs? People Harry “might have known”?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ax. ‘I’m not following this, Fio. Where are you heading?’

  She pressed her hands to her temples. ‘I’m not sure. Could you stop the immix, Sage? It isn’t helping. I can’t think in a doll’s house. Please stop it.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Fiorinda’s House vanished like a dream. They sat in silence.

  Ax sighed, and got down from the bed.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To pray. Facing Saudi, which is something I really enjoy about my religion. I suppose I better pray that the evil empire endures in health and prosperity.’

  Fiorinda did not share her thoughts. The suite oppressed them: they went out in the dark to look for a restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard; where Harry had installed them, for the atmosphere, in a refurbished classic hotel. The night was soft and warm, the asphalt sparkled under the streetlamps. ‘Because it has broken glass in it,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I read that.’ Traffic poured by, never-ending, roaring, goggle-eyed monsters. They were savages, fresh from the rainforest. She walked ahead, the two men followed: not too closely, giving her space.

  ‘How d’you feel now? Will you be careful, in the restaurant?’

  ‘Knock it off. I’m fine. I had an energy crash, I needed sugar. How was I to know there’d be fat in the goop?’

  Dried fruit, thought Ax. I’ll get some dried fruit, and have a supply with me. ‘I didn’t like the way Roche kept asking her the questions.’

  ‘I suspect he was addressing the person who would give him the time of day. I was out of it, and you… You can be scary when you’re angry, Mr Dictator. Did you know that?’

  ‘Ex-Dictator. Sage, they took tissue samples at the border.’

  ‘Allegedly not retained.’

  ‘Yeah, sure. A few cells would do it. What would her DNA tell them?’

  ‘Nothing. She’s Rufus O’Niall’s daughter, that’s all. There’s no genetic profile for what Fiorinda is. Identical twins can have wildly different brains, Ax.’

  ‘I’m afraid for her. I’m appalled at the Neurobomb shit, but they’re wrong and they’re not going to get anywhere so that’s okay. It’s Fiorinda I care about. I’m afraid of the affect of all this, but I’m more afraid of trying to take her away from it, because whatever’s happening, it’s brought her back.’

  They were on the Walk of Fame, treading between the brass plates of a pavement crematorium. She had stopped to peer at some bygone illustrious name. They remembered a moment, in the Mexican forest, when she had almost fallen back into fugue: the light of sanity going out, the agonised flesh and bone ghost that would remain—

  ‘Me too,’ admitted Sage. ‘Thank God we’re in it together.’

  The look that passed between them was so close, so needy it was like an embrace. It embarrassed them both. They took refuge in joining Fiorinda.

  3

  Dead From The Waist Down

  #1: Bandit Queens

  ‘There are two ways to live,’ called Janelle, from her kitchen, ‘On the beach, and all other places, don’t you agree?’ She carried two fat-free bioactive juice cocktails to the sunny deck, above the white, untrodden sands of Rosa beach.

  The Rosa Peninsula had once been the private property of a president’s mistress. It’d had its lapses, but currently it was desirable top range territory once more. Every morning that she woke here she thanked God she’d hung onto the cottage, when all else was falling apart. The house was tiny, but the décor indoors was individual without being pretentious (she told herself). And the location was perfect. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Shame you can’t have it both ways: that was her only complaint.

  Sage was sitting up on the rail, in a loose white shirt and grey three-quarter pants. She remembered him at nineteen, explaining to interviewers that three-quarter pants were not his fashion choice. His height was so extraordinary in stunted little England, these were the only traaasers he could buy… She missed the mask. There was something so fucking naïve, so young, about a rockstar in a digital mask, a walking piece of music television. In ways she was sorry to know he hadn’t been stupid-drunk the other night, when she found him vomiting into the Pergola’s swanky fountain. But no, he’s recovering from a duel to the death with the world’s first actual evil magician. Heigh-ho.

  She handed him the glass. ‘You’re
never going to touch booze again?’

  ‘Thanks. Depends who you ask. I reckon I’m working up to my first taste soon. I believe a new liver needs a little exercise. But opinions differ.’

  ‘I’ll bet they do.’ She sat in a long chair, where she could look at him.

  ‘D’you mind if I ask a delicate question?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Which of those two are you fucking? Is it Red or is it the guitar-man?’

  ‘Hahaha. I’m a bodhisattva, me. I don’t fuck anyone these days.’

  ‘You know, I heard that. Someone’s putting it about that the new Aoxomoxoa couldn’t get his rope to rise with a magic flute. I didn’t believe it.’

  He smiled enigmatically, tested the drink and screwed his beautiful face up. ‘People can be so cruel. What is this, Janelle? It tastes like compost.’

  ‘Quinoa, spirogira algae, ginko, pear and lime. And a stack of life-enhancing bacteria and vitamins. It’s good food, drink it up. So, what? You tag along? Travelling around with them like a royal Zen chaplain?’

  ‘They need somebody to lose at Scrabble. What’s your interest in the state of my cock, anyway?’ He leered, a stunning blast of magnetism. ‘Is it personal?’

  She laughed. ‘Just a pure passion for dirty gossip. Okay, forget it, smartass. I’ll find out. Well, you want to know how virtual Hollywood works? It works the way Hollywood always did. Parties, agents, deals, wheels. We tried, believe me, but movie business without the stars is like the paperless office, it’s a basic misconception. They’re Unionised, they’re tough, and they have agents. Geekie-techies make the virtual movies. The stars take the money, oh, and they do the human touch, promotion and lifestyle, mainly on the tv. They’re indispensable, it’s been legally confirmed.’

  ‘And it all happens here?’

  ‘It happens in Hollywood’s silicon valley, just up the freeway. There was no percentage in starting a new capital city, Sage. The movie business belongs here: cheek by jowl with a crawling, sprawling, falling apart, searing hot metropolis where monsters roam and water doesn’t come out of the taps… Maybe it’s the light, maybe it’s the history, but there’s power in this location, and somehow it’s still a fabulous place to live.’ She grinned, ‘Shit, this is where global culture comes from, it’s the beating heart of the modern world. Who’s going to quit that, and move to San Diego?’