‘I could say the same of you.’
‘You should have woken me.’
‘I wish I had.’ Sage left the desk, and kissed Ax, fiercely. ‘Let’s go next door.’
They moved next door, to Sage’s bed, the sexual heat between them stronger than as ever, while trust and faith were foundering; isn’t it often the way.
Reading Weekend came, the end of August: Fiorinda and DARK headlining on Saturday night. The crowd was huge, in defiance of Travel Restrictions Hell, and there were record numbers at the big screen sites up and down the country. DARK’s set, climaxing with a glorious rendition of ‘Chocobo’, Fiorinda’s superb dancetrack from Friction, was the live music event of the year.
The Dictator and his Minister missed the whole thing. They’d taken oxy again and were in Bartoli’s Hideout, kissing and caressing, and discussing the ever-fascinating topic, did (does) Fiorinda fuck Charm Dudley? How blessed it is to have someone who shares a lover’s fears. ‘No, no no. Yeah, they used to roll-around fight. But there wasn’t anything sexual in it. I saw those fights—’
‘You say that because you’re kidding yourself, Sage—’
On the big screen above the bar, instant replay: Fiorinda and Charm duetting on ‘San Antonio Rose’. Fiorinda in her silver and white cowgirl dress and the red boots, looking so wonderful, playing so tight with Charm, do they or don’t they? Fiorinda and DARK walked into the Hideout in a posse. The dike rockers and Harry Child, DARK’s new bassist (replacing Tom Okopie, who had been killed by a British Resistance landmine, in Boat People summer) closed up around their singer and walked straight out again. Sage and Ax, locked in their twisted obsession, didn’t even notice.
‘Jaysus,’ said Fergal, one of the unwilling spectators. ‘Why the fock do they do it? It’s no wonder she’s mad with them. That stuff eats yer brain.’
‘They do it,’ said Dilip sadly, ‘because if they don’t do oxy occasionally it’ll be bloody murder, they’ll be at each other’s throats.’
‘And break her heart,’ muttered Rob.
‘And break the Reich.’
Fiorinda came back alone later, and teased her boyfriends the drug fiends into some semblance of normal behaviour. Whatever she said to them when she took them home, it worked. Things were okay again; for a while.
She dreamed that the Few were visiting a bathhouse. There were glistening tiles, turquoise pools, mirrors, drifts of white steam; everyone was naked. She knew it was a dream, because this was something they’d never done. She was sashaying around with her tiger and her wolf on either arm, having a fine time. But why do I keep looking at myself? Why don’t I look at my friends, some of whom I have never seen naked before? Surely I’d be interested. Why don’t I look at Sage and Ax? They are glorious. Am I not proud of them? She had no choice. Something behind her eyes wanted to dwell on these breasts, this small waist, this bum, these slim thighs, and Fiorinda must comply, she must stare into every reflecting surface… She woke, sweating, sitting bolt upright: but she did not scream. She’d trained herself not to scream.
Sage and Ax were fast asleep. Where are we? It’s Brixton.
Huddled there, arms wrapped around her knees, she imagined telling them that she was being attacked by a psychic monster. But if this was Rufus O’Niall why did it feel like her deepest self? Like the stupid choices of a fucked-up, worthless little girl? And what good would it do for Ax and Sage to know? What could they do? She would tell them nothing. She would fight her own battle.
Sage was dead to the world, a warm rock. She slipped out of bed, round to Ax’s side, and crept in beside him. Little cat, he murmured, and they moved together, into the way they used to hold each other, falling asleep, before the threesome began. Oh Ax, my darling Ax. I can’t be losing you.
Ax spent a bizarre amount of his time signing things. It seemed archaic but apparently it was necessary. Signing til his wrist ached, all the while making lists in his head, like the lists he used to make in Dissolution Summer. But grittier.
Restore mixed arable farming
Recruit more hedgeschool teachers
Recruit competent drop-outs to the ‘Nation of Shopkeepers’ project
Convince Boat People recruits to above that they’ll be accepted, not stoned to death, in isolated rural communities
Build a lot more solar, wind and wave plants. Quickly
Keep the CCM united. Which means keeping the Celtics happy
But try not to compromise on pagan rituals
Street-fighting
Measles vaccination
Anti-science riots
All the while haunted by a young Indie star, in the first flush of success. You want me to sign your arm? This tattered inner from a vanished jewelcase? Your forehead, your pants, your bum? Hey, okay, no problem, form a line, let me give you my special smile, let me recruit you to my cause. Yes, even then. Because the world was falling apart, and Ax had to use the power fate had gifted to him, he had no choice. He had a stand-up fight with Fiorinda over the Call-Up Bill. She said, what happened to lifestyle choices? What happened to, ‘Utopian revolutions turn rotten in about six weeks if you impose the Good State by force—?’
He said this isn’t about Utopia, it’s about survival now, and she said, yeah, I spotted that. Your survival, you mean. The first rule of politics: stay in power. He said you have to do drastic things in desperate situations, and it was a temporary, emergency measure—
‘What is temporary about this?’ she yelled. ‘This is not temporary! We are not going to get to the other side, Ax. There is no other side!’
They were in the living-room of the Brixton flat. Sage hated their fights, he usually managed to be elsewhere. Ax walked away, as far as the terrace windows: the Brixton back gardens planted with vegetables, urban field strips.
‘You knew this was what I wanted, from the beginning.’
‘Did I? What I remember is that you told us you never wanted to run the country. You said that was bullshit.’
She cries in the night, and he goes on doing exactly what makes her unhappy. He couldn’t help it. He would work himself to death at this impossible job, and make her hate him, because it was better than facing the pain.
What happened to the sweet love you and I had?
‘Oh Ax,’ she said. ‘My darling Ax. The house always wins.’
Fiorinda sat up late by the old gas stove, wrapped in her gold and brown shawl, trying to read: Elsie curled on her lap. There wasn’t much heat in the flames, the pressure was too low, but the sight of them was comforting. She couldn’t concentrate, she stared around, looking for ghosts.
There on the bookcase is the Sweet Track Jade: the stone axe, ancient symbol of civilisation in England, which the Few gave to their beloved leader on the night of his inauguration. There is the Times cartoon of Mr Dictator, with Sage and Fiorinda as big cat and little cat, that they’d decided they liked, and bought the original. There’s the take-off of a famous Hockney picture. Sage and Ax drinking sherry on the terrace, the cat walking on the wall, Fiorinda just a glimpse of party frock. ‘Mr Preston, Mr Pender, and Elsie’.
Here is our life, hollow and empty. Here am I, trapped in the official story.
She heard Sage come in. The Heads’d had a gig in Camden, something about promoting country life. Sage ambling up the stairs, into the bathroom, where he pisses gallons, singing that he has a brand new combine harvester, and I’ll give you the key. Into the room, stumbling only a little, and shedding his coat. He wore brown corduroy trousers tied under the knee with string, a white shirt without a collar and a red kerchief around his throat. He looked stunningly beautiful, slightly ridiculous, and very smashed.
‘Ax not back yet?’
This was the night of the Call-Up Debate. Ax was at the House of Commons.
‘Nah.’
‘D’you know what’s going on?’
She shrugged. ‘I suppose David and Ax are getting their own way. The camera angles will make ten MPs look like a crowd, and
there’ll be a thrilling hard-won victory around two a.m. I think that was the plan. Check the Parliament Channel and find out.’
‘Can’t be tossed.’ He descended beside her in the old Aoxomoxoa style, something between collapsing and folding up like a telescope.
‘You’ve been pouring horrible, horrible quantities of alcohol down your neck, haven’t you?’
‘’Fraid so.’
‘Shit. I really needed someone to talk to tonight.’
‘You can talk to me.’ He lifted her onto his lap (Elsie snarled and fled). ‘I will listen. I jus’ won’t remember in the morning, an’ then you can tell me again.’
She wrapped her shawl around them both. ‘I can’t live like this.’
‘Now, tha’s a shame, because I was just thinking…’ His soft mouth traced her hairline, his arms tightened in the warm hold that would never fail, ‘I would happily spend the rest of my days like this. There could be minor improvements, we could both be naked and my cock safe inside, but this is very fine.’
‘I’ve lost the music. I get up on stage and it’s a job, a fake, I don’t believe in my songs anymore, they’re all stupid, meaningless.’
‘Sweetheart, we all lose the music. You’ll find it again, soon as we get through this part. A little crash-an’-burn, wandle in the widlernesses, de rigeur, my brat.’
‘Idiot. You’d better go to sleep, you’re not making sense.’
When Ax got in he found them like that, fast asleep in the pearly glow of an ATP lamp. He sat on the opposite couch, took out a cigarette and smoked it, watching the lovers, thinking: you’d have to have a heart of stone to want to come between them.
Stones in his heart.
Sage opened his eyes. ‘Well? Did you win, you and David?’
‘Yeah. Let’s go to bed.’
Two days after the Call-Up debate Dan Preston had a massive heart attack. No warning. Ax’s father had hardly been near a doctor in his life. In better times maybe he’d have lived; or maybe not, who can tell. As it was, he was dead before they got him to a functioning cardiac unit. He was fifty-eight.
Straight after the funeral Sage had to go to Edinburgh on a trade mission. The Scots were interested in developing bi-location phones. (Strange the way the cutting edge keeps moving on and out, at least for a while, when a civilisation dies). Fiorinda took over Ax’s diary as well her own, so Ax could stay with his mother. She and Sage kept in touch using the new, commercial model bi-loc. Fiorinda had never tried ‘faceting’ before. It sounded like modern drugs, but Sage persuaded her. They knew they’d better stay off sex, but one thing led to another and they couldn’t resist.
He thought he was making love with her naked soul.
When he came home, he and Fiorinda didn’t say a word to each other about what was going on between them. There was nothing to be said, nothing to be done; and Ax must never know. Ax, on a normal phone, told them he was glad he’d been getting on better with his dad over the past year or so, and Dan had never wanted to get old, so as sudden deaths go it was okay. And his mother was bearing up.
The night he came back from Taunton the three of them had terrific sex, the best sex they’d had in months. When Fiorinda was asleep Ax and Sage got up and sat drinking single malt, discussing the Edinburgh trip. They couldn’t have had this conversation with Fiorinda: she went ballistic at any mention of politics at the moment… A decade or so down the line those canny Scots might be drawing up a new Act of Union, the way things are heading. (Wales isn’t going to object. Basically, the Welsh don’t give a bugger. Most of them don’t care if the government is in Tokyo, as long as it’s not in Cardiff )… And it wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen.
‘We’ll be long gone,’ said Ax. ‘The Reich will be history.’
‘The modern world will be back in place. We’ll be rockstars again.’
‘Mm.’ Ax looked into his glass. ‘You know that Romanian gig?’
‘The Danube dams?’
There’d been endless Crisis Europe invitations: people who wanted Ax to break up fights, speak at conferences; even to tour with the Chosen. The Dacian Greens were the latest. They wanted Ax to arbitrate with their government, and other factions, over freeing the great river.
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m thinking of accepting. I’ve been thinking for a while that I ought to get out there into Europe, see what’s going on. I’ll be back by Christmas.’
When he’d convinced his partners, Ax went to Reading to see Olwen Devi, because Sage had insisted that he have his chip checked out, and it was something Olwen could do. She decided she needed to give him a general health check while she was at it. Ax, like his father, was the never had a day’s illness in my life type, and he didn’t like the idea. But he submitted. The report was good. The heart was fine; last you a century. The lungs likewise, though Olwen seemed less pleased about that. It always annoys people when a tobacco smoker doesn’t show any sign of suffering from it. Everything was fine, except for the chip. She said he ought to get rid of it at once, which was a shock. It hadn’t been serviced for years and he’d known it needed fixing (no alarming symptoms, but he knew). He hadn’t been expecting anything so final. The idea of living without his other mind, his library, his internal security, was a hard blow.
‘We’ll have to see about that when I get back.’
They were debriefing in the new Rivermead Palace health centre. Rain stormed at the small square windows in Topsy’s thick metal-and-mulch walls: seems like we’ll be inaugurating the new Rivermead flood refuge soon… Olwen looked at him compassionately. She wore the Zen Self mainframe as a jewel on her finger: she understood.
‘I want to do it now, Ax.’
‘I have to go to Romania. This is not the moment for brain surgery.’
She might have asked what was so all-fired crucial about the trip, but she did not. She knew from the look in Mr Preston’s eye she would get nowhere.
‘All right. As soon as you get back. Hm. I’ll give you a facet of Serendip. She’ll look after the implant, you will have her resources to call on, and that will be fine for a few weeks. No longer!’
He went up to Yorkshire to see Sayyid Mohammad Zaid, his mentor in the Faith. They talked at length, alone, with Mohammad’s family; and with other vital English Islamists. They spoke of the Islamic Community’s duty to be the presence of God’s mercy and compassion on earth: a spiritual hegemony, far greater than material power. Ax extracted a firm acknowledgment that the secret plan to make England into an Islamic State was indefinitely on hold, a result he’d been working towards for a while. These goodwill agreements might fall apart the moment your back is turned, but they mean something. He stayed three days, and came away feeling his burden lighter. If I’ve fucked up everything else, he thought (too weary and deadened for prayer, thinking only of England), that’s one good choice I made. From Bradford he went to Easton Friars to see Richard Kent, the barmy army’s chief of staff; then a circuit of the big staybehind camps and urbans, talking to hippy councillors and green gangstas.
So many people wanted a piece of Ax. He even managed to make it (alone) to a last Liaison Meeting with Benny Prem. Poor Benny, behind his enormous desk in his big empty office: it was like visiting some cranky old lady. Benny was in a huff, feeling slighted as usual. He wanted to know if there’d be Liaison Meetings while Ax was gone. Ax said Fiorinda might be forced to cancel, as she would be very busy, but he’d remind the Minister.
Benny said, sulkily, ‘Does Sage always do what you tell him?’
‘When he feels like it,’ said Ax cheerfully, ignoring the insolence.
I will even miss you, he thought, as he took his leave. Absurd as that might be.
He kept Benny on out of pragmatism, though he knew his partners didn’t believe that. But sometimes he looked at the guy and saw himself: the mixed-race boy made good, overcompensating. He hoped he could persuade Sage to visit Benny, just for form’s sake. It would be a kindness (not that Benny could appr
eciate kindness, poor bastard). And it would be wise.
Benny was only pretending to sulk. He was excited. Ax was leaving the country. He still didn’t know who his patron was, and nothing had changed except that Ax had gone from strength to strength. But he had faith: he was sure something would happen now.
Fiorinda had been very surprised to discover that everybody, including Sage, took it for granted that she would be Ax’s deputy. But she’d accepted her fate. They’d had the briefings, Fiorinda and Ax with the suits and the Ceremonial Head Of State staff. There was one more thing, a conversation he didn’t want to have at home. He came to find her when he knew she’d be working late in the Office at the San, and waited, chatting with anyone who offered, until everyone had gone, even Allie.
‘Lot of memories in this view,’ he said, staring out through the Balcony doors. Gold gleamed on the Victoria Monument, the Japanese banners at the Insanitude Gates fluttered in the light from the lanterns that hung there; Central London was in profound shadow. He could remember when that darkness had seemed very strange and ominous. Not anymore.
‘Yes,’ said Fiorinda.
He looked at the sacred noticeboards: corkboard ruthlessly knocked up on the gaudy, shabby walls, repositories of holy Reich relics. The old, filled ones were never dismantled; they were framed and sealed. Allie sold scanned copies as Few merchandising and you could see the attraction. Here’s the whole history of our strange days inscribed in old wristies, jokes and gnomic messages on Post-its. Withered memos, photos, newspaper cuttings.
Like a folk museum, touching and sad.
Fiorinda watched him, looking puzzled, until he came to her desk.
‘D’you recall the day we sat around those tables and I told you all I was going to demand the repeal of the death penalty, or I would quit?’
‘It was another world.’
‘Yeah… People are making such a fuss about this Romanian trip. Makes me wish I’d made a habit of going to conferences. Maybe the Chosen should do a foreign tour, the lazy bastards, and I could tag along, pretend I’m still a rockstar.’
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