Midnight Lamp (9 page)

They hit the approach road singing,
Flew in from Miami beach BOAC—

The Mexican guards at Mesa de Otay waved them through. On the US side Ax offered his passport without comment, as he’d been instructed, and they were flagged into a concrete bay. They were dressed like rockstars: Sage and Ax in pastel gangster-suits, sharp shirts, string ties; the babe in a slim, vivid yellow dress and slingbacks, her messy hair forced into a yellow-ribboned braid.

‘We should say goodbye,’ said Fiorinda. ‘From here on, it’s a performance.’ She kissed them, turning from one to the other: the first natural, freely offered kisses she had given them for a long time. ‘See you on the other side.’

‘No goodbye, I’m going over the top with you, stupid brat,’ said Sage, as they got out of the car. ‘So is Ax.’

They waited, alone in a room like any room of the kind, anywhere in the world: dusty windows, slick upholstered benches, a vending machine, strip lights peppered with dead insects. A counter, with silent, shadowed regions of officialdom beyond. The aircon was frosty. Sage sat on one of the benches, long legs stretched out, his hands in his pockets from ancient habit, eyes closed. Fiorinda and Ax paced, staring at notices. They had plenty of time to remember that Harry had not, in fact, explained how the visa problem had been fixed.

After about twenty minutes Harry arrived, in a nice brown suit and without the hat.

‘Hi,’ he said, sounding flustered. ‘You’re here. Um, this is great. There are a couple of formalities. Er, would you like to talk to Mr Eiffrich?’

‘Is he here?’ asked Ax, in disbelief.

‘No, but, er, I could get him on a phone.’

‘Why don’t
you
explain the formalities?’

‘I—well, you’re not going to like this but it’s unavoidable. It’s the only way we could get you in. There’s a procedure. I don’t know if you have it in Europe, DNA imprinting? It’s copy-protection, so that gene-thieves won’t be able to replicate, uh, anything they steal from you.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘It’s a harmless chemical masking process. Many US celebrities get this done regularly, even private citizens also. You have an infusion taken, fixed and injected back, it’s deep, into bone marrow, but under local anaesthetic, you won’t feel a thing. Twenty four hours, they do a few tests, and you’re clear for entry. Celebrity gene theft is a real problem. There’ll be unscrupulous people close to you, no matter what. All they need is a hair from a comb, an eyelash, er, body fluids, a few saliva cells from the rim of a glass.’

‘You don’t have laws against this?’

‘Well, yeah but it’s a grey area, difficult to prosecute unless the cells are germ cells, stem cells, or the DNA is patented. If a case comes to court it’s usually fraud. But the risk of alien sequences being replicated and distributed among the population is real.’

‘I’ll pass,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I don’t like injections.’

Harry cleared his throat, more flustered by the second. ‘You see, uh, Fiorinda. May I call you Fiorinda?’ She shrugged. ‘You see, it’s not optional. That whole area has proved to be the stickiest, in negotiating your entry. There’s the Rivermead gene-mods. You and Sage have them, that’s public knowledge: and the American people have a right to refuse. If someone steals cells from you guys, and replicates the DNA, it won’t be your fault but those novel sequences may alter our gene pool. If any visitor has, or is suspected of having had, gene modification outside the US, Immigration is entitled to insist on imprinting. The procedure we use is approved by the NIH, it’s classified as effective for three months, during which time you’re not advised to seek to become pregnant—’

Fiorinda stared at him. ‘Mr Loman, you can’t be serious. You think we’ll
spread
? We’ll desecrate the pure strain of four hundred million people?’

‘It’s Lopez. We tried, Fiorinda. I’m with you all the way. This is the best we can do.
Please
agree to the procedure. It’s a barrier that’s been raised, and the best way to deal with it is to respect it. We called you here. But it’s your cause, and the future of the world you’ll be serving. How much does that mean to you?’

‘Well,’ said Ax, ‘What do you think of all this, Aoxomoxoa?’

Sage still had his eyes closed. ‘We should do exactly what the man says, Ax.’

‘If Sage thinks it’s okay, I don’t mind either,’ said Fiorinda, after a moment.

‘Oh that’s wonderful. I have the release forms here. If you could just sign.’

‘There are three forms?’ said Ax, taking them.

‘Well, yes? One for each of you?’

‘Wait a minute…
I
have to take this, this racial purity treatment?’

Harry’s relief vanished. ‘I’m afraid so, Mr Preston. I thought I’d made that clear.’

‘
Me
? Why? There’s nothing wrong with
me
! I’m perfectly normal!’

‘Mr Preston, it’s not-’

‘What the fuck are you afraid of? The boys from Brazil?’

‘Brazil?’ repeated Harry, bewildered.

Ax the former dictator discovered he could not bear to explain the quip, it wasn’t funny. ‘No. I’m sorry, but fuck off. I don’t take forcible medical procedures. This is bullshit, I won’t do it.’

Fiorinda said, ‘Mr Lopez, could you leave us for a moment?’

‘Ax, it’s an outrage,’ said Sage, when they were alone, ‘But so-called “imprinting” is harmless, it doesn’t do anything much, and the US Immigration Service is more powerful than God. If they want to give us a hard time, they will do it. I’ve tangled with them in my stupid rockstar days. It doesn’t work.’

‘We can tell Harry no,’ said Fiorinda, ‘try to negotiate, but I don’t think it’ll do any good. Or we can give up and go away. I won’t make you do this. Your call.’

‘I don’t want to go away,’ Ax pulled himself together. ‘I’ve heard of imprinting, I know it’s harmless. It just…that just unexpectedly threw me-’

‘I know,’ said Fiorinda, an put her arms around him. ‘I know, my baby.’

They kept you chained up. You endured everything, including anal rape, staying calm, staying alive. Then one day they brought along some half-skilled freelance brain surgeon. They held you down, they cut your head open and tore out the implant so they could send it to your friends. But needs must, you accept the forcible medical procedure again, and you feel a strange relief. You realise this may be easier than the prison of memory. Better to go forward, though it’s into the maelstrom.

The party for the English invasion was held in the Pergola hotel, an A-list venue, though not quite the hottest in town. It occupied the penthouse floor: two imperial suites and a ballroom-sized reception area. By ten, most of the people Harry needed had turned up. Janelle Firdous, a Hollywood veteran with her future in the past and the past in her immediate future, forged through the maelstrom, checking the quality of the flowers and the catering staff, checking off faces and looking for Mr Lopez, to congratulate him. Harry was a protégé of hers, a sweet kid, a real talent: she wished his project well. In one of the bedrooms of the Louis XIV suite she located the radical rockstars, playing their guitars for a gaggle of movie brats in fabulous designer clothes, who sat on the floor like hippies, reverently gazing. She made her way to the impromptu stage.

‘Hey, d’you guys do Hendrix requests? Can you do me Midnight Lamp?’

Ax Preston ignored her. It was the skinny high-yellow girl who answered, in an unbelievable cut-glass voice, like Vivien fucking Leigh. ‘Do you mean, “The Burning Of The Midnight Lamp?” I don’t know it very well, but I’ll try.’

Doom doom ba doom ba doom doom doom-

She listened to the loneliness, and the circus in the wishing well, she got the the sweet pain: but felt short-changed because it was the girl singing, and playing her Fender. Mr Ax guitar-man Preston was sitting it out, with a little strum or two of his semi-acoustic.

The next number jarred on her. As did the arrogance of the Brit couple, locked into each other, making love in this private guitar language and passing it off as entertainment. She nailed Harry out in the reception area: where Digital Artists swanky floating screens, gliding over the heads of the crowd, were showing crappy archive footage from the English Revolution rock festivals.
Without
the soundtrack; wise decision.

‘Hey, pumpkin. Be proud, be very proud. It’s looking great.’

‘Oh, hi Janelle!’ His smile was distracted. ‘Are you having a good time?’

‘I always have a good time… The party’s very cool, but you should stop them from bringing those guitars everywhere. It makes them look like hired help.’

‘You think that? Oh. It was my idea. It makes the point that they were swept up into history, but they’re
musicians
. Ax Preston, he gets up in the morning and he plays guitar, he’s at a party and he plays guitar. Like Hendrix. It’s romantic.’

‘Did you remember to invite the expats?’

‘Yeah.’ Harry shrugged. ‘It was the right thing to do.’

‘And they remembered not to come,’ remarked Janelle, smiling wryly.

The Brit community tended to be United Kingdom loyalists.

Marshall Morgan came along, and Janelle had nothing to say to the CEO of Digital Artists, so she moved on. Far be it from Jan to fuck anything up for her young pal. He shouldn’t be fraternising with the damaged on his big night.

‘Hi there,’ A sweaty hand landed on her arm, ‘How’s it going, baby? Is the shit kicking you, or are you kicking the shit?’

‘I’m kicking.’

‘Bully.’ Her assailant grinned like a rancid muffin. He was pretty drunk, and clearly did not at this moment remember her name. ‘It’s a scam, pure scam. Tell me this, how can we run out of energy? How can that happen? The sun is still shining! But
we
have nothing to worry about, the industry grows in a downturn. Deeper it gets the more we’ll grow, we should
cut
prices, I’ve been saying it for fucking years, that’s the way to shift units in a bear market, shift
more
units—’

Someone else she didn’t want to talk to.

‘You should tell Harry,’ she said, gushing, ‘You may think he’s just a golden kid producer with a dazzling tech background and top White House contacts, but he
loves
money jokes. You tell Harry the sun is still shining. He’ll find that fascinating.’

A step beyond the muffin, and she knew her mouth had run away with her. Verbal diarrhoea strikes, you start shitting on everything. Time to touch base.

Where’s Puusi?

The reigning queen of post-modern tinsel town, her voluptuous charms swathed in silver and gold, gauze and veils, was in the Golden Age suite: propping up a white, cocktail bar grand and surrounded by giggling young men. Jan and Puusi had arrived together, but the star had been in a spiteful mood. Reigning goddesses don’t appreciate being invited to meet hot new faces, however unlikely the competition. However, a fix of male admiration had worked its magic: and the more camp the better, Puusi had classic diva tastes. She shrieked in delight—it was screaming pitch in here. ‘My girlfriend! Lover come back! Where have you been!’

They hugged, Puusi snuggly as a kitten, big firm breasts that needed no support. She slipped her arm into Janelle’s and tugged her away, with a high-voltage, professional goodbye smile for the drones.

‘Okay, yaar, now I want to meet this Fiorinda. Have you seen her yet?’

‘She’s in a bedroom, playing guitar.’

‘My God, was that the noise I heard? Does she really have all that red hair?’

‘Yeah, but it’s dirty and messy.’

‘Is she
really
thin?’

‘Like a stick.’

Puusi’s huge eyes gleamed. ‘Ha! Then she’s a loser. Being beautiful means never having to be thin. Is she young?’

‘She’s twenty three.’

Ominous silence, a little frown between the perfect arcs of Puusi’s brows, as she continued to sweep Janelle along, bestowing showers of luminous glances left and right. ‘Hm. That’s not very young,’

‘Being beautiful means never having to be young.’

There were surely many examples of this truism here tonight. Beautiful, famous and successful women, sixty and seventy years old, thickly laced the throng, in the suite which Madonna had called her favourite gaff, or doss, or some other God-awful anglicism (the Pergola wanted a plaque, but they hadn’t been given permission): all hating each other because to be lovely at seventy-five was no longer rare… ‘Oh, you bitch,’ Puusi cracked up, gazing insolently at the eternal beauties who had made her life a misery, when she was a gauche Bollywood import; making no secret of the joke. She’s a
lovely
person, Puusi Meera, but she bears a grudge.

If you like hanging out with the stars, you service their simple pleasures.

In the Louis XIV bedroom the set was over. The former Dictator of England was using those blood-soaked hands to light a cigarette: taller when you see him in the flesh, and curiously isolated, as if he really were just a hired musician, on the point of shouldering his gig bag and walking out. His slick dark hair, hippie-length, was combed straight back into a braid. A fine-boned face, good nose, good cheekbones, very sexy brown eyes… His girlfriend was beside him.

‘I
like
her,’ announced Puusi. ‘The hair is awful, and don’t these English ever wash? Stinky poo, I can smell her from here. But she’s sweet. Introduce me.’

Be afraid, Ms Slater, thought Janelle. Be very afraid.

A waiter drifted up to advise Mr Dictator about that cigarette. He smiled, crushed the lighted end between his fingers, and frugally returned it to the pack. Good smile. Very.

Pusi made a small, involuntary sound like
Mm
!

‘I can do better than that,’ Janelle offered, chicken-hearted. ‘I’ll take you to Harry first. He’ll tell you everything you need to know. Then you can make a knock-out impression on Fiorinda, and er, Mr Preston.’

‘Everyone calls him Ax,’ said Puusi. ‘Is he bisexual? I heard he was bisexual.’

On Yap Moss, thought Janelle, at the last battle of the Islamic campaign, the Yorkshire rivers ran with blood. The Deconstruction Tour had smashed through England by then, laying waste to fast food joints and car outlets and pile ’em high planet-destroying supermarts. The Ivan/Lara virus that wrecked the European datasphere came later. Then there was the Danube dambusting, and the Flood Countries Conference. He may not have been personally responsible, but he’s the face on a terrifying revolution. Now he’s in Hollywood, all caught up with the strangest threat the human world has ever known. That’s
Ax Preston,
you idiot. But hey, let’s tackle the important issues. Does he like it both ways?