Castles Made of Sand

by Gwyneth Jones

  It was hateful, pathetic.

  The position she was in made her blood boil in impotent fury.

  They had stopped seeing each other because it was such hell, but she stayed at Rivermead where she could at least be near him, and hear about him. She managed what work she could, and David and Allie were very good about it. When she heard Sage had gone to visit Mary, and to see Marlon at his boarding school, she knew it was over. He wouldn’t be doing that except to say goodbye. But he came back, and she found out that the Zen Selfers were still talking weeks or months. Sage was weaker, they had to space the sessions out, and he couldn’t take so much of the drug. So there was still hope.

  Months! June, July, August? Ax could be home.

  A few days after she started hoping again, it was all over the campground that Sage had been ‘out’—that is, brain-dead—for nearly six minutes. His brain hadn’t suffered because they’d been supercooling him and pumping him with oxygen, but his heart had started bleeding and given them a big scare. It had been touch and go. Now Olwen Devi was refusing to give him any more life support, so he was leaving. He would go to the Zen Self parent company in North Wales. They regarded Olwen as a renegade, but they knew about Sage and they were willing to help him, as long as he understood the terms. With them, there was no way back. Win or lose, once you pass through the gates of Caer Siddi you don’t come out again.

  One night in the last week of May, Fiorinda sat at her piano; in the great upper room with the windows facing west. There was a fire buring in the enamelled metal fireplace, but the room felt cold. She’d been sitting there for a long while, not playing, just looking at nothing. Occasionally she’d rub her bare arms. She was wearing the red and blue printed chiffon that she’d worn when they went to Tyller Pystri, the night they asked her if they could both be her lovers. Elsie the cat was curled up asleep in front of the fire. Someone knocked at the door. She went to open it and there was Sage. She had known he would come to her. She’d been afraid, but he didn’t look as if he was dying. He was leaning against the door frame with the collapsible look he got when very drunk, and Sage-very-drunk was someone she had known and loved, God knows, since the very beginning. She stood back and let him walk in.

  ‘Remind me,’ she said. ‘Where are we in the rules? Am I allowed to touch you?’

  ‘You’re a vicious brat.’

  He crossed to the hearth, moving with the stringless-puppet uncoordinated grace of Sage-very-drunk, and sat in one of the cross-framed chairs. ‘Come and sit on my knee.’

  It was only then that she noticed he wasn’t wearing the mask. She hadn’t seen his natural face since the time he came round to Brixton, after the mediaeval banquet. Oh yes, the night we cried. His hair was shorn again, and she was glad of that. He looked like himself, only very thin and very tired.

  She sat on his knee. His arms closed warmly around her. She pulled open his shirt and burrowed her face against him, inhaling the scent of his skin.

  He kissed her hair. ‘Oh, Fiorinda… I’m leaving.’

  ‘I spotted that.’ She sat up. ‘Nothing would get you into a room alone with me except oh, Fiorinda I’m leaving. I know all about it. Olwen Devi won’t give you life support any more, so you’re going to Caer Siddi, to achieve the Zen Self or die in the attempt. Oh God,’ she wailed, hammering at his chest with her fists, ‘do you ever listen to yourself? What’s Zen about it? Where is the don’t cling! don’t strive! in what you are doing to yourself? How can you reach something called “the Zen Self” by force, by hustling?’

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘What is it like then, bastard?’

  ‘Fee, please don’t talk to me like that tonight. Please.’

  ‘What, you think I ought to be nice to you because after tonight we’ll never see each other again? You’re off to kill yourself, and I ought not to waste our last precious moments yelling? For fuck’s sake!’

  ‘I am not going to kill myself.’

  ‘Like hell.’

  ‘This is something I have to do, Fiorinda.’

  She freed herself, though it was terrible to leave his arms, and stood in front of him, shivering hard, but still fighting. ‘You’re doing this to punish yourself, because we cheated on Ax and we can’t ever be lovers any more. Is that fair, Sage? Do you really think that’s fair to me, or fair to Ax? Or, or, fuck, to England? I still love you, you know. Are you telling me that without sex there’s nothing left between us?’

  ‘I shall love you till I die.’

  ‘Great. So when’s that? Next Wednesday?’ Her knees were giving way, she knelt, shivering, and stared into the flames. ‘No, I’m wrong. This is because of my magic. You think you’ll have magic powers like me. Shit, how can you want the filthy stuff?’

  ‘It might be different, coming to it the Zen Self way.’

  She turned and stared at him in contempt and disbelief.

  Sage got down beside her, moving carefully into one of his giant pixie poses. He was so calm. ‘I want to be complete,’ he said. ‘I don’t think this is anything like your power, Fiorinda. Though I think, I suspect, that you may have made your power like it. Zen Self is like when you are for a moment very happy, and you truly forgive and understand the whole terrible world, including yourself and everything you’ve ever done. It’s like getting back to that state where everything is right, via the tech, and making it physical reality. Everything in your whole life fits, it’s coherent, and you are there in all of it. There’s nothing you’re afraid of. There’s nothing you have to forget, or cut out, or hide, or deny. That’s what I want. I have seen it, and I cannot turn back.’

  ‘So join a fucking monastery.’

  ‘Too slow.’

  She remembered being with him by the river, in another Maytime, and he had told her that he wanted to go into the desert, to find himself. We never listen when the people we love are saying the most vital things. ‘You could wait till Ax comes home. I love you, Sage. I’m not totally surprised you’re doing this. It’s always been in you, you’ve always wanted everything. But please wait. Just wait.’

  ‘I can’t. It’s now or never.’

  ‘What did Mary say?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t tell her. I meant to, but it wouldn’t work. But it was okay. I’ll never know how to behave to someone I injured so shamefully, but it was better. Almost like two normal divorced parents, discussing the kid with decent forbearance.’

  ‘What d’you tell Marlon?’

  ‘Something like the truth. He…he was scared. I’ve always told him too much. I don’t remember all of it. I get blanks, you know. I tried to leave him smiling.’

  Fiorinda looked down. Tears fell on her hands.

  ‘I’ve made a new will. George knows, he’ll tell you about stuff like that.’ (If he’s left me Tyller Pystri, she thought, I’m going to kill him.) ‘I’ve told Ruthie to look after the cottage until Mar decides what he wants to do with it. You and Ax can go there any time, if you want. My desk’s sorted, I mean, my Minister for Gigs desk. Allie very nobly helped me with that, though she hates my guts. She loves you, Fee.’

  ‘I know.’

  He took her hand. ‘Now listen, my brat. You have the Few, and David, and you have Fergal, who will look after the barmies in London and down here in the south. You have a tough job, but there are people you can trust. You don’t need me, Fiorinda. You’re much stronger than I am.’

  ‘What shall I tell Ax?’

  ‘Tell him that I love him. Tell him I didn’t have any choice. Tell him I’m sorry.’

  And the seconds ticked away, and the minutes ticked away, soundlessly. This crippled hand, holding mine. It will be gone. He will never touch me again. She could not conceive of what it would be like, on the other side.

  ‘Just stay with me here, for a few days—’

  ‘I can’t. George is going to drive me to Caer Siddi in the morning. He hates my guts too, but I’m still the boss, an’ rock and roll feudalism’s good for something. I, um, I n
eed to get there soon. I need medical support, pretty constantly. Caer Siddi’s one of the few places, if not the only place—’

  ‘In the morning!’

  ‘Yeah. I’m sorry, I thought you knew. We’ll be leaving early. Don’t get up to see me off. Please don’t do that. This is our goodbye. Well, that’s about it. I’d better go.’

  They stood up together. He was very pale, under the wheaten gold of Ndogs sunscreen. His blue eyes had that inward, covert concentration they get when he’s so smashed walking across a room is a feat of acrobatics. So this is it.

  ‘Stay with me tonight. Stay here with me, just once, what harm would it—’

  He shook his head, ruefully. ‘I wouldn’t be any use to you, babe.’

  Fiorinda gasped and recoiled, and her stricken face broke him. He stumbled and half fell, to his knees, clinging to her, sobbing, ‘Oh God, Fiorinda. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Oh please Fee, I love you, don’t send me away like this, please don’t be like this, please—’

  She crouched over him, holding him, rocking him, stroking her fingers through the warm lamb’s fleece. ‘All right, all right, I won’t be horrible. Don’t cry, don’t cry. Always love me, and it will be all right. Darling Sage, it’s okay. I don’t mind if you have to do this, I don’t care about anything, as long as you always love me—’

  ‘I’ll always love you.’ He stood up, wiped his eyes and bent and kissed her, the soft pressure of his lips, his hands on her shoulders. ‘My brat. Goodnight.’

  She went into the mediaeval bedroom, in which the three of them had slept together only once. He is still here. I have hours and hours left. The hours passed, the light began to grow around the curtains at her windows. Before it was fully light she got up, washed her face and left the building. She hurried across the arena and the campground. The morning was cool and fair, the tented township very quiet. She came to Travellers’ Meadow, and the van wasn’t there. That preposterous grey space capsule, which had been her home, her rock, her refuge, the centre of her life since Dissolution Summer, was gone.

  She stared at the bare earth where it had stood, stunned, trying to grasp the size of this task that the two men of destiny had left for her. In Rainsford’s-the-Gym, just out of curiosity, she had once tried (when they weren’t looking) to lift one of those fat weights that Sage and George tossed around so casually. What happens? Nothing happens. There is no strain, no mighty effort, no terrible costly victory. Absolutely nothing shifts.

  I cannot do this, she thought. I can’t keep Ax’s England going. It’s impossible.

  Something touched her hand. Silver Wing was beside her, a skinny unbrushed child in a brown smock, her small face pinched with grief, her eyes brimming. Silver didn’t say a word, nor did Fiorinda. They hugged each other. He’s gone. Our wild best friend, our beautiful lord. He’s gone, and nothing’s going to bring him back.

  I leant my back against an oak

  Me thought it were a goodly tree

  But first it bent, and then it broke

  And so proved false my love to me

  SEVEN

  Big In Brazil #2

  They were sleeping on rock, in a cave. It was very cold. Ax got out of his sleeping-bag and went to the entrance. We are on the slopes of Mount Elbrus. I am in the ancient world. Far into the distance below, the Caspian basin was on fire. Eco-warriors had set gas and oil reserves alight a year ago, and no one had yet managed to cap the flames. The landscape, under a reddish, Martian dawn, looked like fucking Mordor. But the strangeness of it gripped him, and he intensely wanted Sage to see this. A stab of pain: a glimpse of what was waiting for him, when he let himself feel his loss. But not now. He spoke aloud, quoting from the Odyssey: ‘For in my day, I have had many bitter and shattering experiences in war and on the stormy seas—’

  A voice behind him joined in, also speaking Homer’s Greek.

  So let this new disaster come. It only makes one more.

  ‘You know the Odyssey?’

  The older of his minders grinned, his seamed face and the gaps in his teeth reminding Ax of Fergal Kearney. Lalic. ‘I’m a Macedonian. Come and have breakfast.’

  With Serendip on his chip, a facet of Serendip, that is, Ax could speak and understand any language that hit him. It felt somewhat like demonic possession, but he could handle it. He was afraid it meant he was behaving as if everyone he met belonged to the same tribe: luckily the eco-warriors didn’t give a shit for national identity. Murderous factions yes, borders no. This war is everywhere. He’d met Lalic and Markus, the younger minder, in the last days of the dambusting tour. They’d said come with us, and here he was, on a pilgrimage. The small plane took off from a boulder field. They flew north, over the flames, with the cinder-grey pans of the Caspian sea floor in the east; a sullen gleam of water in their distance. What’s that great wen? Oh, fuck, that’s Stalingrad. Volgograd. They landed in marshland. (Lalic and Markus flew by sight, since most of their instruments were bust. They treated their little plane like a motorbike; they’d park it anywhere.) Walking through reeds, they came to a stretch of water, like an arm of the lost sea. There were hippy guys with rifles, who provided a boat. ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked, expecting another Apocalyptic Environment-Damage story.

  ‘Sssh. Wait. She’ll come.’

  Something very large glided up. He saw an eye. He’d never seen such a big fish. He’d never been near to such a big, living wild thing in his life.

  ‘She is a sturgeon,’ said Lalic softly. ‘We think she’s two hundred years old.’

  ‘Not such good caviar,’ said Markus. ‘Beluga. But okay when there is nothing else left. This is our reserve, it’s what we do: but they are too few to recover; all the sturgeon will go. She is our partner, mascot, wife, you could say. Magic fish.’

  The magic fish, fifteen, even twenty feet long, had the muzzle and barbels of a bottom feeder. She cruised around, seeming gravely interested.

  ‘The war is already lost. Here, as in the South,’ said Lalic. ‘In the west you hear rumours: running out of water, no more fertility in the soil, and you start fighting in the streets. We go on fighting too, with bombs and guns, but we know. We are losing, it is too late, it’s finished.’

  ‘You can’t say that,’ said Ax. ‘We’re not dead yet. This isn’t the end of a long campaign, we’ve only just begun. We can turn it round.’

  He was thinking of Lalic and Markus, and the magic fish, when he set out for the Floods Conference venue, in Amsterdam one January morning, in the different cold of the North Sea coast. The city had reliable grid power, wave power mostly. Good for them. The sky was clear of smoke and the air clean, which made a pleasant change from Bucharest; or London. He walked by the Singelgracht, looking at the buildings, taking in the atmosphere, a dark shape swimming through his mind, like meeting life itself, life with eyes looking back at you. He was thinking that none of the mistakes he’d made in England mattered. Spend time with Utopians whose concept of the Good State is that everyone eats meat once a month and we never run out of ammunition (and Lalic was a Doctor of Philosophy once, by the way), and you learn to respect the scale of this task. You make a mistake, you move on. Don’t waste time on it.

  Just as well the distances in Amsterdam were small. Ax hated bicycles, and he couldn’t buy a bus pass. He’d had a ridiculous conversation with a young woman at the Metrostation: no I can’t sell you a strippenkart, Mr Preston, because you’re an eco-warrior, but could I have your autograph? At least she’d had the grace to produce Put Out The Fire, and the ‘Miss Brown’ single. New Year’s fireworks piled in funeral pyres, a flotilla of drab, icebound houseboats, white-faced coots pattering across the grey ice…he almost ran slap into someone standing in his path. It was Arek Wojnar, Polish music publisher and radical computer geek: a stocky bloke with a skull-stubble of dark hair, slightly mad-looking pale blue eyes and a light-the-sky smile.

  ‘Ax! I said to myself, that’s the amazing Mr Preston, and I was right! Striding along, thinking world-
changing thoughts. Which hotel are you at?’

  ‘No hotel. I’m dossing in the Tarom building.’ The block that had housed the Romanian Airlines office was providing accommodation for a raft of Eastern Europe hippies, who had no money at all.

  ‘Oooh, is that where the English are?’

  ‘No, just me. I’m here on my own.’

  ‘I see! Travelling light. Good! I was worried for you. You have been spending so much time among the suits.’

  Arek was no mean suit himself when it came to wheeling deals and preying on hapless artists. But he reserved the right to be a wild and free idealist in his spare time.

  ‘Yeah, I was worried too.’

  By the time they reached the gabled, turreted Tropen Institut, the winter pavement was awash with dreadlocked outlaws, sober hippies, adventurous suits. They met Alain de Corlay, and moved through the day in an enclave of techno-greens-with-music-biz-connections. Debates, seminars, posters: how much new bad news can you take? The conference was far bigger than had been planned, much of the programme had been moved to university halls, but the museum remained the centre; its tropical dioramas making a very fitting backdrop. These jewel islands that are drowning; this colourful Southern poverty, choking on its own shit. This showcase of human diversity which has become a relentless casualty list… On bilingual placards Ax read the Netherlanders’ core interpretation of what goes on, the same from Aleppo to the Philippines, in times of trouble, the people will cling together and support each other. My bus pass would seem to be an exception, he thought. But he liked the sentiment. These different facets of Europe, their oddness, their sameness—

  In the afternoon there was an angry debate in the glass-roofed Light Hall, the biggest museum venue. The topic in the programme quickly became irrelevant, it was a slanging match between the techno-greens and the pan-European Celtics. The media people had turned out in force, and it was heartbreaking to see their pleasure and relief. Aha! A binary opposition! Now we get it! Hold the front page! But what can you do? At the end Ax had to duck out to escape being mobbed by fans—the classic rockstar experience, which he’d never had before in his life. He was outraged, even a little frightened. He’d been living in a hothouse where there wasn’t a media person, or a punter, who would say boo to Mr Preston.