Band of Gypsys

by Gwyneth Jones

  There’d been nasty cans of worms the Rock and Roll Reich had never dared to open, in their day. Live with it.

  ‘Good. So, let’s begin at the beginning.’

  The smartboard was suddenly flooded with colour and movement: psychedelic roses blooming. The same images repeated, in smaller scale, on the slates.

  ‘These are cognitive brainscans. There’s a brief annotation on your earbeads. I’ll give you a moment, for those who need to listen.’

  The party apparently didn’t need notes. Green hardliners frowned in distaste.

  ‘Magic is a real force,’ began Fiorinda coolly. ‘Or rather, there is a real force, of which we’ve been dimly aware as long as there’ve been modern humans around, a leakage through the barrier between mind and matter. It’s been called by various names: magic will do for our purposes. In the last decade before Dissolution new theories were being matched by new technology, allowing lab scientists to approach the threshold where the barrier can be broken. It was believed, by some, that under certain conditions this breakthrough, also known as “fusion” might unleash extraordinarily powerful “occult” powers—’

  She paused. The false-coloured scans disappeared. An equation (not yet condensed into anything as recognisable as e=mc2) Powerpointed sedately into place, line by line. ‘I’m sure you’ve all seen that before. We won’t trouble to decipher it in detail. As you know, science currently favours a model of the universe as being “made of information”. Anything you care to mention can be expressed in binary code. Zebras, genes, neutrinos, hatred, can all be seen, equally, as objects in information space. This implies a fundamental level where the material 0s and 1s “outside our heads” are continuous with the immaterial 0s and 1s “in our minds”. When we speak of “breaking the barrier”, we mean finding a means to access this continuity, and to manipulate the material world as if it were a set of ideas. The theory of Mind/Matter physics states that all mind/brains—a poor description, suggesting dualism where actually we’re supposing an integrated system, but it seems to have taken root—have a vestigial, infinitesimal interaction with the code “outside our heads”, and therefore an infinitesimal abilty to affect the arrangement of this vast body of information: not only our perception of the world out there, but the material universe itself. That’s been the implicit desire of all magical practice, in every occult tradition.’

  ‘To shift the whole fifteen dimensional kaleidoscope,’ put in Chip, gravely.

  Some faces betrayed confusion. Kaleidoscope? What kaleidoscope?

  Most remained attentively blank, waiting for the keywords.

  ‘The theory goes on to propose that tiny “fusion consciousness events” tunnelling through the barrier between mind and matter, happen all the time: often unnoticed, sometimes perceived as “psychic experiences”; or providing frustrating unrepeatable data in parapsychology experiments. It suggests that successful stage magicians, and powerful shamen, have always been people with a natural, slightly elevated interaction with information space. This advantage allows them to draw on the vestigal abilities of a group of believers; or even a group of passionate sceptics, and add to the their own power. Strong arousal is an adjuvant: and it’s a positive loop. The more the “magician” can steal, the more he can steal.

  ‘Yet magic is still a very weak force. A stage magician can “mess with our minds”. To rearrange a small set of actual events is a huge leap beyond: to make a global change, as the A team did, is a far greater leap beyond that. My father, Rufus O’Niall, seems to have been born with an astounding level of mind/matter interaction, which became dangerous when it was ramped-up by his success. There’s convincing evidence, however, that the neurological mechanism is always the same. Plenipotent natural magicians (my late father is the only known example), and phenomenally altered mind/matter agents like the “A team” work in the same way, and that’s what we need to talk about today.’

  There had been a stir of recoil when Fiorinda said my father.

  ‘Bear with me,’ said the monster’s daughter, candidate for being burned at the stake, in the last mad phase of Green Nazi rule. ‘This is relevant. My father may have been the first and only creature of his kind, created by a historical situation—’

  ‘Synchronicity,’ exclaimed Verlaine. ‘The population explosion gave us mass-market entertainment idols, and drove the development of number crunching machines that could model cognition. Cognitive scanners powered the Zen Self quest. Consumer-slave mega-crowds powered Rufus O’Niall. We got the occult monster and the Neurobomb in the same frame. It seems like a weird coincidence but it isn’t.’

  ‘It’s two sides of the same coin!’ cried Chip.

  Fiorinda smiled, apologetically. The scans returned to the whiteboard.

  ‘Now, these scans. To recap on the earbead notes, what you see on your slates is a time-lapse sequence for early-onset schizophrenia. In all adolescent brains there’s a sorting-out process, involving a net loss of tissue. In some young people, for reasons that aren’t yet entirely clear, this goes off the rails and they develop schizophrenic symptoms. Clinicians call what you see the forest fire effect. See how destruction starts in the parietal cortex, and speeds through the frontal lobes? Five years on, there’s a loss of up to 25% of the grey matter, crucially in areas called the loci of convergence, where the “binding” of consciousness is mainly handled.’

  The Working Party went on waiting for words. Bomb. Weapon.

  ‘Classically, there’s an unmistakable breakdown in late adolescence, but by then, the damage is done. Once things have gone as far as you see in the last scan here, the subject will no longer feel in control of their own body; will have great difficulty construing a single reality; will have lost their sense of time, and may be experiencing unbroken, terrifying hallucinations. Even today, a one way ticket to Catatonia is probably the patient’s best hope.’

  ‘Extensive neuronal tissue seeding,’ murmured Wendy Carter, studying the forest fire with an experienced eye. ‘Might help her—’

  ‘I doubt if you’d have got close enough to try it on my father. But you’re thinking of normal schizophrenia, Wendy. In a “magical” brain, the carnage shows up in the material locii, but it’s the gushing leak, the open pipe to information space that does the mischief, and you can’t fix that by surgery. It’s not a material thing.’

  Dr Carter nodded, cautiously.

  ‘Schizophrenia can have many causes. Infective disease, genetic accident, drug abuse, prolonged psychological stress; torture. I’ve shown you this version because it most closely resembles what we know happens in the brain of a natural magician, enhanced to plenipotence in human information space. There is the same pattern of destruction, only faster; in the same locii.’

  They didn’t get it, not yet. One of the industry consultants found his voice. ‘I, thought Rufus O’Niall’s brain was never examined.’

  The young lecturer nodded, approvingly. ‘You’re absolutely right. The way Rufus behaved, in the years of his fame, would’ve had him sectioned, if he’d been a homeless black man, as a danger to society. As he was a ruthless, powerful megastar, he passed for normal, and, as you say, we can’t be a hundred per cent sure about the state of his grey matter. But we have time-lapse scans of the A team’s brains, taken automatically until they were clinically dead. They show what was happening, how the “forest fire” damage erupted, and how swiftly it spread. There is no room for dispute. The team reached fusion, as a single entity, became plenipotent and, at the same time, irreversibly as crazy as a bedbug.’

  No response, except a few of them reached for the earbeads.

  ‘The belief that using black magic drives people crazy is well attested in tradition. Investigators have assumed the effect was psychological: the evil magician becomes deranged by the horror of his acts. Not so. Morality doesn’t come into it. Become the Neurobomb, this is what will happen to your brain, and you will suffer all the agonizing and highly dangerous symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia
.’

  The scans looked like colourful wreckage, that shuddered and squirmed.

  ‘It’s addictive, too.’

  Mairead Culper gathered herself: a small woman, simply dressed in a brown homespun tunic, a double line of tension, or possibly eyestrain, ploughed between her brows. Every visible inch of her pale skin was tattooed.

  ‘Fiorinda! I am a practitioner of Wiccan magic and I will not tolerate this. The powers we summon are beyond our understanding, we give ourselves blindly into their hands, and we fear them. But Rufus O’Niall was the hellish personification of global consumerism. He is gone, with all he stood for. Our unknowing is not evil, nor insane, and none of your, your vile labscience will convince me—’

  ‘Mairead,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Don’t upset yourself. I’m sure anything you and your people do is perfectly harmless. You don’t have to be criminally insane to lay a mean Tarot. I’m talking about the Neurobomb.’

  Rasheeda had snapped to attention. ‘You’ve seen those scans, ma’am?’

  Fiorinda raised her brows. ‘Of course. Anyone with a public library PIN can see them. They’re in the open access section on the International Investigation Site. Along with routine scans from before the fatal experiment, for comparison.’

  A pause for embarrassment. The Adjuvants grinned at the tabletop.

  Rasheeda scribbled a note (lo-tech secure communication) and passed it to Jack Vries: is she saying we don’t have a Neurobomb? Jack put the slip of paper in his pocket, nodded slightly and spoke—

  ‘Ms Slater, ah, ma’am. We’re aware of the “International Investigation Site”. Some may say its usefulness it limited. It can only reveal what the US military wish to make known, about what happened at “Vireo Lake”’. The Vireo Lake Lab, in the Anza-Borrego Desert, had been the site of the A-Team experiment. ‘Your exposition has been interesting, but I’m sure you’ll understand we came here to talk about our own, English, Neurobomb: I mean Sage Pender. The so-called “A team” were chosen for “psychic potential”, despite the inevitable instability, and subjected to a regime of harmful drugs. The Zen Self route to plenitpotence works with normal, healthy brains, does it not? And “Zen Self” fusion leaves no permanent damage to brain tissue? Still, we share your reservations. One issue we wished to raise was the need for Sage to take new psyschiatric scans—’

  ‘That won’t be possible. Sage has given up being a lab rat.’

  Jack Vries was a tall man, and very blonde, white blonde rather than vulgar Sage-like yellow. His skin had a painful, ruddy delicacy, as if protective outer layers had been peeled away. His light eyes were intent, yet she felt that he only saw the National Sweetheart, who must be handled with care. A secondary figure.

  Be careful, she told herself. Don’t make the same mistake—

  ‘I see!’ said Jack, at last. ‘Well, Sage is a big star who writes his own er, rider, is it? We’ll have to find the right inducement to get him on the program!’

  The Working Party recoiled again: Jack’s faux pas this time. You don’t sneer at the Zen Self Champion, the perfect knight who saved England in single combat.

  ‘I detect a misunderstanding,’ Fiorinda remarked placidly, taking no offence. ‘The Zen Self route uses heroic doses of neurosteroids to reconfigure a normal brain directly to the state of fusion, without destroying a personality and without hijacking increments of connection from a mass of other minds. That much is true—’

  (The Adjuvants looked modest, they’d been among the heroic labrats on the way to Sage’s achievement. No one noticed.)

  ‘But breaking the barrier between mind and matter the Zen Self way is a brief event. Either you quickly return to normal, or you remain permanently—so to speak, where there is no duration—in a state of non-being, non-intent, non-action. Which some see as the goal of all endeavour, but it’s not very useful in a weapon.’

  The Buddhist rep, a prim-looking middle-aged white woman, acknowledged the description with a faint smile, and resumed her air of distant disapproval.

  ‘“No damage”, Jack, means no Neurobomb either. The Zen Self route will never get you there. That’s why the Vireo Lake scientists set out to weaponise natural psychic ability, although such experiments had already been outlawed in Europe.’

  Lord Vries accepted defeat, by means of a slight bow.

  ‘I was there when he fought Rufus, you know.’ Fiorinda had lectured standing. She sat down now, between her bodyguards: propped her chin on her hand and gazed into the past, her voice changing; off her guard.

  The disappointed suits perked up—

  ‘The Extreme Celtics had enlisted my father to reduce population of Europe, drastically, by an act of magic. I’d been condemned to death, allegedly for witchcraft: really because I’d been helping human sacrifices to escape from the people we call the “Green Nazis”. Though of course they were as English as anyone here. Sage found out what was going on, and came back from Caer Siddi—’

  ‘Having achieved the Grail,’ murmured Verlaine.

  ‘He rescued me from the fire. I followed him to Ireland, to plead with him not to take on Rufus, because I knew what my father was. I was too late… They fought with swords, in the courtyard of Drumbeg Castle. My father liked archaic things. They were competing to see which of them had more power over the information: but the fight was part of it, the physicality. Embodiment and mind are equally important, in all magic. They say that when perfect “fusion” is reached, when a coherent, solved, human self becomes one with the state of all states, then the state of all states becomes a conscious mind. Or else, depending on your point of view, the mind in fusion meets a Consciousness that was always there—’

  She made a slight acknowledgment of the Bio-Ethics contingent. The Bishop of Oxford, a slim, elderly gentleman with his collar on backwards over a little fuschia bib, smiled nervously in return.

  ‘Who knows? It’s hard to distinguish cause from effect, where there’s no time. But anyway, if Rufus had won, eighty or ninety percent of the people of Europe would have died at a stroke, and that’s not the half of it. He would have added Sage’s stake, so to speak, to his own. He could have reached perfect fusion, and human information space, our reality, would have become a mirror of that nightmare up there.’

  She glanced behind her, at the smartboard.

  ‘Rufus would have been the Fat Boy,’ explained Chip. ‘And we’d all be living in a Hieronymous Bosch nightmare-dimension.’

  “Fat Boy” was the runaway chain reaction of fusion consciousness, a magic pyschopath with limitless powers. The Lavoisiens had been trying to build one.

  ‘They say Rufus could, could put his enemies living into hell,’ ventured Dr Jones, in the fuschia bib. ‘Is it true, Ms Slater? Could that be allowed?’

  The Islamic consultant smiled, enigmatically, into his beard.

  ‘I don’t know about allowed, but I know about that one. It’s an Aleister Crowley spell, that my father liked. Crowley couldn’t begin to do it: Rufus made it work. You die, but subjectively you stay conscious in your body while it rots, for all eternity. I think that’s where the real Fergal Kearney was, when Rufus inhabited his shell. There may have been others. I hope, I believe, they were freed, that night.’

  The abyss between what she and Sage had done at Drumbeg, and these disconcerted, sulky suits, was threatening to unhinge her. ‘I didn’t explain that very well,’ she added, limpidly. ‘I could try again, see if I can help you all to understand?’

  One of Fiorinda’s beardless counsellors kicked her under the table.

  Okay, okay. Only joking.

  She glanced at her slate, and stood again, for her closing remarks.

  ‘Well, that seems to be it. Perhaps you now realise, if you didn’t before, why the US Neurobomb research has been abandoned. A schizophrenic human weapon of mass destruction is untenable, there are logical constraints that mean you can’t have any other kind, and that’s the end of that. The term “Fat Boy” is a reference to the early nuclear devices
, and the analogy seems apt. The weapon of all weapons has twice been demonstrated in anger. I predict it will now sink into a long, uneasy retirement. Perhaps Global Thermonuclear War wouldn’t be so bad after all, but who would like to try? The known cost is too high, even for the winners: the risk of truly awful unplanned consequences too impressive. Perhaps tactical, limited “occult” weaponry could be developed, but who would dare? My recommendation, and I speak for the Triumvirate, is that we join our neighbour nations, and support President Eiffrich’s call for a total ban.’

  Wales, Ireland and Scotland supported Eiffrich, as did the Nordic countries. The EU as a body had as yet no official stance.

  ‘Ms Slater,’ Jack Vries stood out, in the subdued shades of the other faces, as if he drew the light. ‘With respect, isn’t there, in everything you’ve recounted, an equally strong argument for a deterrent? Though we all deeply admire—’

  ‘Get a grip,’ cried Chip, bouncing in his seat. ‘What are you thinking of, man? The oil’s gone. Doesn’t that convince you? The Hell Dimension scenario isn’t bleeding heart loony tunes. It’s hard science, a threat with teeth and hair!’

  They just went on looking mildly affronted, annoyed that they’d wasted their time. The token Doves were not going to cheep, and no Hawk had been swayed by Fiorinda’s deposition. Boris the Culham physicist had been making careful notes (a flicker in the back of his eyes).

  ‘Ms Slater, one last couple of questions, would that be okay?’