9
Precious Bane
The heat that drenched the forest haunted the chill of Mr Eiffrich’s study at Camp Bellevue, where Sage and the President were investigating a legal question. Mr Eiffrich wanted to get a handle on Sage’s ingenious idea for himself, before it went further: he had a couple of law degrees in his portfolio (though he’d never practiced). They were using the President’s standalone e-library, and refering to arcane sources Sage had collected through his UCLA contacts: but chiefly they were looking things up in books and weatherbeaten files.
‘You’re not offended that I couldn’t let you guys join the investigators?’ wondered Mr Eiffrich. ‘It’s not that we don’t value your expertise—’
‘Tha’s awrig’,’ Sage assured him, stacking loose document pages neatly as he scanned through them. He found the schoolmaster glances over the spectacles more intimidating than the presidential rank. ‘We reckon we done Lavoisier.’
‘Mmmph.’ The fractured syntax comes and goes, thought Fred. Likewise the bumpkin vowels. I don’t believe Cornish can possibly be his first language: wonder what’s going on there? Accents interested him. ‘Your captain having applied his telescope to the wrong eye, in a noble tradition of Br- er, English insubordination-’
Sage kept his eyes on the print. ‘Telescope? Huh? You lost me.’
The President gave him the schoolmaster look. ‘In matters of United States national security, I thought I was the one giving the orders… But I’m glad it worked out, and thank God Almighty the worst threat was a bad dream.’
Ax had reported, and the scientists had confirmed, that there’d never been a chance of the occult training camp producing another Rufus O’Niall. The ritual murders had lost their aura of mighty dread: there were no Defense Department renegades, no Fat Boy candidate, and welcome doubts were now being cast on the “chimera” corpse. What remained was bad enough. The covert network of high-rolling active supporters, the implication that the most dangerous eco-warriors and his own political enemies might even make common cause—
He laid down his smartboard, and contemplated the middle distance for a minute or so. ‘Sage, d’you remember, last time you were in this room, you gave me a sample of organic cocaine, for investigation?’
‘I remember that interview.’
‘I have a result for you. You were right, it was from the same vinyard. It’s circumstantial, but O’Niall and the hostage-takers were connected that far. I’ve nothing more to tell you yet, but the case is not closed.’
So you didn’t fall, my guitar-man. You were hunted down. But meanwhile Ax had found other ways to leave defeat behind. Sage nodded, not wishing to discuss O’Niall right now.
‘Thanks for letting me know.’
They studied without diversion for a while, Mr Eiffrich unconsciously and naturally using the former Aoxomoxoa as an extension of his reach: search this, copy that for me, fetch me the ’97 box; and finding Sage surprisingly adept.
‘You’ve had some experience with our Intellectual Property law?’
‘We spent eight years getting bludgeoned into the ground by Ms Ciccione’s lawyers, when we quit Maverick.’
‘I remember something about that… How’s the racial situation in England since the Dissolution?’
Ooh, and how did we get from Madonna onto English efnic tensions? But he answered without comment. ‘Horrible. The Celtic nations have us f- er, surrounded. The British Resistance are mad dogs, the rural whites are starving savages. Our Countercultural masses, the drop-out hordes, have to be kept in camps for their own protection while they do our slave labour. The Boat People drive us all nuts, the hippies are barking, the Islamics think they are God’s gift, and east of the river, from Essex up to Ely, has mostly become a no-go area, which is a serious problem that we don’t shout about—’
‘The River would always be the Thames?’
‘Yeah, generally.’
Mr Eiffrich stored away this tidbit of Englandiana, and they continued their search. ‘You rockstars should get on well with the Black population?’
‘No, that didn’t happen, due to historical accident. Back in Dissolution summer most of the MOBO activist scene selected itself out of the famous popstar Think Tank: perceived as too gun-crazy. The government had their own plans for violence, see. Or else, other version, Allie did the paperwork an’ she carn’ abide hip hop. Allie’s a closet feminist you know. Very dangerous woman.’
‘Don’t get too baroque, Sage. I might think you’re winding me up.’
‘Right.’ Sage chewed his thumbjoint, frowning over a stack of withered fanfold documentation for the World Wide Web, University of Hawaii, circa 1994. ‘Mr Eiffrich, I need to phone a friend.’
‘Who’s the friend?’
‘My dad. It’s going to be reasonably secure.’
This would be Joss Pender, of eks.photonics, European software baron: one of the awesome few businessmen to thrive in the Crisis. ‘Okay.’
Sage tapped his wrist, no reaction: and for a moment looked stricken, the cyborg reduced to mere humanity. He slapped his pockets and found a Krypton satellite mobile. Fred Eiffrich listened, with fellow feeling for the man at the other end: overjoyed to be accosted at five am by his vanished, adult child.
‘No one can get on with the Black politicos,’ continued Sage, breaking the connection (voice only, no picture for his old dad, and not a word of affection, ah, I have been there, thought Fred) and looking around for a discarded file. ‘They’re like the Boat People, f-er, gangstas: there’s no continuity, you talk to someone and blam, he’s dead, have to start again. Rob gets on best with ’em.’ Sage grinned, affectionately. ‘Unlike me an’ Ax, he can’t be mistaken for a rival gangsta as he refuses to pick up a gun. Rob’s our token genuine radical: non-violence, minimum wage, free health and education, votes fer women, the whole weird package. He’s a throwback.’
‘Did you get what you wanted from your dad? I only heard the one side.’
‘Yeah. I’ll show you in a minute.’
‘And the Hindus?’
‘They run the place. All the top suits are Hindu, or married into Hindu families. Like the Jews and Hollywood, you know.’
Mr Eiffrich peered over his spectacles. ‘Do you do a lot of public speaking?’
‘Only in times of acute national emergency, sir. Then I go on the telly and talk about rescuing kittens from trees.’ Sage delivered a jolt of blue and a puckish grin. ‘It’s okay, Mr President. He keeps me on a short leash.’
The President took off his eye glasses, used them for a bookmark, (he was examining a tome of IP case reports) and looked around the booklined room. The western light had mellowed, giving life to the eyes of the dark-haired woman in the portrait over the fireplace. ‘It always seems to me to be winter in here,’ he murmured. ‘Not in a bad way. I mean, there’s a feeling of shelter.’ They had been speaking of the English situation in the present tense, and, joking apart, he knew that Ax Preston’s Minister (the word lover seemed an impertinence), understood what was going on.
‘Sage, last time we met, I said you were messing with Ax’s girl, because I hadn’t grasped the situation between you three. I’m personally fond of your boss. I count him a friend, I believe he’s a figure of vital influence, and… I jumped in too fast. I do that, sometimes. I apologise. Are we square?’
Sage shrugged. ‘Of course.’
‘Good, because there’s something I have to ask. If Ax were to accept the Presidency would you go with him, and take up that burden again?’
According to the media-news, US and imported, the problem of the English Presidency was settled. Jordan was taking his brother’s place as Ceremonial Head of State, and the delay was just bureaucracy. Sage and the President knew better. The Second Chamber Government wanted the legend, not the substitute; the brother approved by the most powerful man in the world, not the nobody. They’d dump Jordan on the day of his Cornonation in the Abbey (or whatever circus event they were planning); if they could get Ax.
There was a long silence. With the damn-your-eyes mischief turned off and the blue eyes lowered, that much-photoed, oddly attractive face looked strained and weary, thought Fred. Ax seemed fine, but that Lavoisier adventure had left its marks on the bodhisattva.
‘The trouble with Ax is he doesn’t let the bastards grind him down.’
‘And there’s no attitude more calculated to get those bastards grinding. Yeah, I hear you. It wouldn’t be an easy ride, I know. He’d be no man’s puppet, and I see why his friends and, er, anyone close to him as you are would hesitate—’
‘What did Fiorinda say?’
‘Right now I’m asking you.’
‘Ax left me, once.’
Sage reached for his notepad and looked for another of the boxfiles.
‘But that was my fault. You called me a soldier, the first time we met. I didn’t like it, but it works. Maybe I signed up for the duration, and Ax is in charge of whatever it is we do, what it is I signed for. He’s far from eager for the job, and I won’t influence him: but yes, I would go with him. I’ll never leave him.’
‘That’s all I wanted to know.’ The President recovered his eyeglasses, marked the place with a feather from the jar of owl feathers he kept for this purpose, and said, ‘I believe this works, Sage. I want to share your idea with some of my staff, let them play Devil’s Advocate. A false start is something to avoid at all costs. Will you please, this time, wait until I give the word?’
‘Understood, Mr President.’
Ax and Sage had returned, with Fiorinda alive and well. The English were en fête and in favour again, shaking their kooky cameraderie all over town. Their avatar lab appointments were reinstated, bumping rivals and causing grief for other projects. Fiorinda came to the studio village with the Babes when it was their turn to be dunked (apprehensive as if they were going to have teeth pulled), and went for a walk in the park with Harry and Kathryn. They bought lunchboxes and took them to a nest of boulders among the trees, overlooking Digital Artists’ domain; the city stretching beyond. It was very hot. Harry was still a little shaky, he seemed almost to lean on Kathryn physically, though they didn’t touch. Don’t you dare hurt my friend, thought Fiorinda: but she wasn’t going to interfere.
‘You don’t have vr tanks in Europe?’
‘I don’t think people like the idea,’ said Fiorinda.
‘A continent of claustrophobes. Is that what the drop-out movement is about?’
‘Nah. That’s an instinctive correction for our vitamin D deficiency.’
‘I had a picnic like this with Ax, once,’ sighed Kathryn, nostalgic. ‘By the Potomac. The squirrels came up, panhandling: I’d never seen them so tame.’
‘He’s a tamer of all situations,’ said Harry. ‘He’s immense.’ He opened his lunchbox and stared into it. His hands were trembling. Rocks and trees, sushi rice, a sickening unreality behind which lurked the déjà vu room, still rushing towards him, days or hours away… It kept happening, still with the same conviction of an inescapable future.
‘I’m going to have to get out of virtual movies.’
‘It’s a bruise,’ said Kathryn, tough and kind. ‘Verlaine told me how it works. Snapshot blacked your eye, kiddo, don’t poke at the place or you’ll keep it sore.’
‘I think it’s permanent.’
‘It’ll fade,’ Fiorinda assured him. ‘Snap needs fuel to burn.’
‘Okay,’ said the golden boy. ‘I have no capacity for suffering. Go on, be nasty to me. If girls are being nasty to me, I know I’m alive.’
Fiorinda had chosen the laksa lunch, and regretted it. The pieces of beancurd in her Straits Chinese sauce looked like chunks of sodden doggie-chew.
‘Will Janelle let me come and see her?’
Harry shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, no. Not even Sage. She says she wants to be left the fuck alone. I mean, not rude: she’s just concentrating on getting well. Thank God,’ he added, candidly, ‘she’d finished the qualia coding.’
Janelle Firdous had a viral pneumonia, twenty-first century flu. She wasn’t gravely ill but she was confined to her cottage. Sadly, this meant the English might not see her again. They’d be leaving California after the reprise of the Hollywood Bowl show; with Fiorinda in the line-up this time. The Few were going home to England, unless they’d secretly changed their minds. The Triumvirate’s plans were uncertain.
‘I never really met her,’ said Fiorinda. ‘She was Sage’s friend and I felt… I didn’t want to be pushy. I’ve regretted that, she sounds like an amazing person.’
‘She’s the queen of the geekie-techies. Alone of all her sex.’
‘It’s not a problem being a woman in Hollywood,’ said Kathryn (she spoke as if ‘being a woman’ could never be one of her problems). ‘You can be huge, you can rule, however old you are: as long as you do it in a woman way, equal but different. People like Janelle, who claim to be good as the men at what men do, they still carry the world on their shoulders.’
‘Mm.’
‘She might be well in time for the gig,’ suggested Harry, to lighten the shadow that had fallen on the conversation. ‘I don’t think it’s a bad attack.’
‘Let’s hope,’ said Fiorinda.
The city of the plain floated in its dirty peachbloom caul of dreams, and the picnic continued, a little quieted and saddened by the thought of parting.
Rob had sold the studio on his idea for getting the Preston family band on stage at the Hollywood Bowl. It wouldn’t be the first simultaneous broadcast since the end of the data quarantine, but it would be a global first in the use of bi-location tech: a great stunt, if it worked. Jordan wanted to do it. Ax was fine about the fait accompli, but he saw no need to talk to his brother. He thought he could wing it through a Chosen Few standards set, after all these years. Rob bided his time until the Lavoisier excitement had calmed down a little, then he took Ax out on the town, just the two of them.
They went to a Jamaican restaurant in Leimart Park, they graced a couple of jazz clubs, and settled in a quiet bar. It had been a good evening: Ax with that gleam in his eye, the alert attention for every single thing, that had always made hanging out with the guy a privilege. Now Rob braced himself. The juice had been turned off, he was sitting with a wary, hard-eyed stone wall. He told himself this was years ago. He was the mentor: Ax Preston was the talented guitarist from the sticks, with that ruthless streak Rob was guilty of admiring.
‘You know Jordan wants to talk, don’t you.’
‘He wants my approval, yeah. Fuck that, Rob. If he’s idiot enough to let the Second Chamber keep him for a pet, let him do it on his own.’
‘That’s not what he wants to say.’
A ball-crushing look from Mr Preston. ‘I don’t see the problem.’ Ax chugged his beer. ‘Go ahead, take over, be the captain of the Reich, be the President of England. You don’t need Jordan’s support. Why do you never follow through, Rob? You start something, then you hang back.’
‘I am following through. That’s what I’m doing tonight. I’m asking you to go on running the firm, because you’re the man, and we need you.’
Ax stared at him: like a trapped animal.
‘They tried to burn her.’
Sage was a warm, breathing rock: Fiorinda beside him, a book slipped from her lax hand, fallen asleep as she waited up. Ax sat on the end of the bed in the light of one soft lamp, rolling an unlit cigarette between his fingers. A lioness with a shorn mane, how big the orbits of her eyes looked without the mass of hair. How stern, older than old, the set of her young mouth.
There are marks she’ll always carry, my baby.
He took his cigarette to the balcony: where he might get away with breaking Californian law for once. Security lights and darkness, the sound of the ocean, the feeling of strangeness that he loved. We should take the Rugrat and go, he thought. No direction home. I would never tire of that life. I want to consecrate myself to pleasure. Fiorinda came to join him, barefoot: a shawl around her shoulder
s over the glimmer of her nightdress.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi, sweetheart.’
‘How was it?’
‘The restaurant was very good, music so-so. I don’t really get on with jazz.’
‘Ax-’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Sorry.’ She laid her arms on the rail and looked into the dark.
‘Fiorinda…’ He drew on the cigarette, ‘Maybe I’m not supposed to ask, but are you okay to go up against the candidate? I’m scared for you.’
Touché.
‘I can do it. I just don’t want to talk about it.’
They smiled at each other, ah, we’ve been here before. When Ax had finished his cigarette they went inside and found Sage was sitting up. ‘Don’t leave me alone,’ he cried. ‘I hate waking up and you’re not there.’ He was having difficulty sleeping, most unusual for Sage; it made him fretful.
‘We were only on the balcony.’
They got into bed, and the three of them made love together. Fiorinda nuzzled into Ax’s flank, Sage wrapped around her back, drifting in the afterglow. ‘Sage? What did you do to Stu Meredith, when you were here before?’
‘I’d rather not go into that.’
‘You beat him up, didn’t you?’ said Ax. When male persons remember this blond so vividly, there’s usually just the one reason.
‘Yes.’
‘Was it justified?’
‘Not fucking remotely. I was rat-arsed. Can we go to sleep?’
When the character avatars were locked down there was another traditional party, after working hours in Inventory C. A rough cut screening of the movie should have featured, but everything was behind schedule. Harry, mortified, vowed he’d have something ready for them to see before they left California, but the rockstars weren’t fussed. If you have any kind of brush with tinseltown there comes a point where you start dreaming that you’ll be the idol of billions. And then there comes another point, when you realise that was a ridiculous idea.
‘Digital Artists will have us on file,’ remarked Chip to Verlaine as they strolled around, chucking back the champagne and visiting their favourite custom-object areas. The sci-fi horror section; a preposterous oak tree. ‘If they chop us up small enough they can legally recycle the bits. Are you creeped by that?’
Midnight Lamp Page 37