Band of Gypsys
Page 2
It was okay. They weren’t in immediate danger, and Ax knew his value to the bastards in power. He could do business with a hostile government. Even now, being a Lennonist in Paris, he was working on his family’s release.
When Ax and Sage arrived on the Ile St Louis, the ironbound sky had given up none of its burden. They had a borrowed office, in the Seventeenth century mansion where Alain de Corlay, leader of the French Techno-Greens, kept his headquarters. Here they amused themselves by entertaining the proposals of various lunatic emigrées, while Alain’s merry crew prowled around dressed up as spacemen, or Apaches, or whatever currently took their absurdiste fancy. M. de Corlay himself sat in on the meetings when they needed a witness, smoking his horrible marijuana bidis and looking disgusted. Fiorinda stayed at home, working a different crowd.
Today it was the Restore The Thames Party (main platform, massive slave-labour engineering to return the Thames to its pre-iceage route, thus persuading Gaia to reverse the collapse of the thermohaline circulation and restore the North Atlantic Drift). Then a few minor suppliants, and a genuinely fascinating presentation from the Devon couple who could make wind turbines invisible.
The delegates from the New Plantagenet Society had been left until last, sent off to get nervous in the brown and gold salon next door. These lunatics had been holed-up in Paris since Ax’s dictatorship—when the French had provided asylum (out of sheer cussedness) for a hotbed of dodgy former-UK opposition groups. The “Plantagenets” were not the harmless kind. The two delegates were in full reenactment regalia, jewelled badges pinning sprigs of broom pinned to their velvet caps; velvet robes over formal business suits. Mr Red, sallow and middle-aged, thin mousy-grey hair in a long bob, bore an eerie resemblance to a famous portrait of Henry Tudor; suitably enough. Mr White, a much younger, rosy-cheeked and hearty rosbif, didn’t look much like Richard Crookback, but he did have a Yorkshire accent
There goes your project, thought Ax, with mordant amusement, frowning at the sprigs of hothouse planta genista. Don’t you know we’re soldiers of the queen, and Fiorinda hates cut flowers?
Nah, the New Plantagenets knew nothing.
The Reds and the Whites had buried their differences, and were ready share power. They’d approached Ax with a plan whereby he would marry—purely for legitimacy—the Yorkist heir, a young Greek woman: but it was fine if he preferred to be adopted by the Lancastrian heir (and elderly Canadian) instead. Their hopes were high. They had quasi-legal documents, including a ‘writ’ declaring Ax’s Islamic faith was not an impediment, and a ‘writ of perpetual abdication’ from the Hastings family, living Plantagenets who didn’t want anything to do with these nuts. They had fanfold genealogies in oak-gall, scarlet and gilt; they had a recorded video message from the elderly Canadian. They had detailed plans for the ceremony where Ax would simultaneously be adopted, by video-proxy, and consecrated king. He would take the dynastic name Richard Henry the First.
The conference room was bitterly cold, heated only by a trash-eater stove in the back of a cavernous baroque fireplace, where its heat went straight up the mighty chimney. The former Dictator of England and his Minister did not remove their coats. Mr Preston wore Dickensian, fingerless dark mittens that looked none too clean. He smoked one of the expensive cigarettes that were proffered (but declined the carton); showed an interest in the ornate paperwork, and asked gentle questions about the dirty business of actually taking over a country. Tall Mr Pender, with the intimidating good looks, never spoke except in an undertone, to his chief—murmured asides that won Mr Preston’s flashing smile, and made the negotiators envious.
Alain sat at the end of the table, chain-smoking, and followed the proceedings with exasperated disbelief. Sage stared at curling satellite image print-outs of London and the south coast of England, thumb-tacked to the panelled walls. Must have been there since this was the nerve centre of Ax’s Velvet Invasion. He wondered why Alain kept any relics of that hellish time. Poor housekeeping? A phalanx of landline phones stood on a side-table, gathering dust.
The stove hissed. At last Ax squared the documents, slipped an ancient vellum into its silk-lined folder, and swept the lot across the board.
‘Mr Red, Mr White, thank you. That’s all I have time for: you may go.’
The delegates looked at each other, nonplussed.
‘You could move that stove out into the room,’ said Sage to Alain, in English. ‘It would be slightly more fuckin’ use than where it is.’
‘Certainly not. It would mark the parquet.’
‘Welsh sovreignty wouldn’t be a deal-breaker,’ announced Mr Red, after a sub-vocal consultation, on a throat mike, with confederates elsewhere. (The New Plantagenets were not fanatical about appropriate Renaissance tech). ‘We believe in political union between England and Wales, but we can live with separation.’
‘Well, that’s good,’ said Ax, smiling; and raised an eyebrow.
They didn’t take the hint. The pinch-faced older man steepled his hands and leaned forward. His “real” name was Woodville, and he had form, racketeering and violent crime: a background of which Ax was well aware.
‘Mr Preston, Sir, having come this far, can we assume that we have Fred Eiffrich on board? Or are we, er, is Your Majesty waiting for that assurance?’
Mr White (Henry Lovell, close associate of the British Resistance Movement, a body formerly known as the BNP), glowed like a rose, already tasting glory.
In practice, Ax knew he would never have Fred ‘on board’. The friendship of the mighty is a fickle thing, you can never tell when their priorities are going to change. But Mr Eiffrich in theory made a very good stick to poke at monsters.
‘I could be. Or I could be mulling over my chances of waking up one morning in some draughty Norman tower, with a red hot poker up my bum. Or else starving to death in chains when you folks get tired of your new toy.’
The Plantagenets looked shocked, the stove hissed. Ax grinned like a friendly wolf, and leant forward himself; becoming affable and confidential. ‘I don’t have to tell you this, but fact is, we’re getting head-hunted all over the shop. We’ve been looking at a rather nice package from the Sealed Knot.’
The Plantagents bristled like startled cats at the hated name. ‘They’re lying!’ cried Mr White. ‘Whatever they said, it’s a crock of shit! Those bastards have no money and no credibility!’
‘They speak highly of you, too… And the Irish are putting out feelers, about Fiorinda for High Queen. They’re looking at the idea of having a decorative Head of State, like a lot of countries, and she’s an O’Niall you know. The Tyrone branch, the legitimate family, are cool about it. We’re thinking that might suit us very well.’
Sage nodded in confirmation. ‘Nicer climate in Ireland.’
‘So, what can I say? It’s all up in the air. Why don’t you try the Mountbatten-Windsors? They’ve a posse of children, they might let you have one, for the right offer. Feel free. I don’t mind where you take your pitch, as long as you don’t try this game on any other member of my family, or any connection of mine.’
Briefly, the mischief vanished from Mr Preston’s pretty brown eyes.
M. de Corlay sighed, and pressed a banana-shaped yellow buzzer. At its discordant summons some Techno-Green muscle appeared, bizarrely costumed but convincingly armed, or packing heat, as they preferred to put it. The delegates stood, disconsolate, and donned their velvet with dignity.
‘Edward II wasn’t killed like that because he was a homosexual,’ exclaimed Mr White. ‘The homophobic element has been unfairly exaggerated.’ (‘Unbelievable’ muttered Alain, lighting another bidi.) ‘The issue is to leave an unmarked corpse—’
‘Tha’s our kinda meme,’ said beautiful Mr Pender: with such tigerish affection that the White Rose took a sharp step backwards. ‘Hey, compagnero You must be one of us.’
When the lunatics had left the room, Alain delivered a small item of secure mail to His Majesty: who glanced at it and stowed it away, still
falling about and cackling like a fool with his Minister. ‘You two are abusing my hospitality,’ said the little Breton. ‘This hôtel is a serious centre of techno-green utopian excellence.’
‘If you say so, Monsewer Jupette (snarf, snarf—)’
‘Oh yes, very amusing. Mr. Preston, who needs nobody to crown him, gets the rabid dogs to come to him, so he knows exactly where they are and what they are up to, and can deal with them at leisure once he’s whipped his bureaucrats into line.’
‘Nah. I’m just pissing around.’
‘What are you doing, in God’s name? What are you achieving with this infantile, John Lennon, doll’s house game about concentration camps?’
‘My job, Alain. The job I was hired to do. I’m making the suits look cool, working the margins, and getting something done for my own agenda.’
‘Now you’re talking like a toothless human rights activist,’ snapped Alain, and then stared. ‘Mon Dieu. You’re reporting back to those devils in Westminster?’
‘Of course.’ Ax retrieved his guitar case from under a chair, and shrugged it onto his shoulders. ‘What else? I’m a Lennonist, not a Marxist, Alain.’
‘You’re an imbecile. They’ll make you sorry.’
‘I’ve been sorry. Now I’m trying what I always knew I should: the art of the possible. C’mon, Sage. Got to get the beer-money in before dark.’
‘Thanks fer the room, and the heavies,’ called Sage, over his shoulder.
In the courtyard, under naked chestnut trees that stood gleaming in the frost like giant, funereal candlebra, Ax stopped dead, transfixed.
‘What’s up, babe?’
‘Sage. Could she be pregnant? Tell me, truly… So quickly?’
Fiorinda had been chemically sterilised when she was thirteen, and had just given birth to Rufus O’Niall’s baby—O’Niall the sinister rockstar lord with a taste for young girls: who was her own father, though she didn’t know it. As long as he’d loved her, Ax had dreamed of her having a child, and been afraid it was impossible. Now it was possible, but he hadn’t expected anything more than hope. You can live on hope for years… It was dizzying. Fiorinda having a baby!
‘I don’t know,’ said Sage, with equal urgency. ‘But it does sometimes happen like that, straight off. There’s reasons why—’
‘Yeah, yeah, I know—’
Naturally they’d been researching the topic.
Alain stared at the walls of the conference room: which was for him a shrine, a time-capsule of the last days of rational materialism. Here we laid our desperate plans, while that lanky blue-eyed alchemist who has just left was turning himself into the New Prometheus, breaking the barrier between Mind and Matter. And how little we understood, then, what that would mean to the future of the world!
What annoyed him most was that Ax Preston, of all people, the Captain Sensible of Pre-Dissolution UK radical rock, had become a perfect character in this farce. While he, “Alain Jupette” (Alain Miniskirt had been Alain’s stage name, when he fronted a politically motivated Eurotrash band called Movie Sucré), found himself unable to mock a situation that was beyond ludicrous. A world where fossil fuel reserves had been conjured out of existence. Where so-called governments scrabbled to own the new occult superweapon, a magic planet destroyer in human form—
Thank God for Fiorinda. She, at least, still believed in reason.
A knot of Techno-Greens stood at the windows, looking down. He joined them and saw Ax and Sage: stalled under the sweeping branches of the chestnuts and the first difficult flakes of snow. You would stare at those two if you knew nothing, you would follow them down the street. They shone like golden armour.
‘What can they be talking about?’ muttered someone beside him.
‘Obviously, the exquisite shape of Fiorinda’s left earlobe,’ said Alain sourly.
‘Is it true they’re on the oxy again?’ asked the other, hopefully.
The speaker was a government spook, here by agreement, to keep an eye on the Plantagent delegates: and on Ax Preston. Everyone wants to know how Ax is going to jump. The Techno-Greens had differences, but no major quarrel, with the current French government, a faction of their own movement. There’d been a time when Ax and Sage had been addicts of oxytocin, shoring up the famous love affair with brain-wrecking quantities of the intimacy drug. But they were clean now—thankfully (since Alain was genuinely fond of the fools, and that potion is a brain-wrecker). There was nothing fake about the besotted trefoil infatuation.
‘Drowning in it. But it won’t help you to nail him.’
All real megastars must have crap sex lives, thought Fiorinda; left alone in the nest. It has to be true, because which of us rock musicians, performers, hardwired from birth to be continually starving for love and pleasure, forced by the working conditions to be addicts of excess… Which of us would strut on stage, or fret in a recording studio, a moment longer than we had to, if we were getting what we needed at home? It would be: make the money, take your bow and quit.
And how often does that happen? How often does any of us get clean away?
See, I’m not really trapped. I’d be worse off if I was having a brilliant career.
Comforted by this thought, she jumped out of bed as a vicious alarm sounded. Brushed her teeth and dressed briskly and chastely (sorry mates, not going to roll around in sexy underwear, this is not one of those videos). The global stats that ran along the bottom of her out-of-shot monitor screen were gratifying: and here we go. Cribs of the certifiably insane. “Hi everybody, and special hi to anyone who’s looking in for the first time. Welcome to Montmartre, and the rooftops of Paris. This is our garret, acres of space, which is not exactly realistic, but hey, we’re dilletantes, what do you expect? This is our bed, with the personalised coat-bedspread—
Question, is there any heating?
‘Hi, Ian in Rotherham. Yeah, there is, sometimes. We have heating from the arondissement Renewables Grid, this is our dear little radiator. We’re allowing ourselves the same units of energy per day, per person, counting power, heat and sanitation, as we’d get in a camp. If we were getting the statutory ration, which a lot of inmates don’t. But it’s Thursday and we’re on a three day week here in Paris…
Question, do you get fleas?
‘We have no personal vermin, Alice in Queens, which is great, and as unrealistic as the wide open spaces, by the way. The lice powder is just in case.
‘Let me show you round. These are my clothes, all hung up on my piece of string. These are my boots. These are Ax’s clothes; and Ax’s other hat, his Ned Kelly hat. I love this old hat, as long as he doesn’t wear it. The mess is Sage’s stuff. I kick it out of the way, oh, I trod on his board, it’s okay, they’re tough. Et voila our tasty tins, the ATP battery micro-ondes and that’s the drinking water. My boyfriends fetch the water. Isn’t that sweet of them. You’re wondering if the ag.labour campers really feed on out of date tins. They do. Fresh produce goes straight out the gates.
‘Here behind this screen, yes, do come in! Is our very green chemical toilet, which we don’t have to share with a hundred other people, unlike most of the folks who grow your veg for you. The brown stuff is a big problem in the camps, it spreads diseases: I hope you’re remembering to wash everything before you eat it. The cold winters have helped, tho’ it’s also a problem that the camps are not built for our evil share of climate change, which as you’ll have noticed is a colder climate… I’m now going to empty it downstairs. Come along, please.
Do you always get landed with that job?
‘Hey, Sejer in Sweden. Nah, just often. They do fetch the water.’
(Oh, Hi, M. Jouffroy, Il fait encore froid, eh?)
‘That’s our concierge. He doesn’t like the English, but he’s okay.’
Sploosh, sploosh. Swill, scrub—
‘There, that wasn’t too bad. I’m used to it, I don’t even mind the smell of disinfected shit when it’s fresh, after about a million post-civilised rock festivals.
Fiona Ward, EB Breakfast News dolly, had booked an interview: for which a portion of the garret would be specially captured, and pasted into the EB Breakfast set. Fiorinda sat demurely on her mark, in the midst of the frowsty bed, grubby hands clasped, thinking of studio interviews in days gone by. Funny how it’s just a different kind of annoying. Funny how often these News-type dollies are called Fiona—
‘Yes, Fiona, of course there were agricultural camps in Ax’s dictatorship. But they weren’t locked, there were no guards, and the labourers were volunteers.’
‘Yes, Fiona, the “drop out hordes”, I’m sorry, “elective homeless” were a problem for us, too, right from the start. I just don’t think rounding them up and sticking them in brutal concentration camps is really the decent answer.’
‘Oh, absolutely. Human labour must take the place of agricultural machinery for a while, until techno-green Utopia’s solutions are up and running. That doesn’t require slavery. Did you ever think of joining the Volunteer Initiative? You should. It’s great exercise, excellent for body-tone. Communion with nature, very Green and a social bonding experience. I could email you an application form?’
Laughter.