by Carl Neville
Have you listened to it?
No, the file is corrupted. It’s a missing Field Recording, she says, or claims to be one. We have numbers 1, 7, 8, 12, this is one that Crane always says was lost over on the other side. I assume it’s a fake. Gillespie thinks that they took a lot of his materials and never returned them.
They?
You, dear.
I have never had any contact with Crane, Barrow says quickly.
Not you precisely, but your mob, your gang, the SSFs. Perhaps someone has got access to that and is leaking them out if that’s the case. I have no way of knowing. Your domain, Barrow. And if you want someone more neutral than I could possibly manage to be, the only Crane expert out there is probably Goodridge. You could try and talk to Gillespie but I doubt he would be co-operative.
I’ll try Goodridge, he says.
Ask him about Field Recording #4, she says. Probably Goodridge is behind it.
He nods. Rose. I, a pause, there’s something I would like to say but I don’t know what it is, he smiles.
I know, Barrow, she says. Don’t feel responsible, don’t look so glum. We all must go where we are going.
Well, Barrow says. Goodnight.
Goodnight, Barrow, she says. He clicks off.
She became a rose, a rose all in the wood
And he became a bumble bee and kissed her where she stood.
Good luck, she almost said.
Barrow
The car is an old BMW adapted into a driverless model, front seats removed, seats extendable and reversible. He closes his eyes for a moment, slides the seat out under his legs and reclines. The patch, has he got it on? He touches his arm lightly, feels it there, it must have recognized he needs sleep and be nudging him.
A jumble of images and voices like negatives lain over each other. Castleford, sitting in a pub there, no Canteens back when he was still drinking heavily, a long, rowdy night sometime in the Nineties as they had been winding down the coal industry. A woman in her sixties saying across a table covered in glasses, We bloody well won’t miss it, the pit, bugger that, there’s no tradition there that I’m proud of, generations of men, my own family, dead before they could even retire, and on plans to make the area the centre of power generation saying lack of bloody imagination, we don’t want to be in power generation just because there used to be a pit here, why can’t we move the national theatre here, or the big medical schools? What year was that? Pre-Breach by a few months, he must have been in the area around the same time Crane was found wandering in what used to be called the Contested Territories.
Starts to drift deeper, yes it was undercover work he undertook then, subterfuge dead word double agent. He remembers the aristocrats, plotting in the wing of one of those great Yorkshire homes and the late Lord Newson saying, What? Let them overrun the country, the micks, the blacks, the wogs, the communists?
They are all wogs, another said, some minor dignitary, looking at Barrow, pointedly. He remembers too that a few months later, with cold relish, he rolled that very gentleman into a shallow pit dug at the back of the Hall, while a few of the Union men stood guard at his back and all the lights in the windows were burning, throwing parallelograms across that immaculately manicured, blood-stained lawn as just those micks, blacks, wogs, commies, dockers, housewives, miners, truckers, labourers, secretaries, factory workers, administrators sacked the place. He pushed him in, felt him shift brokenly inside his suit, the top button of his shirt still done up, pinching his bruised throat. Sack of potatoes, one of the union men said. Must be King Edwards, another joked, before they set to shovelling the earth over him, tamping it down. Barrow went back to the stables where the rest of them sat cowering, Stratford, Downs, McFarlane.
Julia
The darkness composed of a million teeming colours. Night birds and the sound of pure tones from Tom’s ROD modulating as it maps the shifting contours of the old growth in its groaning, the new growth greenly creaking, the rivers perfume, the sudden streak of a train across a distant viaduct, comet-like, illuminating the brickwork and wrought iron, things built to last a thousand years, her own heart soft and vulnerable, quick and perishable, among all this passionless permanence. Is she in love? It feels like that, so easy to fall in love with all this ease, light, space, time, the thoughtful faces, conviviality. Sips tea on the steps of the cabin, steam moistening her cheeks and forehead.
Tom is cooking, the noise of water bubbling and the clatter of a pan lid. Boiling vegetables? She smiles, perhaps the potatoes he proudly dug from the vegetable patch not long after they’d arrived. She tilts her cup, the light sediment of tea leaves on her tongue and teeth as Tom appears in the doorway with a bowl, the skins still on, butter melting into them and a sprinkling of salt and herbs, two heavy ornate forks in his other hand. She spears one, blows on it, takes a bite. Deliciously exact in its seasoning, in the cooked texture, in the give of the skin.
They look out together past the circle of light that laps up against the trees, spills over the fence posts, catches silvered tufts on the barbed wire.
The Feudal Remnant, she squints out into the dark, senses someone there, crouched among the trees, watching. When I was a kid, she says, she is going to tell him about her dreams but stops, feels the hairs on the back of her neck go up, feels another dimension, deep time suddenly intrude, the hand of history reaching out to lay itself upon her, pauses. Nothing, she says, settles back to look up at the sky, the stars, the light pollution out here so low. I used to dream of coming here. There’s a fluttering and a melody whirrs past, twinkles down, she almost sees it, like a shooting star. What?
Ah, the birds, I guess, someone’s tagged them with these little Chinese whistles, you know, he pauses, sweeps his arms up to the sky, Shangri-La.
There’s another sound sifting in through the trees. Long resonant notes and chiming percussion. Who’s that, she asks, is someone playing music, over in the next valley? She can’t see any lights.
No that’s the wind harp, the Aeolian harp and a wind chime and a water drum, I believe, he strains into the resinous dark, it’s part of the project we are all working on, they are chipped so that the music is in a feedback circuit with other areas all across the PRB and beyond, some really interesting ways people have hooked up these instruments they have invented that run off natural forces, especially instruments that respond to high heat and cold, contracting and expanding and so on, some that are sensitive to light, the way the shade comes dappling through the canopy, for instance.
Oh, you mentioned this, she says, that’s right. He seems a lot more relaxed out here, which is good. She’s feared he might sulk after she disappeared off from the Circuit but if anything he seems to have mellowed out. May be because of the country air, may be the pharms...
Well, that’s partly why I wanted to bring you out here, he says. Sensors in the earth that capture the sound of the roots spreading, of the microorganisms in the soil multiplying, that capture the music of stalactites accreting and the glisten of their minerals in the glow from fluorescent fish.
If you could, Tom looks up, hear it at the highest level of aggregation, have a bird’s- ear view of all of the Co-operative Sphere, you would hear we are composing this vast music, music that only God can hear and which is in constant flux. A living instrument.
She can see headlights coming up the valley below. That’s a pretty unusual sight, she guesses, thinks of the long empty stretches of motorway with nothing but buses going back and forth and the occasional official vehicle.
Her heart starts to beat a little quicker. Maybe it’s Dominic and he has made a special effort to get out here to spend some time with them. With her.
Tom is reciting some poetry now and she is responding automatically, telling herself, No don’t get your hopes up, Julia.
The car pulls in at the front of the cabin. Out back, Tom shouts as she sits up, worried that they will have looked too intimate, unconsciously starts preparing herself, patting her hair flat and sm
oothing her t-shirt.
A woman in a plain-looking blue uniform comes through the cabin and stands in the doorway. PRB security, she says. We need you to assist us.
What? She looks at Tom, who looks equally nonplussed as a group of other security operatives fan out in the field below them, readying themselves for any attempt they might make at an escape.
You are both under arrest, the woman says.
Two Poems from the PRB
The Long Shadows by Owen Somerville
What a thing it is to stand, exhausted, caught
in the half dark of morning, for the first time face
a day of our creation, feel the shadow of the old oaks
recede before the dawn, the chill begin
To lift from bare limbs, broad backs, outstretched arms.
Rise Home by The SRP collective
Spiralling parlance, groupings, strikes.
The starlings breach.
Halt. Swell.
Hunters counteract
Settle avid.
3
Tom Burridge
Tom stands by the greeting point, waiting for Julia Verona, hands clasped behind his back. She seems to be taking longer than he anticipated but of course, he forgot, she has to go through customs. Well, this will be a test. He needs to be careful, he has strong feelings for her, has done since the moment he saw her, situation reversed, as he came in through LAX to find her there waiting with a little sign that said Tom Burridge, tanned skin shining, gleaming smile, her easy grace and confidence.
Perhaps it’s not her at all, of course, but a combination of other factors, his I.P.S., his natural curiosity and open-mindedness tending to make him drawn to the other, the alien, the exotic. Perhaps his shock at being in the States on the other side of the Partition made him more susceptible, more suggestible than usual, and of course he had been obliged to leave his Magdalol at home and there was no over-the-counter form of a depossessent. There one was allowed to be overwhelmed by passions, have a passion of one’s own. Even, you might say, it was encouraged. He has managed to stay off them since he came home, kept busy, tried not to think about her too much, but as her visit has grown closer, so has a certain longing within him that he has been trying to quell with Deveretol.
Who knows how long she’ll be detained at the border check. His thoughts drift and so, typical of life, despite all his preparation, rehearsing the moment of their imminent meeting over and over, when he does see her he feels utterly unprepared.
Here she is, here she is, comes strolling out of another dimension, across a frontier into his mundane PRB world of Canteens and meetings and projects and mass and group activities and the transparent and the public, and he knows that to her all this will be as new and exciting and perplexing as the America she is so critical of was to him. Crossings, so many crossings. For all their differences though they have one overwhelming interest in common: sound, music, the urge to create beauty. He smiles, feels a slow thrill recalling the vast record store in LA that she took him to, the rows and rows of genres and subgenres, the record sleeves up on walls with their price tags on. Nervous. He should take half a Dev. Puts his hand in his pocket to get one out and tries to discreetly pop it in his mouth as she passes a few words to the man chatting to her, who spots him and sidles away with an OK, so, sure, catch you around. His heartbeat ratchets up a notch.
Hey, Tom! she says, beams at him. He’d almost forgotten just how beautiful she was.
Julia, he says a little awkwardly. He audibly swallows the Dev. Julia, so good to see you again. Welcome to the PRB, as he bends in stiffly from the waist to give her a peck on the cheek.
He feels a little guilty leaving Julia Verona alone for the evening in unfamiliar company so soon, just as he feels a little guilty for abandoning his role in the opening ceremony, but it will be impossible for him to stay closely involved in the rehearsals and also take his guest around and so regretfully he has had to. He has taken a room at a hotel near the Bullring for the meeting, perhaps he is hoping Helen will be generous enough to help him with his elevated levels of libido, but their exchanges over the past few months have been very neutral and besides, she is heavily pregnant now. Initially he thought the child might have been a result of their occasional trysts, but she told him no, laughed in a way that he was a little taken aback by, unsure of the implication.
He stretches out on the bed with a cup of tea, pokes through the miscellaneous pills in his pocket, wonders if she will want anything, anything that he can offer her. The door creaks gently open and there she is, new haircut, a severe fringe, eyebrows severely plucked, eyes a beautiful mischievous blue. Hand in the small of her back for support she takes the chair next to the bed as he fusses around uselessly, somehow trying to help.
You look very close.
Yes, within a week they have told me. How is everything? Set up for the Games? she asks.
Oh fine, he says, everything is in place, all I need to do is pass on the instructions and codes and so on to the rest of the team.
Yes. I don’t think I’ll be there either, she touches her stomach. Laughs.
I am sorry, I just don’t think I can devote the time to both and—
That’s fine, she says. I was in Birmingham and I decided to see if you were available.
Available, but not “available” you mean.
She puts her hand on her stomach again with an apologetic smile.
So how is everything?
Well. We have set up a number of protest actions across the country and the city. Some surprises, we have been getting into some of the infrastructure, she says. For instance, this is why I am down here. The Timeline in the central square, the OLF have hacked it to read your ROD’s deep information and adjust it accordingly, put you into an alternate Timeline, one more suited to you, and then we are going to use that to try and push forward the development of the P.A.Z, the Enthusiasm, whatever you want to call it. We have a little surprise lined up for the Games too now you’re not involved.
Really? I am intrigued.
Well, we could never have asked you to participate in that, she says. That would have compromised you, but you not being there provides us with an opportunity.
So you are glad I am backing out! He laughs. And I thought you would be devastated. What is it?
You will just have to wait and see. Nothing really, we are just going to interrupt the Stanhope piece with something of our own. Well not our own exactly. Field Recording #4,
A pause. Nothing too disruptive, I hope.
No, it will come and go in the middle of the piece, take everyone by surprise and make our point I suppose. That there are still new battles to be fought, new thoughts.
Well thank you for putting me in touch with Robert Gillespie.
A real Breacher, she says, all the best and worst qualities of that group. It’s good that your American friend is taking an interest in Crane, he’s been so central to everything we have tried to do really. If only she’d been here, even a few months ago, when he could still communicate. Close to the end. Ends, beginnings, she says, hand touches her stomach again. Rose Galloway would be good to talk to, too. I have yet to meet her, she smiles and her eyes drift for a moment past him to the window.
I connected but so far no response, he said.
I will try to see her before I go into the P.A.Z.
How’s it coming along?
The child or, she laughs. Oh, I see, would you like to have a look?
Do I need some EY? I should be careful, friends in SFF remember.
No, we can get there with SynDev too. Tried it? It’s the Co-Sphere’s attempt to offer a more secure alternative to EY. Not as potent, unfortunately.
She reaches into her bag and takes out a pack of soft lenses and a small bottle of pills and passes them to him, heaves herself up to come and lie down on the bed beside him.
He slips the lens in, a small green spot at the centre of his vision, feels the pill synergise, a slight tingling,
the sense of his cortex hardening, a peaking sensation that comes up through the top of his skull and solidifies. He breathes out. Haven’t been in for a while. Much stronger than before.
A lot of work’s been done on it, she says.
I shouldn’t tarry too long, I have guests. You really feel it don’t you? he says, closes his eyes and sees three green, crystalline towers that have become the symbol of the Enthusiasm, growing closer and slowly rotating, the sound of footsteps and ragged breathing getting louder. The towers fragment and with a surge and a sharp intake of breath, they are through.
Julia jogs up the steps to the library, two minutes, she says. Of course, he replies, feels a small hovering anxiety descend — he is still suspended from any borrowing rights due to unreturned items, on his final warning, they will begin to dock credits from his work hours soon unless he goes in and offers some kind of explanation. He could claim to have lost them, but he is a bad liar and besides, taking insufficient care over common goods carries a very high level of social disapproval. Instead he is contemplating simply that whatever sanctions are imposed on him are in reality just the cost, the price he has to pay to keep those things for himself and then even the words, cost, price struggle into his mind and sit there rebuking him. Perhaps he should never have gone to the States, it has only made his I.P.S. worse; perhaps they should allow sufferers a certain minimum number of possessions in order to hold off the worst effects.
He wanders distractedly over to the Timeline, parlaying off the assignments from the Work Department that are building up in the debit side of his account. The evenings are getting longer and he gazes up across the roofs opposite. The dreaming blue of a sky in which the seasons, day and night are for a moment, seamlessly blent. Blent, nice word.
As he starts to formulate something in verse that might capture the moment, he doesn’t immediately register that the Timeline is different. Is it the Peon-E? It’s not a chronodelic, so how could it have altered…? And then he remembers what Helen mentioned a few nights ago, that the Ontological Liberation Front have tampered with it as part of their Multiple Presents project so that it reads information off the ROD and constructs an alternate, ideal, individualized Timeline. He scans it, too surprised still to be really alarmed, and yet, my god, invasions, camps, collapse, the defeat of the workers across all of Europe and the East, the triumph of capital, the old United Kingdom in an America-dominated globe, all the dead institutions strengthened and revived. He scans and rescans it, reading the details, gets so engrossed in a surge of anguish and dismay that for a few moments he forgets he is in a public place and that any passer-by might see it too, quickly takes a few steps back to get out of its range and just in time as Dominic appears around the other side of the plinth it stands on with a smile.
