“Oh yeah; she keeps four or five on a little shelf.” Reb sits beside Charlie on the sofa and addresses him, while staring resolutely forward and avoiding eye contact.
“What do you think of me?” It’s not the kind of question Reb would normally frame in her mind, let alone vocalise. It has a paralysing effect; the minute the words are out of her mouth she wants to run and throw herself in the lake, but her legs won’t work. Whatever temporal abilities she may possess are useless when the stakes are this high; it’s like trying to predict her own death. Charlie answers carefully.
“You’re an honest woman, a true friend and a demanding but rewarding boss.”
“Which anyone can read on my C.V., but what do you think?”
“If you’ve a fault, it’s taking yourself a wee bit too seriously; you’re all about control and mostly that’s fine, but everybody has to let go once in a while. On the rare occasion anything spooks you, you’ll pull the shutters down; you’re doing it now.” He was right; she could feel her business face coming on and the whirr of her mind searching for controllable things to run off and sort out. She took criticism incredibly personally, which was one of the reasons she was the best. She couldn’t be that way this time; she had to take it. She… cared what he thought of her.
“Anything else?” There is a pause.
“Cards on the table Reb; I would crawl naked over broken glass to see you hitch up a stocking again.” Oh my God she’d forgotten all about that! Their first formal company event a couple of years back; Charlie had become Head Foreman, covering five outlets in Camp de Kamp, and Reb was newly appointed Assistant Manager across three of them. The company held annual black tie awards to honour their rising stars and Reb had received the impression from somewhere that archaic underwear was sophisticated, the result being she spent the entire bloody evening yanking nylon up her thighs with increasing annoyance. She’d honestly not understood why Charlie had been so odd that night, like he couldn’t get his words out, but it made sense now; her neglected libido yelled out loud and did a little dance of joy, but outwardly she remained aloof.
“I see; and what would you do for both?” He takes her chin in his hand and turns her face toward his.
“Anything.”
Outside a Newspaper Office
Two months into the Roaring Forties
Emmaretta Sunbury hesitated as she reached for the small black Bakelite button; she wanted to remember this moment. She took in the gravitas of the imposing stone corner building at One Proxima Road, and the sound of people and traffic around her. The venerable edifice is situated half on Central Square, Port Alpha, right opposite the telestation; the brass plaque seemed incongruous, appearing as it did alongside some of the oldest and most respected institutions in the colonies. Emmy retrieved a harp from the recesses of her coat, blew a quick middle C for luck, and pressed the buzzer.
The receptionist is sifting through a forlorn little pile of photocopied reviews from local fanzines with a sinking heart; somehow her illustrious employer had given this girl the impression there was a vacancy and here she was, having spent five days flying across the systems full of hope. The receptionist just knew the battered case on the floor would contain a typewriter; some days this job made her want to slit her wrists. The girl was bright enough, and they’d quickly reached the part in the conversation where the reality of the situation had begun to sink in.
“Isn’t there anything I can do? I mean, I understand there’s been some crossed wires but I… I don’t even have a return fare.” As Emmy is supplicating Sean Siemens bursts in looking harassed, and fixes his gaze on her.
“She’s a Yank! Why wasn’t I told we have a Yank on the staff?” Emmy goes from seated to standing with seemingly no inbetween stages; the receptionist half expected her to salute.
“That’s right, Sir! I’m a Yank[†††††] and I’m on your staff!” Sean thrusts a cardboard box full of press releases and promo records into her arms, whips a lanyard from his neck and throws it around Emmy’s.
“The Space Jam Infinity Festival starts tonight, and I’m not spending my weekend up to the knees in shit and warding off beggars!” He paces the room, gesticulating wildly “Every ingrate in the building has blackmailed their way out of it!” He halts abruptly and glares at the receptionist.
“I’m not a reporter, so don’t look at me like that! You have lots of reporters; if you weren’t so rude to them they’d be far more helpful.” Sean stares at her blankly before returning his attention to Emmy.
“We have five pages of ads riding on the coverage so tag! You’re it.” Emmy begins a relieved gush of thankyousirIwon’tletyoudown, but is cut short by an impatient gesture.
“Introductions later if you don’t get yourself murdered! Now fuck off or you’ll miss the maglev, and for Gods’ sake take pictures! I’m not made of photographers!”
The receptionist watches through the window as a young girl fresh off the ship hurries across the bustling square to her first assignment, press pass around her neck like an Olympic medal. It was a scene straight out of the golden years of Hollywood; some days this job made her heart sing.
Miles Ravenscroft is leaving the telestation after an entertaining junket at the new su quattro factory on the Skenthurp estate. There had been music, food, freebies and hospitality and he is still slightly fuzzy from fizzy wine, which goes down like lemonade until it hits you. He observes a youth running past with a Maximum Acid Beat press pass and a box full of band merch; they really should lock the door if they’re going to spend all afternoon in the pub. He wonders briefly if he should drop by the office and report it in the incident book, but no; Sean had forgotten to assign a correspondent to some freak farm on the other side of the planet and it wasn’t going to be Miles! He allowed himself a smirk at the thought of his boss surrounded by jugglers and tarot readers, trying to find something to eat which wasn’t organic. Miles sincerely hoped there would be non-alcoholic beer and yoga; it was only a pity it couldn’t be raining.
Emmy flops into the first empty seat in the carriage and lets out a squeak as she hugs the box. The programme is studied, and promotional items are investigated; cigarette lighters and rolling papers seem to be a popular choice. She checks the Spiral Vibe stage time carefully; her sisters’ copy of Sonic Assault is a favourite when they’re getting ready for a night out. The one track everyone knew was Golden Machine, a thrashy mess so out of tune it was practically atonal; not withstanding the record was possessed of a filthy groove, and became the unexpected hit of the summer of ’39. It opened with a shuddering sweep across the audio spectrum emanating from a modular synthesiser known as the Warp Generator; the instrument had been constructed from diagrams in a magazine, and despite the bands best efforts that bowel-loosening floor filler was the only sound it ever produced. The follow up record, twenty minutes of white noise entitled Bomb Parliament (Defenestrate the State), was quickly blacklisted by every media channel in the three systems and the band returned to happy anonymity without ever satisfactorily explaining what a golden machine was.
The festival has a stream so Emmy can catch up with less familiar acts on the journey, and then it hits her; she got the job! Well, she got a job, and if she doesn’t make too bad a hash of it there may be others although there still was every chance she’d be back on fry duty before the month was out. Emmy had felt the need for a fresh perspective for some time now; to a certain degree she’d never lived her own life. She’d been an adjunct to Reb for as long as she could remember; first by necessity as her eight years older sister had legal parental responsibility, but more recently by Emmy’s own lack of direction and tendency to take the path of least resistance. With Reb and Charlie’s ‘who didn’t see that coming?’ romance blossoming, it was as good a time as any to strike out on her own. She couldn’t believe her luck though; all in all, this was a very strong start.
Back at the Maximum Acid Beat offices, the receptionist regarded her employer. True, he was fast asleep at
three in the afternoon with a back issue over his face and his boots on the desk, a hole clearly visible in one. It could also be claimed he was chaotic and irresponsible, but he tired easily these days, and she’d just watched him make a young girls’ dreams come true. The receptionist remembered another young girl as if it had been only yesterday; Mr. Barwing himself showed her around the Garden Block on her first day as an admin assistant for the Britannia Mining Company. She remembered the advice he gave her.
“If someone asks you something you don’t know, it’s tempting to spin ‘em anything so you don’t look an idiot; Lord knows we’ve all done it, but it’ll always come back on you. Better to tell ‘em you don’t know, and tell ‘em you’ll find out, and then mind you do; that way you’ll both have learned something.” As she unpacked her case so many years ago, cross legged on a bunk in a noisy shared house, she realised with a fizz of excitement a life of her own, real life, had only just begun. Independence feels like true love, or finding God; the receptionist throws an eraser at Sean’s head.
“I wasn’t asleep” he lies.
“Of course you weren’t; you were just resting your eyes. Do you fancy going out for a drink together, just the two of us?” Sean straightened himself in the chair, a look of pleased bemusement on his face.
“Thank you Helen, I’d like that very much. I’ll just um…” he rises from the chair and rubs his unshaven chin thoughtfully “I’ll just go and have a wash.” When he returns, Helen has already shut down the phones and set the alarm; she’s pleasantly surprised.
“I had no idea you wore Armani.”
“Ah well, you know… special occasion.” He holds the door, and they step into a new chapter together.
Emmy feels civilization falling away the further into the festival ground she goes; everything has the look of something made to be used outdoors, and used hard. Even the teak bronzed men and willow women appear shaped by the elements, sapling children darting hither and thither in excitement and defiance of the late hour. All around, hulks of battered travelling homes and faded show wagons loomed in such illumination as liquid fuel lamps and headlights afforded. There was a thirty year old school bus and a plague-era Bugatti ambulance; shutters open on a wheeled fire engine exposed a coop of gently snoring chickens. Emmy climbed a mound, and camp fires twinkled as far as she could see; God, but it was huge! Like those motorcycle rallies, riding pillion with her sister or Charlie during school holidays, music was only part of the action.
One of those biker weekends, she must have been about ten, Charlie had roped the metal hood of an old pod to his bike and was dragging his mates around nearby scrubland three up on the thing; Emmy pleaded and pleaded for a go, and eventually Charlie relented. Emmy remembered feeling annoyed she wasn’t being driven anywhere near as fast as the men, and how unfair it was, when Reb returned from a search for ice creams to witness Charlie taking horrific risks with her baby sisters’ life. What followed was possibly one of the finest beatings a motorcycle gathering will ever witness, and the reader with even a passing knowledge of the subculture will appreciate what a high bar is being set here. Reb tore Charlie from the bike and belted him so hard his crash helmet came off. Many witnesses will still swear blind they saw an angry woman punch a mans’ head clean from his shoulders, and ensuing events were no less spectacular; Emmy sat on the abandoned pod hood, working her way through three ice creams in awed silence. More than once it looked as if Reb had run out of energy, panting, half doubled over with hands on her knees and pure fury burning in mother lion eyes. Charlie would raise his palms in supplication but Reb would rally and unleash another ferocious pummelling to the cheers of assembled men and women alike, as the big man backed away from her around the clearing.
Emmy didn’t see Charlie around for weeks after that, and the subject of large Irish tech guys was a firmly closed one in the Sunbury household. She told her friends she’d seen Reb kill him, enhancing the legendary (and largely fictitious) Scary Mom persona Emmy had long been crafting around her sister.
She was glad she’d left her heavy typewriter at the office with the nice lady and the stressy man, but the cardboard box was getting awkward so it went on a bonfire; she stored the festival bumph around her coat pockets, and the records in a freebie gunny sack. The bag featured an intricate logo, so psychedelic it was impossible to tell which band was being promoted; she kept the plain side outward in case they weren’t very good. Sighting the main stage Emmy locates the green room entrance and makes her way through the temporary metropolis clutching her press pass, an amulet of passage in a new world. She heads for a thankfully free bar; Emmy has extremely limited funds, and intends to sleep on the office floor until they pay her enough for a room. She downs a triple of Dutch courage and scans the area for something worth interviewing. She doesn’t have to scan long; Marc Dolan, guitarist, singer and keyboard player with the Spiral Vibe, is struggling with a Blue Cheer vending machine. He is making a right hash of a relatively straightforward procedure and audibly whimpering in frustration, but as she draws near he releases a puzzled ‘oh!’ and the can drops. Emmy taps him on the shoulder.
“Emmy Sunbury, Maximum Acid Beat; I’m a reporter.” The boys’ eyes are darting all around; they flicker across hers once or twice on the way to everywhere. He shakes his head and finds his voice.
“A journo? Oh good, we just lost one of those! Bernie’ll be happy.” She is led to a side room where she recognises Marcs’ fellow multi-instrumentalist Ehsan Mian asleep on a sofa; the brick outhouse drummer known only as Big[‡‡‡‡‡] looks to her and nods before returning to his book. The bands’ manager gives Emmy the kind of look an airline passenger might give a gremlin on the wing.
“No women! Boys, how many times do we go through this? Green cards and STD’s are only the start of the trouble!” Bernadette Boswell is tackling a familiar trope in her chosen career.
“S’not a woman Bernie, it’s a journo! You said it was my fault we lost the last one and now I’ve found a new one. Look; she’s got a press card and everything.” Bernie inspects the laminate around Emmy’s neck and frowns suspiciously.
“Do you know Gordon? You must have met Gordon; he practically runs the place.”
“Honest truth Ma’am I’ve never spent more than twenty minutes in that office; I’ve seen a nice lady who sits at the front desk, and a scruffy posh man who looks like he drinks a lot of coffee.” Bernie laughs.
“That’s Helen and Sean! There’s no Gordon, it’s just my clumsy way of weeding out bullshitters. Welcome to my travelling one parent family; we did have someone from the Newer Musical Express tagging along but they jumped ship and this is the band’s biggest tour to date. I don’t suppose you’d be free to come with, after the festival?” Emmy’s inner fangirl squealed like a faulty drivebelt.
“Personally, my diary’s free; I have to check in with the office later, but if they don’t need me I’m all yours.”
After a short nap in the back of Bernie’s Land Rover, Emmy wakes to the intermittent sound of a distant shotgun above the background noise of generators and pre-dawn revelry. Yawning and helping herself from a coffee pot still warm in the embers of a camp fire, she wanders to the edge of the field and climbs a gate into the yard of an abandoned and derelict farmhouse.
“Pull!” Marc is aiming a twelve bore at the sky, and a house brick climbs Heavenward before exploding in a hail of shot. Emmy can see Ehsan balanced on the apex of a partially collapsed shed, whirling bricks on a loop of rope; when he releases one end the target takes flight. Marc turns to greet her.
“It’s the journo lady! Do you shoot?” Emmy felt it best not to mention the Night Patrol; what goes in Columbia, stays in Columbia.
“You mean like in competitions? Never tried.”
“It’s heaps of fun; here, give it a go. Keep both eyes open mind; you won’t think fast enough with one closed” Emmy tries an experimental aim, squinting along the barrel.
“The sight goes all fuzzy unless I close
an eye.”
“Good. You don’t want to focus on the sight; focus on the bird.” The gun is a single barrel semi automatic which can fire five fat cartridges without reloading. Emmy has a good eye as it turns out, atomising four of her bricks; the kick at her shoulder is exhilarating, even though she’d been expecting it, and she ends up temporarily deaf in one ear.
“Nice shootin’, Tex!” cheers Marc, rather inaudibly. His comrade has run out of masonry, and joins them “Ehsan! This is Tex; she’s a sharpshooter and a journo and all kinds of badass.”
“Cool; who do you work for?”
“Maximum Acid Beat.” It was a thrill to hear herself say it; Emmy hoped lots of people would be asking who she worked for. Ehsan nodded approvingly and turned to Marc.
“See; I said we should have them along instead of the Newer Musical Express! It’s just ‘cos Bernie won’t have Sean in the same room; NME are lightweights.” Marc smiles at Emmy.
“Our boss says your boss shouldn’t be allowed around people.”
“I think he’s alright” offers Ehsan.
“Only because he gives you drugs!” Ehsan grins and Marc explains “Bernie prides herself on running clean and sober tours; she’s like one of those Granger youth leaders, but all lost and at the wrong festival.” Emmy considers their immediate surroundings; dawn has not long broken, and people are taking morning chillums and water pipes as they prepare breakfast and exercise dogs.
“How is Bernie’s policy working with the Spiral Vibe?”
“We genuinely try to hide it from her; I feel dead guilty if she catches me sparking up. For Gods sake don’t do ‘shrooms when she’s around; you’ll crack in five minutes and probably wake up in a convent.” Breakfast is obtained from a fry wagon and the band sit with another vaguely known to Emmy, which reminds her she should cover at least some other acts; the assignment is still a festival report. She’s messaged Helen and received a list of Sean’s advertisers, with handy sub lists of performers and concessions they own a slice of. She’s just thinking it’s going to be a balancing act getting enough of this stuff mentioned while still being fully available as Bernadette’s pet journo, when she notices everyone is arguing.
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