Rainbow Bridge (10 page)

‘One more thing you should see before you meet General Wang, Mr Preston. This is the Memorial Hall of the September Offensive. Please step inside.’

He stepped inside. There was an antechamber, with a display of the first relics he’d seen of the invasion. Newspaper pages screen-dumps and printed emails from that day, behind glass. The wild reports of a UFO fleet, the panic, recorded on crystalline touch screens. Blackened fragments of domestic objects.

please no, don’t make me see—

They moved on, into the Memorial Hall. Now they were not alone. Grave-faced Chinese of varying ranks, all in uniform, were studying the exhibits, in groups and singly. The atmosphere was hushed. ‘We intend this display to be permanent,’ said Chu, quietly. ‘The public will be allowed to visit, soon.’

They’d have to be bussed in. Reading had been cleared of English civilians.

Ax inclined his head in acknowledgement, and said nothing as he walked from one image to the next: he didn’t linger at the little movie theatre, but stood for a while in front of each huge, analog photograph. There was no soundtrack but the one that was playing in his mind, don’t make me see, don’t make me see… But he must see. The dirty naked bodies piled on plastic sheets, shattered and whole, the glimpsed faces tug at you from under anonymous slack limbs, men he’d known and talked to, friends, acquaintances, enemies. All of them seemed to have been subjected to the Chinese form of castration; probably after death.

‘Why were they mutilated?’

He thought she would say, in her calm young voice,
to impress the people
.

‘I don’t know. General Wang may be able to tell you.’

‘I see.’

They had reached the end of the room, and double doors stood ahead. He looked at them with terror: are you hard enough for more of this, Ax Preston? She ushered him through, and they were back in the foyer. The drab décor of the original Leisure Centre seemed to have returned, all the Neo-Feudal colour stripped out. There was a nostalgic, utilitarian smell of fresh carpet glue.

‘Why were there no women in the pictures?’

She blushed. ‘That’s a different room… You’re a Muslim, Mr Preston. We didn’t want to insult you with the sight of naked female bodies.’

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘That was considerate.’

Wang Xili had been sitting-in on the press conference arranged for Norman Soong: assessing the English music journalists, those
not
mired by collaboration with the deposed regime. It was strange work for the commander of an occupying army, but there was no denying the importance of the music these days, and Wang was not an ordinary soldier. He had found the discussion fascinating—though he did not like Soong, who struck him as humourless, grasping, and absurdly vain. He left the meeting before it broke up and lay in wait, in the great solar, for the journalist who had struck him as most sympathetic and promising.

‘Come over here, Joe—’

The toughness of honest mediamen! Joe Muldur came to join General Wang by the huge west-facing window, a cheerful smile on his face: perfectly convinced he was about to be flung into a cell, heaped with abuse, raped, mutilated, shot.

‘It’s a beautiful view, isn’t it?’ said Wang.

Rivermead site was bare of any feature except for instant buildings, heaps of naked frosty earth, and the wall. Joe nodded, not quite capable of speech.

‘Potentially beautiful,’ Wang conceded. ‘There will be beauty here, Joe. There will be flowers, fountains, groves of trees, rocks and dells. I wish I could tell you the river will run free but that doesn’t make sense. Tell me about the Triumvirate. How do they get on with the media? Your own impressions, and please speak candidly.’

‘They each have their different ways,’ said Joe.

Wang smiled encouragement.

‘Sage, I mean Aoxomoxoa, was never
mean
, he would make you laugh, but we all used to dread him. He’s just stupidly, stupidly clever, it was easy for him to make any poor journo feel like a squashed bug. But he was amazing copy.’

Aoxomoxoa’s unpleasant taste for public and domestic violence, Wang noticed, did not get a mention. Sensible mediaman! ‘Was? You use the past tense?’

Joe had just been told that the three great English stars were to resume their musical careers. ‘He’s changed, since.’ He recoiled from deadly danger. ‘Since he and Ax… The tiger and the wolf, you know they’re called the tiger and the wolf?’

‘I’ve heard that.’

Joe glanced at the soldiers, Wang’s bodyguard. He nodded: a gesture that got away from him, and went on too long. ‘Better together, they’re better together, they, how can I put it, they earth, mellow each other. Sage is kinder to us these days. Ax’s style is something else, he’s in charge of the interview, he’s looking at you like,
how can I use this person
. Not for his own benefit, for the agenda, but always. Fiorinda, well, different again because she was born in the business.’ A genuine, involuntary smile illumined the journalist’s fear-cramped features. ‘She’s brilliant. She knows we’re family, she’s Rufus O’Niall’s daughter, her father taught her a lot. She won’t stand no nonsense, but she cares, she looks out for us like a big sister—’

‘Her
father
?’ Wang raised his eyebrows. ‘The same father who got her pregnant when she was twelve, whose minion made her his sex-slave during the Green Nazi Regime; and whom she and her male concubine later murdered, having pursued him to his private Irish island?’

‘Er, yeah.’

‘Remarkable.’

Joe nodded uncontrollably again. ‘Rock and roll, er, General, er, Sir—’

Wang reflected that he could do anything he liked with Joe Muldur. Jump out of this window, Joe, and he would jump…or at least bump his rather awkward nose badly against photovoltaic glass. He flattered himself that the abuse of power held no attraction. Only tell me the truth Joe, only fear to deceive me, and I will do you no harm. He considered saying this; but reassurance would terrify the man further.

‘Ah, well. Family affairs forced into the open often look very strange. Thank you, I’m glad we’ve had this chat.’

Flee, Joe Muldur, still nodding like one of those toy dogs that used to be a Western joke, in the back window of a private car; in the long ago.

Ax was delivered to Wang Xili’s office straight from the Memorial Hall. Lieutenant Chu took his greatcoat, revealing him in a suit from Hollywood, dark red with gleams of iridescence; cleaned and brushed but distinctly worn. A dress-uniformed guard, or secretary, who sat at his own desk, stood and saluted. He sat down again as Chu left: he did not speak. Every single one of them wears uniform, thought Ax. Add that to the equation. A smaller art screen hung behind Wang’s desk, the same style as the one in the gatehouse; perhaps the same artist. This time it was a map of the Chinese world that changed through the iterations, from close detail to a China-oriented projection of the globe. The capital was marked at Xi’an, ancient Chang’an, not Beijing, although many of the changes shown predated that shift. He couldn’t read much secret history, he didn’t know enough about China’s internal affairs, but he watched until his eyes were tired, because it was beautiful. Then he paced about, sneaking a look at the message Chu had left in full view on the General’s desktop screen.
Watch out for this one
, he was chagrined to read.
He’s literate, and he thinks like a Chinese
.

Damn.

Wang Xili breezed in, his uniform cap under his arm, accompanied by a private soldier, clerical grade, with an armful of folders. He beamed, tossed his cap and offered his hand. ‘Ah, Mr Preston, we meet in the flesh.’

A scholarly face, unlined, broad square high brow, regular features; humorous eyes and a quick smile. His screen image doesn’t lie, he’s a good-looking bastard, and he has instant charm. They shook hands. Wang dismissed the clerk. The General and the fugitive President sat down together. The courtship’s over, thought Ax. They’ve got me now. Better be ready for intimidation, and it could be crude. They do it by numbers, they’re experts, they know it works.

‘You saw the exhibits in the Memorial Hall?’ said Wang.

‘Yeah.’

The General nodded slowly, sombre-eyed. He was a five star general, Ax was able to confirm now, by eye; a marshal of China. They piss around with their badges, but say that makes him one of the top ten military: which figures, the invasion was a showpiece. And Hu was another of them, yet seemingly subordinate to this man. But who would be Wang’s superior? Maybe scratch the fifth element theory.

‘I have some information I’d like you to glance at.’ Wang handed the folders across the desk. ‘Everything’s in English.’

Ax took out documents, slick e-paper. He assumed the interview was being recorded, possibly transmitted live to some Department of Conquered Countries in Xi’an. He did not know how many eyes were upon him as he steeled himself for hideous news. There was nothing about England, it was all about China. Good God. True or false? He could see nothing that suggested the statistics weren’t genuine.

‘You are privileged, Mr Preston. You’re one the few, one of only a small number of non-Chinese in the world, to have been shown those figures.’

‘My God.’

Wang nodded. He leaned back, touching that humorous mouth with his fingertips, watching Ax. ‘Yes. We have suffered, Ax; may I call you Ax?’

‘Sure.’

‘Thank you. Blow upon blow, like the rest of the world. The Crash. Horrific environmental degradation, plus the more insidious damage of climate change, and two ah, very large scale industrial accidents. We have grown great among the nations while absorbing an almost frightening net population loss. This is a terrible time for humanity, Mr Preston. Do your losses match ours, by any measure?’

‘No,’ said Ax, with a straight look. ‘Our floods and storms have killed very few, directly. Likewise the civil unrest, and famine isn’t biting yet. So far the extra deaths have been attrition of the vulnerable: old age, infants; major league disease and trauma we can’t treat any more. Our worst problem is a generation lost to Cultural Revolution, and I think you know what that means. Did your grandfather, the distinguished novelist, ever recover from what he went through?’

‘He did not. My beloved grandfather died insane, several years ago now.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Wang’s grandfather, a notorious Red Guard, had survived that debacle and lived to become a distinguished literary figure in the Deng Xiaoping reform years. He’d suffered a psychotic breakdown in the late eighties, the price catching up with him at last. The grandson’s rank, and his presence here, should be indications of the state of play inside China’s current power structure… Ax wanted the General to know he thought like this. No baby talk, okay? I’m not entirely ignorant. They measured each other, the dead standing between: the millions on millions of Chinese swept away like dust, versus the mutilated bodies of Rivermead’s Counterculturals.

Intimidation by numbers, with a vengeance.

‘I am a soldier,’ said Wang, ‘not a wanton killer. This country has been identified as a Human Treasure, First Class. I am here to preserve it, not to destroy it. The Counterculture’s foul delusion was wrecking England and spreading its filthy rot through Europe. They had to die.’

‘They had to die,’ agreed Ax, statesman to statesman.

‘All Counterculturals will have to die, wherever they are found.’

Abruptly Wang changed the mood, looking around with a little moue of apology. The furnishing in here, apart from the fabulous art screen, was military basic. ‘I wish we could have met in cosier surroundings, my London flat is charming. In official quarters I favour austerity, it’s good old-fashioned practice. Do you happen to recall what function this room served, when Rivermead was your palace?’

Ax shook his head. ‘Sorry, I’ve no idea.’

‘Pity.’

‘We never lived here, you know. Rivermead was a showplace, conference centre, assembly rooms. I don’t think I slept under this roof more than once. I’m afraid I don’t like the place. To me this is where Fiorinda was held prisoner, in the worst episode of our short history—’

The General raised his hand to interrupt. ‘You refer to the “Green Nazi occupation”. Tell me, what do you make of the story that Ms Slater’s father, Rufus O’Niall, came to England
disguised in the body of a dead man
, to lead those villains; while you were being held by the drug-cartel in Mexico, and believed dead?’

‘I think you can regard it as metaphor,’ said Ax, unperturbed to find himself discussing forbidden topics. ‘Fergal Kearney, an Irishman we thought we knew, had insinuated himself into the inner circle. I was on a mission to Washington when I was taken hostage—I’m not proud of that, I was a fool to get caught—; whereupon Kearney showed his true colours. O’Niall was certainly running Kearney, while he himself never left Ireland. As you know, he was in league with the Extreme Celtics of mainland Europe. Their plans were damnable, the rest is—’

‘Metaphor.’ Wang smiled. ‘Very good. I’d love to have your personal account of the jungle hostage affair one day. Hm. As self-made dictator of England you were titular leader of the Countercultural party. After you had vanquished the “Green Nazis”, when you accepted the Presidency at the instigation of Fred Eiffrich, you retained the post. This looks like intimate association. What is it that makes
you
, and your people, something other than Counterculturals, Mr Preston?’

The fact that you want to use us, thought Ax. But he talked the talk.

‘David Sale’s government, our last legitimate government, recruited me as Green Head of State, as a popular leader. The Counterculturals were forced to accept me; they didn’t like it. Later, when the Counterculture had outright power, Mr Eiffrich convinced me I should try to work with them. I know I was wrong even to try.’

Wang accepted the formal submission with a nod: and moved on.

‘What about Stephen Pender, he of the ridiculous nicknames? How did “Aoxomoxoa” come to be the ringleader of the pernicious Zen Self experiments?’

‘Neurological experiments were carried out, here at Reading. I can’t deny that. They were misguided but innocent. Aoxomoxoa is guilty of being a rockstar who sought spiritual truth in a scientific fantasy. He’s over it.’