‘It’s going to be okay, Silver.’
‘Really?’
‘Never in doubt.’
A slight exaggeration: the indicators were mixed.
‘That’s good,’ croaked Marlon.
‘Something else you wanted to know?’
‘N-no,’ whispered Silver, gripping the folds of her nutbrown homespun skirt in grubby, childish hands. ‘Something we have to tell you.’
She’s pregnant. Fuck. Silver Wing was nearly fourteen, a woman according to the customs of her people, the Counterculture. Not in English or Welsh law. Shit, what a moment, and Mary is going to be livid. Then Ax was disgusted with himself. Get your priorities right, for a minute or two. The child’s going to have a baby.
‘Okay,’ he said, gently. ‘C’mon, you’re not in trouble. Tell me.’
Marlon looked to Silver. Silver looked back, hard and long, and then at Ax.
‘He’s been questioned by the police.’
Chills ran down Ax’s spine. ‘When you were picked up in Hyde Park? You were all questioned, weren’t you? About what?’
‘It was different for me,’ whispered Marlon. ‘I thought it was the police.’
‘Wait a moment. I’d better get Fiorinda down here, and your dad, Mar. It sounds as if they should hear this.’
The day Marlon had disappeared for hours, he and Silver had been in Hyde Park. They’d been rounded up with others and taken to Southampton Row for a severe telling off. The kids claimed they’d been inside the Permanent Festival campground: the Metropolitan Police begged to differ, Ax had his doubts, but the incident was closed. So far, so minor, but Marlon had something new to tell—
‘They said they needed me to answer questions about another issue. I was driven somewhere, not far. It didn’t look like a police station, more like a private house. I didn’t notice much, I was too scared. They… I was alone in a room with a woman, not in uniform, she asked me a lot of questions. Then they took me back to Southampton Row. They said next time I was in trouble my dad would hear about it, and they let me go. I was just glad to escape. But Silver had waited for me, and when I talked to her, I realised something very weird had been going on.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us right away?’ asked Sage, who stood by Ax’s desk, his arms folded, calm expression; trying to remain impassive.
‘Because I knew why they’d done it,’ said Marlon, looking up. ‘They wanted me to tell you, so you’d g-go berserk. So you’d be out of control and you and Ax would get f-fucked over in the debate—’
Ouch.
‘You should have told us,’ said Ax. ‘But you’re doing fine now. What were the questions about, Marlon?’
The boy coloured, and stared at the floor. ‘About my dad, and what happens when I come on visits, and I don’t want to say any more.’
‘It’s because of what we did,’ whimpered Silver, twisting her skirt in agony. ‘All of this, it’s because of what we did. We slept together, we did it to make a s-spell against your enemies, because we knew you were in some kind of trouble. My mum says sex is the strongest of all magics, and she says it comes back on you, only I never thought about that part, and, and one of us was a virgin. That makes it a million times stronger—’
Marlon shrank in his chair, deep red to the hairline.
Fiorinda jumped up, dropped on her knees by Silver, siezed the girl’s hands and held them firmly. ‘Silver, look at me. You think it was wrong to fuck Marlon, and if you did it for any reason but love, fun or friendship you’re probably right, but it’s not the end of the world. You have not committed magic. Trust me, you haven’t hexed anyone in the slightest. I’d know.’ She waited, until some of the alarming, drained and white-lipped tension left Silver’s face. ‘All right?’
‘All right,’ whispered Silver.
‘You know what: I’m going to take you home. Doug will drive us to Reading, and I’ll talk to Anne-Marie. You’ll stay on the site, with your mother, until the debate is over, is that understood?’
‘Yes.’
Fiorinda left with Silver. Ax and Sage let Marlon go to his room: trying not to show how angry they were; cutting short their attempts at reassurance, as he’d clearly had enough. Marlon’s travel plans were made: Sage had told him he had to go back to Wales, before the debate kicked off. A decree Mar had accepted, they now realised, with suspicious docility. Sage went upstairs. A while later he returned to the office and sat staring into space.
‘You were right,’ said Ax. ‘We should have given him a 24/7 bodyguard.’
‘Never out of arm’s reach, yeah… I’ve spoken to Mary.’
‘What did she say?’
Sage looked at the strong, shapely artist’s hands that had been crippled paws. Crippled paws but handy fists, blunt instruments he’d used viciously on his former girlfriend, his son’s mother. Both of them drug-addled, locked in mutual lust and hatred, a really nasty, destructive lifestyle, but that’s no excuse—
‘Mary says… If I need her she’ll come up to testify for the defence.’
‘Wow.’
Sage nodded. Wow indeed.
‘I told her it’s not that kind of trial.’
They relapsed into silence. No use talking about it. Soon the ‘debate’ would be over, vanished like the miasma it was, and they would get back to work. Ax felt that the bodhisattva would be okay. There was that core of peace in Sage, which nothing could touch. He was trying to keep the depth of his own emotional crisis to himself.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Despite Silver, we’re going to win this.’
‘Yeah’, Sage agreed, wearily. ‘I know.’
On the thirteenth Fiorinda was in Liverpool, on Volunteer Initiative business. She met Alan Cosby, the waste-plastics magnate, at his stark but central offices in Ranleagh Street: trading a popstar-royal geisha hour for financial committment to the Open Gates scheme. It costs money to dismantle that razor wire. They were old friends, in that Cosby was routinely generous to the VI, and warranted Fiorinda’s personal attention. She wore the glamorous smoky-opal frock from Hollywood; the interview was broadcast live on the regional news, and published on the net. It was a pleasant change, despite everything, to talk to someone for whom the future looked bright. Even if she did have to suppress thoughts about ruthless waste-plastic futures-trading.
Mr Cosby shook her hand warmly as they parted. ‘Ax Preston gave the drop-outs a life,’ he announced, ‘and gave me back my self respect, as I don’t have to step over the buggers no more. Now, while you’re at it, there’s young woman who plays the didgeridoo outside St John’s—’
The nation’s sweetheart laughed. ‘Sorry, Alan. She’s a colleague, a working musician, we don’t clear those away. Offer her a job, if you think she’d take it.’
Cut to Recycling Magnate of the Year, crosslegged on the sunny pavement, finding out about the different styles of Western and Eastern Arnhem Land from the young woman with the didgeridoo. Debate, what debate? It’s business as usual for us citizens of Utopia, thank you Mr Cosby.
The sleeper sabotaged her at Crewe, by having H-problems and threatening to blow a piece of Cheshire sky-high: but she was on her way again at dawn. Patchwork power sourcing, including trailing behind a wood-burning steam locomotive at one point, slowed her journey. At Milton Keynes she watched as the great casket of the Palace of Westminster was opened, on National Rail tv.
The crowded train was very quiet. She thought of the Referendum, long ago, when the people had been asked to vote on the repeal of the Death Penalty, and they knew Ax would quit if they refused to be merciful. If they could, they’d give him another landslide, she decided, watching faces. But the people weren’t going to be asked, and many of them had no vote, anyway. They were debt-casualties, bonded labour, neo-feudal serfs. We will fix that, she thought. We will get your franchise back for you. Ax has it on his list, and we aren’t beaten yet—
She saw the opening salvos; part traditional, part impro. Ax was in his dark red. Sage wore a suit in d
usty-blue, dating from the glory days: discreetly remodelled, as Sage would never have the body Aoxomoxoa’d had when the Reich was young. White-headed Jack Vries was sombre as a funeral. Second Chamber celebs filled the Commons front benches, surrounding the narrow pit like gentlemen-bruisers—with a few tough, stylish ladies—jostling at a prize fight. The Member for Teddington, let his name be expunged from memory, proposed the motion of censure.
The sound was very bad, she could hardly make out a word.
At two in the afternoon, having sent her overnight bag to Brixton, she crossed St Stephen’s Green; where they had tried to burn her alive. The day was cool and clouded. She made her way through a silent crowd to the Gallery entrance, where she was saluted and ushered upstairs into a hushed, avid, VIP crush. There was a roped off section for Ax’s close associates. She snuck in at the end of a row, beside Rob.
‘How’s it going?’
‘It’s okay,’ said Rob, eyes front, rigid as a gun dog. ‘It’s okay.’
‘It’s horrible,’ whispered Dora, leaning past her lover, showing the whites of her eyes. ‘Horrible but good. It’s going great. You need an earbead, here—’
Ax Preston had never used speech-writers in the dictatorship—something people found hard to believe now. He had no tricks of oratory—except the ones carried over from his other profession, such as his sense of rhythm, his effortless timing, his instinctive, peerless feel for an audience. Those who knew had warned Greg and Jack, don’t let Ax speak. If you let him get going, you’re screwed. Work on Aoxomoxoa, who has all that dirty washing, and a famously short fuse… Faud Hassim’s team, in the other corner, had rehearsed their principals furiously: where the worst questions would come from; the dangerous special interests. They knew the danger, they had cunning plans and fallback positions; and Sage knew when to duck out—
All of this had gone by the board. The PM and his allies must have been inwardly rubbing their hands in glee at first, because it had seemed that the leaders of the Reich had no idea how to protect themselves. Quite right, Ax admitted. We didn’t know what we were letting ourselves in for, when we agreed to help the President track down his occult terrorists. No more than when joined the government’s popstar Think Tank, the year of Dissolution. We blundered into a situation out of stupidity and vanity, and then we were in too deep to get out.
Yeah, agreed Sage. We knew the Lavoisiens were sincere in their beliefs. They’d mostly been driven to suicide-warrior terrorism by righteous desperation, and we knew that when we shot them down.
Asked to confirm that they’d believed the nest harboured a “Fat Boy Candidate” a psychic monster of unimaginable power: Ax said it wasn’t true. They’d been pretty sure there was no Fat Boy among the trainees, they’d just been set on getting Fiorinda out. They were afraid she’d be caught in friendly fire when the ‘unlimited force’ US government raid happened. Implored by a friendly questioner to condemn the faked ‘video’, Ax said it wasn’t faked by that much. Sage said, and what did you think we were doing up in Yorkshire, that time? We were killing people, it looks nasty. Now you’ve seen us doing it, dunno why it makes such a difference.
Did they admit the secret camera footage was substantially accurate?
Not the dialogue, but broadly, yeah, in the events.
Had they fired on anyone who was unarmed?
We don’t honestly know.
Did the President and his Minister take pleasure in dealing out death?
‘There are people who will never touch a lethal weapon,’ said Ax. ‘I wish that was me. I’m efficient, I’ve taken pleasure in that. Insh’allah, I’m not going to do it again. Tell the truth, I’m grateful to the Black Dragon for the shove up the arse… You’ll never entirely get rid of violence, it’s part of life. But our fight for survival in an overwhelming Crisis is turning into something else now, and we all know it. It’s time to to think hard about the traits we want to encourage in this new thing, and the traits we want to keep down. Initial conditions are crucial. We’re the parents, we’ve got to be careful what kind of a start we give to this baby world.’
This was Mr Preston’s longest speech.
Parliament had been out of fashion for a long time. Most of the Elected Members, tracked down, bused and bullied here for the occasion by one side or the other, had never been inside the building before. But the chamber grew sober and concentrated, as on the best occasions in its active career. It became evident that Ax and Sage were not self-destructing; not at all. They had seen the one straight path, and they were sticking to it. The issue was violence, the ultimately futile and destructive solution of violence that had haunted England since Dissolution. The President and his Minister, unprofessional soldiers, were not the accused. They were the expert witnesses the House had called upon, offering their experience.
When Fiorinda arrived the bad guys were on the ropes. Jack Vries had launched a blatant cross-examination of the former Aoxomoxoa, and nobody on the Rebels’ team had protested, because Vries was so obviously desperate. Does Mr Pender agree he has a history of uncontrolled aggression? That as ‘Aoxomoxoa’, before Dissolution, public outrage was his trademark?
‘Yes.’
‘Rapine and pillage are the signs of the berserker,’ mused Jack, consulting his notes. ‘Have you ever raped anyone, Sage?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she prosecute?’
‘No.’
‘Well, we shan’t pursue that,’ said Jack, with a courtroom flourish. ‘Or act on your confession of a serious crime. You’re wise not to deny it, considering the media reportage of your liasion with Mary Williams. Rape with grievous assault was quite a hobby of yours, wasn’t it? Could you explain how a rapist, and, may I add, a former heroin addict, came to achieve the Zen Self?’
The House kept quiet. Mr President Ax sat back, mysteriously passive, and let his volatile friend take the punches—
‘Achieve is technical, Jack. It means you’re there because you reached a point where you will be there, an’ fusion is outside time. I don’t know what would happen to someone else: the science is neutral. What happened to me is ongoing. I would say it’s hardly begun an’ I don’t know if it has an end.’
Whoever told you you could make me take a swing at you was mistaken, sunshine. The sad truth is, half the time when I was nineteen I wasn’t out of control. I was worse than that. I used to hit people cool as ice: because I felt like it.
Jack nodded. ‘Ongoing. A process that might be reversed, and isn’t that what happened in the desert, Sage? You invaded a place of power, in a state of unwisdom and unpreparedness, as you have admitted. We have been told there was no evil magic at Lavoisier, it was all mere delusion: but I don’t take my opinion on these affairs from the US security forces. There are powers beyond their understanding, and I can show exactly how and in what form you and Ax were disastrously affected—’
Jack opened his notes, and commenced to explain what a werewolf is, very cogently: dismissing the common errors, referring to learned sources. Might he draw the House’s attention to their slates, where they would see a certified copy of the relevant passage from that notorious ‘Royal Academy’ interview—
Uproar.
Consternation. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the Rebels were dealing with an accusation that could put Ax and Sage on trial for their lives: because witchcraft, despite past misuse of the law by enemies of the state, was still a capital crime—
Faud Hassim leapt up, demanded to be recognised (which Jack didn’t deny him) and urged, at the top of his voice, that the House should affirm that any attempt to weaponise natural magic, by any means, by state, by opposition group or private persons, was anathema: and that was what had been happening at Lavoisier. This censure of Ax and Sage was turning law and justice on its head! There was loud and prolonged applause, almost drowning the boos and hisses—
The session closed at six. The debate was to run for three days, with a possible continuance to five days, and no anti-social hours
. The PM had been warned that late nights and a bunker atmosphere would favour the rockstars. Fiorinda went down to the floor, her presence cutting a path to where the steps of the sanctuary would have been, when these moots were held in the mediaeval Chapel of St Stephen.
‘I feel I should have quartered oranges, and fresh towels.’
‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ said Ax, sternly. ‘You’re supposed to be in Liverpool, protector of the poor.’
‘How could I resist?,’ Fiorinda smiled for the cameras, of which there were plenty. ‘This little place may not be much, but we’re fond of it, we English. It’s nice to see it functional again.’ She put her arm around Sage, an unusual public gesture that made him grin at her and murmur, nice: but she felt his weariness—
‘You were great, Jack. Terrific stuff, all those references. Well played, sir.’
The Few left the building in a body, huddled around their leaders: beautiful people in unconsciously show-off clothes, rockstar clothes, walking away from a fight together, intact but battered, as how often before. ‘Did I tell you?’ inquired big George. ‘Do not fuck with them!’ The boss hung his head. It was so bad, it was funny. ‘I know, I know. I have learned my lesson… But, but it was fucking years ago!’
‘They never forget. Hell hath no fury like a sandwich.’
‘You won’t do it again, will you?’ Cack insisted, anxiously.
‘He won’t,’ promised Ax. ‘I’ll see to it. I can get very jealous.’
Verlaine was less struck by the humour of the situation. ‘Werewolves!’ he snarled, with uncharacteristic venom. ‘He’s a fucking lunatic, oh how I’d love to get my teeth in the bastard’s throat—’
Fiorinda tucked her arm into his. ‘Cool it, son. Look happy, we’re still on show. Don’t panic. We’ve conceded a goal, but we had the best of the play and it’s not even half-time.’
On the second day Fiorinda turned up beside Faud: neat and spruce in her old dove-grey trouser suit. She was formally spied as a stranger, and defended her position, correctly addressing Jack Vries, not the protestor. She was Mr Preston’s deputy, and therefore the acting titular head of the CCM, with a theoretical seat in the Reformed House of Lords. If she’d chosen to use her privilege on the other side of the Lobby today, she certainly wasn’t alone! (Laughter). Thus began the second act, in which Fiorinda’s performance was inspired. She touched the hearts of aged House of Commons anoraks by her attendance to the forms, and when she didn’t know, she made it up. She bounced up and down like a Jack in the Box, she made elaborate use of sarcasm; she employed all the beloved jargon.
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