Midnight Lamp (24 page)

‘Fuckin’ shit, Sage! How long you been in town? Why didn’t you look me up before? How long’s it been, shit, how many years? Where’s the mask?’

‘I don’t do that anymore. Yeah, too long, Laz.’

‘You’re looking good, bro,’ said Lazarus, politely. ‘Time has been kind.’

‘You too.’

His name was Lazarus Catskill, just
Laz
to the fans. He and Sage had been newly famous bad boys when they met on the Heads’ notorious US tour. For a few years they’d crossed paths, the way you do, then Sage had vanished into Crisis Europe and his revolutionary adventure; and Lazarus had taken the industrial route. He’d made the transition into movies and tv, become unbelievably successful and was now more or less a god.

Laz wanted to show off his Peter Pan features so they did a tour, reminiscing about the outrageous days as they had fun with the treetop rollercoaster, the vintage animatronic gunfighters, the holodek and immix room in the caverns behind the waterfall. On the sweep outside the house there was a gold panning alley game. A wooden trough knocked together with rusty metal, and a stream diverted from the artificial river running into it from above, along a crooked little aqueduct on stilts. Ancient pans, lanterns, picks and shovels were on display—

‘Is this a real fake ancient Californian diorama? Or just a replica?’

‘This is authentic man, there
was
gold in my valley. You got to try it. This is the greatest game. You have to pick up that rock and dump it in the chute.’

‘And what happens?’

‘Something cool. It’s the best feature of my whole theme park.’

Sage looked at the boulder, the boulder looked at Sage. Fucking hope there isn’t a lot of gold in that mountain. Ah well, do what god says. He picked up the rock, made it look easy, dumped it in the trough, and
wham,
a section of the aqueduct opened and drenched him in icy water. Laz ran indoors, cackling in glee. Sage ran after him, cursing and swearing vengeance. A maid was waiting, with an armful of fluffy white towels and a merry smirk: this must be one of those divine jokes that never stales.

Laz tossed the towels to Sage. ‘Bring us some coffee, Maria. And cookies.’

He led the way into a baronial hall, oak panelled, with lambent stained glass lancets, and lit a fire in the great hearth with a snap of his fingers. Sage saw that he was going to have to take his shirt off, which he did not want to do.

‘
Jeeezus
! Fuckin’ mother of shit! What did that? Shark attack?’

‘You could say so. Hey, I did not lose. You shoulda seen the shark.’

Lazarus gaped at the ropes of scar. I’m getting rid of them, thought Sage, towelling his head. Call me childish, but if I
ever
again
have any money—

‘Well, my God, Sage. Thank the Lord you’re still with us. Here’s a dry tee. You want to change your pants? I guess only your shirt got wet, you jumped so fast.’

It was a Laz Catskill teeshirt. Childishly, he decided not to bother.

‘I won’t catch cold.’

The coffee and the cookies came, the maid took away the towels and Sage’s wet shirt. The heat from the gas flames fought with the frost of the air-conditioning, the former bad boys quietly sipped their coffee.

‘You like the stainglass? You like the oak? All from Europe: shipped over when the fucking place collapsed. You wouldn’t believe the stuff I picked up. I had to tussle with my conscience over some of it, no way it was the legitimate owners selling, but it’s safer over here, right?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Kaya will be pissed that she missed meeting you,’

Kaya was the god’s wife, R&B diva: she had changed him mightily, it was said. They had a stable relationship, one child a couple of years old. Sage nodded. ‘Sorry I missed her, too.’ Kaya probably spent her life trying to keep Laz away from former associates.

‘And you got your hands fixed,’ said Laz. ‘Nice job. I heard you went to China. What made you do that? You always swore you never would.’

‘Everybody changes,’ said Sage, trying to fit together the raucous brother he remembered with this family-values perfect specimen. I went where all the colours blend into one, Laz. And I came back with these hands… No. I don’t know you, and if I wanted to confide, something tells me this is not the setting.

‘So that’s where the loot went, huh? I heard you were broke.’

‘Flat busted. The yachts, the drugs, the hospital bills. It adds up.’

Laz nodded: but he seemed unable to take his eyes off Sage’s hands. ‘Hey!’ He touched the braided ring. ‘Whoa, You
married
?’

‘Betrothed.’ Fiorinda and Ax would say plain
no
to that question, Sage liked
betrothed
. Nothing to do, no no no, with a secret persistent fantasy of Ax all in formals beside him, and Fiorinda in a cloud of white tulle—

‘Well who’s the laydee? Uh, I guess that’s not Mary?’

Mary Williams was the mother of Sage’s son. They’d broken up before Marlon was born, but he had carried the festering corpse of that relationship around with him for years. The worst things he’d done in his life he’d done to Mary.

‘No,’ he said, jolted by the question. ‘Not Mary.’ This visit was turning out to be a series of pokes in the eye for the former Aoxomoxoa. Is that suspicious?

Or merely inevitable.

‘I heard you were in a threesome with the revolutionary king of England.’

‘Something like that.’ Sage braced himself for further pratfalls.

Lazarus had unusually dark skin, that glowed, like his whole presence, with Hollywood perfection. His eyes were light hazel shading to green: an arresting effect. For a long moment, he considered Sage in silence.

‘Who the fuck knows the truth about anyone?’ he said at last, without a smile. ‘Like you said, we all go through changes.’

They finished their coffee and toured the house, checking out the wired rooms, where
Lazi and Kaya
conducted the obligatory reality show. Lazarus recommended the life of a post-modern megastar highly. ‘All I have to do is be me,’ he said, with unaffected charm. ‘No script, no acting talent, no turning up on set required! I refresh my avatar when they tell me: and maybe twice a year I put out a single, which goes platinum to the nth.’

‘You don’t tour?’

‘Shit, no. Those days are gone, man. The security got unbelievable.’

‘Well, it sounds thrilling. What d’you think about our movie, anyway?’

‘Harry Lopez isn’t it? He’s the golden boy: it’ll be a big fat success.’

The shirt reappeared, freshly washed and crisply ironed. Sage’s humble limo was summoned to the carriage sweep. Lazarus came out to see him off.

‘I hope you stay, it’d be cool to have you around. You know, we might have more in common than you think.’

‘Oh really?’

Lazarus nodded, with a big perfect white smile, and sober eyes. ‘Yeah, really. Hey, promotion takes it out of you. If you guys feel like unwinding I have a cabin you could borrow. It’s pretty, peaceful and commuting distance: we go up there when we can’t get away like
away
, you know. Great little coffee shop in the village too, I recommend you should check out their live music.’

‘We may take you up on that,’ said Sage. ‘Thanks.’

Back at Sunset Cape he sat by the dry fountain pool in the courtyard, thinking about the several hells he had escaped. Ah, but those Peter Pan features! Nice cage you got, Laz… Dilip came by. They sat together, on the rim of amber stone, and DK broke the news he’d been hiding. He would be sorry to leave the party early, but it was about time. He had been HIV positive for eighteen years, nearly a third of his life, and he’d been very well for most of that, but never
better
.

‘I want you to do something for me,’ he said. ‘When we get back to England, I want you to talk to Olwen Devi-’

‘Okay,’ said Sage, with a good idea of what was coming. ‘What am I to say?’

‘That I want to die trying. I want to be under the scanner, full of snapshot, when I go. I want you all to watch what happens.’

Snapshot was the nickname of the formidable drug cocktail the Zen Selfers used, to facilitate their path to fusion consciousness.

‘Olwen won’t like it. She’s going to call that assisted suicide.’

‘I have AIDS, Sage. Unconfirmed as yet, but I know. How can it be suicide, if I make an attempt on the unclaimed prize, all the way and never come back? Will you fix it for me, my lord?’

‘I’ll talk to her. You’re sure we’re going to get back to England?’

The mixmaster shrugged, already indifferent. ‘If the doomsday scenario gets us first, you are absolved.’ He lay back, and gazed into the pearlised evening sky. The day had been hot and calm, nothing to shift the smog. ‘I’m glad to be in California again. I’ve had good times on this crazy, corrupt and golden shore.’

‘Have you told the others?’

‘Not yet. Everyone knows I’m in a low energy phase, and that’s enough for a while. It will be hard to tell Allie. I’m an old man, but she doesn’t see it.’

‘This could still
be
a low energy phase. You could be wrong, and if you’re right, there must be better and easier drugs, fuck, this is California.’

‘Tree-hugging conservative. You never want anything to change, oh master of change. But the sword outwears the sheath. Whoo, it has been fun, terrifying but fun, dancing with you guys through the death of Babylon. I’ll go indoors now.’

They hugged. Dilip was like dry leaves.

Sage stayed where he was, trying to think about Dilip Krishnachandran’s beautiful life: artist of friendship, lover of the world, a true adept of the
dao
of fun. All he could feel was numb. The gatehouse floodlights came on, because the evening was growing dim, and suddenly he was plunged into utter blackness. A shift of orientation: he wasn’t facing the same way, he was indoors, not outdoors. Fiorinda’s voice said, softly, ‘
Hello
?’

He felt his own surprise, and inexplicable dread. ‘Hi, baby, what are you doing here?’ Then she was in his arms like thistledown, and he knew she’d come to say goodbye, but all he could see was blackness—

Gone. He was back in the pastel courtyard in California; and
that
was a snapshot flashback. He’d taken so much of the fucking stuff, in the last phase of the Zen Self, he’d be getting flashes all his life. Was that a glimpse of the future, something from the past, something that will never happen?

He realised that there was someone behind him.

He didn’t look round. He saw, with the hyperreal clarity of internal vision, the man who was standing there: a rawboned, middleaged bruiser, in battered jeans and a fringed Celtic mantle, a broadsword at his back and an assault rifle in his arms. It was Fergal Kearney, the Irish musician whose dead body Rufus O’Niall had used as a disguise; haggard as a corpse, and his breath was carrion.

‘Is that you, Fergal?’ But no, that’s not Fergal.

‘
Rufus
? Is that you?’

The crunch of a heavy footfall, shifting on gravel. ‘Fergal Kearney has no more use fer this stinking carcase. Since I took it from him, I must wear it now.’

‘Would you mind telling me what the fuck you are doing here?’

He had the impression that the ghost took proud offence. ‘I’m here to guard and protect my daughter, Aoxomoxoa. And I’ll thank you not to get in my way.’

‘I’m
not to get in your way
? Rufus, I think we’ve had that conversation.’

But the vision was gone.

Very strange.

What do they mean, these phantoms of the mind?

Fiorinda had not mentioned Fergal’s ghost since the Baja. If he’d understood her, she’d seen the apparition as benign, but he wouldn’t tell her about this. She’d come back from the shock of Billy’s death, he wasn’t going to risk sending her into fugue again. So what
was
that? A warning from his unconscious? He was starting to feel he would
really
like to get out of California. That he would like to run for his life: if only they could persuade Fiorinda to leave.

Is that suspicious?

He dropped to the ground, and went into the house.

The avatar tests came around, delays and difficulties vanishing now that Lou Branco was back on board. Harry had impressed on them that this day was as a
very big deal
in the virtual movies, schematic equivalent of weeks or months of action in front of the cameras. Custom scanned characters signalled an important project, and this was the live performance. It was technically almost irrelevant, but a moviebreaker: you knew where you were by looking at who turned up. They’d be performing today for the stars and money-mavens and the hot mediafolk, as much as for the lasers: and they know their stuff, said Harry. They’re very sharp, even the ones you’d least suspect—

Then he was afraid he’d scared them, and backpedalled madly.

It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter. Just be yourselves.

Limos picked them up viciously early hour, and they were on the Golden State Freeway soon after dawn. At the entrance to the studio village they had to wait for someone to open up, and had time to appreciate the Abe Stevens quote, worked in metal in the arch over the gates: Digital Artists’ mission statement.

A rock is a rock, a tree is a tree,
Shoot it in Griffith Park.

Griffith Park itself, the green oasis somewhat smaller than it had been before Silicon Hollywood arrived, made a peaceful backdrop to the plains of parking, the dorms with their leisure facilities and mall, the inventory hangars, the units where code-monkeys slaved. The theatre allotted to them was reached through Inventory C, the biggest building in the village: where ‘custom objects’ were being scanned into code.

Harry was nowhere to be seen. His assistant, a charming, ditzy young woman named Julia, apologised for him profusely: another girl handed out name tags. The Few nibbled pastries from the breakfast trolley and wandered; they hadn’t been back here since the obligatory studio tour. Inventory C had everything, from full size trees to torn and bleeding human body parts. Rob and the Powerbabes stopped to examine a shabby armchair, that stood in state on a flatbed, ready for the lasers. There was something familiar about it.