Midnight Lamp

by Gwyneth Jones

  ‘Madeleine,’ he said, ‘This is how it feels to be Ax Preston, with the devil juice turned off. When you do the same things, because you can’t bear to quit, but you no longer believe you are destiny’s child.’

  Insh’allah.

  Around six he reached the autodump. Nothing had changed. He broke out welcome water supplies, stripped Madeleine, looked her over for dents and scratches, checked her feet, rubbed her down and got her travelling halter on (to her bared-teeth resentment). He uncovered the trailer, backed the Rugrat out and hooked them up: and sat on the tailgate, looking at the wide pale sky, the beautiful colours of the desert. The bay mare nudged his elbow, bumping her big shapely dark head against his shoulder. ‘You’re a beauty,’ he said. ‘You’re a handful, but you are a fine creature.’

  Alas, how easy it is to fall in love.

  He settled her in the box and fastened up. He was about to get into the car (one more gaze, farewell to the crucible) when he heard a sound he recognised all too well, and turned to look down the barrel of a shotgun, at the other end an old bloke in battered overalls with an amazing white beard: who had presumably emerged from the lopsided caravan.

  ‘What’s in the trailer?’

  ‘Werewolves,’ said Ax.

  ‘Uhuh. Git them off my land.’

  ‘Right away.’

  Behind the wheel, about to go and meet his darlings, struggling with reaction after his conferences, he thought sadly that soon he was going to have to say goodbye to the Toyota Rugrat. You saved our lives, you fat little ride, and I still don’t know all you can do. Do you have a bat out of hell mode, Rat? Nah, Madeleine wouldn’t enjoy that. Maybe there’ll be another time.

  Sage and Fiorinda headed north, into badlands. On horseback, and ignorant of the terrain, they had to stick to the marked trails; which made them uneasy, and very thankful that Ax had the Rat. He might need to get out of trouble fast, they only had to stay out of the way. They saw no signs of an FBI Shock and Awe raid. All seemed quiet. Nothing moved except jackrabbits, the little birds in the sagebrush and the occasional tau cross of some big bird of prey above. There were many springs, but the water generally smelled like paintstripper, so they weren’t in danger of poisoning themselves. They camped when darkness fell, dined on the remains of Fiorinda’s Bombay Mix, and a packet of battered ginger biscuits, and talked about effective magic. Fiorinda conceded that the applied science might be neutral. It’s unravelling bits of the world, but okay, world always ravelling and unravelling itself. But she maintained that magical thinking was the road to hell, and a gift to the right-wing extremists, who were already having a great time in this Crisis. Sage conceded she could be right.

  Inevitably, they were scared. But Ax had a mystical talent for handling fucked up confrontations, which they felt they did not share. The presence of either of them on his white flag mission would just have been inflammatory.

  As soon as it was light they headed out of the red hills and down into the valley, following the line of highway 168. They hoped that the absence of traffic was just normal for these days, but as they approached Big Pine they saw Road Closed signs and State Police barricades ahead. Sage left Fiorinda with Paintbrush and the gear, in a juniper-smelling wilderness of rocks and grasshoppers, and rode down to the little two-street resort; blighted by the Downturn and fuel starvation, suffering on its way to join Lavoisier. He thought if he kept his hat on he’d pass for normal: there were enough tall, skinny weatherbeaten blonds around. No sign of Ax. He learned that the trails on the east side of the valley were closed, and the 395 had roadblocks back to Independence. This was looking bad, but at the visitor’s center, the default meeting place, there was a coded voicemail message on the tourists’ bulletin board. He unlocked it with the Triumvirate password, and a poor approximation of the late Stephen Hawking delivered good news. The wording was circumspect but it told him the raid had been cancelled, the surviving terrorists were leaving under an amnesty, and the Lavoisier Affair was to be thoroughly investigated.

  Looks like he did it.

  Ax’s message had said, stay where you are: I’ll come and find you. This told them they had to lie low for a while longer. Sage bought supplies, paying cash, and they crossed over to the Sierra side. By nightfall they’d hired a stone-built hut, eight thousand feet up in the John Muir wilderness, and got the horses accommodated further down. There was a Ranger trail to their cabin, but it had a gate at the foot that would be closed when the Ranger had delivered them to their romantic hideaway. They were out of sight, and couldn’t easily be taken by surprise. But they weren’t expecting trouble.

  They spent the evening in bed, playing with such of the cable tv as came free with the rent, and fell in love with a women’s bowling championship in Arizona. Their affection was unrequited. After they’d declined to buy a Gypsy Charm Bracelet, a dozen red roses fashioned lifesize in porcelain, and a velvet-feel guest room towel set endorsed by Puusi Meera, they were thrown off.

  Early in the morning Sage walked down to the Ranger station, to use the payphone and see if there was another message. The cabin had running water, but the bathroom smelled of mould, and chemical-toilet chemicals. Fiorinda decided to wash and brush her teeth outdoors: took the dishpan from the kitchenette, and dipped water from North Fork Creek. How quickly the primitive necessities return, and how sweet they are. Icy water, chill morning air, the scents of the forest. A brown squirrel with a yellow throat sat on a boulder and dismembered a large pine cone.

  One day soon it won’t be from choice that we live this way, she thought, and there won’t be any cable tv, either…

  The great trees made a russet shade, pierced by rays of morning sun, the green water margin was full of flowers: tiger lilies, columbines, blue aconite. And before this the painted desert, yesterday the juniper wilderness. Oh, California, you are an amazing land. The squirrel bounced up the side of a tree, Fiorinda laughed. She saw a big man’s shadow, coming along the path. Not Sage: too bulky, not tall enough. He stepped into sunlight. It was Moloch, from Lavoisier.

  ‘Oh, bugger,’ muttered Fiorinda. She had totally forgotten about Moloch.

  ‘Good morning Fiorinda.’

  He was disguised as a hiking tourist, even had a map wallet, the clown. He studied her in triumph; and with a fearful, unwilling sexual interest. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to hurt you. Shall we go into the cabin?’

  ‘No.’ She sat on the squirrel’s boulder. ‘We can talk here. How did you part with Lavoisier? Did they realise you were an enemy agent? But you don’t really work for the FBI do you, Mr Moloch? You’re somebody else.’

  ‘I found you guys very easily, you know. The Feds could do the same, and you don’t want that. Or those outlaws: they were were pissed off as hell.’

  ‘You were never in Yorkshire.’

  ‘Thanks for not busting me,’ he said. ‘I wondered about that.’

  I had another agenda, she thought: and smiled, wondering what to do next. Another shadow was flitting through the trees, and this time it was Sage. He came into the clearing quietly.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Look, we have a visitor.’

  ‘I see him. Is this the bloke you reckoned works for the CIA?’

  ‘I don’t know who he works for,’ said Fiorinda, depressed. ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘What are you going to do with him?’

  ‘I’m thinking.’

  Moloch grew impatient of this exchange. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I’m not here to waste time. Fiorinda, you’re coming with me. You’ll be well treated, your head isn’t going to be in a jar. You’ll be better off than you were in the ghost town, or than if the Committee gets its hands on you. Are you going to make it easy, that’s the only question.’

  Sage was leaning against a tree: an idle stance, no threat.

  ‘You know what really annoys me?,’ said Fiorinda. ‘You know what fucking annoys me? Nobody has tried to hire me. Nobody has chatted me up, taken me to lunch in a fancy resta
urant, offered me Ferraris, said, Fiorinda, you’re very talented, we could do business… Oh, no. When you’re headhunting me, you come with a meat chopper. Nobody ever treated Werner Von Braun like this. I’m not saying I’d have been interested, but it would have been nice.’

  ‘I can’t help it that you’re a person,’ said Moloch.

  They heard a jeep coming up the Ranger trail. Fiorinda had the faint hope it might be the Ranger, come to offer them firewood or tell them about a campground talk on owls; and defuse the situation. But no, the fuck-up continued. The jeep was dark-windowed and unmarked, the goons who got out were disguised like Moloch, but packed an air of professional violence.

  Moloch shucked off his backpack. He grabbed the birdboned young woman, pushed her against a tree, and ran his hands expertly over her body. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, Fiorinda.’ He held her jammed against the trunk with the weight of his shoulder and thigh, while the goons stopped Sage from intervening. They didn’t find this an easy job, but there were four of them, and though Sage was fit and strong as he would ever be, he wasn’t Aoxomoxoa anymore. Those days were gone, and, fatally, he was unarmed. It hadn’t occurred to him to take a firearm along to the tourist centre payphone.

  ‘Sage!’ screamed Fiorinda. ‘Don’t—! Don’t get yourself killed!’

  They weren’t aiming to kill. Soon the fight was over and Sage had lost. They dragged him to a sitting position at the foot of another tree, blood streaming from his nose. One man stood over him with a gun to his head, while the other three changed places with their boss. Moloch opened his pack and took out equipment that he laid on the ground, carefully in order: like a Hollywood serial killer arranging the props of his grisly fantasy. Ankle-cuffs, a roll of silvery tape, a black box, and attached to it by cable a grey rubbery skull cap with a chinstrap; lumps on its surface. A hypodermic in a case, a straitjacket—

  ‘I shouldn’t have screamed,’ she said, ‘I made them worse, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have jumped them,’ admitted Sage, trying to tip his ringing head back, and swallowing blood. ‘Not thinking straight. Uh, okay, start again. Listen, whatsyername, Moloch, you don’t know what you’re—’

  ‘She won’t do anything now we have you at gunpoint. Will you, Fiorinda?’

  ‘You don’t get it.’

  ‘No, Fiorinda. You don’t get it. You’re going to tell me you have no potential, but I don’t believe it. I know those people had genuine expertise wrapped up in their anti-establishment rhetoric.’ Moloch selected the rubbery cap. His route map face was creased with fearful satisfaction. ‘Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you if you take this quietly. You have to come with us, and what happens after that will be…will be negotiated.’

  ‘Let me go,’ said Fiorinda.

  The men let her go. The goon standing over Sage put his gun in its holster, and went to join his fellows. Fiorinda crossed the clearing, and stood looking at Moloch, the morning sun a scarlet aureole around her newly-stubbled head. ‘I know who you are,’ she said. ‘You’re that bloke in “Alien” who turns out to be an android. It’s your job to see that the evil horrible monster gets delivered to the company, so they can develop it. Well? Are you an android? Shall I tear your head off to find out?’

  Moloch stared, the skullcap dangling from his hand.

  Sage laughed and shook a gout of blood from his nose.

  ‘Go, Fiorinda!’

  ‘Sage? What shall I do now?’

  ‘Tear the fucker’s head off.’

  ‘N-no. I don’t think I’ll do that.’

  ‘Tear it off and stick it back on again. Give him a fairground ride.’

  ‘Nah. Moloch, watch this.’ She went to the mossy boulder, and pressed her fist against it. Her hand drove into the stone, and her arm halfway to the elbow. There was an intense pungency in the air, burning rock, melting granite. Fiorinda withdrew her fist, and the boulder was the way it had been before. ‘Was that an illusion?’ she asked, ‘Or was it real? Did I fuck with the material world, or with your mental perception? I will tell you a koan. There’s no difference, not where I am. Now you can go. Your goons won’t remember much, and they didn’t see me do that trick. You’ll tell your mates at I-Systems, or wherever it is you come from, that Fiorinda is worthless to them, and you won’t tell anyone what happened here. Not until the day you die. Do you get it now?’

  Moloch said, carefully, ‘I get it.’

  ‘Take your stuff and go.’

  He shoved his kit into the backpack, he left with his goons. They listened to the jeep driving away: and to the cheery voices of a group of early hikers, passing on the trail. ‘That was not easy,’ said Fiorinda. She nursed her forehead between her hands. ‘I was careful, I solved it, no damage, but now my brain feels melted and everything is déjà. I wonder how often I’ll have to do that, in my life.’

  ‘Maybe not too often.’

  She nodded, resignedly, and knelt beside him. ‘How’s your nose?’

  ‘Broken,’ said the voice of experience. ‘Ah well, I still have both my ears.’

  Fiorinda wiped his face with the sleeve of her shirt. ‘This just goes to show, Ax should never leave us, we fuck up instantly, it’s uncanny how stupid we are. I knew that bloke was unfinished business and I just forgot. I wonder who he’s working for.’

  ‘Better not to ask, my sweetheart.’

  It’s better not to ask. You’ll never get to the bottom of it, whatever it is; and you never know who you might need to work with.

  ‘Did you get through?’

  ‘No messages. I’ll try again later.’

  ‘Shit. And I probably only convinced him to stick around, and wait for the best chance to shoot me with a poison dart.’

  They were still sitting against that tree, with the music of the North Fork rushing beside them, the towering grandeur of the Palisade massif above, when a party on horseback arrived. ‘Good morning,’ said Stu Meredith, at the head of the posse, in some amazement. ‘Ax told me you were over here, and we should fetch you back to Bighorn. What’s been going on?’

  ‘You’re a little late,’ complained Sage.

  Fiorinda stood up: Stu got down, and held out his hand. ‘Well, you must be Fiorinda. I’m very pleased to meet you, very pleased indeed. Has this daddy-long-legs fellow been bothering you? I’d offer to give him some lessons in how to treat a lady, but it looks like you have that under control. You pack a punch.’

  ‘We had to deal with some bad guys, leftovers. Sage got into a bit of a fight.’

  ‘Mm. He likes to do that, I recall.’

  The ranch hands dismounted, Sage was given First Aid. A pot of coffee was brewed, and breakfast shared: Stu, his posse and the English couple sitting together on the mossy boulders by the creek ‘We had a call from Ax,’ said Stu. ‘He told us you two were in Big Pine, or on your way there, and I should find you and bring you back. He’ll meet us at the ranch, he expects to be free by evening. I understand he’s discussing your desert trip, Sage.’

  ‘Is he in any difficulty over that?’ asked Sage, cautiously.

  ‘I don’t believe so.’ The ranch hands glanced at each other, grinning slightly. They felt this was a great story, a worthy addition to their rockstar antics repertoire. ‘It’s been quiet, since you left, on our side of the Valley.’

  The Bighorn ranch was very quiet, late that night. The Noise Hotel was still between bookings, the younger generation had gone out to a hell-raising dive in Lone Pine (a much hipper burg, not to be confused with Big Pine). Sage and Ax sat with their hosts on the back porch, looking out on stableyards and corrals; and the dim black mass of the mountains, against the starry sky. Ludmilla and Stu were drinking bourbon, Ax and Sage preferred tequila, cool but not frosty. A long silence had settled, because Fiorinda had decided to go to bed, and for Stu and Ludmilla she had left an unearthly, dazzling space in the company.

  They would get over it. They’d often shared their daily life with the real megastars. You talk and laugh and
sit down to eat with the idol of billions, a face and voice that have been so multiplied; and soon it doesn’t bother you. You forget the extraordinary and relate to the person, just as you forget the bizarre miracles that are going on far inside the hardware, and use the machine. But just now, tonight, it was as if a goddess had risen and walked away from them.

  Sage’s nose had been taped. He was lying in a long chair, mouth breathing, occasionally touching the dressing, tenderly.

  ‘Your girlfriend’s an extraordinary young woman, Ax,’ said Ludmilla at last.

  ‘Yeah. Luckily for me, I have Sage to help me keep her in line.’

  The seniors nodded politely. They hadn’t quite got the hang of the threesome.

  Fiorinda walked down past the bunkhouse to where the Rugrat was parked; and leaned on the rail of an empty corral. She liked to see the Rugrat there, but she was homesick for the desert; for the burning world. Memories and impressions rose, and drifted on the night breeze. What the bear had said, and the challenge ahead of her. But live for the moment. Right here, right now, all okay.

  A gleam of movement caught her eye, down at her feet. She crouched, very quietly, and saw a small animal with pale brown fur and black, shining dewdrop eyes. It hopped towards her, unafraid, and stood on its hind legs. For a moment Fiorinda and the kangeroo rat, the desert creature than needs no water, looked at each other: a pure encounter with the living world. Then it whisked away, and vanished into shadow.