Midnight Lamp

by Gwyneth Jones

  ‘Uhuh…’ He nodded. ‘What d’you think of Harry’s movie?’

  ‘I think it’s an excellent project,’ she answered, briskly. ‘You have a terrific human story, boy-next-door becomes king of England: a free sound track and romantic British locations, which the studio will be able to create easily from file. Harry’s lucky no one else thought of it first, and he’s luckier than hell that the studio is going to let him do it. Do you know how old he is? He’s twenty five. All you have to do is keep it personal, personal, personal. Europe was in turmoil, yeah: but no rhetoric, and no environmental horror stories. Stay off Islam. And remember, Ax didn’t want to be king, he only wanted to play guitar. He was forced into it, for the good of the people.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘This is a conservative community, in case no one ever told you. They fear our native eco-warriors like the plague, they hate the Counteculture and they’re twitchy about refugees: we have our own, we call them Mexico. Don’t make the internet collapse a big deal, some folk around here already think you are plague carriers. Oh, and having the free sound track is good, but not too much about rock music in the narrative, because that’s a rival sector of the organisation.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be telling Harry all this?’

  ‘I tell him these things. I’m Harry’s little Jiminy Cricket. You need to keep an eye on the boy wonder, because he’s not arrogant, he just sometimes doesn’t see the pitfalls. You’ll have script approval, use it. But the main thing you have to do is get yourselves liked. Be fun, be modest, be quirky: but not alien.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And watch out for dirty tricks.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘You have enemies. First, there’s the producers at Digital Artists who didn’t get the money because it went to Harry: and all the people involved in the projects that didn’t make it. Then there’s the classic-film establishment. They may not be making movies on the backlots but they still live here, they despise us, they can’t believe how successful we are, and they’ll screw things up for any virtual movie, if they get the chance. Last but not least, there’s the liberals. Your secret agenda has been leaking like a sieve, everybody in town knows that the President of the United States wants this vehicle to raise the profile of Ax Preston, the guy he’s chosen as the face for his peace and love campaign. That’s not going to do you any favours anywhere, but your worst enemies are the mavericks with the liberal opinions. They don’t rate the president as a force for good, and they’ll hate having the British muscle-in on their tiny patch.’

  ‘English.’

  ‘And never correct anyone when they say something that sounds out of touch from your perspective. You’re the strangers here. Do like the Romans do.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right to call me on that.’

  ‘And you should tell Fiorinda-’

  At the sound of her name, he’s on, she noticed. His whole being quietly snaps to attention: not even sexually, more like a guard dog. She’d seen it at the party. The eccentric English have no discernable bodyguards, but Fiorinda’s lover and his lanky white homey are constantly on the alert. At any moment you may bet they know where she is, who is near her; and just how fast they could reach her if they had to. It’s eerie.

  ‘Her accent is wonderful. She must gain weight before she tests for us, and it doesn’t matter that she’s so smart because nobody understands what she’s talking about. But—’ (No, don’t mention the hair. Enough candid remarks, already). ‘But she must never explain herself. Stick to the kooky sayings, Breakfast at Tiffany’s touch. That way our capricious emperors will say she’s very intelligent and charming, and love her.’

  ‘We have capricious emperors at home.’

  ‘Good, so you understand.’

  A pause, Sage unselfconsciously silent. The brilliant light picked out laughter lines around his eyes, around his fabulous mouth: but the effect was good. He has grown into that face she thought. He can wear it now, he doesn’t need the mask. Ah, it was so long ago… Such a gulf of years.

  When new-born virtual Hollywood heard about Morpho, the first immersion album in the world, they’d been on the attack at once. Janelle, the queen of the geekie-techies in those days, had sent her team of disinformationeers into overdrive. Virtual movies are magic and fun, immix will rot your brain. It’s only a light show, it’s creepy mass hypnotism, it’s degenerate. Aoxomoxoa and the Heads are a crass, loutish little Brit tribute band, totally out of style… It was nothing personal, it was just that they feared for their product.

  She’d gone along to the party after the Hollywood gig, curious to see the Great White Hope from across the pond in the flesh. (She hadn’t bothered with the gig). She’d found herself talking to a funny, crazy, gangling nineteen year old with fabulous chemistry. He didn’t give a sign of knowing who the fuck she was, he just wanted to get her into bed. She was in lust and something worse, instant tenderness. She took him to the young company’s hospitality suite, because she didn’t know what was under the mask, and she didn’t want to wake up with something ugly next to her on the pillow at home. They walked in, they did some heavy necking. Then he backed off, and the mask vanished. She presumably stood there with her mouth open, staring at this puckish, depraved young angel. He set a roll of bills on the night stand. ‘You better count that first,’ he says, in his Disney bumpkin accent. ‘See if it’s enough. This stupid fuckin’ currency all looks the same to me. Hey, and don’t forget yer tip.’

  Ah, you had no idea, my rockstar beau. You were such an innocent, you had no idea how much that would hurt. How often a woman in a man’s world can feel like a whore. How often I’d been on my knees in the boardroom, swallowing every drop. Fucked where it hurts, and had to say thank you-

  Later that night she’d tried to make him take back the roll, but he’d refused, giggling like a loon. He was drowning in money. She’d counted the bills and she was thirty thousand up on the deal… They’d had ten crazy days, Janelle leaping on planes and chasing the band around, doing the whole rock-chick scene. He’d been travelling with his two year old son, and an au-pair everyone hated, and one of the guys in the band was called George. She didn’t remember much else, except the feeling of being in love.

  ‘D’you remember the night we met, Sage?’

  Oh, fuck. What made her say that? Verbal diarrhoea strikes.

  He came out of his reverie, and the laughter lines deepened: ‘Er, yeah.’

  Of course he remembers. People always remember the things you most want them to forget. He remembers the stupid, wide-open hurt he saw in her eyes—

  ‘I was so full of shit,’ he said, ‘when I was nineteen.’

  ‘Heheheh. I was equally full of it when I was thirty nine. We were even, kid.’

  She was thinking: how long did we have alone together? Maybe thirty hours, max? A thousand dollars an hour. Allowing for inflation, that’s not bad for an amateur. And I know how little it meant, and that’s my last word.

  Just come and see me sometimes, while you’re in town.

  ‘I’ll help you all I can,’ she told him, recovering her poise. ‘I’m not a neuroscience nerd. All I know about “fusion consciousness” is the pap that’s been on the science news, plus what scraps Harry thinks he’s allowed to pass on. But I’m fucking sure I don’t want it used as a Weapon of Mass-Destruction.’

  ‘Thank you. I think you’re the best friend we could have.’

  She allowed herself to stare at the hands she had known as crippled paws: missing one thumb and half the other; half of the fingers creepy little stumps. Sage immediately stuffed them in his pockets.

  That gesture too. Masked or not, he used to hate anyone to look.

  The word from Europe was that the Crisis was over. Sure, there are floods and famines, there are hordes of refugees on the move. But the Green Nazis have been disarmed, and the moderate Celtics are people you can do business with. Fucked-up, twenty-first century normality has been restored. But it couldn’t
be true. The awesome invisible wave that had crashed through the British Isles last summer was still building. It had just hit California, and here was the human embodiment, a mind that had broken the barrier—

  ‘I could tell you,’ offered Sage. ‘About the Zen Self; if you want to know. The technical version is long, and I’d need my board, but I could bring it here. I’ll trade you. You be our native guide, I’ll bring you up to speed. How about it?’

  ‘Deal,’ she said, instantly. ‘We’ll make a date… Is it true you get visions of the future? Or you know your own future? Fuck. I would hate that.’

  ‘Nah, it’s not so bad as that. You must have heard, I didn’t go all the way. That prize is still to be claimed.’ He grinned. ‘Not by me, even if I felt like changing my mind. If I mess with my brain like that again I die, straight off: I’ve had that impressed on me strongly… I was part of an experiment, Jan. Involving smart cognitive scanners, heavy neurosteroids, and a brilliant Welsh neuroscientist called Olwen: Olwen Devi, the Zen Self guru. Maybe you’ll meet her one day, I think you’d like her.’

  And this was another older-woman lover, she instantly knew—

  ‘I reached fusion with Information Space, I came back, and that’s the whole story. I have nothing extra, no super powers, I’m just myself: er, except that I’m alive when I ought to be dead, my hands got fixed and I have a new liver that currently thinks it’s about eight years old. But that doesn’t count, it’s a modern medicine liver.’

  Her chief interest in the top secret science was that it would bring him to her house. Yet she was fascinated, despite herself. ‘But you were there,’ she said. ‘You made it, you were beyond the veil. What was it like, Sage?’

  He looked very serious. ‘You want me to tell you the secret of life?’

  He who hesitates is lost. ‘Yes. Do it. Tell me.’

  ‘Are you sure? Hmm, I dunno. Are you sure you’re ready for this?’

  She drew a breath, a tingling in her belly and throat. ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘Okay, here goes. You want to achieve the Zen Self? Chop wood, draw water. Don’t cling, don’t strive. Look around you, this is all there is.’

  ‘You bastard.’

  ‘Hahaha.’

  ‘You fucker, you really had me going.’

  ‘And I really told you. What did you expect? Stockmarket tips?’

  ‘Congratulations, Aoxomoxoa. Enlightenment hasn’t changed you a scrap, you’re still one of God’s own assholes.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you.’

  They grinned at each other, eyes meeting. ‘You look great,’ she said, softly. ‘You’re better without the muscle-man rhino suit. Now you look the way God intended.’

  ‘I disagree. I miss my rhino suit.’ He pondered for a moment. ‘What happened with you and Digital Arists, Janelle?’

  Touché. Never get personal with someone when you can’t afford for them to get personal back. ‘Ah, yeah: my brilliant career.’ She was gallingly sure he knew the story, probably had it from Harry. Okay, so cut it short and don’t whine. ‘I fell out with Marsh, that’s what happened. I wasn’t a kid like the others. I’d done my time in games development, I was pushing for significant art. I thought we could do more than goshwow graphics, brain-burning fx, same stupid stories over and over. We stopped having a good working relationship, then I made the mistake of withdrawing from the endless fucking meetings… One day I had a text, telling me I was out.’

  ‘Classic.’

  ‘Yeah. I was proud, to have it happen such a traditional way. After that, other things went wrong. Car broke down, dog died, you know… I did the downward spiral. I’m okay now. I have work, I have a rep. I have friends who are a lot younger than I am, like Harry, the kids who are doing the exciting things. I just never found my way back to the money, that’s all.’

  ‘Didn’t you think of moving on?’

  She laughed. ‘To Mumbai? Or Shanghai? Nah, I’m too old, too female, the Afro-American ancestry wouldn’t be an asset, and most of all I don’t want to. I’m good where I am. I have a life, close to the beating heart. I like it here. What about you? Did you ever regret giving the immersion code away like that? You could have been rich forever.’

  After all that, the dirty tricks had been for nothing. Sage had made the key building blocks of his code open source, and the virtual movies had thrived.

  He laughed, full-on sincere amusement. ‘Never! That was a wise deed. One of the few in my life. It got me phenomenal cred. Listen, I didn’t give anything away. I put the ideas back where I’d found them, in the public domain—’

  A small frown appeared between his golden brows. ‘Hmm.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’ He looked out, over the sands and the untroubled ocean. ‘Doesn’t it bother you that you can’t walk on the beach?’

  The Rosa peninsula had fallen victim to that toxic bloom, the nerve-poison that had come from Florida, and was now patchily infesting the whole west coast. There was nothing you could see: but it wasn’t safe to step off the deck.

  ‘Not really. The water’s too fucking cold for swimming anyway.’

  He glanced at his wrist, where he’d had a phone implanted, answering a summons she hadn’t heard, and dropped lightly from his perch.

  ‘I’d better go: the car’s here. We’re house hunting.’

  Harry was shipping over the whole Revolutionary Tribunal, a move Janelle approved. The English would need a private army, for the turf wars in this town. Puusi, true to her word, was helping them find the right chateau. She went with him through the cottage. It was their Rugrat waiting outside, Red in the driver’s seat: so make this a short goodbye.

  ‘Sage, there’s just one thing. Be careful of Puusi. I love her dearly, but—’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘She’s a wonderful, sweet generous person. But she’s a goddess. Be careful.’

  ‘Thnaks. I’ll remember that.’

  Fiorinda slid over, leaving him the wheel. ‘Hey…’

  Sage was an atrocious driver, and the new hands made no difference. His lapses in concentration were terrifying. Most of his friends, including Ax, were intimidated into letting him play helpless and providing taxi-service. Fiorinda believed in tough love.

  ‘Pretend it’s a video game. How was Janelle?’

  ‘Oooh, waspish. Mean, bitter, not a good word to say for anyone.’ He grinned. ‘Perfect for us. She’s going to be our native guide.’

  Fiorinda gave him a cynical look. ‘Oh, good.’

  ‘She says, we’re in great shape as long as Harry’s movie doesn’t involve, lemme see, Environmental Issues, Refugees, Climate change, Utopia, Social Welfare, data quarantine, anything too English, I mean British, back pedal on the rock music, and did I say don’t raise the subject of Islam?’

  ‘Terrific.’

  ‘No, no… Shit, why all these cars? We should be the only ones with a car, what happened to the fuckin’ fuel crisis? I want to go home, no, forget I said that, ouch…’ Lane change, squeak by. ‘Don’t listen to what they say, go by the tone of voice. Janelle’s full of awful warnings, which is good. If she was being nice, I’d be worried. She asked me what’s the real secret of the Zen Self. D’you think that’s suspicious?’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘The truth, but she didn’t believe me.’

  Another near-miss occupied him. ‘Something she said gave me an idea,’ he remarked, when they’d survived it. ‘About the ban the Neurobomb agenda.’

  Their relationship with the FBI had blossomed. Roche and Phillips were okay, once you got past their poor regard for the golden boy. Philemon Roche had brought his casenotes to the hotel, (trusting nothing to the datasphere), for a lengthy session. They knew more than they’d ever expected to know about LA County’s unsolved cult-related crime, and especially that string of sacrifices. But that was all, so far.

  ‘What kind of idea?’

  ‘Not going to tell you yet, it’s too bizarre. You know, maybe
I should switch the nannying back on, when Ax isn’t… Oh, fuck, that’s our exit—’

  ‘SAGE-!’

  ‘Whoops, no, sorry, too late-’

  The Rugrat had now entered a locking zone. At least there was no more driving, he just had to keep one hand on the wheel… Janelle’s sombre dark eyes. He remembered (one of the few things he remembered, apart from the money prank) that she had told him she was old enough to be his mother. He hadn’t believed her. He’d thought she was about thirty, which seems ancient enough when you’re nineteen. He could see it, now.

  ‘Janelle’s had a hard time. She’s made mistakes, been a drunk: downward spiral, ooh, I’ve been there. But she’s come fighting back, she has a lot of respect, and she knows everyone. It’ll be good to have her on our side. The only problem is, hm… I did something, years ago, that I thought was funny and…it wasn’t. She hasn’t forgiven me, and she always pays back.’

  Fiorinda immediately wanted the details, but knew she wouldn’t get them. Sage was annoyingly chivalrous, you never got any unseemly gossip about the mille e tre. ‘You make this old flame of yours sound a real charmer.’

  ‘No, no. I like her a lot. It only means we better watch out and we knew that.’

  He turned and grinned at her.

  ‘Eyes on the road.’

  ‘It’s a locking zone… Are you my girlfriend, Fiorinda?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, with a conviction that went straight to his heart; and his balls.

  ‘Just checking. Hollywood is saying the new Aoxomoxoa is permanently off sex. Can’t get his rope to rise, what a cruel expression.’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘Not anymore.’

  Eventually they recovered from the missed exit, and reached another beach enclave a few miles south; called Sunset Cape. Not as A-list as the Rosa, where Puusi had her mansion and Janelle Firdous her little cottage, but it didn’t have toxic algae, you could walk and swim. Harry, Ax and Puusi Meera, accompanied by an awesomely well-preserved real-estate matron, were waiting at the house: a cinnamon-washed ranchero in a Mission style courtyard. The street address was on Hunter Thompson Drive, but the house was down a public access road, right on the beach. It came furnished, with a full staff.