Midnight Lamp

by Gwyneth Jones

  He took a sip of whiskey. ‘You know the most appalling thing? When I was told the fusion consciousness project might be tainted by black magic, I was relieved. I thought: way to go, now I can stop them. And I believe I can. When I track down this rogue project, the research will be killed stone dead.’

  ‘But you have no evidence.’

  ‘We’ll get there. We’re looking at the terrorist option also, of course, but I’m convinced it has to be our own people. Don’t worry. I’m going to stop this. But it must be done sub rosa. The public mustn’t know. That’s one reason why I called on you, and your partners. My victory will be secret, but the people also have to be convinced. We have to show them another way.’

  ‘As of now, your public seems generally convinced that fusion consciousness power is a good thing. They even like the weapon.’

  ‘That’s what the polls are telling my advisers. Let me make the distinction I want you to help me to make. I don’t care how clean and green it is. I am not “against” fusion consciousness science, as some of my detractors claim. But to use the information, the pure power of being as a weapon of destruction, oh, no, no… That is utterly forbidden. Do you truly believe in God, Ax?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then work with me. Help me.’

  Whatever happens will happen, thought Ax, and finally, mercifully, it isn’t in our hands. He decided against trying to convince Mr Eiffrich that he could take refuge with the Lord of the Daybreak, and simply nodded.

  ‘Uh, does Sage believe? I mean, in the conventional sense?’

  ‘You’d have to ask him.’

  Mr Eiffrich poured himself a little more bourbon, shook his head, and smiled. ‘My God… The last time I saw you, Ax, you’d just been hauled out of a year’s brutal imprisonment, and you were setting off to invade your own country in a state of barely contained mental and physical collapse. It was the most gallant, bloody-minded stubbornness I ever saw. I hardly thought I’d see you alive again. But you came through… It was a fine thing. But recovery from the kind of trauma you had has to be slow. You can play guitar again?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Ax stretched out his right hand, and flexed it. ‘It’s better all the time.’ He believed his fine motor control would never be what it had been, but he wasn’t going to whine about that.

  The president was looking at him with great kindness. Ax wondered if he should explain that he had no memory of their previous meeting. There were gaps in his record: the days after the rescue were blank (and most of the invasion too, tell the truth). He had been frightened of this meeting. He’d been sure he’d be forced to talk about England: he ought to have known better. Kathryn’s uncle Fred can be hasty, he can be intemperate, he’s been known to bluster. But he’s not a bully, and he’s definitely no fool.

  ‘D’you feel like answering me a couple of questions, Ax?’

  Ah, shit. Here we go, after all. ‘What kind of questions?’

  ‘Secret history, of course… Was it you and Alain de Corlay, behind the operation that wrecked the Channel tunnels beyond repair?’

  Alain de Corlay was Ax’s continental counterpart, enfant terrible intellectual and sometime frontman of the Eurotrash outfit Movie Sucré: currently one of Europe’s most formidable techno-green leaders.

  ‘No, that was a group run by one of the French governments, one of the four-day efforts, the spring of the year after our Dissolution. Alain and I merely collaborated in letting them do it.’

  ‘But why did he agree to that? I can see your reasons.’

  ‘If you want to reduce traffic, close some roads. The tunnels were a siphon, drawing a mass of refugees through France to the northern coast, and England. When they were gone, that problem dissipated.’

  ‘Which makes you to some extent responsible for the Boat People armada, that ended up crossing the North Sea, since they couldn’t use the tunnels?’

  ‘The situation was already there, but you could say that was one of mine.’

  ‘What can we do about the refugee situation? It’s one of the worst problems Europe faces, or so it seems from our perspective. Do you have any ideas?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘No I am not kidding. I’m not in the mood for kidding.’

  ‘Okay, then rebuild the countries that the refugee hordes are fleeing. I don’t even know if it’s possible. The environmental devastation is beyond belief, in some places: I’ve seen it. But you could try.’

  ‘Good words, and there’s a precedent. But for Marshall Aid, the precedent says first there has to be a war.’

  ‘Wait for the big one, if you like. You may not have to wait long. You may not be able to sit it out, either. No more than you could in the last century.’

  Both of them looked at the fireplace for a while, in silence.

  ‘My wife gave me this house,’ Fred Eiffrich remarked, ‘when we married. She died young, you know: Hodgkins. That’s her, on the wall above the fire, it’s a good portrait. Our daughter Sally fell to an armed opposition assassin’s bullet in Colombia, nearly ten years ago now. She was working with a human rights group. She was twenty four: hungering and thirsting after justice; I hadn’t seen her for eighteen months. I miss them still. I always will.’

  The president had never remarried. He was a serial monogamist of discreet Washington matrons; quietly acknowledged, never in the public eye. A smiling woman in the clothes of thirty years ago looked down on the quiet room. On the mantelshelf her daughter, in a yellow slicker, laughed and leaned over the side of a sailing boat, dark hair whipping over her rosy cheeks.

  ‘You’re sure I can’t tempt you to a little bourbon?’

  ‘Not tonight, thanks. Another time.’

  ‘It’s good that you drink. That you’re an Islamic prince who takes alcohol, in moderation. An eco-warrior who loves a good car…in moderation. I want you on my side, Ax. I want you to help me to stop the information space weapon research: but I want you on my side regardless. The movie’s the thing. It’ll raise your profile like nothing else. I want what you did in England presented as an ideal. The man who rode out the storm, and kept the lights burning, with guitar! With his queen, the heroine of the resistance at his side. And his champion, the very perfect knight who hath achieved the Grail.’

  ‘But first we have to create those fictional characters,’ said Ax, dryly, ‘Mr Eiffrich, how serious is the problem we have with Lou Branco?’

  He thought he could rely on the president having heard the bad news.

  Fred Eiffrich glowered. ‘Don’t worry about Lou. I’ll talk to Lou. You talk to the people, Ax. Do what you do, be who you are. We have eighteen months.’

  ‘That’s when the Vireo Lake project is due to reach critical mass?’

  ‘That’s how long I can rely on staying President.’

  If you’ve been talking to the pres, and your ride went home without you, you get a helicopter with a real human being flying it. Ax rode in the back, in hushed luxury, irritated that he wasn’t beside the pilot, and evaluated.

  Fred Eiffrich has crucial information he’s not going to share, they’re investigating the possibility of a terrorist group (but the high level cover-up suggests otherwise). Not a hint that the president was considering Fiorinda’s Hollywood Conjecture, and this Ax thought had to be good news. He believed that Fred Eiffrich’s horror of the weapon research was genuine, too genuine for his own good, maybe. It’s only another Weapon of Mass Destruction, Fred. Don’t protest too hard, or they might take your God game away from you. No, Fred was too wise to be caught like that. Hence the imported ex-dictator, who will take the flak, if the peace and love campaign proves unpopular…

  And he thinks he needs me. Thinking like Ax Preston for a moment, it’s not when you’re ‘in power’ that you can pursue the agenda. Far from it. It’s when the powerful have a use for you—

  He had called Sage his boyfriend. Oops. I should have cleared that with Harry! But the claim had warmed his heart, futile as it might be. The city of the
plain lay beneath him: a great shimmering raft of stars, setting sail into the dark ocean. He called the house at Sunset, and learned that Fiorinda and Sage had not come back. He wasn’t concerned. One good thing about loving those two is that you really don’t have to worry about them being waylaid by the bad guys. Pity the bad guys. But he didn’t want to go home alone—

  A gleam in his eye, he tapped the button on his armrest.

  ‘Hey, pilot?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Preston? Lieutenant Joe Kevah here, a pleasure to be your sky-driver, sir. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Change of plan, lieutenant. I want you to take me to a different address.’

  ‘Is that the native English, that left-tenant? Not Sunset Cape, sir?’

  ‘D’you know a gated place called Copperhead Glen?’

  ‘I know it. Out along 101, near the state park. If you mean the Copperhead where Mr Branco lives?’

  ‘That’s right. You don’t have to wait.’

  ‘I’m supposed to see you safe home, sir.’

  ‘I can get my people to come and fetch me. If I need you, I’ll call Bellevue.’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  The machine touched down, with a minimum of fuss, on the pad outside the enclave gatehouse. Ax let it lift and soar away, Joe Kevah waving cheerily, then he strolled up to the gates, through the razor sharp floodlight shadows. He parleyed with the intercom, feeling guns trained on him and thinking what a way to live. But they had armed guards at at Sunset Cape too. The night watch called the Branco house. A delay followed, during which the men came out of their dugout, and talked to Mr Preston through the bars. They said he didn’t look much like Axl Rose. They wanted to know, what did something like Yap Moss do to the Chosen’s music? Did that make you feel like, you were real?

  Sigh.

  The message came back. Mr Branco will be home shortly, would Mr Preston please come to the house.

  Lou Branco’s house was enclosed in more massive walls. The front gates opened, and Ax strolled up between shaven lawns where sprinklers hissed. There was a beautiful scent of jasmine. The great money-man lives alone. He has ex-wives and grown-up children, but they don’t visit. He has a father in a nursing home, far gone in decrepitude. He’s heterosexual, but has no regular girlfriend (it seems he prefers to be a paying customer). No intimate friends. A lot of movie people, virtual and classic, hate his guts, because they feel that his crude and poor taste dominates the kind of work they can do; and because he’s as unpleasant to deal with as a spoilt toddler. But everyone does his bidding, because he has a stunning instinct for making money.

  Sounds like a lonely kind of life.

  The door of the main house was open. A barefoot teenage boy stood there, wearing soccer shorts and a faded Brasil teeshirt. Everyone was in bed, because Mr Branco had not been expected home. The boy was the housekeeper’s nephew, he had been watching the tv in Mr Branco’s kitchen; he was allowed to do that, it was a better tv than his tía had in her cottage. The guards had reached Mr Branco on his cell, and Mr Branco had called the house to say he would be back very soon… Ax followed his garrulous guide through to the kitchen, which he felt was a better option than sitting alone in the lounge.

  The kid’s name was Daniel Ortega Morales, and he was far too young and full of himself to give a shit for the warlord of Yap Moss. He was not a servant, he was living here because there had been trouble at home, about his school results. He had left, and his father, who had left the family years ago, had refused to take him in, so he was living with his tía. She kept wanting him to behave like a houseboy, so he could get a job: but he didn’t know how, and he didn’t want to learn. What he really wanted to do was act. Or maybe play guitar.

  The housekeeper, who did not consider it was her role to get up in the middle of the night, had called from the cottage and ordered Daniel to lay out snacks for the visitor. Mr Branco would be expecting this. Daniel didn’t have a fuck of a clue. He opened the doors of cupboards as he talked, with an air of aggrieved helplessness. Okay, said Ax, I’ll show you something. When I was starting out, I worked as a short order cook. You’ll hate me, but it’s good to have a fall back.

  Lou Branco arrived some thirty minutes later to find Ax Preston, still in formals but having shed his black jacket, in his kitchen, supervising the preparation of a perfect Spanish tortilla (it takes a good frying pan, sweet onion, good oil, par-boil the potatoes before you fry, and do everything really slowly). Mr Branco had changed his clothes somewhere since the Bellevue barbecue. He stood in the doorway, very confused by this scene.

  ‘Hey,’ said Ax, ‘There you are, Lou. I dropped round, on the chance you might have time to talk. I’ve been thinking: about the bootleg remix video: great idea. I’ve been looking at Harry’s demographic maps. Where are you planning to sneak it out?’

  There’s an interesting moment, when you wait to see how the dice will fall—

  ‘Well, hi, Ax,’ Mr Branco turned furiously on the boy, ‘Daniel, what’s the matter with you. Where are your shoes? Did you offer Mr Preston a drink? You think I’m paying you to stand around staring at my guests?’

  Daniel at least had the wits not to protest that he wasn’t on the payroll.

  ‘I’m very sorry Mr Branco.’

  ‘He’s been fixing me some supper,’ said Ax, ‘Maybe you’d care to join me?’

  ‘You’re a night owl, eh, Ax? Like me. Okay, lemme get my shit together, let’s discuss. Prepare to learn. The US of A is a much bigger cabbage patch. Fuck, California is a much bigger cabbage patch than you have back in England.’

  Mr Branco went to fetch some papers. He sat at the breakfast bar, took out his palm-top, and raised a spreadsheet on the excellent screen of the kitchen tv. It was a transformation. Social niceties were a closed book to this man, but with his tools in his hands he was unstoppable, amoral, stunningly acute, genuinely fascinating: and thankfully, Ax had done enough of this sort of thing in his mis-spent career to be able to appear to keep up.

  ‘Ax,’ said Lou, ‘I have to tell you, as a rockstar, you’d make a good analyst.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you have to learn a little about marketing, when you’re running something like the Reich. The tortilla’s getting cool, Lou.’

  Daniel, aggrieved at losing Ax’s attention, had brought over the frying pan and plonked it down, with the bowl of salad. ‘You should bring plates,’ Ax prompted him softly. ‘Silverware. Water, glasses. No, straight glasses—’

  They ate, they talked. Lou exclaimed with satisfaction, ‘Hey, I’ve got the king of England, having a midnight feast with me!’

  Struck by the presence of Daniel Ortega, (the kid didn’t know he should leave, he was sitting sulking in the background) he cried, ‘Daniel, pull up a stool. Take a plate, have a slice of tortilla… This is what I love about the story,’ he said to Ax. ‘How you put the drop-outs back to work. Got them doing what they could do, paid them in beer and fried potatoes. Give them dignity, that’s what we need over here, my opinion. I wanna have Harry work that into the movie, but he’ll say it isn’t art, it isn’t romantic. Daniel’s like family to me.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Nothing funny, though.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Not that I’ve anything against gays. Now, let’s do the figures on—’

  It was very late when Ax walked out of Copperhead Glen. Sage and Fiorinda were coming to pick him up, but he’d told them he’d be outside. He didn’t trust those two not to give his newly-turned money-man the ancient English Upper Class you are a non person treatment. At which they so excel. Besides, he liked being out in the heat of the night. He walked up to the turning circle at the end of the access road, under the misted stars: thinking about his father. In ways, Ax’s entire career had been based on being different from his dad: Dan Preston, pub-culture layabout, shameless grifter, dead two years now. But you get older and you know yourself better. Dan would have understood this episode, he was a born gambler too. You get that white light f
eeling, and the cards are with you.

  The toad’s in a hole. He can’t possibly want to be in this hole, pissing off the president, all Hollywood sniggering behind his back. He’s not stupid. Offer him an easy way out, it’s better than even money he will take it. All you need is the DNA, or whatever it takes, for seeing chance as opportunity—

  What kind of world will it be, when the real revolution takes hold? When we live in a palimpsest of minds, and no final barrier between thought and ‘material’ things, between mind and matter? The answer’s obvious, it will be this world. The same place we were living in before, seen in a new light.

  Someone was watching him. He felt the presence with a soldier’s instincts, and moved so he could look behind him without seeming to. There was a shadowy figure under a tree by the helipad. Starlight glinted on a stubby rifle, Ax thought he could make out a raw-boned, rough-headed outline, naggingly familiar. I know that guy. But what’s he doing here? The shadow lifted its head looked Ax’s way, steady gleam in hollow eyes.

  And vanished, as the Rugrat zoomed up

  They both leapt out and grabbed him.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ gasped Sage. ‘Don’t do that to me! Please!’

  ‘What’s the matter? I came here by presidential helicopter, and I’m standing under a gun emplacement. What could happen?’

  ‘No you’re not,’ said Fiorinda, ‘the gun emplacement is over there… You can’t frighten us like that, Ax, you can’t vanish off the screen, please don’t do it again.’

  They parted from the three person embrace, not knowing where it could go; a little shy. Ax decided that he wouldn’t tell them, especially not Fiorinda, about the other presence. It would cause needless panic.

  ‘How did you get on with Branco?’ asked Sage.

  ‘Fixed, I hope. I’ve been discussing where we put out that white-label video.’

  ‘You, beyond belief. What about President Eiffrich?’

  ‘Not bad, not good. No news, just confirmation of Harry and Roche’s story.’