Band of Gypsys (39 page)

There were several proposals on the table. First, that the army should go to Reading, and put itself at the disposal of Faz Hassim’s government. Second, they should find their way to wherever the fighting was still going on, and join the regulars… Third, they should volunteer their men for bomb disposal, ambulance and stretcher bearer work; as conscientious objectors. Fourth: organise. There were Islamic militias, and unaffiliated armed groups. The barmy command should take control of these disparate forces, go underground and prepare an army of resistance.

Fifth, do nothing and wait for Ax

The Reading option was quickly dismissed. They’d be joining the fish in the barrel, the rats in the trap, and Faz had enough mouths to feed. Nobody felt like fighting under Greg Mursal, either, and it would be another suicide mission. The morale of the regulars had disintegrated. They believe that the denial of the ‘A’ Team was a smokescreen, and the Chinese actually possessed occult weapons
far worse
than the Neurobomb. It was known that some troops in Yorkshire had been forced onto the transports at gunpoint. The third suggestion had some merit, but they couldn’t believe it was what Ax wanted. The barmy staff had been with Ax all the way in the House of Commons. Of course, in the Good State, violence would be reduced to a minimum! But that didn’t mean Ax would not defend his country!

And whatever’d happened that night in Berkeley Square, probably nobody knew, but ten to one Ax
had
broken the evil fucker’s neck. Which proved the non-violence speech was not to be taken
literally
.

The fourth option was discussed at greater length.

The barmy staff were better informed than the Few. They knew Ax and his partners had not been secretly executed: the most popular theory with the public, since that horrible mock-up ‘appearance’ with Greg Mursal. They had reason to believe that the Triumvirate had escaped and were still free. But that was all. They didn’t know where Ax was, and they could not account for his failure to make contact.

‘Each of us here speaks for thousands,’ said one dreadlocked Islamic campaign veteran, somewhat optimistically. ‘My lads want action, and we’re ready for casualties. We’re a finely honed weapon, England’s last line of defence, same as we ever were. Suppressed by the fucking Second Chamber, we’ve remained hidden but intact, like an oiled rifle in the thatch—’

‘Yeah, Marsh. So what’s the good of diluting that finely honed strength and political will with untrained, criminal mad-dog rag-bag wannabes?’

The staff officers had turned up in barmy uniform: which was crazy of them, in the circumstances. But Richard couldn’t blame them. He himself was wearing the battledress tunic he’d worn in the Campaign, with the pink triangle, and his campaign buttons. It was too tight, he looked a fool, but he couldn’t have borne not to make the gesture.

He’d been getting a small salary from the Reich, as nominal ‘Colonel’: sorting out the problems of the ex-barmies in civilian life, and dreaming of the glory days. He hadn’t liked the Second Chamber, but England could have survived Greg Mursal. Ax’s reforms would have come, if only the world had given them
time
. Why couldn’t we have had a few more years? Every sane projection gave us a few more years… He felt blindsided, dumped on from a great height, outraged and heartbroken.

‘I’m not here to give orders—’

‘We don’t work like that,’ someone agreed. ‘We’re consensual.’

‘But I agree with Marsh. The Chinese are an Expeditionary Force, far from home. If we take our time, dig in and manage to string this out, I think we can dislodge them, get them to come to terms—’

But not without leadership, and where was Ax?

The chiefs of staff were unsure, silent and divided.

‘All right, let’s come back to it. Anybody want to tell me why the invaders don’t use those incredible airships? Why no bombing raids?’

The purple fleet had not been seen in action since the landings.

‘Our distances are negligible,’ suggested someone. ‘They don’t bomb populations, they’ve walked over the regulars. They don’t need air power.’

‘An air strike might take a chip out of somethen’ mediaeval.’

The men and women laughed, bitterly. The Chinese were ruthless with resistance, the few times they’d met any: but they were obsessivly careful with ancient monuments.

‘That fuckin’ Royal Message was a desp’rate mistake,’ offered a West Country voice. ‘All Mursal did was convince the whole countree, includin’ the regulars on the front line, that Ax is dead and Lord Mursal killed him. Wonderful encouraging, that was.’

Cornelius leaned back in a musty armchair, tossing the amber komboloi he favoured, in place of the pipe he’d given up. ‘You’re right Hawk. As it turned out, we were a walkover. But what if Shi Huangdi had tackled Europe the conventional way, from east to west? Albeit with the same overwhelming post-fossil fuels technology?’

Officially, the new China was ruled by the old men. Most experts believed there was a concealed junta, a ‘gang of four’ behind this façade. Cornelius, who’d spent some years as a Beijing watcher, preferred the ‘one man’ theory. He called the hidden leader
Shi Huangdi
, First Emperor, for obvious reasons.

The young man known as Hawk, thought for a moment. ‘Lemme see. East toWest, you move from the old Soviet empire hardscrabble countries to the big soft populations with high expectations. You do your rough fighting while you’re relatively close to home. You meet technically superior forces when they’ve seen what’s coming, and their civilians have panicked. They’re less eager. The Crisis hasn’t changed the basic situation: it’s hardnuts then soft. I think he’s a risk-taker, this guy. He plays high, to win high.’

‘They psyched the entire world with that trick,’ agreed someone.

‘Like the Wang guy says,’ added a much-tattooed elective slaphead, one of the two females in the command tent, ‘they don’t want to
annexe
Europe. They want to box it. After the airship stunt, they’ve no need to make their point, nation by nation. It was cheap at the price.’

‘Plus they were establishing dominance over the real rival, the US,’ added Marsh, the proposer of armed resistance. ‘Up the back passage, without a fight, by getting them to cede those beachheads.’

Cornelius tossed his beads. ‘All good points. But Shi Huangdi has not been a risk-taker in building up his Asian sphere. I think he’d have taken the East-West approach, once he’d decided that Europe must be pacified… If it hadn’t been for Rufus O’ Niall, and Sage Pender.’

The barmies frowned over this.

‘You think they’re shitting us? That they have magic?’ said Hawk.

‘I think they hope there’s no such thing. But they’re not sure, and that makes England incalcuable.
That’s
why we were targeted, in such spectacular style—and why the invaders are so careful of life and property. I believe Ax has realised this, and is reserving his options, waiting to see what happens.’

A shock of relief went through the little band.

Gone to ground! He’s gone to ground.

Silence is an answer
, thought Richard. His only plan had been to hold the army in check, let them talk and wait for orders. He had not known how cruelly Ax’s defection (it felt like defection) had been weighing on him. Suddenly he could breathe.

‘Ax is telling us we’re
guerrillas
,’ exclaimed the muscular blonde who was the other token woman. ‘Not the buggering Light Brigade!’

Marsh and the Hawk were not convinced. ‘I know you, Corny,’ Marsh said, ‘You talk around corners, like an old tortoise. If you two say wait and I’ll wait. But me and mine will go kamikaze when we have to.’

Cornelius nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

They put it to the vote. They would wait for Ax.

On the tenth day the Insanitude was under siege. The Republic had rejected a safe-conduct for non-combatants offered by General Hu, and declared martial law. It was summary execution for any traitor caught trying to escape. Non-combatant ‘citizens’ were living in the North Wing, under guard. They had water—hard to run out of water, in the sodden London Basin—; but the quality was poor. They had sanitation, likewise. Food, cooking fuel and medicines would last for a while. Supplies were not fairly rationed, but there were reasonably fair barter-markets. It was rough, not terrible.

The Few had a piece of floor in the largest of the havens. They had to occupy it all the time, or they would have lost territory instantly: but that was okay, there was nowhere much to go. Dilip was on firewatch in the State Apartments. Felice was with another couple of parents, supervising a finger-painting session; under the grand piano that stood, mysterious survivor, at one end of the big room. The rest of them sat around on rolled up bedding, or lay dozing on their portion of a large Turkish carpet; another random survivor. Chip and Ver, propped on their elbows, were monitoring the San’s remaining external cameras on a palmtop with a virtual screen. An assault was due this afternoon. The ‘citizens’ knew about it because there’d been a Chinese announcement. They still, eerily, had access to the media.

Nothing was happening outside, as yet.

Everyone missed EBC, which had died when London fell. It had been fun jeering at the lies, and there’d been the faint, undying hope that suddenly Ax would appear. The real Ax, not a stupid fake, smiling with his eyes, having the Chinese eat out of his hand, making everything come right.

The piano room was warm and dim: the tall wooden shutters were never removed from the windows. The air was stale from the exhalations of about forty bodies (not counting the children), and days of cooking smells. Rob lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. He was dead tired, nobody could sleep in here. Fear for the kids was breaking his back. Remorse and guilt, too.

Why did we walk into this trap? Why didn’t we get out of the country?

‘I keep thinking the next meeting will do it,’ murmured Chez, lying beside him, equally heavy-eyed. The Few were trying to organise a surrender, preferably without getting themselves shot.

‘I’m still sure the barmies can be turned.’

She took Rob’s hand, and kissed his blunt fingertips.

The best of the San’s security forces had left before the ‘Republic of Europe’ took over, or else they’d been killed in the takeover. The remaining squaddies had been recruited by the Republic. They were conflicted. They did not see how defending the Insanitude could be wrong.

‘You know where that leads?’ muttered Rob. ‘A gun battle indoors.’

‘I
hate
the firewatching.’ Dora was absently stroking Toots, the big fluffy black and white cat. The Babes’ other cat, the notorious Ghost, who had once eaten two of her own healthy newborn kittens, had not been seen for a day or two. ‘It’s so scary. But this is not so bad. I keep drifting off, and thinking this is some other, ordinary disaster, you know?’

‘Nothing’s happening in the Forecourt,’ reported Ver.

‘The tourists
will
be disappointed,’ remarked Chip. ‘No Changing of the Guard. Maybe they’ll go away and come back tomorrow.’

The tourists were the Chinese, so called because of their passion for historic monuments and natural beauty. They had been true to their word. They respected non-combatants and eschewed ‘immoral weapons’. But what if they had to choose between Buckingham Palace and the citizens of the Republic? General Hu had proved he had no patience with recalcitrants. None of the Chinese did. Inevitably you thought of nerve gas—

Allie sat on one of her suitcases, huddled in her beloved red Gucci jacket. She had brought all her clothes with her when forced out of her flat. This had turned out useful, good clothes fetched high prices in barter (though you wondered why); but she would never part with this perfect jacket. It was her lover and her child, she slept with it cuddled in her arms. She looked down at little Nathalie: fast asleep, curled in a foetal ball. So thin, brittle insect limbs… Natalie had begged them to kill her rather than let her be taken alive, and you start thinking, get a grip kid. How bad can re-education be?

We have no idea.

‘I thought it would go on for years,’ she said. ‘First I couldn’t believe it, then I thought we’d be fighting them forever, like a normal warzone.’

‘Maybe it
will
go on,’ said Chip. ‘Just not for us.’

‘I know why the Republic keeps it up, they’re nuts and they can’t count. But why are the Rebels still resisting, and the campers at Reading? It’s
ridiculous
, they’re just prolonging the agony for everyone.’

‘Hippies, Allie.’ said Dora. ‘They’re all mad dogs.’

She knew it wasn’t that simple, not for anyone trapped at Reading: but she had compassion fatigue. She wasn’t proud of it.

‘Thank
God
we’re on our own,’ mumbled Rob. ‘If Mursal had won armed support from the Celtic nations it would’ve been carnage.’

‘Never a chance,’ said Chez. ‘Why would anyone support
him
?’

‘Nothing’s still happening.’ reported Ver.

The other citizens lived their lives; watched the external cameras on small screens. Picked guitar, played cards. Anyone who passed, crossing the floor to visit the bathrooms, the water cooler or the kitchen burners, stooped to hi-five Rob, or squatted down for a few words. He was the uneasy leader of the non-combatants, he hadn’t been able to stop it happening. He felt like a corporal in the trenches, promoted
faute de mieux
, and resented the women’s slippery ability to dodge the draft. What became of women’s lib around here?

Chip and Ver lost interest in the watch on the Rhine, and rolled over on their backs. ‘Pippin,’ said Chip, ‘d’you remember a sci-fi story called “We Who Are About To”? They’re stranded on an alien planet, no skills, no hope of rescue and the argument is, why build shelters, seek for water, when—’

‘It’s just a question of how long, days or weeks?’ finished Verlaine. ‘“We Who Are About To Die Salute You” From the Latin,
Morituri te salutant
, which gladiators never really said, when about to get killed in the arena.’ He stroked Chip’s nose. ‘I think we’ve been playing that game since Massacre Night, young Merry. We should compile an artefact called ‘Morituri’.’