Midnight Lamp

by Gwyneth Jones

  Rules for dealing with the quantum computer: don’t raise the subject of Celtic sacrifice unless someone else raises it first. Don’t mention Fiorinda’s magic, and play down what happened to Sage. This is to avoid confusion in the populace: the Fat Boy candidate doubtless has the lowdown on our bodhisattva and our lady… Rule Three, Chairman Ax says there are no rules. Say what you like, do what occurs to you. Assume everything’s on the record, and be yourselves. But remember what Fiorinda says. It knows we are here, it wants us here. Watch out for secret messages, watch for things that look out of place.

  Chip and Verlaine, aka The Adjuvants found Fiorinda’s version of what was going on both plausible and interesting. They weren’t scared. Allowing that Ax might be phased by supernatural conflict (though Ax is powerful, and that goes for all the dimensions), what, pray, is going to get through Sage and Fiorinda? They played their set at the Steel Door, unaware that two of their leaders were having trouble outside; and as usual more or less oblivious to the presence of the audience. The applause from the whackily garbed mosh surprised them, and they were moved to hang around for the main event. The Rectal Vixens turned out to be bog-standard-grunge. But their look was okay.

  After the show, the Adjuvants’ crew, hired hands under the supervision of one of Doug Hutton’s men, packed up and departed. The Adjuvants joined a dressing room scene, involving the Vixens and their entourage. Pills and poppers were dispensed, tequila flowed. The English rolled up contraband Bristol skunk.

  ‘What was that last thing you did?’ asked Jody, the Vixen’s singer. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Autocondimentation?’ suggested Verlaine. ‘I think.’

  ‘Whatever. That was fucking esoteric. I thought it would never end.’

  ‘That’s how you’re supposed to feel,’ explained Chip. ‘“Autocon” is designed to cause desperation. It’s an expression of the feeling you get when you try to open a plastic sachet of ketchup, in a half-derelict Welcome Break motorway services where everything tastes of salad cream, in the early hours on a cold, rainy night. Few people appreciate us, on a global scale, but we know we’re right.’

  ‘Our art is slavery,’ said Verlaine. ‘Our life is art.’

  ‘Hey, I don’t need no fanbase!’ said Chip. ‘I have driven a Number 17 bus!’

  ‘I have swabbed cholera patients,’ boasted Ver. ‘They struggled in vain.’

  ‘We have stacked the sandbags of solidarity, in the shop doorways of hope.’

  ‘Fuck. Have you guys ever thought of selling a few records?’

  ‘We’re not old enough to earn our living,’ explained Chip, taking offence.

  ‘Has Sage turned gay?’ asked someone else, growing impatient.

  ‘Nah,’ said Chip, accepting another popper and applying it to his throat.

  ‘He’s a miserable sod,’ said Verlaine. ‘It’s all lies.’

  ‘What about the hedgehog farming?’

  ‘Oh, now that’s true,’ Chip confirmed, with an air of relief. ‘Sage wouldn’t lie about hedgehogs. That game is huge in England. Urban gardeners were crying out for them after Dissolution, when the use of slug pellets became a capital crime. It snowballed. There’s a hedgehog fancy now. Shows, breeds.’

  ‘Siamese hedgehogs,’ chipped in Verlaine, necking tequila freely. ‘Differently abled symbiote fleas you can get for them, it’s a whole industry.’

  ‘What about the group marriage?’

  The Adjuvants said solemnly, in unison, ‘We can’t talk about that.’

  The Vixens were tall and huskily built. They wore a band uniform of loose dark teeshirts, gold trimmed, and baggy dark shorts of unequal length, also gold trimmed. Jody and Rex wore their hair combed back and clubbed in the nape of the neck. Lex was slapheaded, naturally. All three had light voices, smooth faces and serious boobs, but they did not seem to be dikes; they seemed more like minor-league Sumo wrestlers. Rex, the drummer, astride a chair turned backwards, brawny arms folded, stared back at the English youths, assessing their anatomy with equal frankness.

  ‘You two still have the meat and potatoes, don’t you?’

  ‘Er, what?’

  ‘We can tell. Don’t have to check your shorts, it’s written all over you.’

  ‘You’ve all had the surgery, then?’

  Laughter went round the room. ‘We’ve had the treatment,’ said Lex.

  ‘Nobody has the surgery now. Only perverts have the surgery.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Verlaine. ‘We don’t need to change. We like being boys.’

  ‘We’re just never going to become blokes,’ said Chip. ‘We’re into neoteny.’

  ‘You should do it,’ said Jody. ‘It’s the most fucking liberating thing, to watch your dick melting away. It’s self-sculpture. It’s what you’ve been looking for without having the concept. You’re half-way uncertains, I know you are.’ He, or s/he, grinned warmly. ‘Hell, I’d like to convert you both, right now-’

  Hm. This begins to sound like Jehovah’s Witness territory.

  Chip grinned warmly back, and gave Ver a swift make our excuses and leave? Verlaine concurred. But in one of those puzzling shifts that happen when you’re drunk and spaced, especially in a place you don’t know, instead of leaving they found themselves in a corridor they didn’t recognise, walking up and down with the fourth Vixen, the one they hadn’t noticed. S/he told them to come to the party, and gave them an address. Next thing they knew they were on the sidewalk, alone in the dark, in a different derelict neighbourhood in the vast city of the angels. No sign of the club, or the Rectal Vixens, or rich kid punters. A dim knowledge that they had come here in a cab, but the cab was now gone. All they had was a scrap of matchbook, on which the fourth Vixen had written the address of the party.

  ‘At least it’s not raining,’ said Chip.

  ‘It never rains in southern California. We must be here.’

  Chip agreed. ‘Otherwise we wouldn’t have got out of the cab.’

  They saw a lighted building. It was tall, though not a skyscraper; it looked recently renovated. The name on the plate outside matched the address on the matchbook, so they went in. The renovations were very recent, the builders didn’t seem to have moved out yet.

  ‘Top floor,’ said Verlaine. ‘I hope the lifts work.’

  ‘Elevators… Ver, I think there were only three Vixens.’

  ‘What d’you mean? So, it was one of the other dudes. Guest list.’

  The lifts were not working. They climbed the stairs: talking to avoid the silence, which can become threatening when you’re a little dazed and confused.

  ‘He hasn’t changed has he? He’s still totally our Aoxomoxoa.’

  ‘Hence the expression, Zen Self, dork—’

  It couldn’t have been more than five or six floors, but the climb took forever. Chip’s mood plunged. His life meant nothing. He was a futile hanger-on, an overgrown pageboy at the court of an abdicated king, and would grow old and bald, in the same silly job… Verlaine thought about Rox. Roxane Smith, the absent elder of the Few’s tribe: his lover, parent, mentor, patron at the time of Dissolution. How incredibly gracefully Rox had bowed out, when Ver and Chip had become an item. Rox is getting old. Food stains, confusion. Soon I’ll be visiting the nursing home… The mainstay of his life was giving way.

  They reached the top floor and looked at each other, acknowledging telepathy artefacts. They were veterans of the Zen Self experiment. Chip had dropped out, Verlaine, one day, might yet travel further along the path that Sage had taken. They recognised the penumbra of something seriously untoward around here.

  ‘It’s a very quiet party. What d’you think? Are we onto something?’

  ‘It’s a hedgehog party. Uncertain weirdness fills the air.’

  ‘Would physical contact be in order, young Merry?’

  They approached the double doors to the loft arm in arm, and pushed them open. They were facing a wall of windows, mainly dark; some patches of twinkling light. The room that held this darkness was b
ig as a barn and almost bare of furniture. Naked flambeaux hung, on long chains, from the exposed timbers of the cathedral roof. Heavy-scented smoke wreathed in the air and seemed to coil across the floor: which was covered in a white layer of plaster dust. In the middle of the floor stood a framework of planks and ladders. A young woman and a young man were hanging there, he by the wrists, she by the heels, eviscerated. Their entrails lay heaped on the floor, their arms and legs were split like anatomy drawings. The white dust was trodden—insolently, deliberately—by many footprints, but none of them lead to the door or the windows. The worshippers had just vanished.

  ‘Two out of how many?’ whispered Chip.

  ‘Poor kids, God help them.’

  It was important not to be awed. Thousands of kids died today, the world over, many of them in horrible ways, this is not special, not clever—

  ‘Look at the woman, Chip,’ said Verlaine, ‘Look at her. It’s Billy the Whizz.’

  It was Billy the sweet-natured party girl, her sugar blonde hair dripping blood from its sticky strands. She’d never score with Aoxomoxoa now.

  ‘What’s the emergency number?’

  ‘You’re going to call the police?’ breathed Verlaine. ‘What, and wait here for them? Chip, the blood is still running.’

  ‘Not that one, the other number, the Committee number. But you’re right. We should call nine one one.’

  ‘I don’t trust that Committee, who knows if they’re the good guys.’

  ‘I don’t think we should stay here a moment longer than we have to,’ said Chip. ‘I think we should make our call from the street, and not stay to meet the police. But there’s one thing we could do, to screw the bastards.’

  Fiorinda wouldn’t have liked it, Sage would have been non-committal, but the Adjuvants reserved the right to obey their cultural instincts, when it came to opposing supernatural evil. They got down on their knees, the way they knew Rox would have done, and prayed for the dead. Then they left. They called the police when they had managed to find a lighted street, and flag down a yellow cab. They then decided they’d better maintain radio silence, but made a thorough search for the scrap of matchbook that the fourth Vixen had given them. They couldn’t find it.

  5

  November Rain

  Chip and Verlaine did not have to go downtown. They were interviewed at Sunset Cape, by Philemon Roche and his partner, then next day by the LAPD, with a pair of Digital Artists lawyers in attendance. The police interview was minimal, and conducted with a veiled resentment which was wounding: in the Reich, the police and Ax’s friends had been on the same team.

  The Adjuvants played innocent in both the sessions: not much of an act, there were no awkward questions.

  The night after the police came Fiorinda dozed, trying to carry water in her cupped hands, the drops escaping as tiny wriggling babies; and woke from this task knowing she was alone in the suite. Ax? Sage? No, they’re dead, of course. She got up and wandered, the weight of her hair heavy and sticky on her shoulders, laying her palm on each bedroom door, to keep her friends safe. At the bottom of the stairs she sat and thought about poor Billy. I didn’t protect Billy. Did I kill her? Maybe I killed her? She felt guilty, but confused. What am I doing here, what is this place? Why are we here and not in London? There were voices from Allie’s office. She drifted over and listened.

  ‘East Hollywood Reformed Mosque. It’s a big modern Islamic centre, they’d like you to speak after Friday prayers. The studio wants you to do this one.’

  ‘What does reformed mean? Salat-in-English? I won’t do it if I have to make up New-Agey prayers. Oh, and I won’t dance. I’ve nothing against Sufis, but—’

  ‘No, no, it’s kosher.’

  Soft laughter.

  ‘Forget I said that,’ said Allie’s voice. ‘Reformed only means the men and women pray together. They asked me how you’d feel, because they know you’re rather strict with Fiorinda.’

  ‘Shit. Ouch. Where did that come from?’

  ‘The fact that she never leaves the house without a male family member, or an AI car as equivalent guardian. The fact that she never appears in public as your first lady, and they see her dressing very modestly.’

  Fiorinda opened the door. ‘Hi Allie.’

  Ax gave Allie a glance. She closed her laptop. ‘Well, just about finished,’ she announced, with false cheer, and quickly left the room.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  Fiorinda sat down, trying to think how to recover her position. But Ax knew she had behaved as if he wasn’t there, when she walked in. Not unnaturally, since what she saw was a shrivelled corpse with a hole in its head. She struggled with the incohate fragments, jostling for attention. Ax is dead, no he’s alive, looking fine, Chip and Verlaine found some bodies, what is this place, where are we?

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Ax, calmly. ‘How are you, Fio?’

  ‘Yes.’ She dug her fingers into her hair, puzzled at the resistance, what is wrong with my hair, it feels horrible. ‘Ax, is Sage is having a fling with Janelle Firdous? I don’t mind. I just need to know what everybody’s doing.’

  ‘I’m sure he isn’t.’

  ‘She’s fucked him. Billy wanted to fuck Sage, and she’s dead.’

  ‘He isn’t having a fling with anyone. He’s upstairs asleep. Let’s go to bed.’

  ‘I thought he wasn’t there. Ax, I’m better, really. I’ll be better in the morning.’

  ‘I know you will, my little cat. C’mon, upstairs.’

  Since they hadn’t taken Harry up on his promise of more and nicer cars, and since the Rugrat must be reserved for Fiorinda, Sage arrived at the splendid estate of an old friend in a studio limo. His host came to the gatehouse to meet him, a tall black man, extremely good looking, in fabulous shape and dressed in perfect casuals. They strolled through the grounds. This was a beach and canyon pad: a valley running down to the Pacific, full of specimen trees and majestic groups of beautiful, alien boulders. A river ran through it, with rainbow-spinning falls spanned by a crystal bridge. The water must cost a fortune.

  ‘Fuckin’ shit, Sage! How long you been in town? Why didn’t you look me up before? How long’s it been, shit, how many years? Where’s the mask?’

  ‘I don’t do that anymore. Yeah, too long, Laz.’

  ‘You’re looking good, bro,’ said Lazarus, politely. ‘Time has been kind.’

  ‘You too.’

  His name was Lazarus Catskill, just Laz to the fans. He and Sage had been newly famous bad boys when they met on the Heads’ notorious US tour. For a few years they’d crossed paths, the way you do, then Sage had vanished into Crisis Europe and his revolutionary adventure; and Lazarus had taken the industrial route. He’d made the transition into movies and tv, become unbelievably successful and was now more or less a god.

  Laz wanted to show off his Peter Pan features so they did a tour, reminiscing about the outrageous days as they had fun with the treetop rollercoaster, the vintage animatronic gunfighters, the holodek and immix room in the caverns behind the waterfall. On the sweep outside the house there was a gold panning alley game. A wooden trough knocked together with rusty metal, and a stream diverted from the artificial river running into it from above, along a crooked little aqueduct on stilts. Ancient pans, lanterns, picks and shovels were on display—

  ‘Is this a real fake ancient Californian diorama? Or just a replica?’

  ‘This is authentic man, there was gold in my valley. You got to try it. This is the greatest game. You have to pick up that rock and dump it in the chute.’

  ‘And what happens?’

  ‘Something cool. It’s the best feature of my whole theme park.’

  Sage looked at the boulder, the boulder looked at Sage. Fucking hope there isn’t a lot of gold in that mountain. Ah well, do what god says. He picked up the rock, made it look easy, dumped it in the trough, and wham, a section of the aqueduct opened and drenched him in icy water. Laz ran indoors, cackling in glee. Sage ran after hi
m, cursing and swearing vengeance. A maid was waiting, with an armful of fluffy white towels and a merry smirk: this must be one of those divine jokes that never stales.

  Laz tossed the towels to Sage. ‘Bring us some coffee, Maria. And cookies.’

  He led the way into a baronial hall, oak panelled, with lambent stained glass lancets, and lit a fire in the great hearth with a snap of his fingers. Sage saw that he was going to have to take his shirt off, which he did not want to do.

  ‘Jeeezus! Fuckin’ mother of shit! What did that? Shark attack?’

  ‘You could say so. Hey, I did not lose. You shoulda seen the shark.’

  Lazarus gaped at the ropes of scar. I’m getting rid of them, thought Sage, towelling his head. Call me childish, but if I ever again have any money—

  ‘Well, my God, Sage. Thank the Lord you’re still with us. Here’s a dry tee. You want to change your pants? I guess only your shirt got wet, you jumped so fast.’

  It was a Laz Catskill teeshirt. Childishly, he decided not to bother.

  ‘I won’t catch cold.’

  The coffee and the cookies came, the maid took away the towels and Sage’s wet shirt. The heat from the gas flames fought with the frost of the air-conditioning, the former bad boys quietly sipped their coffee.

  ‘You like the stainglass? You like the oak? All from Europe: shipped over when the fucking place collapsed. You wouldn’t believe the stuff I picked up. I had to tussle with my conscience over some of it, no way it was the legitimate owners selling, but it’s safer over here, right?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Kaya will be pissed that she missed meeting you,’

  Kaya was the god’s wife, R&B diva: she had changed him mightily, it was said. They had a stable relationship, one child a couple of years old. Sage nodded. ‘Sorry I missed her, too.’ Kaya probably spent her life trying to keep Laz away from former associates.

  ‘And you got your hands fixed,’ said Laz. ‘Nice job. I heard you went to China. What made you do that? You always swore you never would.’

  ‘Everybody changes,’ said Sage, trying to fit together the raucous brother he remembered with this family-values perfect specimen. I went where all the colours blend into one, Laz. And I came back with these hands… No. I don’t know you, and if I wanted to confide, something tells me this is not the setting.