Band of Gypsys

by Gwyneth Jones

‘You’d be right. Well, we’ve done art, an’ rock and roll is beneath us. How about Paris? Let me tell you how I loved that so-called protest. I want to live like a refugee, except with a dry place to sleep an’ futuristic tech, the rest of my life. That’s what it was about, do you remember? You were there. Treading lightly on the earth, down by the river at Reading, in the mud and blood and beer?’

  Dian shook her head. ‘I can’t think of anything to ask you about Paris. What’s your opinion about the Grey Lady in Amsterdam, or ooh, werewolves. Can human beings really transform into wild beasts?’

  ‘Hahaha, oh yeah. For sure. Now we’re talking cocktail hour.’

  And Sage waxed lyrical, relieved to have found a safe subject, on the new drugs, sadly forbidden to him, being far more demanding on a regenerate liver than alcohol, that had such weird effects—

  ‘What was it,’ asked Dian, with an impish twinkle, when he paused for breath. ‘That happened when you were five, that made you realise you were gay?’

  Fiorinda came home, after a masterclass session at Battersea Arts Centre; where she was teaching a rock guitar course. She didn’t really approve of these sessions, for if you could pass the audition, then you surely ought to be teaching yourself, with a broom handle and a piece of string if that was all you had. You ought to be too proud to go to school. But students in the Reich’s Hedgeschool Education Scheme had to learn to read and write and figure before they signed up for anything glamorous: so she was achieving something useful. Close your eyes to the fact that our rescued drop-out kids are now the privileged few—

  Doug Hutton, supremo of the Reich’s personal security, was in the tiny guardhouse that had once been a broom closet, making an inspection that involved a jug from the Monkey’s Paw and wreathes of fragrant smoke.

  ‘Of course you guys would leap up, fully in control, if I needed defending.’

  ‘Course we would, but you don’t need us. Sage is up there.’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  How hateful to have armed guards living in the house. What happened to being wild and free, citizens of Utopia…? Hard to test, and put an end to hoping. Hard to resist testing. Not pregnant again, but harmlessly this time, just an irregular period, she climbed the naked stairwell (they still hadn’t finished unpacking) chasing a tail of memory. Same naked stair, same weary mood. She knew the dress she’d been wearing, the blue taffeta with the emerald sparkles, she could hear the sound of Ax’s guitar, sad and lonely. Which of our disasters? It wouldn’t take shape.

  Sage was on the brick terrace, outside the french doors in the living room; where Fiorinda’s orange trees had stood. He sat crosslegged with his back to the wall, and smiled when she appeared, but his open eyes were so still she knew he was far away—studying a process of conversion, once mediated by neurolab machinery, that now continued without the tech. Studying to solve the equation of himself. She watched him, feeling a little frightened. It was dangerous work. Olwen had said he shouldn’t do it without life support. He could get lost and die in those mazes.

  Slowly, his presence returned to the surface.

  ‘Hi, sweetheart.’

  ‘Hey, my pilgrim. How did the interview go?’

  Sage grinned. ‘Badly.’

  ‘Well, fuck her,’ said Fiorinda, automatically: but she was taken aback. Sage and Dian Buckley never goes badly!

  Except possibly from Fiorinda’s point of view.

  ‘How do you mean? What did she do?’

  ‘Nothing, she was just bog standard Dian. It was me, I was annoyed about the notebooks, an’ it put me off. I was listening to myself, talking about my work and how it should be displayed only a special way, I sounded like David Bowie.’

  ‘How awful for you.’ Fiorinda affected to take alarm. ‘Did you hit her?’

  ‘Ha. Those days are gone. I should’ve done, Aoxomoxoa lives! Nah, the violence didn’t get beyond mild sarcasm. But she’s going to tear me to shreds: I’m not invulnerable any more.’ He sighed. ‘Something else. They know about the video.’

  ‘What?’ She stared at him, electrified. ‘Dian told you that?’

  ‘Give me credit. I’d be makin’ more fuss if a mediababe had jus’ announced I was due for extradition… No, something stranger. I had a snapshot flashback.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Sage had taken so much snapshot, the vicious neural aligner they’d used on the Zen Self quest, that he would never be free of it. He had lapses, like tiny epileptic fits, from which he returned (returned, though no time had passed) with a glimpse of his brainstate at another place and time: and he would know things, sometimes things that clearly hadn’t yet happened. Usually negative. Call it his share of the Drumbeg fallout—

  ‘Somewhere down the line, I’m in the dark, dank sort of smell, I’m wading thigh deep in cold water, and in my head is the memory that the Lavoisier video did go public, the suits had known almost as long as we had, an’ we were screwed—’

  ‘Screwed how?’

  ‘Nothing fatal, obviously. Acute existential nausea, for all I can tell you.’

  She knew about the existential nausea. That outrageous tampered record had torn things open in her boyfriends, shaken them beyond reason—

  ‘Anything else?’

  Toby Starborn. But he’d keep that to himself. Toby had probably popped into his head for no reason, except he was in the RA, talking arse about art. So now we both dread that name, he thought. Wonder what “Toby Starborn” means as a coded message from the future? Something I don’t want to be found…

  Yeah, thanks for that, Mr Snap. Most helpful.

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘So this is what it’s like,’ said Fiorinda, bitterly. ‘We break the mind/matter barrier, and our reward is useless oracles, no better than if we were talking to a python in a cave. I suppose it’s reassuring, really… You’re going to tell Ax?’

  ‘Of course. For what it’s worth.’

  She sat beside him against the wall, took his hand and felt its grip, warm and strong. The bogey man didn’t get us. The past is a defeated foe. Sunlight fell through the dusty urban air, quiet neighbourhood sounds reached them. The afternoon gardeners were busy, in Brixton’s vivid backyard strip farms.

  ‘Fiorinda? Is it my imagination… Or do you also suspect we are in deeper shit that we have ever been before?’

  ‘Deep shit,’ said Fiorinda, instantly. ‘Deep, deep shit.’

  ‘Finally time to cut and run?’

  Fiorinda thought, stubbornly, of her masterclasses. ‘Fuck that. Nothing’s happened yet. We have committments, and you won the Wallingham round. Besides, you know Ax can’t bear to give up. He just can’t.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  Once before, they had rebelled against Ax Preston’s desperate need to save England. They weren’t going to make that mistake again. She touched the sickle-shaped indentation at the left corner of his mouth, which used to need a trick of the light to make it visible. ‘And I’m buggered if I’m going to be chased off my patch by Dian Buckley… How do you mean, she’s going to tear you to shreds?’

  ‘I’d rather not dwell on it. You’ll find out soon enough… Augh.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I left our yuppie box at the Royal Academy.’

  ‘What was in it?’

  He screwed his face up. ‘Can’t remember. A manky cardie. Old hair grips.’

  ‘Oh well, never mind. They’re sold off to the Saatchi Rooms by now.’

  Sometimes there is no warning. Other times, you know exactly what you should do. You don’t do it, simply because it’s an option that’s been open too long. You’ve turned it down too often, you just turn it down again, out of pure habit.

  FOUR

  Careless Love

  Festival Season hell was upon them. Fiorinda was in the North East, playing with her old bandmates DARK, in County Durham, Tyneside; all around that cold and beautiful coast. Ax and Sage were back in Brixton, lucky enough to be together for forty-eight hours. In Ax�
��s office downstairs, after midnight, Sage read documents on a screen. Long time since the Minister for Gigs had done any hands-on management, but the troops out there liked to see Aoxomoxoa’s sig decorating their mountains of dispatches. He didn’t mind the work, it was peaceful. Occasionally he made a note: an email he would send, something he would query.

  Ax was practicing his Chinese, copying characters from a book of proverbs. He was immersing himself in all things Chinese at the moment, the way only Ax Preston can… It made Sage uneasy.

  ‘Going to have to give this woman more money, Ax.’

  ‘Can’t. What woman?’

  ‘Road manager, Jennifer Lateef. She does not hump boxes, she does the informatics. We’re paying her beer money an’ she’s a star. She’s going to quit, get a real job an’ we’ll never find anyone else.’

  ‘Well, I can’t help it.’

  Sage pushed back, and watched the calligraphy. The brush in Ax’s hand paused, the tip swept down again, making a long, curved stroke—

  ‘Is China to be your next theatre of operations, Sah?’

  ‘I’d like to go there. It seems like a happening kind of place.’

  I’d like to go anywhere, thought Sage. Just roam the streets, only it would upset the fucking spooks. Soft winds and rains of a cool night, outdoors—

  ‘What’s that one mean?’

  ‘Qi huo ke ju… It means a precious treasure worth cherishing. Merchant Lü identified a hostage prince as a precious treasure worth cherishing, and this was very smart, because with Lü’s wily support the prince became king of Qin, and his son… Who was actually Lü’s son, it’s a long story… Became the first emperor of China.’

  ‘Was he a good guy? The first emperor?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘What happened to Merchant Lü?’

  ‘It ended badly.’

  ‘Fuckin’ inscrutable proverb… Ax, please don’t suddenly run off to save the world from the wicked emperor, an’ leave me.’

  ‘I won’t. This is a beautiful thing to do, you should try it.’

  ‘Mm. It’s late. Would you care to come over to my side of the fire, at all?’

  On cue, his screen chimed. A box opened and there was Marlon on the doorstep. He was in Brixton for the summer holidays, supposed to be observing an 11.30pm curfew but Sage had not been concerned. Mar didn’t know it, but he was under fairly close surveillance. In the old days, the lock on their front door had been biometric, a thing you looked into and it read your iris patterns. They’d moved with the times: Marlon waited for armed guards to check him out and open up.

  ‘Don’t call him on being in the pub,’ advised Ax.

  ‘Not tonight. But Mary’ll ban me again, if she finds out I’ve been allowing underage drinking—‘

  ‘Marlon’s going to ban you himself, if he finds out you’ve had him tailed.’

  ‘Hey, there’s someone with him,’ said Sage.

  The girl was trying to lurk out of sight, a glimmer of long silvery brown hair in the shadows, but they recognised her at once. It was Silver Wing, Anne Marie’s second-oldest, a scarily independent young woman of thirteen: living with Rob and the Babes in Lambeth at the moment, having had a huge fight with her mother.

  ‘Bugger. What shall we do? Send her home in a car?’

  ‘That’d be a little draconian. Just call the Righteous Collective, make sure they know where she is. If we send her back the car will get followed, and that’s going to piss the brothers off. Why shouldn’t she stay?’

  A dissatisfied silence from Sage.

  ‘So make up a bed in the music room, if you want to get all Mid-Wales about it. Don’t forget a few rolls of razor wire. They’re probably just good friends, Sage.’

  ‘She’s far too young.’

  Ax laughed. ‘Let’s go upstairs, my big cat.’

  Marlon and Silver sat on Marlon’s bed, having negotiated the front door and the guardhouse without attracting the attention of Marlon’s dad and Mr Preston. Silver combed her damp hair, it had been raining gently out there.

  ‘Shouldn’t we say hello?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It would be childish.’

  Silver rolled her eyes. ‘I knew Ax before you did.’

  But Marlon outranked her, she had to accept that. Aoxomoxoa’s son had always been at boarding school, far above Anne-Marie’s raggedy campground brats. They sat with an ashtray between them: smoking grass, showing-off; trying out lines.

  ‘My dad wants to stop me having sex or taking drugs,’ said Marlon. ‘It’s a joke. Thank God Ax is different. And Fiorinda’s my best mate.’

  ‘When I was eleven Mum and Dad tried to give me to Sage, as his junior wife.’

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Nah, it’s true. Ask your dad. My parents are totally decadent, without knowing what the word means. They thought being his concubine would be a great career for me.’

  ‘Arwan.’

  Maybe he looked like his mum: Silver didn’t know. He didn’t look anything like Sage. No more than Fiorinda’s height, with peaky Welsh features. His eyes were gold under thick black brows, naff-o tattooing round the left one. The dressing on his hair smelled like woodsmoke and hemp oil, which she liked. She wondered how it felt to be a boy who had no chance, not a hope, of outdoing his father. She had grown beyond her parents before she had her first period.

  ‘I was Fiorinda’s handmaid when Rufus was doing her, in Fergal’s body. We were in and out at Rivermead that winter, Pearl and me—’

  ‘I don’t think you should talk about it.’

  Fiorinda’s ordeal preyed on Marlon. He had sometimes lain awake at night, unable to get horrible images out his head.

  Light, powerful footsteps came down the hall. A brisk knock, and Marlon’s dad filled the doorway, rangy and wide-shouldered, light glittering in his hair. ‘Hi Silver. There’s a bed for you in the music room. Don’t stay up too late.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Marlon, bored. ‘Fine. G’night Dad.’

  ‘G’night kids.’

  The door closed. The teenagers smothered giggles. They lit another spliff and talked again, going deeper. Bad news always gets out. They didn’t know to call the problem the Lavoisier video, but they knew Ax and Sage were in big trouble. All the Reich kids knew, maybe better than their parents, how horrible things were getting: on the streets of London; on the campgrounds that were no longer safe havens. At last Silver glanced around the spare room, once full of Sage’s junk, now made over lovingly for this little prince. She touched his bare foot with her own.

  ‘What about the plan?’

  Marlon nodded and shook his head at the same time. He wondered what it would be like to fall in love with someone his own age… It wouldn’t be this girl. Wanting to have Silver had nothing to do with Silver.

  ‘I dunno. I think it’s too weird, I mean, yeah, but—’

  ‘Okay, let’s see if Ax’ll send me back to Lambeth. Let’s ask him.’

  The living room was dark and empty. Lamplight trembled out from under the Triumvirate’s bedroom door. Silver wrapped her arms around herself, listening hard. She heard Ax’s familiar voice, a wordless murmur tinged with laughter. Her rightful owner answered, with a crooning, roughened softness—

  What would you see if you opened that door? The heart of the Reich, the red dragon and the white. She closed her eyes, wrapped in the heat of that core. Harm to their enemies. Protection over them. I would give my life, give anything… When she opened them Marlon was staring at her, through the deep shadow of the hallway.

  ‘It doesn’t sound like we should knock.’

  ‘Let’s go back to your room.’

  They lay down together like children in Mummy and Daddy’s clothes. They were Sage and Fiorinda, and Ax was watching. They did not mention the make-believe, but they knew it made what they were doing more powerful still.

  The Heads were in residence, between Festival dates, at their old headquarters, the convert
ed warehouse on Battersea Reach. A week later Ax went to meet Sage there: he’d managed to spend one night with Fiorinda in the meantime, most of that on stage with their respective bads. It could be September before the three of them were in the same room in the flesh. He was admitted on the first floor, above the flood defences, by Marlon. Techno, ancient or modern (Ax could not tell the difference) crashed down from the floors above, stray immix effects caught your eye like unattached hallucinations. The hallway was full of strangers, in altered states or merely drunk: a proper, old-fashioned debauched rock and roll afternoon clearly in session.

  ‘Hi Mar. Is your dad about?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him for hours. Bill’s in charge, upstairs somewhere.’

  Marlon went back into the room he’d left. Ax glimpsed an illusory glade of shining branches, the river through a long window. Silver Wing dressed in green brocade, her silvery hair tied up in a complex knot, sitting on a green sofa, beside a red and white chessboard. Like something out of a fairytale.

  Bill Trevor was entertaining Gintrap (fresh-faced young divinities, Neo-Feudalist Metal, well-meaning but hungry); plus The Trap’s merry girl and boy entourage. The RA interview had aired, and Sage had indeed been ripped to shreds. Gintrap found this hilarious. They worshipped Aoxomoxoa, they were in awe of someone so big he could afford to be ripped up by Dian Buckley. Ax declined the alcohol, the other drugs, and affected to enjoy the joke. Dian’s hatchet job did have some fine moments of unintended humour.

  ‘Hey, Bill? Where’s the boss?’

  ‘I dunno where they all got to,’ said Bill, looking disgusted. ‘I think they went boating. Down the river for a cup of tea at Greenwich.’

  Thereafter Ax took the back stairs to the ground floor, where huge strange stage properties braved the risk of drowning. From thence he was admitted to the other back stairs—which didn’t appear on the plans of the building—by Heads crew, who graciously disabled the annoying Cornish password routine for him. Down and down. There had to be a secret passage. Overgrown kids like the Heads couldn’t do without a dungeon chamber in their fortress. They’d never really known what to do with the amenity, but now it had a purpose.