Fiorinda remembered Martina’s terrified face. He could do what he liked.
Pigsty’s tremendous physical strength and resilience became evident. While Ax turned grey and sank into his chair, while his hands began to tremble, Pig stayed bright as a button: not stressed at all by the events of his busy evening, showing not a sign of fatigue. Twice he sent the guards out, once for cigarettes and once for curry. (Ax vetoed alcohol, the Pig took this like a lamb). And still the facts poured out. Verlaine and Chip, Fiorinda and Sage started to give each other wondering looks.
Finally it was over. The last phase blurred, the Pig abruptly satisfied. They were taken to another part of this building, where two connecting rooms and a bathroom had been prepared, evidently prepared in advance for this planned emergency, with camp beds and blankets. Ax went straight into the bathroom and threw up, ran a lot of water, came out with his head and face dripping, wiping his mouth; and collapsed on one of the cots.
The others grouped round him.
‘Ax,’ said Sage, softly, ‘You’ve got a warehouse chip, haven’t you.’
‘An implant,’ whispered Verlaine. ‘You must have.’
‘Yeah,’ said the Ax, muffled, choking. ‘You’re true. Don’t tell Pigsty. I think he’d tear my head off.’
In the morning, Ax was separated from the others and sent on a tour of the provinces: on what seemed like a rampage of mob violence but was actually pretty structured, Ax should know because he structured it. Within a few days he knew that the decision he had made was in some sense justified. Pigsty really did have an army, an army of wild young men, and a few women: led by hardened Green-violence veterans. It was growing all the time; and the Pig really was in command of this army, so far as anyone could be. There were no other leaders left, at least no one who was prepared to claim that rank after Massacre Night. The wild rumpus couldn’t have been stopped, not without a major escalation of violence and death, but what was more shocking, more disorienting, was that nobody seemed to want to stop it. The police, the government, they were going to stand by, and let the thing burn itself out. So that’s what Ax was doing, or directing, the burning out of this energy: guiding the destruction, as best he could, along less than utterly destructive channels. He felt like a lone paramedic at a massive traffic accident, except that this paramedic was the same person who had allowed the drunk driver to take the wheel. He’d been so determined not to peak too soon—and to be honest, hoping the violent phase could be avoided entirely. But Ax had got it wrong and Pigsty was the boss: well on his way to declaring himself King, Emperor, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Milosevic.
At least there were remarkably few human fatalities.
Considering. Yet.
It was horrible, but it was quite an experience leading Pigsty’s barmy army. There came, maybe inevitably, a moment when it started to feel right. It was in a vast supermarket, outside Wolverhampton—a staged event, this one, with a local tv crew in attendance and Ax himself leading the action—as the mob, the barmy army and a local crowd, let rip with blowtorches and chainsaws. This had to happen, thought Ax. Two hideous little children sleeping in a shop doorway, their names are WANT and IGNORANCE. We cannot make terms with those children, they’ve grown to monster size, they can only be driven out by force. He had just made a stupid speech about the crimes of profiteering fat cats, and the real, terrifying consequences of profit-motive consumerism, but though stupid it was also true. Smash! Destroy! He had never wanted it to be this way, but maybe there was no other way, the crashing chords, the furious energy of sound and meaning fused—
(they would put his Jerusalem solo on the soundtrack for the tv item, he’d made sure of that…)
Later: the Disney version. It was March, the postponed Dissolution Day had come to pass. A retired Prime Minister, ceremonial Head of State since the Royal Family quit, had quietly resigned and fled. President Saul Burnet, (aka Pigsty) would take office now: a figurehead post but a substantial and fitting compliment to the leader of the CCM. Fiorinda and the Ax—best candidates for romantic revolutionary prince and princess—featured in the parade, rolling up Piccadilly and down the Mall behind Pigsty’s biker escort, in a coach left behind by the Royals. It was balmy weather, the sky was clear and china blue, the buds on the plane trees swelling and unfolding in a mist of green and gold. The cheering crowds included many ordinary Londoners; but few tourists.
They hadn’t seen each other since December. Ax had been delivered to the luxury hotel where Pig had his London HQ just in time for the start of this charade. He didn’t know what had been going on. He had not been allowed to communicate with his friends. He only knew they were still alive, all those who had stayed alive that night in December, alive and more or less okay. He wanted to talk to her about the rightness, the immense power of certain moments, was that magic? She ought to know.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, softly. ‘What’s happened is terrible, but I can use this—’
Today the formalities would be concluded. Northern Ireland already someone else’s problem, Wales and Scotland would go their separate ways. Then it would be time to explore the new relationship between the English government and the CCM, how would that power—sharing go? How would things go in the continental EU, where versions of the same scenario were playing at several national venues, to some degree or other? Alain had been right about that non—Velvet Revolution. Now that he was free again, Ax would be able to find out more. Fiorinda was looking so good. At first he’d thought it was a new dress, then he’d recognised one of the old ensembles, green silk under spiderweb lace, cleaned up and mended. There was a jewelled netting threaded through her beautiful hair.
‘We’re still together, you and me and the others. We can still make a good team.’
Fiorinda turned her head. Trust Fio, she was not impressed by his pitch.
‘Ax, you are beyond belief.’ She shook her head and added, with such loss and finality she could have been speaking from an open grave, ‘I’m never going to write another song.’
And the crowd went crazy, a background of senseless rejoicing behind his familiar face
THREE
Cigarettes and Alcohol
Ax was in the Zen Self tent. He hadn’t been interested in the place before, because Olwen Devi was Welsh and, by definition, none of Ax’s business (be practical: set your limits). But Dissolution was past and the Zen Self circus was still here, so he’d decided to come and check it, see what Fiorinda and the Heads were on about. He had meant to accost one of the Selfers, get the spiel. Instead he moved through the little crowds around the installations, stopping and staring and then passing on, brooding on the grief he was having with Fiorinda.
He hadn’t known how much he’d been looking forward to seeing that girl, until they were suddenly together in the royal coach, and she froze him out. Things had been no better since. He was back where he’d started, with the stone cold eyes, the clipped chill voice, the so, do you want that fuck? In times like these, a lover isn’t for sex. A lover is someone to reach for in the night, someone whose existence in the world you can cling to when you’re hard pressed. He’d been imagining that was what they were for each other, but no way. She’d been living in Pig’s hotel under some kind of house arrest, which couldn’t have been fun. He’d thought she’d relax when he took her back to the Snake Eyes’ place: it hadn’t worked.
She said the world where they could have been together no longer existed.
Ax said he thought they needed each other more than ever, now everything was fucked.
She said, ‘I’m not going to be any rockstar political gang’s Comfort Girl, allowed to tag along in return for sexual favours.’
So then Ax had to face the question of what Pig might have been up to (although at least she was alive, and in okay physical shape, more than some people could say). She brushed that off, hurtfully as possible. ‘Oh no. Pigsty won’t touch me. He’ll protect me. I’m the Ax’s main squeeze. I’m safe, as long as you and he
don’t fall out.’
‘Look, Fio,’ said Ax, ‘this is not fair. We’re all equal under the Pig. You, me, all of us. You think Pigsty or his goons would hesitate at anal rape? You’re kidding. Believe me, I’ve seen them in action. You’re not “allowed to tag along”. You’re vitally important, you have been from the start, if that’s what’s fucking you up. You’re the one with the verbals, the one the suits respect and so do we all.’
Still the curled lip, the hostile eyes, the relentless tongue. ‘He’ll probably knock me on the head, however, when he finds out I’m sterile.’
‘You are not sterile. You had the injection: it’s reversible—’
‘Not the one they give to single mother thirteen year olds, who have just given birth and have no one to read them their rights.’
It was impossible, he couldn’t reach her, and he hated and despised himself for taking the sex anyway. It was his own stupid fault for building up a crappy fantasy. He’d come to like and respect Fio very much, but he hadn’t thought of himself as romantically involved, before Massacre Night. He’d regarded her as a project, a friend in need. What a fucking stupid way to get involved. Not knowing what is happening, not thinking it out, just falling—
It had been a relief to go down to Taunton, where repossession loomed again. That’d been a bizarre experience. Contrary to the look of the thing, Ax had no money, certainly none to spare to pour into his Dad’s black hole; not this time. He’d been pleading with the finance company, thinking fucking hell, don’t you guys realise a word from me to the Pig and your heads might get blown off?; and at the same time could have kissed their feet for not realising, for still managing to live in a world where nothing had changed. Dad didn’t realise anything. Ax’s dad would keep repeating on him like a bad curry, until the hideously distant day when the bastard could be stuck in a nursing home.
And throw away the key.
Old people ought to die more. When he’d said that, what he’d meant was that old people in this country might as well be dead, considering the kind of life most of them had to endure—
Taunton had been only lightly bruised by the Deconstruction Tour. Broken plate glass, a couple of burnt out buildings, nothing to mention. But there were no young men. Apparently a bunch of hippies, led by one of the Organs, had been through all this area on an aggressive recruiting drive. It made for a strange atmosphere, especially at night. Ax had walked about the quiet, dark streets, and felt chills up his spine. The idea of Ax raising an army in Somerset was laughable, but it was a scary insight into the way the Pig’s mind was working, (we never thought he had a mind. What fools were we); and a view of the situation that had to be nipped in the bud. The fingernail and thumbnail coming together, nicking out the disastrous growth before it has time to get started: he could feel it. And there was Fio again, one of those Think Tank Fio-riffs about words that make sense, language we can understand with our senses… Raising a cruel, ridiculous nostalgia for the good old days of jamming with Paul Javert.
His brothers and Milly had been here on Reading campground since the coup. Good thinking on their part, safety in numbers: safety in being seen to be part of the Countecultural nation. He’d insisted that he needed to talk to them, wanting to know how much freedom he had. His barmy army escort had agreed to drop him off, no problem there. He’d told the band he hoped they could go home to Taunton soon. But Ax would have to stay in London. In the Snake Eyes house; or find somewhere of his own. What about Fio? Would she move in with him?
He kept wanting to call her, see if anything had improved. Like, right now. It would be no use. Fiorinda and telecoms didn’t mix. Her cut glass accent, her mulish little white face on a postcard screen, communicated nothing.
Fuck. Relationship-grief was a distraction he badly did not need.
Was it the sterilisation? Women will do that, tell you anything but the real problem. If she wanted to have a baby…okay. As long as it was just one. Whatever the injection had done, they’d get it fixed: sure to be possible.
In front of the quantum-dissociation experiment he stood, distracted from his trouble by a technical puzzle. What were the Zen Selfers running all this stuff on? Mains Power was fucked to hell all over, to the extent that the campgrounds, with their dodgy little generators, were relatively well off. But these big science installations looked too hungry to be feeding off a little chugging petrol engine out the back of the tent. Ax was interested in novelty energy sourcing. There would come a time when the problem of power was not transient, and it might not be far ahead.
It was on the list called Solutions to Problems:
Find a means of supply that can survive without the socio-industrial complex.
But Ax had envisaged years of working on the sidelines, tackling that list. Instead of which he would have to spot the solutions that must be around in embryo, and save them now, if he could, while struggling with a raft of horrible present and pressing dilemmas—
‘Good morning Mr Preston.’
A woman in a sari was standing at his elbow.
Ax the guitarist had prided himself on being non-famous. His face was not his fortune, he didn’t do celebrity culture, no one was ever going to pester him in the supermarket. He felt a bitter, irrational shrinking: he was public property now.
‘You can call me Ax.’ At least he remembered this woman’s photograph from the Festival programme, so he could return the compliment. ‘And you’re Olwen Devi, nice to meet you.’
‘Is there something you’d like to know?’
‘Well, yes. How’re you keeping all this stuff going? Is it a petrol generator?’
Maybe they had a landline all the way from some busy Welsh wind farm. But that wasn’t the answer. All the renewables were the socio-industrial dependent National Grid concept, Greenwashed, and all the micro-generation he’d seen so far was chickenshit. Nothing solved the problem Ax wanted to solve.
‘We make our own power.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Literally. We use ATP, adenosine triphosphate, the energy currency of all living things, from our own cell metabolism.’
‘You mean, like a…like a potato clock?’
‘Something like a potato clock. Would you like me to explain?’
‘Hmm.’
Fiorinda flew out of his mind. He took a better look at the scientist. The morning was chill, Olwen Devi wore a vivid red and green plaid shawl, trimmed with black piping, around her shoulders—a colourway offensively drab-yet-garish to his English eyes. Her face was a smooth oval: half-circle eyebrows, high round cheeks, round brown eyes, businesslike smile. What is she like? She was like a calm, confident, Welsh Hindu Primary school teacher. He could imagine her standing no nonsense.
‘Okay. Explain it a little. No need to get too technical.’
She led him away from the drifting, idly interested campers, to the decking in the centre of the tent. They stood among the collection of lecture props.
‘Every cell of your body contains little powerhouses called mitochondria.’
‘Yeah,’
‘Which…it’s a fascinating process—’ Olwen Devi’s hand edged as if magnetically attracted towards her laser pointer; the remote for her display screen. Ax gave her a firm look.
‘Translate fuel into work potential.’
‘Right.’
‘We’ve developed a means to draw on this power, through the skin, and amplify it.’
‘Oh yeah? And what can you make it do?’
‘Ambient light and moderate heat are the most developed applications. Those can be seamless. Otherwise, there’s an interfacing problem. We’re envisaging a set-top technology, in the medium term.’
‘But you’re already running this whole show on it? How long—?’
‘We’ve been running the Zen Self tent on human metabolism power since last July. In times of high demand it can be exhausting, like running uphill. But everything here is highly energy conserved and we are many: it’s never too much to
handle. Of course it would be another huge step to move on from experimental conditions.’
‘Guruji, how would you like to work for me?’
‘Please don’t call me that. A guru is a chubby fellow with a penchant for half—nakedness, glistening like a raw egg as he rakes in money from the gullible. Also it is a title for a man. I tolerate it from the punters: I don’t like it.’
‘Then, er Dr… Devi?’ But that was another nickname.
‘Just Olwen.’
Zen Selfers, most of them wearing some of that tacky Welsh red and green, had come to see what was going on. They didn’t look surprised, no more than Olwen herself. It was as if they’d been waiting for Ax to turn up.
‘Okay, Olwen. What about it? If I’m ever in a position to hire you, one day?’
The Zen Selfers looked at each other, grinning. Olwen Devi shook her head at them a little. ‘Mr Preston, Ax, we believe we’re already working for you.’
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