Bold as Love

by Gwyneth Jones

  Ax arranged for Fereshteh to get him up to speed on British Islam, or English Islam as they should now say. She and Allie were sharing a suite of Insanitude rooms: a makeshift arrangement, like Ax and Fiorinda living at Snake Eyes, that seemed likely to persist because it was impossible to make plans. No sign of Allie. She was keeping a low profile, functioning okay, but nothing like her old self. He was startled and intrigued to find that Fereshteh still wore the burqa, in her own living room.

  ‘You’re not a male relative, and I feel more comfortable this way.’

  It was certainly interesting to watch her hands, and her eyes, and guess at the shape of that smile in her voice. How old was Fereshteh? Her hands said young, but her rich singing voice had all its growth, which he knew in a woman normally meant late twenties. Was she fat or thin? A little fleshy, he judged, but graceful. They talked about Islamic background, and how Ax would have to learn Arabic if he wanted to get very far: Ax skirting round the obvious, which to Ax was how can a woman put up with this religion?

  ‘I don’t get it,’ he said, at last. ‘Okay, I heard about how women get a better deal legally in the Koran than in the Bible, and Muhammad was secretly an early feminist, and wearing the veil is actually liberating, but give me a break. You and I both know that what happens, among the faithful, is heavy inequality.’

  ‘Qur’an.’

  ‘K’ran’

  ‘Better. Whenever we say the name of the Prophet, we say Peace and Blessings of Allah Be Upon Him.’

  ‘Muhammad, Peace and Blessings of Allah Be Upon Him. But how can you agree to something that says you’re less than a man, and you have go around with a bag over your head because you’re responsible for sexual attraction and he isn’t, all that?’

  ‘I don’t have to agree, Ax. I only have to accept, to stop fighting with the way things are. Accept the will of God, and be at peace. That’s what Islam means. But not only Islam thinks like this: In la sua volonte e nostra pace—’

  ‘That’s not Arabic.’

  ‘No, it’s Italian. It’s a line from Dante’s Paradiso. In His will is our peace.’

  For himself, he could feel the attraction: some kind of bedrock. Accept was a riff that kept playing in his head just now. For a woman, a courageous, competent, talented human being like Fereshteh, it was incomprehensible. He shook his head. ‘Nah, I still don’t get it.’

  She straightened the sleek dark braid, tinged with rust—colour, that lay on his shoulder. ‘You’re like a little boy. Your information chip let you down, huh?’

  ‘It doesn’t help with understanding things, it’s only a stack of facts and some ordering software. So, are you ever going to take that off, while I’m around?’

  ‘Not until we put out the light.’

  In July Fiorinda moved back to Reading. Too many hurtful things had been said and done, since that horrible ride down the Mall. Being with Ax had become an unhappy marriage, they were better apart. She found a vacant hut, sturdily made out of car body panels, in one of the farthest flung camping fields, arranged her possessions and sat looking around, seeking things that dated from before the Ax. Her guitar, a few dresses. My life is over, she thought. This is something else, a useless aftermath. That was the way she’d felt since Massacre Night. It wasn’t Ax’s fault, but maybe it was the reason they’d broken up. She picked up the saltbox and held it in her palm. She felt no nostalgia for the cold house, those years were dreadful to recall, but this double-edged talisman was still precious. A present for a little girl who is going to live beyond the end of the world.

  She began to work for Olwen Devi, on a scheme training human gut bacteria to chew up and neutralise shit, wherever it was laid (but not before!). As Sage had predicted, it was getting direly necessary to have a policy for the brown stuff. She didn’t like being a pharm animal, but she knew she had to be there. That was what The Few were about. She wasn’t going to let Ax down, just because they had personal differences. There were exercises you did, physical exercises rather like T’ai Chi, which expedited the pharming, due to quantum entanglement or something. She was doing them one morning, while her breakfast tea kettle sizzled, when Sage arrived. When she’d finished he was sitting at her open door.

  The skull was chipper enough, but it was lying through its teeth. The rest of him looked bone weary. The Heads had all been ill with some bug or other: and then Luke had gone down with a viral pneumonia. There was nothing a hospital could do for him, and Head Ideology scorned such places anyway. They were nursing him as best they could in the van. Fiorinda was not allowed to help. They said she was too young, and what the fuck would Ax say if she got sick?

  ‘How is he?’

  She didn’t invite him in. He looked as if he needed the sun and air.

  ‘Okay, sort of, for the moment. George is with him.’

  ‘Is he going to get better?’

  The skull contemplated. ‘No,’ said Sage at last, stonily. ‘I don’t think so.’

  She said nothing. Her fire burned with a strong, young, yellow flame, the effect of the exercises made her feel distant and sleepy. So this is what we will do, she thought, as she crouched waiting for the water’s note to change. We will die… Well, that’s not so bad. Without premeditation she reached out, and a flame crept into her hand. It curled there confidingly, the little wild creature, full of life: such a consoling thing, a fire.

  Sage moved in the doorway, a boot heel striking—

  She looked around. He quickly looked away.

  ‘There’s a letter for you. I brought it over.’

  The campground Post Office was busy, these days. Cellphone networks had collapsed as the hippies chopped down masts all over the place, leaving the utterly, abjectly mobile-dependent English lost and bewildered.

  The short letter was from Carly.

  Dear Fiorinda, excuse me writing, but I couldn’t get a number for you, you famous person you. I don’t know if you want to know this but I thought you ought to be told—

  ‘My mother’s sick again,’ she said, when she’d read to the end. ‘Sounds as if she’s dying.’

  Summer turned to Autumn. Throughout Europe, Countercultural Revolution flared and smouldered. In England appeasement, the President Pigsty route, seemed to be working: but the conflict between Yorkshire’s Islamic Separatists and the police had reached the proportions of a small war. In the cold house Fiorinda endured the hated company of the dying woman, not knowing if it made any sense to stay, sure she could not leave. At least Carly made no further contact. She thought of Saul the Pig in his hotel suite with his bodyguards, Ax the manager organising everyone, the Few obediently doing whatever he said: and all the barmy army lads, all the campgrounds, all those thousands upon thousands of people who had never gone home. From a distance she could see it happening, Ax’s future, the rock and roll lifestyle written over everything. The nomadic idleness, the greedy self-indulgence, the emotional intensity, the anomie, the tantrums… She saw no hope in the development. A certain model of human life becomes accepted: once we were manufacturing workers, then we were venture capitalists, then docile consumers. Now we’re rockstars. So what.

  Sometimes she thought about the magic. But Sage had been right to look the other way, because there was nothing to discuss. Magic, when you hold it in your hand, turns out not to mean anything useful. It’s like life, it’s like death: it’s not for anything. It just is.

  The trouble in Yorkshire was getting very bad. Girls of Pakistani or Bangladeshi extraction were found dead if they had so much as left the house unveiled or without the escort of a male relative. Schools were closed, ‘Anglo—Saxon’ companies attacked, mixed race families harassed. Terrorist bombings and racial firefights were almost daily occurences. People who still had satellite tv started seeing the map of England on Al Jazeera and CNN (shorn of Scotland and Wales: you didn’t even recognise the “headless chicken” shape, first few times you saw it); with Yorkshire outlined in jagged red. People who didn’t were fed a milder versi
on of events.

  President Pigsty decided there was a Countercultural issue. He was outraged over the honor-killings, dress codes, all that oppressive stuff. He ordered the toughest nuts of the barmy army up there, to liase with the police and sort the bastards. When his Cabinet demured he told them to mind their own business, they were a bunch of fucking wankers and he was the President. But there was no change in Yorkshire, and the Pig’s pride was touched. One day in September he announced that he’d fixed up for Ax and Sage to go north. They were leaving tomorrow, no argument. Let them solve the Islamic problem. If they were so fucking clever.

  The others gave Ax and Sage space, after the meeting was dismissed. No one knew what to say. They were still hostages, still at the Pig’s mercy. The two of them went back to the Snake Eyes house and up to the room Ax had shared with Fiorinda. It was twilight and there was a brown-out. Ax fussed with candles, which to Sage was nostalgic. At Reading they had ATP lighting, a limited system, but beyond futuristic: a glimpse of a world that challenged Head Ideology in ways he didn’t know if he could tolerate.

  ‘Well? I suppose we have to go?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ax. ‘I suppose we do.’

  Without withdrawing his support, or causing trouble with the Pig, Sage had been quietly going out of his way to annoy Ax, and Ax had accepted the situation. He knew it was his own fault, for impugning the guy’s honour (to get suitably mediaeval about it) that time, over Fiorinda. He shouldn’t have done it, and he’d wished often he could apologise, but some things are better left unsaid. He was surprised and relieved at Sage’s attitude.

  ‘And we can take it that our secret rulers are happy for the barmy army to be involved?’

  Ax was sitting next to Sage on the bed, the room didn’t have much furniture. He leaned back, head against the wall, thinking about Benny Preminder, sitting there so demurely, making his notes. Bastard. ‘No secret. The PM’s clearly decided that using the barmy army is better than sending in the regulars, which is the next step.’

  ‘So what are you planning to do when you get there?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘No brilliant solution to the Islamic Question, on that chip of yours?’

  ‘I keep telling people, it’s a datastack, not a wishing well. I’m only fucking sure that street fighting is not the solution. This is a problem of emotional identity, it feeds on that stuff.’

  ‘Fine. Let them be the Islamic Republic of whatever.’

  ‘Right. Then would you evacuate the non-Islamic population of Yorkshire? Or let them stay, sit back and watch the ethnic cleansing? Come to think of it, where would you set the borders of that Republic? What about London, Birmingham, Leicester, Manchester? You know of any major cities that don’t have a significant Islamic population? No, there has to be some way to convince the Islamics they want to be part of the new England. Maybe we have to find it…and without offending the Pig. Last thing I want is to challenge that fucker’s authority.’

  The streets of Taunton, running with blood—

  They sat in silence, watching the candlelight, and the shadows that played on the red Gibson, on some sheet music lying on a table; a saucer of dry catfood with which Ax had been trying to lure one of the Eyes’ cat’s pretty kittens into his life, a scarf that Fiorinda had left behind.

  ‘Pig’s goons aren’t going to be very impressed,’ Ax remarked gloomily. ‘I’ve never touched a firearm. I managed to avoid them on the Tour. What about you?’

  ‘I can use a shotgun.’ Sage took off the masks, and flexed his crippled hands. The right was worse off: that was the one with only half a thumb, the surviving fourth and fifth fingers lumpy and crooked from long ago efforts at repair. ‘My left hand’s more or less functional.’

  ‘I thought you was right handed.’

  ‘Yeah. Converted to ambidextrous by years of vicious bullying. Ah, it won’t be hard. Things like that never are.’

  ‘Easy enough for you to say. You’re the guy who juggles chain saws.’

  ‘First time I’ve heard you admit you’ve seen our stage act.’

  ‘Must’ve read about it somewhere.’

  ‘Hahaha. So we go up there, and what, we shoot people? My God.’

  ‘I hope it doesn’t come to that.’

  ‘I think it will.’

  They contemplated the future. The sheer monstrous impossibility of what had happened to them, the hopelessness of Ax’s project.

  ‘Maybe now you grasp,’ said Sage at last, ‘why Fio was so fucked up.’

  Ax flinched. ‘Please, could we not talk about Fiorinda.’

  He hadn’t been too concerned when she moved back to Reading. It was just a spat, he’d known they would be together again. But now… She was living in that house, her mother still dying: refusing to let him visit, refusing all help. The last time they’d spoken on the phone she’d looked so bleakly unhappy. He was terrified. The only comfort he could offer himself, in those grey hours when Ax never slept, was that she was too down to get it together to slit her wrists or swallow enough paracetamol.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Sage restored the masks and got to his feet: unfolding, as always, to unexpected heights. The skull’s stark grimace was irrationally cheering. ‘Okay, we’re off to the wars. Now lets find some company and get stinking drunk.’

  FOUR

  The Straight Path

  Ax did not get drunk. Talking with Sage had made him realise that being treated like that by the Pig didn’t matter. The Islamic question was something he had to tackle: a hill to climb. Looking at it concentrated him so he forgot to drink; or if he remembered, the drug had no effect. Maybe the calories from the alcohol went straight into bit-minding, who knows. In the morning Sage was found in the Mugs Room, curled up peacefully beside a savory pool of vomit and urine. They woke him up and hosed him down, Ax and Sage went off to talk to media folk about their expedition, and it was time to set off. Ax went on thinking about his hill on the train: while Sage slept, folded in an impossible-looking pose on the opposite seat in their ancient first class compartment. Sage could sleep anywhere.

  In Doncaster they were taken to a disused office block on Chequer Road, that the barmy army was using as a base. They were received on an upper floor by someone called Gervase: who sat behind a desk, in an open plan office that bore traces of its previous occupants, and explained that the barmy army in Yorkshire had no use for their presence.

  ‘I’d like to see you two dudes do your free concert or whatever it is, and get on the next train back to London. We’re running a war here, not a pissant rock gig.’

  Gervase wore his new piercings and his custom-tattered camouflage with an air of self-satisfied irony. His accent was more offensive than Fiorinda’s, though not so perfect. You had to feel a certain sympathy with the pleasure he took in being rude to pop celebs: but he was frightening. Ax had met others of this chilling type. The kind of guy whose response to Massacre Night had been to realise that joining the hardline CCM was a smart career move.

  ‘A war?’

  The Pig wannabe stared at him. ‘What else would you call it? Now, if you rockstars will bear with me, we’ll take care of your gear, and I’ll get someone to drive you to your hotel.’

  He picked up a sheaf of papers and pretended to read. The goons at the doors of the office suite stared ahead of them. Either ex-regulars or they’d soon got the idea. Ax got up and went to the windows above the street. He thought about the rivers, the Don and the Trent, the line of the Great North Road: the old Roman road to London. Strip out the confusion of modern civilisation and you could easily see why this place had once been a guarded gateway to the south. And here we are again. How long does it take to complete the fall back to the Dark Ages? Not long. Not when the stumble and slide is being helped along by so many venal idiots.

  It was late evening and there was a police curfew, but there was a crowd on the pavement for Ax and Aoxomoxoa. Gervase’s soldiers were shoving them back. Sage had got up too. He was
prowling the deserted desks, turning over the spoor of the accounting firm that had died here, suddenly, some months ago. But the skull’s eye sockets appeared to be watching Ax with lively interest, to see how he would jump.

  It was one of those moments when you have to take one path or another. Am I a visiting celebrity, or am I something else? Maybe, ignobly, it was a pure rockstar reflex that swung it. That’s my crowd, you smug bastard. ‘Sage, let’s go meet the public. Take care of the gear, Gervase. We’ll call you later.’

  The lifts were non-functional. They went leaping down the stairs, passing the occasional startled militarised hippie. ‘Hey,’ said Sage, ‘What happened to not challenging the Pig’s authority?’

  ‘It’ll be okay, I can fix him.’

  The guards on the ground floor seemed to have other orders, but Ax made it clear that he was going through. Faced with the hero of the Tour and your actual Aoxomoxoa, paragon and nonpareil of glorious English louthood, what could they do but give way? Minutes later Ax and Sage were working the front row, accepting eager, thrilled invitations to come along to the barmy army’s favourite club: marching away, the lads forming up behind them, roaring out the Deconstruction Tour song:

  Oats and beans and barley grow

  Oats and beans and barley grow

  Do you or I or anyone know

  How oats and beans and barley grow?

  At least they were clearing the street, police should like that.

  The club was a dank basement arena, given over to drinking and male bonding, the sound of yakking voices louder than the generic dancetrack. The moment they walked in they were surrounded all over again. Ax knew he’d made a risky move, but he didn’t think it was too dangerous. He could handle the Pig, at least this far. He put the problem out of his head and got into Tour mode. It wasn’t hard. These lads were nothing like as bad as the merciless hordes at the post—Deconstruction Tour concerts. They just wanted to get near, grinning all over their faces, laughing stupidly, bursting with pride.