Midnight Lamp (48 page)

‘Understood, Mr President.’

Ax and Sage had returned, with Fiorinda alive and well. The English were
en fête
and in favour again, shaking their kooky cameraderie all over town. Their avatar lab appointments were reinstated, bumping rivals and causing grief for other projects. Fiorinda came to the studio village with the Babes when it was their turn to be dunked (apprehensive as if they were going to have teeth pulled), and went for a walk in the park with Harry and Kathryn. They bought lunchboxes and took them to a nest of boulders among the trees, overlooking Digital Artists’ domain; the city stretching beyond. It was very hot. Harry was still a little shaky, he seemed almost to lean on Kathryn physically, though they didn’t touch. Don’t you
dare
hurt my friend, thought Fiorinda: but she wasn’t going to interfere.

‘You don’t have vr tanks in Europe?’

‘I don’t think people like the idea,’ said Fiorinda.

‘A continent of claustrophobes. Is that what the drop-out movement is about?’

‘Nah. That’s an instinctive correction for our vitamin D deficiency.’

‘I had a picnic like this with Ax, once,’ sighed Kathryn, nostalgic. ‘By the Potomac. The squirrels came up, panhandling: I’d never seen them so tame.’

‘He’s a tamer of all situations,’ said Harry. ‘He’s
immense
.’ He opened his lunchbox and stared into it. His hands were trembling. Rocks and trees, sushi rice, a sickening unreality behind which lurked the déjà vu room, still rushing towards him, days or hours away… It kept happening, still with the same conviction of an
inescapable
future.

‘I’m going to have to get out of virtual movies.’

‘It’s a bruise,’ said Kathryn, tough and kind. ‘Verlaine told me how it works. Snapshot blacked your eye, kiddo, don’t poke at the place or you’ll keep it sore.’

‘I think it’s permanent.’

‘It’ll fade,’ Fiorinda assured him. ‘Snap needs fuel to burn.’

‘Okay,’ said the golden boy. ‘I have no capacity for suffering. Go on, be nasty to me. If girls are being nasty to me, I know I’m alive.’

Fiorinda had chosen the laksa lunch, and regretted it. The pieces of beancurd in her Straits Chinese sauce looked like chunks of sodden doggie-chew.

‘Will Janelle let me come and see her?’

Harry shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, no. Not even Sage. She says she wants to be left the fuck alone. I mean, not rude: she’s just concentrating on getting well. Thank God,’ he added, candidly, ‘she’d finished the qualia coding.’

Janelle Firdous had a viral pneumonia, twenty-first century flu. She wasn’t gravely ill but she was confined to her cottage. Sadly, this meant the English might not see her again. They’d be leaving California after the reprise of the Hollywood Bowl show; with Fiorinda in the line-up this time. The Few were going home to England, unless they’d secretly changed their minds. The Triumvirate’s plans were uncertain.

‘I never really met her,’ said Fiorinda. ‘She was Sage’s friend and I felt… I didn’t want to be pushy. I’ve regretted that, she sounds like an amazing person.’

‘She’s the queen of the geekie-techies. Alone of all her sex.’

‘It’s not a problem being a woman in Hollywood,’ said Kathryn (she spoke as if ‘being a woman’ could never be one of her problems). ‘You can be huge, you can rule, however old you are: as long as you do it in a woman way, equal but different. People like Janelle, who claim to be good as the men at what men do, they still carry the world on their shoulders.’

‘Mm.’

‘She might be well in time for the gig,’ suggested Harry, to lighten the shadow that had fallen on the conversation. ‘I don’t think it’s a bad attack.’

‘Let’s hope,’ said Fiorinda.

The city of the plain floated in its dirty peachbloom caul of dreams, and the picnic continued, a little quieted and saddened by the thought of parting.

Rob had sold the studio on his idea for getting the Preston family band on stage at the Hollywood Bowl. It wouldn’t be the first simultaneous broadcast since the end of the data quarantine, but it would be a global first in the use of bi-location tech: a great stunt, if it worked. Jordan wanted to do it. Ax was fine about the
fait accompli,
but he saw no need to talk to his brother. He thought he could wing it through a Chosen Few standards set, after all these years. Rob bided his time until the Lavoisier excitement had calmed down a little, then he took Ax out on the town, just the two of them.

They went to a Jamaican restaurant in Leimart Park, they graced a couple of jazz clubs, and settled in a quiet bar. It had been a good evening: Ax with that gleam in his eye, the alert attention for
every single thing,
that had always made hanging out with the guy a privilege. Now Rob braced himself. The juice had been turned off, he was sitting with a wary, hard-eyed stone wall. He told himself this was years ago. He was the mentor: Ax Preston was the talented guitarist from the sticks, with that ruthless streak Rob was guilty of admiring.

‘You know Jordan wants to talk, don’t you.’

‘He wants my approval, yeah. Fuck that, Rob. If he’s idiot enough to let the Second Chamber keep him for a pet, let him do it on his own.’

‘That’s not what he wants to say.’

A ball-crushing look from Mr Preston. ‘I don’t see the problem.’ Ax chugged his beer. ‘Go ahead, take over, be the captain of the Reich, be the President of England. You don’t need Jordan’s support. Why do you never follow through, Rob? You start something, then you hang back.’

‘I
am
following through. That’s what I’m doing tonight. I’m asking you to go on running the firm, because you’re the man, and we need you.’

Ax stared at him: like a trapped animal.

‘They tried to burn her.’

Sage was a warm, breathing rock: Fiorinda beside him, a book slipped from her lax hand, fallen asleep as she waited up. Ax sat on the end of the bed in the light of one soft lamp, rolling an unlit cigarette between his fingers. A lioness with a shorn mane, how big the orbits of her eyes looked without the mass of hair. How stern, older than old, the set of her young mouth.

There are marks she’ll always carry, my baby.

He took his cigarette to the balcony: where he might get away with breaking Californian law for once. Security lights and darkness, the sound of the ocean, the feeling of
strangeness
that he loved. We should take the Rugrat and go, he thought. No direction home. I would never tire of that life. I want to consecrate myself to pleasure. Fiorinda came to join him, barefoot: a shawl around her shoulders over the glimmer of her nightdress.

‘Hi.’

‘Hi, sweetheart.’

‘How was it?’

‘The restaurant was very good, music so-so. I don’t really get on with jazz.’

‘
Ax
-’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Sorry.’ She laid her arms on the rail and looked into the dark.

‘Fiorinda…’ He drew on the cigarette, ‘Maybe I’m not supposed to ask, but are you okay to go up against the candidate? I’m scared for you.’

Touché.

‘I can do it. I just don’t want to talk about it.’

They smiled at each other, ah, we’ve been here before. When Ax had finished his cigarette they went inside and found Sage was sitting up. ‘Don’t leave me alone,’ he cried. ‘I
hate
waking up and you’re not there.’ He was having difficulty sleeping, most unusual for Sage; it made him fretful.

‘We were only on the balcony.’

They got into bed, and the three of them made love together. Fiorinda nuzzled into Ax’s flank, Sage wrapped around her back, drifting in the afterglow. ‘Sage? What did you do to Stu Meredith, when you were here before?’

‘I’d rather not go into that.’

‘You beat him up, didn’t you?’ said Ax. When male persons remember this blond so vividly, there’s usually just the one reason.

‘Yes.’

‘Was it justified?’

‘Not fucking remotely. I was rat-arsed. Can we go to sleep?’

When the character avatars were locked down there was another traditional party, after working hours in Inventory C. A rough cut screening of the movie should have featured, but everything was behind schedule. Harry, mortified, vowed he’d have something ready for them to see before they left California, but the rockstars weren’t fussed. If you have any kind of brush with tinseltown there comes a point where you start dreaming that you’ll be the idol of billions. And then there comes another point, when you realise that was a
ridiculous
idea.

‘Digital Artists will have us on file,’ remarked Chip to Verlaine as they strolled around, chucking back the champagne and visiting their favourite custom-object areas. The sci-fi horror section; a preposterous oak tree. ‘If they chop us up small enough they can legally recycle the bits. Are you creeped by that?’

‘Hollywood seduced us, briefly,’ said Verlaine, ‘But we leave with our intacta restored, because we leave the seduced parts of us behind.’

‘Someday everyone will live like us. A snippet here, a version there.’

‘I call it depraved. As if the virtual world wasn’t crowded enough.’

Fiorinda sat on the edge of a fake parterre of red and yellow tulips, slightly on the defensive because
she
didn’t have an avatar; getting drunk with Lou Branco. She had the size of the money man now. He was like Cack Stannen without the sweetness; he was a type she’d often met in her work with the drop-out hordes, except he didn’t smell and didn’t sleep in doorways. Someone who can do one thing freakishly well, all else is whirling chaos, human relationships a mystery. So, he was still a shark and a childish vindictive bastard, but Fiorinda rarely had trouble getting on with the socially disabled.

‘What’s the deal with Rob, then?’ Lou was intrigued by the group marriage, by all the strange English sexual habits. ‘Three laydees, one guy. How does that one work? Does he have a rota?’

‘Well, no. There’s a ritual. Rob leaves his shoes outside his bedroom door—’

‘Uhuh?’ said Lou, eyes fixed on her face, propping his jowl on one hand.

Fiorinda took a slug of champagne from the bottle they were sharing. ‘The Babes come up, they pee into his shoes, and Rob then sniffs the mixture.’

‘They
pee in his shoes-?
’

‘Yeah. Then he sniffs it, and he can tell from the blend which of them he should spend the night with, or which two of them, or whatever.’

‘Uhuh, uhuh. Well, that’s… He must get through a lot of shoes.’

‘It’s called “Taking The Piss”.’

The toad pondered. A grin dawned, a guffaw followed. He choked, snorted, and beamed at her. ‘You’re all right, Fiorinda. I thought you were some snooty do-gooder, look down your nose ladidadi broad. But you’re okay.’

‘It’s the accent.’

Fiorinda stood up and walked. Lou followed, making a short diversion to pick up another bottle. ‘You lookin’ for someone?’

‘I thought I saw Janelle.’

‘Nah, she’s still sick,’ There was a flicker in Lou’s eyes, as of someone who knows an illness is diplomatic. ‘It’s a hell of a thing, the viral pneumonia.’

‘I had a friend die of it.’

‘She’s getting the best care, I’m sure. Let’s party.’

‘Lou, where do the crash dummies live?’

‘They ain’t alive, baby.’

‘Native English. We say, where does it live, meaning where is it?’

‘Oh right, okay. Okay, c’mon that’s easy.’

He led her away from the crush to the dull part of the vast inventory floor, where no perverse works of creation filled the spaces between the machines. He stopped by a scanner, the housing sleek and amorphous, a slug the size of a limousine. The flatbed was covered by a shaded dome.

‘You want to see them? I know how to do this. I get the safety off, we got no goggles but it’s no big deal… Look away, now.’

Fiorinda looked away, Lou shaded his eyes while the lightnings played. When she looked back the dome was sinking into the floor. The flatbed looked like a crowded Underground carriage: or a fishtank in a brothel, where the whores wait to be chosen on the other side of the glass. The dummies were lifesize, fully dressed, personality in their eyes, they just didn’t move and didn’t seem aware of being looked at. They were not taking up enough space, there must be arms and legs overlaying each other, heads and bodies at odd angles, but you couldn’t spot where it happened. On the scanner’s monitor screens code teemed away, picking up the angle of her gaze, flipping from one stunning complexity to another—

‘I guess you know the story,’ said Lou. ‘The Screen Actors Guild said Digital Artists had to use real character actors. It was a condition, or they couldn’t scan the stars, and that was virtual movies over a barrel, a benchmark case. They picked out these random second rates, gave them a stingy wad of bucks apiece, and they’ve never paid a royalty since, not in ten years.’

‘No substantial reuse.’

‘The studio never
needs
that. Not the way substantial got defined, hehehey! Don’t need the fuckin’ stars either, but that’s a whole other deal… They call this toybox the index. I can animate, I can sort them by ethnics, age, sex, dentistry, you name it. I can make ‘em talk, isolate you a psychological characteristic uh, no, I forgot how to do that. Whaddaya think?’

It was like visiting Vireo Lake, she didn’t know how to react. She was a savage from the rainforest again, looking at stolen souls.

‘There’s something called entanglement.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Always hearing about that shit. You prick one of these code-bunnies, some saddo thesp pumping gas in Bakersfield bleeds, and so what? We’re all connected, isn’t that the line? I stick with my balance sheets.’

‘I believe they’ve been used in ways they didn’t contract for.’

Lou gave her a sour look: hearing the do-gooder princess after all.

‘We all get that, baby.’

‘And no one’s out of the loop. I’m just drunk. Let’s get back to the party.’

The English had rehearsed for their reprise in the virtual Hollywood Bowl at the studio village, keeping the show under wraps; and because no one was taking chances with the rescued hostage. Fiorinda arrived there, for the first time by orthodox means, with the crowds, in a shaded limo, swamped by an armed escort; and was delivered to her trailer. She glimpsed rustling eucalyptus slopes, heard Snake Eyes big band sound in the distance,
lets get together and feel all right
…(Oooh, I’m late); and stepped into her gilded cage.