Ax was making lists:
Weapons
Police
Armed Forces
Airports
Roads
Freight Distribution
Communications?
The World
There was something wrong with the item Communications. He felt that this was not a target. You would not gain anything by rushing to control the airwaves, charging into Broadcasting House or whatever and letting fly with automatic rifles. Other ways, the priorities were the same as ever in history. Put a cap on the enemy’s powers of retaliation, secure your borders, get control of supplies. But let them talk. It will keep them happy. The World was why he was here, looking out of the eyes of a daft little robot, which was sitting-in on a meeting of Pan-Asian Utopian Revolutionaries, convened by the Chinese. The robot sat on a chair at a table in a room with dun coloured walls, its little hind-legs sticking out in front of it. When standing it was about a meter and a half tall, and built something like an upright vacuum cleaner. RPs were small, so as not to look threatening. If you clothed them in either skin or fur, it made people’s ineradicable tendency to treat the remote logger like a cute toy much worse. So here was Ax, in a dissidents’ secret talking shop thousands of miles away from his physical location. The windows were too high for him to get a look out, but he believed he was somewhere in Shanghai.
The PanAsians could not get their heads—or digital remote logging equivalent—around revolutionary rock and roll. They were geeks and nerds, they didn’t have the context. Everyone who could understand tried to explain: but the leap was too great. An assortment of cartoon domestic appliances, humming Imagine, wasn’t going to convince anyone of anything.
When they reached the religion item on the agenda it was the European and the US delegates’ turn to recoil. US and French-tradition radicals, trained from birth to foam at the mouth when they heard the God word, muttered and fell silent. The Chinese were uneasy too. Ax felt differently. Be practical: understand that for a significant part of the population of England, this is mighty real. He paid a lot of attention and asked questions, while the South Asians and the Islamics and the Japanese bandied lines from the Koran and the Lotus sutra.
At last they came to Ax’s item, which however it got mangled by the simultaneous translation was meant to be about… Well, apparently he had proposed that the revolution had magic on its side. Yeah, explained Ax, going with it. For sure we all have to make our peace with God: but you can’t use God, you can only hope that what you want to achieve is in accordance with His will. But we can use the magic, it’s on our side.
Huh? What did he mean by magic?
‘I mean this.’ He raised the RP’s skinny metal arm. ‘Magic technology. We’ve got the big advantage that we’re comfortable with things like RP, virtual realities, putting alien things in our bodies; doing strange things to our brains. I think we’re in danger of losing sight of that, with all the emphasis on being ecological and green and getting back to nature. Not that I’m against getting back to nature, but—’
A West African Marxist (physically present, must be teaching or working here) leapt in joyfully, exclaiming, with reference to the model of the nineteenth century in Western Europe, the creation of a proletariat leads to revolutionary man, and revolutionary individualism leads to the creation of anti-capitalist machines…! A babble of voices joined him, straining the ST with their enthusiasm. The machines, the magic futuristic machines are GAIA in disguise, the Demiurge is with us, our Mother Earth and her secret informational armies, conspiring with us, we have the mandate of heaven! Ax had struck a nerve, a rich vein, and it’s good when you do that. But he wished he could get them to stick to the practical. No use: they were stuck into the mysticism riff, really getting off on it. Well, better add that to the list. Maybe it should be another list.
God
Magic
God he felt he could deal with. Ax could do business with God. He’d have to get onto Fiorinda about the other. Magic being a feminine thing, she was bound to know.
DARK and Fiorinda had agreed on a trial separation. The parting was calm, possibly because Fiorinda had been taking Sage’s advice. DARK returned to their native Teesside. Fiorinda stayed at Reading, going up to London for the Think Tank meetings with Martina of Krool, when the Heads couldn’t be arsed. If you believed the media, every Fest of Dissolution site, populated by campers who refused to quit, had become a pocket state of violent anarchy. But at Reading all was peaceful, though things were getting basic. Hippies washed clothes in the river, and traded insults with the private security guards who patrolled those nice-looking houses, all boarded up, on the other side. Yellow leaves and lye suds drifted down to the watermill built by Sun Temple, patriarch of a tribe who were neighbours of the Heads in the Travellers’ Meadow. It was constructed to a cunning design from the Whole Earth Catalog website, to dervive maximum energy from the slow—flowing Thames, but sadly it had no corn to grind. A couple of kilos of wheat berries from the Organic Grocery van had simply vanished between the stones. Without grist, the mill turned on: a mournful, post-industrial aeolian harp.
In the Whitehall meetings they discussed names. Counter Cultural Think Tank was hopeless. Some favoured The Dissolution Alchemists, which appealed to Paul Javert. Fio was holding out for The Dead Metaphors. Hours were spent designing a bus for the roadshow, and arguing about what they should wear on stage. The Heads started a small book on the incidence of the sexual/scatalogical swear words the suits employed to liven-up their script. The word shit had special rating, and was greeted with a cheer. Two shits in successive utterances and they would jump up and start hugging and rolling around like footballers. The poor unfortunate suits had no idea how to defend themselves, just sat there smiling uneasily. Pigsty caused an impasse, by refusing to let the tv cameras into the Committee Room: but of course was forgiven. Could be he didn’t want to get shown-up. He wasn’t impressive in these sessions. He had nothing to match Ax’s Lennonist one-liners, or Fiorinda’s crushing put-downs. Couldn’t even organise a childish wind-up.
It was the middle of October when the Heads decided to eat shit. It came about because HurdyGurdy’s site managers had banned them from the Blue Lagoon. This was a tactical error, for the former Festival had become a hungry, heaving mess, and if you couldn’t give the mob bread you had to give them circuses. The Dissolution Loaf—so firm, so brown—was served up in the Best of Fest tent, on a stage which had been ceremonially prepared, a trestle table laid with a white cloth and real knives and forks. Cack did the business, modestly at stool behind a red velvet curtain. His production was carried to the board on a silver platter, and carved by George to wild applause. It seemed like a sign that everything’s allowed.
Then the rain began in earnest. Fires could no longer be lit, and anyway there was no more wood to be had, unless you ripped it from the trees and then the hardline hippies would kill you. The hoi polloi were best off, with their sleeping bags tucked into binliners in the fug of their little tents, on the higher ground. In the open spaces of Sage’s van, almost afloat, Fiorinda and the Heads huddled, miserable and sour. The heating had given up entirely.
‘What’ we stayin’ on for, anyhow?’ asked Cack, the puzzle apparently fresh and new to him. ‘It was two weeks. Why’s everyone still here?’
‘Because of the Dissolution, Cack. We’re occupying the Festival site until the end of the year. You lost the plot again, you arsehole.’
‘And what’s gonna happen then?’
‘Then we all go home… I suppose.’
Cack was right. There was no sense or reason in hanging around in this sloshing wet field. ‘I want to book into the Holiday Inn,’ whined Fiorinda. ‘I want to sleep in a room with walls, and be clean, and have a flush toilet and a washing machine: look at my hands, they look like skinned toads. I want to be warm and dry, I want to have a hot dinner. We could try lighting a fire in here, in a biscuit tin or something. Is there any wood left?’
‘Nah, we burned the last of old Sun Temple’s mill; and the charcoal sack got left outside—’
‘It got left, did it? Why is nothing ever anyone’s fault around here?’
‘Because that’s the way we like it, Fio.’ snapped Sage. ‘You want laws, you want crime and punishment: go somewhere else.’
Sage and Fiorinda glared at each other. The Heads, dismayed, cast about for some way to distract their leader and their adopted princess.
Bill, the quiet Head—cadaverously thin, his skull mask always looking too big for his narrow chest and coat-hanger shoulders—remarked, ‘The Blue Lagoon has a wooden floor.’
Energised, they fired themselves up with appropriate drugs and ran round the campground, demanding support and illicit accelerants, neither of which were lacking. Without anyone, except the Heads and their near neighbours, knowing how it had started, the anarchist tribe of Festival stay-behinds poured into the arena, many of them bearing paraffin torches. Sound engineers were dragged to Orange Stage, and forced to ply their trade. The Heads put on a tremendous set, followed by various artists, and somewhere in the middle of this the Blue Lagoon was indeed set on fire. Nobody claimed responsibility, maybe many separate arsonists were involved. Fiorinda took over Orange Stage, with Krool and some unknown volunteers from the camper masses: and became alcohol-related furious about the way the staybehinds were waving their arms and singing along, these round beaming firelit mouths and ecstatic eyes, as if Fio was some kind of children’s entertainer—
She dived, screaming. The slithery, resilient matrix of human flesh engulfed her. They passed her from hand to hand as if she was a sacred idol, as if she was the ceremonial turd. They were chanting joyfully, idiotically, Live in the Pain! She struggled free and ran, and found a place in the circle round the great bonfire. By this time not at all sure what was going on, still believing herself on stage and surrounded by howling music, she screeched that she was not doing this for pay, you bastards this is not entertainment, this is me, this is what’s inside me. So often she felt like a dammed stream, such a head of power but she couldn’t release it: desperately now, now, but it didn’t happen. It was like sex, like the huge reservoir of arousal and lust in her that ought to flow like Niagara but it was blocked, barred, she always had to work to get there. Only the baddest music understood her, only the most violent, pounding beat and wail came close—
‘I’m so fucking miserable,’ she said to Cack, when Thames Valley Police had (reluctantly and ineffectively) come and gone, when the fire was dying down under hissing rain and the bodies of the fallen were being carried away. He had joined her, hunched under a fold of tarp, back of Orange Stage, bringing with him a sixpack of strong lager he’d found somewhere. ‘D’you realise what’s happening to this stupid country? Do you realise? Look, you see that bonfire? That’s my life, that is. It’s all going to go. By the time I’m grown up, everything I wanted, a whole civilisation I needed, will have gone up in smoke.’
‘Oh well,’ said Cack. ‘At least yore among friends. Have another beer.’
‘It had a rotten acoustic, anyway. I’m glad I never played in there.’
The fate of the Blue Lagoon, well-covered in the media, brought new crowds to Hyde Park, to Worthy Farm and all the other venues, just as the weather was becoming impossible. Shane and Jordan Preston, and Milly Kettle, returned from Taunton. DARK called Fiorinda to tell her they’d joined a campground in the North East, and intended to live outdoors all winter. At Reading staybehinds who literally hadn’t left the site since July shivered in their summer clothes: but they would not give up. Fiorinda wore her party frocks in extra layers, topped by a shapeless Dutch army surplus rain jacket; and divided her nights between Sage’s annexe, Krool’s women-only bender in the hospitality area; and Ax’s basement in the Snake Eyes house. She liked being of no fixed abode. The Heads were recording a new album, which meant they spent a lot of time away, but the van stayed in the Meadow, and Sage, sporadically, went on turning up for the Think Tank. So did Fiorinda. She told herself that as long as Allie was involved there must be something in it: because Ax was obsessed and Sage pathologically whimsical, but Allie never made mistakes.
It was like the whole Dissolution Year phenomenon. You kept thinking you should quit but you found yourself hanging on, just to see what happened next. And she wasn’t wasting time. She was putting a lot of thought (she didn’t seriously believe the world was going to end) into planning her solo career.
In November Sage had a call from Alain Jupette, mastermind of the radical EuroTrash outfit Movie Sucré. Movie had been at Rivermead in July. They’d decided to come back to check out the action, and Alain wanted a meeting, with Ax and Sage and Fiorinda.
Ax rendezvoused with Sage and Fio in the arena, which was looking more than ever like the centre of a refugee camp or a bedraggled mediaeval township. It was noon, but white mist still limned the eau de nil geodesic of the Zen Self tent, and shrouded the blackened circle where the Blue Lagoon used to be. A giant tortoise on stilts loomed up: a hippie with a huge tray, the contents covered by a steaming cloth. ‘Get your breakfasts here!’ he bellowed. Ax bought three dumplings and handed them out. They weren’t much to eat, a tincture of red bean paste in a mass of greasy dough: but they were wonderful to hold. Ah, thought Fiorinda, cuddling the heat. Hot cakes!
‘You two know what this is about?’
‘No idea,’ said Sage. ‘Power breakfast with Le Grand Grenouille.’
Ax frowned. ‘Where we’ll try not to say anything offensive.’
Fiorinda did not think Ax had yet recruited Sage to his cadre. They got on okay at the Think Tank, united in putting down Paul Javert; but there was too much previous between these two. Things like Sage describing the Chosen’s music as ‘complacent nostalgia’ in front of a tv audience of millions. People remember words of that kind, when the obscenities fade. And you wouldn’t think cynical manipulative crowd pleaser would have hurt Sage’s feelings, but it had. It was a difficulty in her life, because she really wished they could be friends.
Movie Sucré’s long white bus had arrived overnight. Alain was waiting for them with Tamagotchi, obligatory Eurotrash kooky girl. No sign of the rest of the band. Alain was wearing a scarlet quilted jumpsuit with a Ferrari badge on the breast pocket. Tama, in pink flannellette pyjamas and a fisherman’s guernsey, was making coffee that smelled divine.
‘Where’s the others?’ asked Sage at once, as if he suspected an ambush.
‘Oh, they are in here.’ Alain patted a black box. ‘Figuratively. Too much is going on at home, we could not all leave civilisation in person.’
‘I fucking hope you said so on the tickets.’
Alain laughed. ‘Tickets! What tickets? Tickets for the Blue Lagoon? There are no tickets anymore, that world is over.’
‘So, why did you want to see us?’ said Ax.
‘Well, it is the question of the British Squaddie. We want you Ax, and your people, to know that we in Europe intend to deal with him strongly, and instantly, when the day comes.’
‘Um, you’re in Europe now.’
‘Europe before,’ said Tam, bringing the coffee. ‘Europe afterwards, maybe. In between, every country for himself. Hello Ax, we were in Shanghai with you. Alain was the brave little toaster, I was the cranky anglepoise.’ She put down her coffee tray, tipped her naked skull into Ax’s lap, and bared her muscular, tattooed forearms.
‘See my RP shunt scars, and now you want to see my new back flip?’
‘She’s such a clown,’ said Alain indulgently.
‘I am a fucking clown!’ sang Tam. ‘Don’t ever put me down!’
The English took their coffee, exchanging puzzled glances.
‘Afterwards? After what?’
‘We prefer not to deal with Pigsty.’
‘Pigsty?’
‘Oue. I prefer to talk to you. Direct, offhand, like this, it’s the best way. But we don’t reveal any details and we understand it’s the same with you. Only,
when the violence starts there will be no time to discuss tactics, so you should know and accept it will be “open season” as you say, on those fucking mindless animals of yours, from the Baltic to the Sahara.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Ax, ‘What violence? I am not into violence.’
Tamagotchi sighed impatiently. ‘That’s fine,’ she muttered in French, rolling her eyes. ‘Fine.’
‘Well—’ said Alain. He looked into Ax’s face, head on one side. ‘Well, this is very curious. Ax, I think you will have to change your mind. This is not going to be a Velvet Revolution. As you will soon find out.’
There was a pause. ‘Hey, Fiorinda,’ said Tam, eyes sparkling. ‘Did you eat the shit?’
‘I was there,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I certainly inhaled. But I did not put anything in my mouth.’
Then they were out of the bus, dismissed so abruptly they were still clutching their coffee beakers. ‘What was that about?’ wondered Fiorinda.
‘Organised trouble,’ said Ax. ‘Brewing in London and other venues. Alain wanted to know what I know. Which is nothing, so now he’s happy. What you said, Fio: a few burned out cars, a few casualties, back to business as usual. That’s not for me. I’m in this for the long haul.’
Fiorinda headed off, leaving them together; hoping for rapprochement.
‘Fucking frog-eaters,’ said Ax. ‘I hate the way they always talk English.’
‘With those chichi accents. They could easily pronounce it properly.’
‘If they felt like it.’
They stood together, self conscious. It was hard to know what to say when there was no one else about. The skull’s demeanour was forbidding.
‘Sage,’ said the Ax, nothing daunted, ‘About Fio—’
‘Shoot.’
‘If she wants to fuck you as well, at some point, I thought I should tell you that would be fine. There’s nothing exclusive going on: I’m happy if she’s happy.’
‘No.’ Sage did something, which didn’t involve his hands whatever it was, and the skull vanished. His natural features: wide nose, full lips, wide-spaced blue eyes, a close cropped fleece of yellow curls, made a rare public appearence. ‘No,’ he repeated, face to face. ‘I’ll stick with playing the big brother. I think it’s more what she needs. If I’d wanted to have her, I shoulda ignored the ribbon, shouldn’t I. Only I know why the kid wears it, see.’
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