Castles Made of Sand

by Gwyneth Jones

  ‘I’m not sure who it belongs to. It might be mine.’

  Chip and Verlaine were inspecting the swamp that had been Rufus O’Niall’s fishponds; feeling uneasy. What would Aoxomoxoa say about this visit? Verlaine spoke of the afternoon when, in a moment of dire folly, he had given Ax a dodgy neurological drug…and Sage had come looking for him. It bothered him that he couldn’t remember a word his hero had said. The encounter played in his mind like a sunlit, horrible silent movie. ‘You think you’ve seen him angry, Merry: you haven’t. He didn’t touch me—’

  ‘Commiserations.’

  ‘Lay off. You’re the one that lusts after him, not me. My feelings are pure. He didn’t touch me because he knew if he touched me he’d kill me.’ He glanced up at the terrace. ‘Are we sure she’s okay?’

  ‘Never in doubt. Look at them, aren’t they great? Our court philosopher and the young queen, in stately conclave.’

  ‘Cool,’ agreed Verlaine. ‘Don’t you love the way this is turning out—’ A moorhen chugged from between stands of flowering rush, breasting mats of green. The water she revealed didn’t look too malarial, it was brown and clear.

  Chip got interested. ‘D’you think there are newts? Let’s have a look.’

  ‘It might be yours?’ prompted Roxane. ‘Oh? How’s that?’

  Fiorinda rested her chin on her hand, gazing ahead of her. ‘After I started singing with DARK, and someone outed me as Rufus O’Niall’s daughter (It’s okay, Rox. I’ve forgiven you), I got a lawyer-letter offering me money. The deeds of this house were in it. The band helped me deal with it, because I hadn’t a clue, and his lawyers got a lawyer-letter back saying I don’t want your money. With the deeds in it, torn up. I never heard anything more. I suppose you could say he was trying to make up, but I didn’t feel like playing.’

  ‘I was once raped by a stranger myself,’ said Rox. ‘Long ago. As I recall, the hardest part was convincing myself to let it go. That I should forgive myself, if I couldn’t forgive the bad guy, and get on with my life. It took several years.’

  ‘I wasn’t raped. I was just taken, like a piece of fruit.’

  When you can call what your father did by its name, thought Rox, you’ll be free. Not until—

  Fiorinda was thinking that she owed Fergal a debt of gratitude. He had knocked away a crutch that she no longer needed. It had been a shock to hear her father’s name again, so casually spoken: but she was over that, and a shackle had fallen from her. Who’s Rufus O’Niall? Just an ageing celebrity with nasty habits, who once did something to me that is unfortunately public knowledge. He doesn’t matter, he can’t hurt me now.

  When she’d realised that investigating Fergal’s story was going to bring her within twenty miles of this house, she’d decided she had to come and see. So here she was, and it was fine. No panic attack, no strangeness. She touched her throat mic and recorded, blandly, ‘The house seems weatherproof, no gaping holes, no obvious vandalism. The grounds are level, well-watered, well-drained. However, the position makes this a wildlife refuge, in a sea of essential agribusiness: that could be linked to the National Forest corridor. I think that’s what we should be looking at, pending further investigation.’

  ‘Rox, is Fergal really dying?’

  Enough said. Roxane understood, from the cool, very Fiorinda smile s/he was getting, that the subject of Rufus O’Niall was closed. One doesn’t pester this young lady. Her confidences are rare treasure. ‘Ah, Fergal… Every time I meet him I’m surprised he’s still alive. He has a systemic cancer, and cirrhosis. The tumour suppressants make it difficult to treat the liver failure, and I’m afraid that’s about it. But who knows? As long as he can keep himself supplied with modern medicine, he may have a few more years.’

  ‘Can he play that harp? He seems to just carry it around.’

  ‘He can play. Last summer he could still sing. You’d have to get him on stage. Prop him against something, turn on the lights, he might surprise you.’

  The ever-infantile Adjuvants came up from the ponds, duckweed to the armpits. ‘Palmated newts,’ announced Chip. ‘How about that? Enough to stop a motorway, if we had one planned. D’you want to come and see?’

  ‘Pass,’ said the philosopher and the young queen, in unison.

  A bee hummed. A bird burst into song, one solitary voice, loud and sweet.

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ complained Verlaine, ‘is how they can call it a revival. Where are the sacred texts? Where did they turn up the liturgy of the ancient Celts? Who told them what they’re meant to do?’

  Pagan rites held no terror for the Adjuvants. Nor Rox. They treated the whole subject with a very English, affectionate scepticism. Hammer Horror and Narnia.

  ‘I don’t know about “Celtics”,’ said Fiorinda, ‘but if it’s about ritual magic, you don’t need ancient authority. Wicca isn’t old. Someone invented it in the nineteen forties or something. According to my gran, anyone can do ritual magic. Get yourself sky-clad, get some candles, ball of red yarn might be handy: do whatever you think. Impro is positively encouraged.’

  ‘Yeah, and I bet most of it absolutely sucks,’ said Chip. ‘Good tunesmiths are rare. Most people shouldn’t be allowed to use their own material…er, present company excepted, of course.’

  ‘Wanker,’ said Fiorinda, amiably. ‘I know how you talk behind my back.’

  The Adjuvants rejected the concept of original music. Every scratch and sample and scrap of lyric that went into their daft compositions was previously owned.

  The security crew, left with the van out on the road, started paging, complaining that they were bored. The party left Rufus O’Niall’s manor and drove on: to the obscure little country town where they might find proof of the Prime Minister’s involvement in a bloodthirsty Pagan cult.

  The Triumvirate had investigated Feargal’s story as far as they could (as far as they dared), and then brought the problem to closed meeting in the Office: banishing the admin staff and shutting down the PA on the grounds that they needed to discuss the Irish recruit in private. Which was, in a sense, the truth.

  Ax had talked to Fergal again. The Irishman claimed he was just the courier. He’d been contacted by people he trusted, who knew of his plan to come to England: he thought they were acting for another party, and he couldn’t say more than that. He didn’t know how digital images of the English PM had turned up in Ireland, on the wrong side of the quarantine barrier. He didn’t know anything about the source, or how the information about dates and locations had been obtained. He’d known what he was carrying, and of course that it was dynamite. He’d said what he’d been told to say, and that was it.

  He hadn’t been searched coming in. He’d come over unofficially, on a smuggler’s boat, and crossed into England from South Wales over the mountains, without passing through customs: which was likely enough.

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Ax, ‘that Fergal is telling us the simple truth, as far as he knows it. The data quarantine isn’t unbeatable. We can’t make so much as a phonecall across the barrier, but discs and electronic devices and e-paper can be smuggled both ways: we know it happens. I can see him having contacts in the Irish radical underground, I mean people with more sympathy for the Reich than for their own government. I can equally see the Irish Intelligence Services using someone like Fergal, with or without his knowledge. We can verify parts of his story, his route into the country for instance: but I’m expecting it to check out, and that’s not really going to tell us anything.’

  The prints were passed around those schoolroom tables. There was a feeling almost of relief, a sense that unfinished business was being resumed. Things had been quiet for a while, but no one here had believed the storm was over.

  ‘But the Prime Minister has minders,’ protested Verlaine, ‘They’d have to know; like the heroin. If he’s been doing this, somewhere there’s a file a mile wide. We’d have heard something. You’d know, Ax—’

  ‘Minders can be incompetent,’ said Ax.
‘Or his friends in Cabinet could be covering for him very efficiently, maybe not even knowing what it is they’re covering up.’

  ‘But why come to you?’ said Dilip. He rifled the images and passed them on to Allie with a shrug. Anything can be faked…‘Whoever sent him, why send Fergal to us with this, and not to the suits? What does that imply?’

  ‘A misunderstanding,’ said Ax.

  ‘That’s a good question,’ said Sage.

  ‘Maybe “they”, whoever “they” are, have told the suits as well,’ suggested Chip. ‘Er, whoever it is you tell, when the PM is the problem—’

  ‘Maybe that’s Ax,’ murmured Allie. ‘Makes sense to me.’

  ‘But could there be any truth in the story?’ asked Roxane, cautiously. ‘That would seem to be the first issue, wouldn’t it? Can we find out?’

  ‘Not easily,’ said Mr Dictator. ‘I haven’t a clue how to find out if David Sale’s been dabbling in animal sacrifice. The Reich has no intelligence network inside Westminster. I’m sorry, major oversight, it just didn’t seem like the way to go. I started checking if the PM’s whereabouts were accounted for, on dates we’d been given. But then I realised—in time, I hope—that I was going to make people curious, because I don’t do that. It’s my policy to stay out of their business. I never ask a single unnecessary question.’

  ‘We can’t investigate down here,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Because we don’t know how far he’s already compromised. The moment anyone notices what we’re doing, we risk launching the very scandal we’re trying to avoid.’

  ‘There’s got to be someone,’ protested Dora. ‘Someone on the inside who could snoop, could ask the questions, without—’

  ‘Who do you suggest,’ growled Sage. ‘Benny Prem?’

  There was a mutter of disgust.

  ‘There are plenty of Celtic sympathisers at Westminster,’ said Ax, at last. ‘There are bastards in positions of power who find all that neo-primitive, ne-feudalist shite very appealing, and say so openly. But the hypocrisy of English politics is sufficiently intact that if this story comes out, David will be forced to resign. If David resigns, the government will fall. If this government falls—’

  ‘We are screwed,’ said Sage.

  The Heads were masked. As long as Peter didn’t want to appear barefaced, they would support him. The living skull’s expression was as bleak as the Few had ever seen it, as if this betrayal touched something deeper than they could guess. I wouldn’t like to be in David Sale’s shoes, thought Verlaine. If he’s guilty and Sage gets hold of him.

  The Few were silent, straightfaced. Nobody was going to say it, but is a disaster for David Sale necessarily a bad thing? Do we need the government?

  ‘The reason England is still in reasonable shape,’ said Fiorinda, sensing resistance, ‘is because we have what looks like a normal, legitimate State apparatus, working in harmony with the CCM. That’s the illusion we’ve created. But we’re not independent of the suits, and many if not most of them do not have the agenda. If David Sale’s Coalition falls, there’s nobody else we can work with. The Reich is done for.’

  ‘You said, “down here”,’ Dilip noted, after a long pause. ‘Meaning we can’t investigate in London. What’s the an alternative?’

  ‘We have dates and locations,’ said Ax. ‘We have a date and a location for a ritual allegedly coming off at Lammas, near a place called Wethamcote, in the East Midlands. There isn’t a known hardcore sacrifice venue in the area, I was able to check that in police records: but that would figure. I imagine David Sale would be on an exclusive, well-protected, blood-fest network; if at all. Sage and I have a good excuse to go up there. We can see if Fergal’s story checks out.’

  ‘Wethamcote has an arts fest,’ added Fiorinda. ‘They call it Lammas Festival, but apparently it’s just a perfectly innocent tourist fête. I’m going to invite myself, get the local viewpoint and pass on any information to Sage and Ax, who will be lurking in the countryside.’

  Allie stared. ‘What? Fiorinda, you can’t do that! No one knows what the fuck’s going on in the rural hinterland these days! They have a Pagan festival! They have blood sacrifices in the woods! They could be up to anything!’

  The living skull looked (a rare sight) as if it thoroughly agreed with Ms Marlowe. ‘Yeah, well. You talk to her… Fiorinda will be in the town, Ax and I will be with the barmies, having a look at the British Resistance Movement situation in the East Midlands, which is a genuine errand. If we find a hardcore ritual venue where Fergal’s tip-off says we ought, that will be confirmation. If possible we’ll get a look at the ceremonies: which David Sale is down to attend.’

  ‘You’re going to bust him?’ exclaimed Chip. ‘Wow. Er…would that help?’

  ‘We’re not going to bust anyone,’ said Ax, patiently. ‘If we find anything, we’ll try not to get spotted. If they spot us, we’ll back off at once. Very sorry ladies and gentlemen, we thought you were rural terrorists, no, please, don’t bother to get dressed, we’ll see ourselves out… We have to try and manage this fucking thing without offending the Celtics, that’s the other bind. We can’t deputise it, it’s too sensitive, but I can’t be seen to be actively hunting down the ritualists. If we find them, we have to make it look like an accident.’

  ‘But what if he’s there? What if he’s there? What will you do then?’

  ‘With luck, Chip, we won’t know if he’s there or not. The pap-shots were taken in the dark, in infra-red: if there’s anything in them at all. Word is that the so-called “respectable” ravers at these events usually wear digital masks.’

  The pictures were with Rob. He nodded. ‘Oh, yeah, I get you.’

  ‘We’ve been caught like that,’ said George, nodding. ‘You think you’re masked, and you’re not.’

  ‘I’m going to have to take this to David,’ Ax continued. ‘The pictures exist. If the story’s true, someone could out him at any moment. If it’s a hoax, that’s nearly as bad, looks as if somebody’s trying to destabilise our government—’

  ‘Hohoho,’ muttered Fiorinda.

  ‘Yeah, thanks, as if that were necessary… Whichever, I don’t want to tackle him until I know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Lammas is the first of August,’ said Allie, opening her laptop. ‘Isn’t it? That’s two weeks… Shit. Okay, well…’ She tapped keys. ‘Fiorinda is not going alone. I will be calling for volunteers. Ax, this is going to fuck you up worst. You’re supposed to be playing a residence with the Chosen at—’

  ‘I know,’ said Ax, cutting her off. ‘Yeah, thanks. I spotted that.’

  He’d been making an effort to play and rehearse with the Chosen this summer. As his friends and his lovers were well aware, it had not been working out. Of course, audience-wise the band was still a howling success: it would be a while before that changed. But Jordan Preston wasn’t happy, he didn’t like Ax’s on-and-off role. There had been tearing rows, and the Chosen were taking their break from the circuit back in Taunton. The Few gave Ax space. It’s a common tale, the rending and the tearing when someone gets bigger than the band. Always painful, no matter what the circumstances.

  ‘Hey, slow down!,’ Felice protested. ‘Slow down! You guys go up there. You find out the truth, you come back and Ax talks to the PM. I get that, that’s okay. But what if the—the baby-impaling part is real? Could it be?’

  The worst of Fergal’s hints had been recounted, and lost in the discussion.

  ‘The Ancient Celts,’ said Dora, worriedly, ‘were on the global high end of normal for human sacrifice, according to the archaeology. And the Romans said so too. I saw a programme.’

  ‘Then we need to know about it,’ said Ax. ‘But I never heard of our lot doing anything worse than horses. I’m hoping that part is wild exaggeration.’

  Wethamcote was a small town, long-time post-industrial: no railway, population about twenty thousand. A tributary of the Trent, called the Doe, ran through it. There was a lot more information on Ax’s chip, none of it
significant. It had been trying to reinvent itself as a tourist destination, with a brand new traditional summer festival, when Crisis Conditions and Dissolution had intervened. Allie reached the festival organisers by landline phone and found them touchingly keen, strangely normal-sounding. They were thrilled that Fiorinda wanted to play, short notice not a problem.

  Ax and Sage had no difficulty getting themselves summoned by the barmy army. On the evening that Fiorinda and her companions arrived in Wethamcote (after their side-trip to her father’s house), the Dictator and his Minister were in a VI potato diggers’ camp outside Tamworth, meeting some old friends. Fergal Kearney was with them. He had not been unwilling, on the contrary he’d been determined to come along, but he was subdued. He knew he under suspicion.

  The next night they were bivouacked outside Wethamcote with a picked squad of barmies, and in secure radiophone contact with Fiorinda. She reported that, yes, there was a rumoured sacrifice venue. Nobody they’d met would admit to knowing anything specific. It was strangers (said the locals): posh Pagans with private transport, from as far away as Leicester or further. Nobody wanted them, but the Wethamcote police refused to take action, and what can you do?

  Ramadan had begun. Before dawn on the thirtieth of July, the Muslims washed themselves, prayed and broke their fast. By the time they’d finished the infidels of various stripe were ready to go. They set out to circle the town: moving with ordinary precaution, but not expecting trouble.

  It was dead quiet out in the agribusiness. Not a bird. The men hated it. In the early days, the direct-action outlaws who’d become the cor of the barmy army had napalmed great swathes of green desert monoculture. They’d been convinced to give up the assault (forty-odd million people can’t live on goat’s cheese and nettles): but this landscape was still their heart of darkness, haunted by the great dying.

  ‘They came for the tawny owls,’ intoned Big Brock the re-enactment nut softly, as the men, two by two, crossed a stark expanse of last year’s maize stalks, ‘and I said nothing.’