Midnight Lamp

by Gwyneth Jones

  It was a long time since they’d played a make-do for a big crowd, but they’d put this sort of patchwork thing together so often in their day, they were fine. When he was sure it was good, and that the crowd was taking off, Ax went to join the legendary Stu Meredith, presiding over the onstage sound.

  Stu, an ancient monument with a grey pigtail, ropy arms laden with turquoise and silver, who’d worked with all the gods you could name, was very kindly: greeting Ax like an old friend, though as far as Ax could recall they’d never met. The big band numbers ended. Sage was duetting with Rob, singing Bob Marley, great voices and the best songs: a surefire combination.

  If it works, don’t get bored with it, they’d learned that lesson.

  ‘You know,’ remarked the grizzled engineer, ‘I sure never figured Aoxomoxoa for one of the survivors.’

  ‘Sage?’ said Ax, absently, ‘Yeah, he should be dead many times over.’

  ‘I’m not surprised he came out the other side of the smack and the booze. Whatever you rockstars have, the docs oughter bottle it and vaccinate kids at birth. You’re all fuckin’ survivors in that sense, you can count the casualties on one hand. Jim Morrison, Janis, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt, I s’pose you could add Elvis, and Garcia. I meant, survival as a human being. When he was here last he was bouncing off the walls. His band fuckin’ worshiped him, but nobody else could stand the guy, even if we knew he was a genius. Even the ladies, and they loved his dick, couldn’t take much; aside from Janelle. He was a spoilt fuckin’ disaster, heading for bedbug superstar crazyland.’ Stu handed a spliff, with a fatherly smile of approbation. ‘Someone must’ve turned him right around.’

  It wasn’t me, thought Ax. I think it was a certain red-headed babe.

  Yet something rose in him, something he badly needed tonight. He’d always wondered why Sage loved him. He was sitting a few metres from the stage, back to the action, listening to his earbead and watching a screen, and it crossed his mind that they could be thousands of miles away from the actual musicians. The sound at a gig like this had been digitised, managed, subjected to fractional distillation, culverted like a river in a pipe, rebuilt, and delivered back to the performers brand new, for decades… This made him think of what Sage was going to try and do, and he felt a distant thrill, a distant memory of the time when he had been excited by futuristic tech. When he’d thought it worth any sacrifice to ensure that the marvels continued, and didn’t go down into the dark.

  High-tech is magic that works.

  And the future is what happens while your life gets in the way.

  ‘D’you ever worry that we’ll be out of a job, Stu? The way the technology is heading, who’s going to need an old-fashioned guitarist or a sound engineer-?’

  Then he was afraid he’d been tactless, talking to a veteran like that.

  ‘I’ve worried about many things, over the last eight, ten years,’ said Stu, accepting the good grass again. ‘You hear about what happened to Europe, you see it starting here. You see your kids get used to doing without things you took for granted. Fuck, my kids don’t even notice there’s no such thing as just taking a plane to another city anymore. They have no sense of loss. And there’s worse things. It wakes you up in the middle of the night.’

  He took a couple of steady draws, mashed the roach between his fingers and replaced it in his smokes tin.

  ‘But someone turned me around. I believe we can beat this Crisis, and come out with something different but better. No, I don’t worry I’ll be out of a job. I’ll work for the love of it, the way I always did… I was at the Islamic Centre in East LA,’ he added, ‘I heard you speak. I’d never been in a mosque before.’ He held out his large, gnarled hand, laden with rings. ‘It’s been an honour to meet you, Mr Preston, and a privilege to talk with you. It’s meant a great deal to me.’

  Ax shook Stu Meredith’s hand, wondering what he had said at the Islamic Centre: just now he couldn’t remember a word. There’d been a time when he had worked, constantly, to elicit this response in every person he met; and he had come to hate that in himself. But it isn’t what you do. It’s what you are to people, and you just walk along behind it, like a man with a sandwich board.

  Now Sage was down the front, singing “The Ballad Of The Big Tattoo”, a humorous number he’d done live for many years, with different idiotic verses every time, finally released on Headonastic. He’d shed his suit jacket: he was a blond Freddie Mercury in white singlet and white trousers, shoulders and arms gleaming in the stage lights, blue eyes sparkling. He tossed his radio mic, which vanished because of course it was only virtual, and went into some fuck-you gymnastic clowning, to the delight of the mosh (or posh Hollywood Bowl equivalent). Ax had such memories, his eyes dazzled—

  Fiorinda, Fiorinda, Aoxomoxoa’s back, but where are you?

  ‘I think you’re on, son—’

  He joined the matrix of light and darkness, into the hands of a competent stage crew: took the Les Paul and looked out. Strange to see them piling up in raked rows in the out-of-doors, you don’t get that in England. But it could be anywhere… Oh shit, Sage forgot to get Laz to take off the hex. He had a premonition of doom, but now he must play.

  Thoughts of her, rising through the music.

  The day I bought her those red cowboy boots. It was September, the leaves were turning on the horse chestnut trees. I had known her for two months, we had slept together four or five times. Oh, remember the quality of those early days. We were walking along the Kings’ Road together, and stopped to look into a shop window, I saw her drooling, ragamuffin punk diva, for the red boots, so I took her in there and bought them. So then she bought me the beaded belt, instantly: no idea how to do it gracefully, matching my price to the cent, because she had to restore the balance. I knew she had no money, and I felt terrible.

  But the boots had worked out. Fiorinda had loved those boots to death, and Ax had watched them become treasured with a feeling of profound relief. Years later, when that edgy little babe had become the woman he would love forever, he would still look at them and thought whew, that was a close one…

  just to do it all again—

  Harry was in the Garden seats, with the studio execs party. A pawn in his boss’s entourage, as the Few would have it, and he felt wronged by the accusation. If things had been different, if Fiorinda had been up on that stage, he’d have been with Kathryn and her pals: but she wasn’t here tonight and he could understand why. He didn’t know why he was here himself; or maybe he did. Some deep primordial stupidity in him was still impressed he’d been able to do this, to reach out and make a dream come true, what awesome power is that? ‘That guy was one of the greatest living guitarists,’ intoned his neighbour, a direct competitor if Harry had any rivals, ‘It’s a fucking crime he got mixed up in politics, and ended up selling out, doing this kind of variety show.’

  ‘I have all his records,’ Harry replied, riveted by the tiger and the wolf in their electric pas des deux. He knew for a fact this colleague had never heard of Ax Preston before Harry’s project started the movement. The night air was cool, and he wished he was at El Pabellón, and nothing had gone wrong. ‘I bought the teeshirt.’

  He was in awe of their professionalism, knowing the furious reality of their mood. He did not understand why they were doing this gig, but he was in awe. Did they know the truth? When Harry let himself think about the truth, fear and dread threatened to overwhelm him. He kept going through the motions, but at any moment he thought he might start start screaming and never stop—

  It was eleven thirty when they took a break before the finale. Sage’s immix had so far been lo-key, no different from a lightshow: except that these fx would leave no trace on photographic film or any conventional recording media. In the break, the amphitheatre became a nest of coloured lightnings. Sage was out there alone, doodling on the videographics desks, that the English called visionboards: setting something up, bantering with the front rows. Apparitions flickered over the hillsides and played
through the crowd. You might feel a hand touch you, or find an impish face looking over your shoulder; hear the brush of wings, see animals running by: all of it really happening only in your brain. Whatever that meant. Anticipation climbed, some of it mediated by those little immix tweaks. The brain gets very alert in response to out of context perceptions; it’s thinking to itself (so to speak) what the fuck’s going on. There was also the thrill of the cutting edge. The people knew they were getting an unprecedented show, devised by the first person to use direct cortical stimuli for entertainment. They’d read it in their programme notes.

  Cherry and Dora, Chip and Verlaine, gripped hands at the back of the stage.

  ‘You realise we’re her occult group?’ whispered Chip.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ hissed Cherry, furiously. ‘This is science.’

  ‘There’s no difference any more, Chez. Honestly, no fucking lie, magic came in from the cold, finally, last summer. It’s real and it’s staying real.’

  ‘Fuck off, shut up and c’mon, we’re on.’

  There will be no encores, announced Sage. This is it. And I wonder what it can be? A Beatles medley? Laughter. Opening chords, and a wave of laughter. Oh, he has them in his hands, like always. But don’t touch him, he’s a real live wire-

  Relax!

  On Unmasked, their collection of golden oldies, the Heads perversely elected to treat the notorious Frankie Goes To Hollywood track as a nursery rhyme. So this was what the Few enacted, to that joyous childish beat. A kids’ version, a Disneyland version, a little child on tiptoe, dazzle-smiled at a wonder show (can you imagine sex like that?), and it segued into the immix finale which took possession of the Hollywood Bowl: something wicked and innocent, a puckish spirit, doing sneakily impossible things, so that the audience saw the dancers on stage dancing into the air, and they went marching around up there, candy-coloured costumes repeating in mirror cascades, bright-eyed faces springing into focus and flying away again; bands of dancers arm in arm, high-kicking, treading hamster wheel circuits on the darkness, spinning into spirals, a Busby Berkeley phantasmagoria, a mocking, teasing, thrilling compliment to tinsel-town.

  The Los Angelenos loved it. They were on their feet, en masse, clapping and prancing, chanting the lyrics, grinning in delight. When the wheels ran down and the children all came home, and there was no one left on the stage but the maestro, they stayed on their feet yelling and stomping, until he’d put away the last of the coloured toys, to the fading notes of a nursery rhyme, on solo guitar.

  Ax came out of the shadows. ‘This is for Fiorinda,’ he said quietly, leaning to the old fashioned upright mic that had been set up, under cover of the Immix. None of her music had been played all night. Silence fell. Ax played, and the two men sang, yearning close together. No fireworks, no sexy electric frisson between the guitar man and the crowd-teaser this time.

  Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone

  Pretend that we’re together, and alone—

  The sound of their voices, Ax’s lighter tone blending with Sage’s soft and deep, died away. The stage was perfectly dark now, except for their single spot. Every light in the canyon was quenched, and Fiorinda’s voice came from very far away, but quickly growing clear and strong.

  Love is like water,

  it runs downhill

  It takes the line

  of least resistance—

  The Angelenos held their breath, anticipation ramped til their ears rang. Sage stepped back behind the desks, and donned an eyewrap. ‘That means he’s doing this live,’ whispered an Immix vet in the cheaper seats, wisely, to her novice friend. ‘He’s reading what’s happening to the code when it hits us, and feeding the results back into it. I didn’t know you could do that in an open space.’

  ‘Sssh!’ muttered the neighbour—

  Ax moved into the solo that he’d written for ‘Love Is Like Water’ on Yellow Girl. He was aware of the Few behind him in the shadows, and Sage beside him, incandescent with nervous energy. He was so afraid he was going to lose both of them, he wanted to yell STOP THIS, but the words fell and broke on the boards. All he could do was play, fear like the taste of metal in his mouth, she was my country, I lived in her, I’m going to lose both of them, right here and now, because Sage is trying to cut and paste the real world as if it’s the software of a video game, as if reality can be chopped about like graphics code, but there’s only one way he can do it, and he’ll never come back this time.

  But he must play, and feel the others with him—

  Something appeared in the sky above the canyon. It seemed like a leaf-shaped split in the sky, then it was a flame, a shooting star, flying towards them from high up in the darkness, spinning as it flew. ‘Ah!’ breathed Dilip, falling to his knees, ‘Ah, Shiva Natraj!’ Allie Marlowe pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, but she could not control what she saw, nothing would blot out the letters, Yod-Hé-Vau-Hé, damn you Sage, don’t you do this to me! She realised in horror that she was resisting the immix that would bring Fiorinda home, and let the name of God fill her mind, so be it, ה ו ת י whatever image works.

  Love is like fire,

  it needs fuel to burn

  There’s no love

  without a lover

  I can do this, thought Sage, amazed, not well, (the code flowed into his eyes and out of his fingers, the hand/eye physicality an essential adjuvant), nothing like as slick as in nature, but I can see, wow, have to be fast, what needs to be done and get there, by any means necessary, but my God! He genuinely had not understood, had barely thought about what he would have to be doing to get her back: only seen the result he needed and the ways to reach there, oh, fuck! You and I, Janelle Firdous, movie maker, because you lead me here, are the first two people to decipher information space. Jan, where are you, you should be here!

  Look!

  Look! What we can see!

  And nothing more, because at this point Sage lost it, completely. He couldn’t think, he had become a white-hot conduit for what was happening. The clouds parted and down she came, flying, wearing the image that Sage’s code had clothed her in, a summoning from an antique fantasy game, and landed tiptoe, in front of Ax, a slender opalescent goddess, power gleaming in the swell of her naked breasts, grey eyes astonished. Sage left the desk, they fell at her feet, they held her hands, warm and living, for a moment she was there, not a goddess, not a ghost, Fiorinda standing on the stage clutching their hands, opening her lips to speak, the penumbra of another place around her, and something stands out, what the fuck is that…?

  Sage cried, ah, shit, no, no, no, please—

  She was gone.

  Ax came out of a monstrous, wracking, dry orgasm to find himself on his knees on the stage at the Hollywood Bowl, clutching Sage’s hands, in the blank of his mind something saying, I did not fail, in England. I did well.

  ‘There was something in the way,’ whispered Sage, his face taking shape from primordial nothingness, white and shadowed, drained and haggard as if he’d run a marathon (where have I been?, wondered Ax: where was I just now?).

  ‘I nearly had her, Ax, but there was something in the way.’

  He wiped his eyes.

  ‘But I know. I know.’

  7

  Desperados

  At seven am the morning after the concert, the Few had gathered in the dry whirlpool. Doug and the security crew were with them: Sage and Ax had been out in the courtyard to watch the morning sky, and had brought the guards indoors. They could afford to leave the gatehouse empty, they surely had plenty other professional minders, out there in the dunes. The smouldering herbs in the Aztec bowl were a different mix: a sharp, arousing acrid scent, not that they needed anything to wake them up. They were still in the penumbra, the aftershock of last night. The spa was intensely blue, the echoes supernatural; every friend’s face supercharged with meaning.

  If the Few were glowing, the leaders of the pack were incandescent. They sat with her empty place between th
em, poised on the edge of flight, radiating the insane degree of energy and will that had once ruled the English nation: only more so. Ax had his timber wolf look: steely power; smiling alertness. Sage was like a beautiful gargoyle, a grin he couldn’t control, wide-open eyes on fire.

  ‘Now we have to go to this meeting, and ideally we won’t be coming back… Ah, sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it came out.’

  They were to meet the secret Committee, at the Digital Artists village this time. They meant to go after Fiorinda straight from there, because they felt time was running out fast. They did not know where she was yet, but no problem, they knew where to get the information. They were frightening their friends—

  ‘We won’t be coming back because we’ll be leaving LA directly,’ Ax clarified. ‘So this is the last briefing-’

  ‘What if the fuckers pin you down and throw you in stir?’ asked Rob.

  ‘Why should they?’ reasoned Ax.

  ‘They won’t,’ said Sage, with really alarming assurance.

  Because they’ll spot that you’re off your heads, thought Rob: but it wouldn’t help, so he didn’t say it. Truth was, he didn’t want to hold them back, if he had known a way to try. They were convincing him, just like long ago.

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Dora, ‘Don’t go in there and shoot your way out, Sage.’

  Sage heard Fiorinda’s voice, just her sweet, womanly and exasperated tone.

  ‘I won’t, Dor. I may not sound like it, but I’m in control. Truly. But we’re leaving you, so before I go I want to teach you all to die.’

  The Few accepted that they weren’t coming on the rescue expedition. Doug and his men were not so happy, but they were staying behind too.

  Doug bristled. ‘No one’s gonna die, Sage. This place is very defensible. If a situation develops, we’ll handle it an’ scream for the cops.’