‘Skull ’ead nation welcomes you,’ sez George.
Moving on to the newest of the Heads’ rockstar toys, something called ATP, and that’s why there’s a goldfish bowl full of water on the table in front of the Heads, it is to be used for a demonstration. George takes off his jacket; Sage is already wearing only a singlet. Bare arms, nothing up their sleeves, they touch the water for a few seconds and sit back. Dian, gamely playing her Blue Peter part, confirms the water was cold and is now hot. Wow, it’s really hot! Within seconds it bubbles: it boils.
Can’t prove anything on television, but that is amazing!
At the moment, says Sage, that’s a party trick. Doesn’t make sense to use ATP to boil an egg, not yet. But we’re getting there. He’s in disgrace with Olwen Devi and with Ax, for inciting the staybehinds’ weird-science tendency to pump their weedy hippie systems full of creatine supplement and grape sugar, so they could do tricks like this. Tonight he restrains himself, leaves George to say a few words about metabolic energy amplification, the fun of being your own powerhouse.
Sage picks up the mask button on his fingertip, licks it and casually tucks it back into place. With all the skulls restored, (before Heads fans watching this start to panic) the technology discussion continues: Rox providing intellectual comment, Fiorinda deflating the excesses. How near to cost-free these futuristic tricks can be, in production and in use; how easy on the environment. And (a rare slip into compassion land) the lives that could have been saved when Ivan/Lara struck, by radically decentralised energy supply—
Hope you’re enjoying this, dear manager.
Not too little, not too much. Soon they retired to interview territory, Are you going to tell us any new cheats to get at the secret stuff on Bleeding Heart? No! says Sage, laughing. If we told you it wouldn’t be secret, would it, explains Peter patiently. You got to use your initiative… Fiorinda, do you do this? Is, um, the Guinness Book Of Records since1989 inclusive hidden on Friction anywhere? Not that I know of, says Fiorinda. Whatever shape I am in the mosaic, I do not have the anorak gene—
Curled up in her comfy chair with her boots off, bare toes hidden under opaline organza skirts, she was thinking: life used to be so simple. There was the pain, and there was the determination to get even (though she didn’t call it that). No nerves, no doubts, no question. Every day, even before she met the man who was her father, a step towards, or a setback on the way to the finest kind of fame. Fame on her own terms, no grovelling: just by being the best. Now that’s gone. All gone. That arrogant, stupid little girl Fiorinda used to be must see her life in terms of the people she loves, because there’s nothing else left. So here she sits in Gulag Europe, playing Ax’s game, contemplating this new gestalt. People I love.
Roxane was smiling at her, with such understanding she felt frightened.
The Insanitude intranet was running again: Allie’s staff picking up the pieces of their empire, Sage on hand on start-up day to troubleshoot. Fiorinda and Anne-Marie Wing were there too, plus Chip and Verlaine allegedly helping out, in fact pestering Sage. The Triumvirate soap-watching pair were most intrigued by the flight to Cornwall. It was a great relief that the three had returned reunited: but what was behind these tantalising references to slugs, and jigsaws?
‘What d’you do when you’re there?’ asked Verlaine.
‘Get a little peace,’ Sage unfolded from the board where he’d been sorting out a problem for one of Allie’s people. ‘Okay, try that.’
‘Thanks, Sage,’ said the victim nervously. It’s an alarming privilege having Aoxomoxoa for technical backup. You pray you won’t fuck up.
‘And war. Ask him what happened in Venezuela,’ suggested Fiorinda, from across the room.
‘Vicious brat shafted me,’ said Sage, ‘that’s what happened.’ He left the nervous kid and went to peer at Allie Marlowe’s screen.
The tour of the north, promised by Ax and Sage at the end of the Islamic Campaign, was about to go ahead, and damn the torpedoes. The road show circus, the Few and friends, illustrious guests, local support, would be zooming around Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumbria and the North East for a month, through the start of the Festival season. Then straight into rehearsal for Ax’s inauguration concert at Reading—inauguration, accession, or whatever it was. The suits had capitulated to his terms, and now wanted this to happen as soon as possible. The whole thing was a nightmare to organise. But by this time Allie felt she was addicted to nightmare conditions.
‘Is that the big date?’ asked Sage.
‘So far,’ She wished people wouldn’t look over her shoulder; something she hated. ‘It works for the suits, haven’t had a chance to ask Ax yet—’
‘You’re gonna have to change it. That’s the middle of Ramadan.’
‘Is Ax really going to observe Ramadan?’ asked Chip, coming over.
‘Of course,’ called Fiorinda. ‘No food or drink from sunrise to dark, plus he plans to take no drugs at any time. No cigarettes. You’re all going to meet that nice Ax Preston’s evil twin.’ Possibly no sex either, but she didn’t think the kids needed to know that.
‘Shit,’ muttered Allie. ‘In July you’ll all be touring. It’ll have to be September.’
‘You don’t have to move it far. Just past Eid il Fitri.’
‘But we have to have the full moon,’ protested Allie, unexpectedly sentimental—
‘Got to have that fat old moon coming up behind Red Stage.’ agreed Verlaine.
‘Does it? Oh yeah, suppose it must—’
Now they were all breathing down her neck, all getting into the game. ‘You couldn’t have done it on the August full moon anyway,’ said Anne-Marie. ‘That’s Hungry Ghosts, I’m sure it’s inauspicious—’
‘You better not clash with the Last Night of the Proms,’ said Chip worriedly.
‘Can’t go to October, that’s too near Samhain, very much the wrong message.’
‘Ooh, mid-September, isn’t Yom Kippur around there? What’s the feng-shui on that?’
‘That’s not helpful, Sage. And Yom Kippur is not at the full moon, thank you very much.’
What to do about Benny Prem? At the end of a Whitehall meeting Ax attached himself to the Parliamentary Secretary and strolled with him to his private office. It was in the building that had been the original home of the Countercultural Think Tank. The meeting had brought up news from France about Alain Jupette and his cadre: it seemed as if Alain was trying his version of the Ax effect, pop-culture icons for law and order. In some very French, anti-authority way. So, what d’you think Benny? Can Mr Miniskirt swing it?
‘You mean the Marquis de Corlay?’
Ax grinned. ‘Alain has a terrible taste in stage names.’
‘I can’t get over the way you all know each other,’ said Benny wistfully. ‘All you rockstars.’
His office was a nice big room, furnished with taste. He’d looked after himself, the treacherous slimeball. Ax sat down by the desk. Benny hovered, clearly very uncomfortable, but seeing no way to escape. ‘We don’t. It’s the way you and Paul Javert picked out your Think Tank. English rock musicians who’d come to a seminar like that would be likely to have run into Alain.’
‘The natural leaders of the Movement.’
Ax laughed. ‘The natural leaders of the CCM were gunned down on Massacre Night. Except for the ones still lurking in the woodwork, resenting me deeply. The Movement is a political thing. What we are is something different. Listen.’
Thus invited, Benny—not daring to put himself behind his own desk—sat on another chair.
‘We’re not their political leaders, we’re more like their gods. That’s what rockstars are to their public, Countercultural or otherwise: objects of superstitious devotion. And most of them are clueless, docile cashcows, getting well fed and making the priests rich, same as most of all the gods you ever heard of. Except for the ones who are also criminally insane. It’s fair enough. People choose to worship lumps of wood, they’re only as fooled as
they want to be. But I’m not like that, Benny. Sage isn’t like that. Or Fiorinda, or any of the Few.’
He took out a cigarette and offered the packet. Benny shook his head.
‘So that’s what you’re up against,’ said Ax, easily. ‘A handful of minor deities, turned out to be real, and effective, and walking among the mortals. It’s a strange situation. Be careful how you mess with it.’
He held the guy’s gaze for a good long moment of calm, smiling silence.
‘I see,’ said Benny.
Ax had been more worried than he’d liked to admit by that approach to Sage. But he was convinced it was better to leave Prem in place, until he knew what lay behind it. He felt sure he could romance this guy, poor Benny with his irrational longing to be one of the gang. Sucker him with a charisma punch, get him to talk: quite possibly turn him, temporarily at least.
Celebrity culture’s got to be good for something.
Benny’s secretary put his head round the office door. He had some urgent information from the Internet Commission link, arrived by courier from GCHQ. Benny took the disk, put it into his new Ivan/Lara checker-box, fed it into his machine only when it had come up clean, decrypted it and stared at the text. Ax waited, wondering what now.
‘Ax,’ said Benny, chummily, looking a bit thrilled (it must be bad). ‘You said losing the internet was something you expected. What would be new bad news?’
Ax shrugged. ‘The Black Death?’
‘Mmm. I’m to pass this on to you. And the PM will want a meeting, urgently.’
Displaced persons, on the move through Continental Europe, had been a constant of the last few decades. They were called refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants, and sometimes welcomed, sometimes turned back. Crisis conditions, and the phenomenon of the home-grown drop-out hordes, ought to have made the problem worse. In fact there’d been a lull since Dissolution: if only because it was more difficult for anyone to reach this offshore island. There’d been rumours this happy situation was about to end, that there was a new influx, mixed origin, coming up the Rhone corridor, and down the Rhine from the east: collecting numbers from failed internment camps on the way. The news from the satellite link was that a mass of refugees were preparing to cross the North Sea.
Challenged by virus-free landline, German and Netherlands national authorities confirmed the report, and said they couldn’t help it, they would have to let the people go. Scandinavia was stuffed, Ireland had its own problems. The European Parliament was planning to hold an Assizes On Displaced Persons, real soon now. (Thanks a lot). There was no escape. The nations of mainland Britain were going to have to deal with this.
Getting down to numbers, the numbers were big. An Armada of over a hundred vessels was involved: idle passenger ferries, bulk freighters and car transports that had been lying empty in Rotterdam and Hamburg, stranded by the collapse of world trade. If it couldn’t be halted, the refugee population of mainland Britain (currently around 300,000) stood to be more than doubled, in a single month. Approximately three quarters of these people would be at least nominally Muslim. If they were turned back, there would be hell to pay with the Islamic community.
If they were allowed to land, dealing with that would be a different hell.
The gentle people, the genuine radicals of the Counter Cultural Movement, came out on the streets, insisting that the Boat People must not be turned away. Ax decided to join them, and the Few went with him. By this time nobody in the country would have expected anything else. Sayyid Muhammad Zayid came out too, along with other church leaders. It was awkward, and touching, to be with the sensible-shoes wing of the CCM: peaceful middle-class civil disobediencers, do-gooders, aid-workers, persons of goodwill. To see them out in such strength. But there was a lot of anger on the streets, directed at these do-gooders: there were ugly scenes. Better hope the governments of the three nations, in urgent consultation with their continental partners, managed to secure a compromise.
Emergency preparations got underway, construction workers putting up instant reception centres. The army had to move into the ports to protect them.
On the eve of the North East tour the Few met around those schoolroom tables. There wasn’t much to discuss. Cohorts from the Volunteer Initiative would joining the government aid-workers: that was all fixed. The barmy army was ready to be mobilised, but everyone was wary of that option. Campground councils, reluctant about offering space and opening themselves to a deluge, were offering to share their sterling expertise on lo-impact living—
‘I don’t think so,’ said Sage. ‘Can’t believe these DPs are going to be desperate to know how to swing a crystal, chew their own comfrey leaves—’
‘My grandfather’s name was Markowitz,’ remarked Allie, wearily. ‘My mother’s from Hungary. I suppose even Sage’s family must have come over with the—the Beaker People, or something, and displaced someone else—’
‘Just nature taking its course,’ agreed Dilip. ‘My God, I am tired of all this. Why did that bastard Javert have to pick on me?’
‘He didn’t,’ said Fiorinda.
‘Huh?’
‘Paul Javert didn’t pick anyone, except Pigsty.’ She looked around, surprised at their surprise. ‘You know he didn’t. Paul knew sod-all about rock music. We used to joke about it, remember: how he should have gone for a team of soap-opera stars, footballers, conceptual artists, that he could talk to on his own level and they wouldn’t always be giving him an argument.’ (Her grasp of the demotic, thought Sage, has come on wonderful). ‘Paul bought himself a big fat gun. It was Allie who recruited us.’
Everyone stared at Allie.
‘Oh yeah.’ said Sage. ‘Shit, you are right. I never thought of it.’
‘I suppose it’s true,’ said Allie, biting her lip, eyes down. ‘I’m sorry everyone.’
‘Hey, don’t apologise! Never had such a glorious time in my life!’ Sage cackled horribly, skull doing an oafish leer. ‘I’m so immensely flattered! I had no idea!’
Allie, olive cheeks aflame, was not finding this funny.
‘Lay off, Sage,’ snapped Fiorinda. ‘I’m an idiot, but you can be a bastard. Leave her alone.’
‘Whatever his weight in pounds shillings and ounces,’ murmured Chip the irrepressible, ‘He always seems bigger because of his bounces—’
‘Forgive me, Allie,’ said Sage, dead sober. ‘Warped sense of humour.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’
‘’S’ all right,’ said Allie. She wiped her eyes. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying.’
They were all on edge, all burned out.
Fiorinda had taken down the vampire guitarist, and put up a page she’d pulled from a history textbook in the network library. It showed what had been going on, invisible to the people on the ground, in the fifth century CE, the last time a European civilisation was falling apart. The broad arrows of displaced population, sweeping across Europe, bringing on the end of a world. Thanks, Fiorinda. Most helpful. Ax stared at this cold-equations diagram, from across the room. What did that? Climate change. Yeah, always that one. Anaerobic bacteria, dinosaurs, the Roman Empire, us. Dead ironic that this global-warming summer continued to be dismal as November.
They had no solution, they were back to the original hapless plan, staving off anarchy with free rock concerts. At least they’d be on the spot. Apparently these Boat People were convinced they’d be turned away from the south of England. They were refusing to communicate by radio, but helicopter observers, tracking the ships as closely as the bad weather allowed, reported they were heading for the Humber, Teesside and the Tyne. As close as they could get to the Yorkshire heartland of the Islamic separatists; who had been at war with the rest of the country until Ax made peace six months ago.
Great. Just great.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘Tomorrow we’re going to have Oltech phones for everyone, our own virus-free network. They have ATP batteries, new development, so treatment vir
gins will be okay; the base stations will be driving around with us. Voice and text only: but we’ll be able to stay in touch. Keep your phone with you always and keep it switched on. This means you, Fiorinda.’
The telecoms-allergic teen, sitting between her bodyguards as usual, ducked her head and muttered something. Sage poked her in the ribs. ‘What was that? Didn’t hear you, brat.’
‘I said all right. Okay?’
Ax sighed. ‘It’s probably going to be fine. Immigration happens, it’s natural, we need it. The numbers’ll turn out to be wildly exaggerated and the panic is for nothing. Let’s hope so.’
‘And pray,’ said Dilip.
That too.
On the 23rd of June the circus rolled north. The first gig, in Sheffield, had its share of disasters. Aoxomoxoa and the Heads found themselves facing the packed stadium with no power at all on stage. They coped handsomely, Sage seeming glad of the chance to wipe his awful crime at the Internet Wake off the record. Incidents like this were bound to be commonplac, in current conditions; but they would soon be regarded as minor indeed. Already, on that first night, they noticed the extraordinary mix in the audience: people of all ages, all classes, all dress-codes, all shades of Green and otherwise politics. This could have seemed like a compliment, but it did not. Seemed like a deeply, deeply mistaken confidence. Sheffield, Doncaster, Leeds, Bradford, York, Hull—
On the 28th the first ships arrived on Humberside: inadequately crewed, overcrowded, poorly provisioned, battered by heavy seas. Turning them away would have been a humanitarian disaster. The government chose this moment to announce that negotiations had broken down, and the whole Armada would have to be accommodated, at least temporarily. Rumour carried this news to the wide areas where there’d been no internet, no tv or radio, no newsprint for weeks (not to mention no mains power); and made it sound much worse. A lot of people were sincerely convinced that the refugees were carrying plague, anny contact with them deadly. The east coast of England erupted in panic.
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