Band of Gypsys

by Gwyneth Jones

  ‘I’ve just heard a statement from Washington. The US government has come clean. They’d ceded Pacific and Eastern Seaboard beachheads, some time ago, in secret talks. That’s how the stunt was done. The Chinese came around the back of the world in three hops: up beyond the atmosphere, down to the NorthWest Seaboard, up and down again: they crossed the Atlantic from Nantucket or somewhere.’

  Sage nodded. ‘Any word on the design; or how the ships were fueled?’

  ‘Nope, but they had some pretty graphics of the flight plan.’

  Ax could get pictures now: Sage had fixed that. He saw a new bundle of hazel rods, which had not been there when he left. They’d been raiding the coppice-farm again. It filled him with terror when his darlings left the den, but he couldn’t stop them. He had to go out and fetch news, and forage: he couldn’t be on guard all the time.

  Fiorinda had been whittling the end of a hazel pole to a point, with Sage’s pocket knife. She returned to this task, smoothly detatching a long shaving, which Min the kitten danced and jumped to catch.

  ‘What now? Are the Chinese going to take a card?’

  ‘I dunno, maybe. The US are saying their Chinese allies have no territorial ambitions. They’re going to occupy England and Roumania, purely to contain the dangerous mess that is Crisis Europe. They’ll brook no resistance, but nobody gets any trouble unless they ask for it.’

  ‘Good of Fred to give us three months’ notice,’ remarked Sage.

  Iphigenia: now it all makes sense. The ultimatum China had delivered to Brussels, over the Uzbek resistance, had expired at midnight on the nineteenth, making that stunning attack on the South West of England a legitimate act of war. So that’s all right, and if the remaining world powers had needed an excuse to do nothing, they had one. Not that anybody seemed fussed. Ax just wished he knew when those secret talks about the beachheads had been held. When exactly did you sell me out, Fred? But he bore the man no ill will. Never judge until you know the whole story; or even then.

  Min approached the rabbits, quivering with excitement. Sage scooped him up, and dropped him on the heather bed; fairly gently.

  ‘Any news of the Few?’

  ‘Nothing… I’m still hoping they got away, out of the country.’

  It was strange. England had been invaded, but when Ax came back from his forays they struggled to think of questions, and he struggled to form answers… Sage resumed knotting strips of birchbark into a long string: hippie guerrilla skills coming in useful again.

  ‘Where’d you get the rabbits?’ asked Fiorinda, at last.

  ‘Oh…yeah. Not so good. Some one saw me in the wood, a bloke with a shotgun. I thought it was okay, just a chance encounter, but when I came back those were on a post. What are we going to do?’

  ‘Eat them.’

  Ouch. Ax must get better at foraging. They’d had nothing to eat in two days but the apples, some milk, a few crumpled tomatoes and the last of the bar snacks. He was afraid to make too many raids on the milk halt, and they couldn’t cook the garden vegetables, because of the smoke of a fire.

  ‘Of course.’ They’d just have to risk the fire. ‘But, listen, this is serious, someone knows we’re here—’

  They were shaking their heads.

  ‘It’s beyond our control, Ax,’ said Sage. ‘Someone knows we’re here, and he gives us rabbits. Let’s take it as friendly.’

  ‘What else can we do?’ asked Fiorinda gently. ‘We have to face it baby, either we’re among friends, or we’re not going to last long.’

  ‘Okay. But we could get further out of sight. I’ve been thinking, about that big house? Place where I found the apples?’

  ‘NO,’ they said together, instantly.

  ‘No walls, I veto walls,’ added Fiorinda.

  ‘What about cannibalising the house? There’s bound to be stuff.’

  ‘Now tha’s a good idea.’

  Ax cleaned the rabbits and spitted them, wrapped in herbs. Fiorinda lit a fire, and they devoured a feast, rabbit with tomato and marrow kebabs, and salt from the birchwood saltbox which was her talisman.

  Later that morning, Sage decided to start a video diary. When they raided the empty house he took the visionboard with him. Then Ax and Fiorinda decided to join in. They helped Sage to map Wood Court, for sound and vision, and the three of them became auteurs. Styles emerged. Fiorinda recorded home improvements and created installations (which the kitten wrecked, but the destruction was equally valid). Ax made narratives. The maestro let his camera eye rest on details that took his fancy. His diary entries were turning leaves, gosammer spider threads. The dusty, mourning flowers of summer’s end, goldenrod in fallen sheaves. Knapweed, fumitory and purple vetch, fading by the track to the road.

  The Few could have been safe. But the time to leave had been when Fiorinda told them it was over in a voicemail. Once the Wallingham situation was established, nobody was going to quit. Sage’s ‘disappearence’ had dashed their fragile hopes, but they’d been reliably informed that he was okay, just back in Wallingham, having ‘violated his parole’. No one believed Sage had got into a brawl with some ex-barmies of his own accord: Peter’s story (when the search parties had found him), suggested entrapment. But “Rick’s Place” was still running, although Bill and George couldn’t get in. So hopes were dashed again but it wasn’t the end. What else could they do but hang on? Then the police informed Allie about the Wallingham break-in, early on the morning of the eighteenth, and they were in another crisis.

  On the twentieth she was in her new office, doggedly trying to contact everyone who might have been at ‘Rick’s Place’; and who might talk to her. Were you there on the seventeenth? Did you see Ax or Fiorinda, did you speak to them? Did you see Sage? Do you know anything more about this break-in? Dilip arrived with his current squeeze, an emigrée Vietnamese ceramics artist called Nathalie Qu. Chip and Verlaine turned up on their precious bicycles, and started trying to make a drama out of the South West Peninsula’s telecoms crash. Allie’s assistant, a quiet young man called Charlie Middleton, was in his cubbyhole with the longer list of non-hopefuls, Rick’s Place regulars who certainly wouldn’t talk to Allie Marlowe. He was sending them personal emails, to leave no stone unturned.

  ‘I grasp I can’t get through to anyone in Cornwall to Somerset today,’ said Allie irritably. ‘Other than that, what’s the difference? Wake up, Chip. Thing fall apart, it’s normal. It just doesn’t get reported any more.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s more significant that the European Union is technically at war this as of morning,’ said Dilip. ‘Isn’t that something we should discuss?’

  Allie wished they would all leave, but wanted them to stay, just for the company. ‘How can that have anything to do with Wallingham? It’s not that I don’t care, DK, it’s just there’s fuck all I can do about it—’

  Verlaine groaned. ‘The ultimatum? Come on, that’s a canard, the New Masters of the Universe know Brussels has no control over us Rogue States.’

  Reflexively, he glanced out of the window: the bikes were still there, locked to the Courtyard railings. They were Giffords of Wiltshire Roadsprites, semi-AI and much loved. Chip’s machine was green and Ver’s was blue, with detail in mauve and acid-yellow. Their names were Cagney and Lacey.

  Allie rolled her eyes, and stuck her finger in her free ear.

  ‘Allie, who are the “masters of the universe”?’ asked Nathalie, timidly. ‘I never understand what Chip and Verlaine are saying.’

  Nathalie was tiny, beautiful and very chic. She tried to make friends with Allie, whose history with Dilip she knew. Allie couldn’t look at her without thinking, I’ll probably see you at his funeral: but she knew that wasn’t fair. DK was in reasonable health, at the moment. It would more likely be some other young girlfriend by the grave.

  ‘They mean the Chinese.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘They’re talking about the Uzbek Ultimatum, darling,’ explained Dilip. ‘It ran out at midnight.’

 
; (when did DK start calling people ‘darling’, so unlike him?)

  ‘Listen, I appreciate you all being here, but I need to make these calls, and Charlie’s busy too. We are trying to establish whether Ax and Fiorinda are okay.’ Allie hardly dared hope she might hear anything about Sage.

  ‘It’s a Reich issue,’ Chip informed the new recruit, helpfully. ‘Ming the Magnificent might even now be attacking Roumania, and we’re not “queer for Brussels” but the Dacians are our ancient allies.’

  ‘Ming?’

  ‘The Emperor of China. Playfully identified with vintage scifi fictional alien despot. You must have heard of Flash Gordon?’

  ‘N-no?’

  Wish Fiorinda was here, thought Chip. Jokes are wasted on this infant.

  ‘It’s Ming the Merciless,’ corrected Allie’s assistant, from his hole in the corner.

  ‘Whatever turns you on, Charlie—’

  ‘Sit up straight and pay attention, my child,’ said Verlaine to Nathalie. ‘If you want to join the gang, these things you must know. The Roumanians, and we use the ‘u’ spelling so as not to confuse them with the Roms, who are different, are in trouble because some of their guerrillas, that’s g u e, r, not g,o, were aiding the Uzbeks. We are their allies ever since Ax went to Bucharest, and arbitrated for some other vampire hippies to blow up the Danube dams. This makes us responsible for their fate—’

  ‘Ax blew up the dams! That’s not true, is it?’

  ‘Of course it is, Nathalie. We are ruthless eco-warriors.’

  The little Vietmamese looked terrified: Dilip hugged her.

  ‘Ignore them.’

  Chip and Ver turned Allie’s upright desk screen to face the room, touched it on and found the Channel Seven News. Chip whooped. ‘Hey, this is the UFOs! Pay attention, this is so cool! Someone videoed a flock of UFOs, leapt on a motorbike and zoomed out of the mystery zone at dawn. Nothing has escaped from there since—’

  ‘If you’re going to talk about UFOs, I’m really thowing you out—’

  Verlaine checked the bikes again. ‘Here’s Rob and the Babes. Plus babies. Cool beenz! We can play with Mamba, he’s such a great kid—’

  ‘Anything, so long as it gets you out of my office.’

  Rob, Felice, Dora and Cherry came rapidly into the room. Dora held Mamba in her arms. The toddler was looking sullen and tearful, a child who has been frightened by adult disarray. Ferdelice, the tall, slim four year old, caramel complexioned like her mother, clung to Chez’s dark hand. Felice checked the company and said urgently, ‘Someone ought to call Rox.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ gasped Chip, instantly sober. ‘What’s happened?’

  It was the end. So they are dead. Fiorinda’s dead.

  On Allie’s screen, a spray of purple teardrops flew across the ocean, looking like nothing on earth. Rob assaulted the touchpad. A vintage movie mix of Liszt’s ‘Les Preludes’ leaped to ear-shattering volume—

  ‘Fuck, sorry, how d’you change channel?’

  ‘I don’t, I don’t watch tv on my machine. Try the number keys.’

  ‘Got it.’

  A row of men and women in olive green uniforms, sitting on a stage under a ribbed, shiny, purple dome. They looked pleased with themselves and serious, as if posing for a proud school photograph. In front of them a tall, good looking man, in similar uniform but smarter, stood at a rostrum. A mixed crowd looking up, with blank faces.

  What’s wrong with this picture? The audience looked English, all ages, all dresscodes: some in military uniform. The people on the stage didn’t look English at all… Chip and Verlaine, Allie and DK were silent in bewilderment, slowly noticing the text that ran across the bottom of the screen; slowly grasping that the tall man wasn’t actually speaking English, it was instantaneous translation, following his words like an echo—

  The invasion was eight hours old at this time. The airships had arrived in waves, in rapid succession, each wave bringing thousands of troops: plus political officers, support staff, and the technicians who had instantly assembled mobile fuel generators, armoured transports, and armoured shelters like the purple dome. Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset were overrun, Bristol and Bath had been taken.

  ‘Is this real?’ said Allie. ‘Are you saying this is real?

  ‘He’s called Wang Xili,’ said Felice grimly. ‘He’s the General in Command of Subduing the South West.’

  ‘It’s real,’ said Dora. ‘It’s an invasion. The dome is in Bristol, they pulled people off the street to listen to them and this is live.’

  General Wang was telling the masses that they were in no danger. The Chinese Commanders would not target civilian populations, they respected non-combatants and had vowed never to deploy immoral weapons. He listed the immoral weapons, starting at the top with strategic or tactical nuclear devices. Nerve gas, biological weapons, chemical weapons other than crowd dispersing tear gas, several of the more vicious ‘non-lethals’. Weapons of direct cortical illusion using the forbidden “immix” code—

  ‘But how?’ demanded Allie. ‘How do you mean, an invasion?’

  Mamba began to cry, in piercing wails.

  Nathalie pressed white-knuckled fists to her mouth.

  —Expressed solidarity with the English people, and assured them they would be freed from oppression, disorder, torture and tyranny. Freed from the delusions of the Counterculture, free to practice in any style the three Approved Monotheisms, or the five Approved Pantheisms; or to practice Principled Atheism.

  ‘What’ll we do?’ cried Chip. ‘What are we supposed to do?’

  ‘Get hold of Rox,’ insisted Felice, as if this were the vital move that would annihilate the Chinese Expeditionary Force.

  ‘You’d better go home, Charlie,’ said Allie, hearing her own words time-delayed, echoey; like someone talking in a dream. ‘Tell anyone else who’s working today they should go home too. It’s going to be chaos.’

  Charlie got his things together and left. Who said, but we should all stay at the San? Maybe nobody said it: it was so obvious. This was where they had always gathered to face trouble. They had to stick together, how could they not? Dora and Chez took Chip and Verlaine back to Notting Hill, in the Snake Eyes people-van. They loaded up, then they drove to Lambeth, loaded up again, and said goodbye to the communards. The round trip took hours. Anyone who had wheels in London had scrounged some kind of fuel. There was a mass epidemic unauthorised personal transport hypocrisy, with hardly any police, and the added value of a generation of drivers who’d never had to deal with traffic before.

  Rox wasn’t answering hir phone. They swung by Queen Anne Street on the way back, but s/he wasn’t there.

  By the time they reached Buckingham Palace Road again it was dark. The concourse around the Victoria Monument was heaving. The permanent campground in Hyde Park had broken up, and many of the campers were trying to take refuge inside the Insanitude. A crowd of them, laden with hippie regalia, banners and bundles, besieged the Building Management Office. Further crowds had flocked to the old Reich Headquarters as if to a Big Screen, convinced that here, somehow, they would get the real news.

  It was a humid, autumnal night, the air was still, noise deadened. A handful of mounted police with lanterns appeared and disappeared, like rocks emerging from the choppy human sea. Police on foot were holding a lane open for authorised vehicles to enter the Courtyard; with great difficulty. As Dora inched through the turmoil, and the two Snake Eyes cats yowled, distressed to be uprooted, it may have crossed the party’s minds that this was not the best idea they’d ever had. But once they were inside it was okay. A bunker mentality took over, they felt safe.

  Allie secured a good set of rooms for Rob and the Babes and the kids and the cats. Chip and Verlaine had a room to share with a window facing an inside courtyard (thinking ahead, don’t want to be on an outer wall); it was reasonable sized and had a decent bed. They could use Allie’s bathroom and kitchen. Nathalie would stay with Dilip. She was afraid to go back to her place
. She believed the Chinese would be in London in a day. She would be picked up for re-education; and she was terrified.

  Which did not bode well.

  If they’d expected to be in charge they’d have been disappointed: but it hadn’t crossed their minds. The Few had never been in charge, and they knew they would never sit around that circle of schoolroom tables again, giving advice and consent. The Balcony Room had become an emergency shelter for Hyde Park campers. They made Allie’s office their headquarters and spent most of their time in there, kids and cats underfoot, watching the disaster unfold. Allie moved into the new general office on the first floor, for the Reich work she needed to do: closing things down, wiping hard drives, making sure paper was shredded. No one had been able to locate Rox.

  They watched Australian channels, and the Radio Delhi webcast, to find out what was really happening, more or less: English State tv for loony disinformation. They found out about the beachheads, and spluttered at President Fred’s perfidy. They heard Crisis Europe described, from all sides, as ‘a tragic and violent backwater’—which warned them not to expect much from the international community; and they saw the most momentous event of the world’s recent history calmly airbrushed out of existence.

  The Chinese did not believe in the ‘A-team’. The few and vague statements that had come out of China in the past year had cast doubt on the nature of the event—without going into specifics. Now they had their story sorted out. The ‘so-called event’ was an ‘absurd mystification’ of the simple fact that the world’s reserves of polluting fuels had collapsed more steeply than Western forecasts had expected. The Chinese people, who had already made a successful transition to the post-fossil-fuel era, saw no need to attribute the decline to black magic! US science colleagues had admitted the shameful truth, Chinese investigators having uncovered irrefutable evidence of how the Big Lie had been perpetrated. Absurd “Neurobomb” research had been abandoned, as Mr Eiffrich had wisely decreed.