Rainbow Bridge (25 page)

‘
How did you find us, who are you, how do you know my name—
?’

She could get her hand through the grille. She grabbed his and gripped it. There was someone there, Richard himself, not the way he’d been at Ashdown, although he didn’t know her. He asked her was she from the Red Cross? She reached for Corny’s claw too, but that held no affect, nothing.

‘We have to go. But you’re found. You’re getting out. It won’t be long.’

Formless mouth-noises followed them, and faded under their feet.

Back in the prison house Frosty crouched on her heels, head in her hands. ‘I’m all right Miss, it was the smell, just give me a minute ’case I throw up.’

Fiorinda crouched down too, and hugged her belly.

‘Are they your best mates, Miss?’

‘Not really, Ax and Sage know them a lot better than I do. Say it’s a debt of honour, do you believe in those? We have to get them out, they chose a wrong path, they don’t deserve what they were to end like that. We
will
get them out.’

Frosty looked up. ‘I’m okay now.’

The young woman and the girl were face to face, very close to each other in this squalid cell, in the pity and horror of what they’d just seen. Love and trust blossom in your brain at such times, reliable as if you’d taken a pill for the effect. Frosty swallowed, and ventured, brave and naive.

‘Miss, there’s something I wanted to ask you. Are you pregnant?’

And that’s me caught, thought Fiorinda. I cannot hide little shoot any longer, it’s been confirmed. The instinct to say
no
was very strong, but she resisted.

‘Yep.’

The Fenland girl did not yelp, she did not get appalled that Fiorinda had brought her unborn child to a fearsome place like Rainbow Bridge. Probably she understood that there are no safe places. She just nodded, and wiped her eyes again.

‘Thought you were… That’s lovely Miss.’

‘Let’s get away from here.’

By noon the next day, when the prisoners of Rainbow Bridge came out onto the roof, the north east wind had blown a grey pall over the clear skies of midnight. The Triumvirate and the mediaman huddled behind the chicken shed, and Joe was brought up to date. They felt he had a right to know.

‘They refused to have the Feds on board,’ said Ax. ‘They were ready to surrender, rather than go along with that. Shots were fired, Corny and Richard were “court-martialled”, and ended up here, walled up in a coffin cell and left to die.’

Joe nodded, straight-faced. ‘How long have they been in there—?’

‘About a month,’ said Fiorinda. ‘They’ve had water but no food, or hardly any. Corny’s off his head. Richard is better mentally, but his leg is bad, it could kill him in days.’

‘Shit… And the Chinese don’t know?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Ax. He lit a cigarette, more for the illusion of warmth than anything, and watched the glowing tip. ‘I’m not sure they even know Rich and Corny have been deposed. But I’m sure they knew about the Feds. The Unoccupied Zone Intelligence Office isn’t totally useless… They knew, or they found out very soon after the invasion, that our eastern flank had been infiltrated. That’s why they’ve been so hands off about tackling the actives. China doesn’t want to take issue with the Russian Federation. The logic of the situation says they’ll have to do that job some time: but not here, not now. Ideally, they want the privateers to back down and go home, with no trouble.’ He grinned. ‘I tend to agree with that.’

Joe tried to take this in.

‘Fuck…’ he whispered. ‘So this was your secret mission? To uncover the Fed connection, and discredit the resistance? That’s why we came here?’

‘Nah,’ said Fiorinda. ‘We were winning hearts and minds, that’s all we knew. Wang Xili expected us to do some encounters with resistance sympathisers on the side, which is how Ax and Sage found out about the Feds; and what had happened to Rich and Corny. Everything says the Chinese
didn’t
know about Rainbow Bridge. They thought it was soft option, another Warren Fen but funkier. Maybe it was. But this place is a kind of sacred city to the camps of Anglia, which is something we didn’t know. That’s why the recalcitrants decided to move in, and the party animals couldn’t stop them, they’re not fighters. So, we’re here, where we shouldn’t be, and
we have to get out gracefully
. We cannot admit we didn’t know what was going on. Anything less than smooth success, like it was never in doubt, is a disaster. That’s the Chinese point of view, and Norman is grateful that we share it.’

There was snow on the wind. Joe blinked flakes from his eyelashes. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Okay. But why the fuck did the bad guys
invite
Norman Soong?’

‘Norman invited himself,’ said Ax. ‘The party animals said yes, and did not explain how they were fixed. They saw the Peace Tour as a way to get help. The hippy die-hard bastards ies who are now running poor Rich’s resistance agreed to the
fait accompli
, because they are delusional alpha geezers, who do much drugs. They think they’re a powerful armed opposition group. Why shouldn’t they negotiate with a Chinese delegation? They’ve
no idea
what effect the sight of them had on Norman. They don’t understand that they are proscribed. They yell about it, but they don’t know what the word means.’

‘We were talking to people who call themselves the Grand Council Of The Slave Camps,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I don’t know about that, but they say they speak for a silent majority, and they want the resistance out. They’re using the Feds issue, which is a gift to them, because they don’t want to sound like collaborators.’ She smiled faintly, wryly. ‘But their aim is clear. They’ve figured out a solution that the hippies have to accept. That’s the situation. That’s what we’re being asked to do.’

Joe had heard the Triumvirate cheerfully discussing this gig. Going along with the idea, getting into the details. He’d been sure they were babbling. You realise you’re talking to psychos: you agree to whatever they say, you swear eternal friendship, you neck their vodka, planning to run like fuck first chance you get… The mushroom teatime in-between didn’t help him to deal with what he was hearing now.

‘Okay, all right. You, you do this… The doves get a royal charter, hearts and minds are won, and we can leave? Is that the way it works?’

‘Plus they hand over Richard and Corny,’ said Fiorinda. ‘We brought that up, but the campers feel the same. I’m sorry, but to me that’s the main point. The rest could be hogwash, we have to do this because Richard Kent and Cornelius Sampson
don’t die like that
. We may not be able to save them, the Chinese may just shoot them. But they’ll be out of that hole.’

‘You don’t think the Executive Committee guys intend to stick to the deal?’

‘
No
,’ said Ax. ‘Not in their plan at all. But they might have to.’

‘D’you think—?’ began Joe again. ‘Oh God, forget it.’ He tried to laugh. ‘This is another of those great stories that can never be told, isn’t it?’

‘Fraid so,’ said Fiorinda.

Sage, a windbreak beside her, leaned forward, peering through frosted yellow lashes. ‘Hey Joe, what the fuck did you do to deserve this? Can you remember?’

I was a cub rock reporter, thought Joe. I was chasing the nearly famous, the nearly famous got tangled up in a national disaster, so I did too. I rode in Fiorinda’s tour bus through the Newcastle riots; I had a huge crush on her. I was
terrified
of you, Aoxomoxoa, and I thought Ax Preston was the kind of arrogant, super-talented bastard that never gets anywhere and he wonders why. And even in that feral saloon, I was thrilled to be on your fabulous trail. I’m insane.

‘You’ve always been f-fucking good copy.’

They stood up and walked around: sinister, hooded scarecrow figures in the white out. ‘You are a fucking heroine,’ said Joe to Fiorinda, dead straight. ‘As always. Does the Committee know you went prison-visiting? Was that in the deal?’

Fiorinda tasted snowflakes. ‘No, but it’s okay. We were asked to accept some very crap video-evidence that Rich and Corny were alive. We had a right to check. Anyway, I’m the girl. I can do bleeding-heart stunts like that, and get away with it.’

‘I b-blame the Chinese,’ cried Joe, throwing his head back and opening his mouth to the wind. ‘Fucking daleks! How did they end up dominating the world, if they can’t do their own reconnoitring?’

‘Oh, it evens out,’ Ax answered, off on his own track. ‘Good decisions, bad decisions, good information, bad information. I’m sure there’ve been cock-ups all the way from Xi’an, some of them spectacular, but the victories have been far greater.’

‘Don’t worry Joe,’ said Sage. ‘If it turns ugly, we have the fourteen most unstoppable buggers in the known universe on our team.’

‘Can you promise me that?’

‘Guaranteed,’ said Fiorinda.

They struggled with the emergency doors, attained the drab, foul-smelling corridor and went their separate ways. Joe went back to bed. He tried to sleep, to get rid of his hangover; but he had the horrors. There were things about this situation that had been censored on the rooftop: words that must not be spoken, not in any circumstances. This
ritual
(go on, think it—).

He remembered thirty thousand people, ripped to shreds at Rivermead.

Sage pounced on Fiorinda before they reached the suite, and nuzzled into her hair. ‘How bad is that leg, Fee?’ She snuggled back, in the same light-hearted vein. Everything we do is seen, everything we say is heard—

‘Not getting worse right now.’

‘Thought so,’ he breathed against her mouth. ‘Oh, my brat, be careful!’

In a weird way they felt rescued. Better to go down in a colourful screw up than find yourself pining for Rufus O’Niall’s final solution.

He thought of the people, men, he had killed in Yorkshire. They came back to him very vividly, though there’d been others later. How many kills with the assault rifle? None, he thought. He’d taught himself how to deliver a controlled burst by the end, but in combat he’d been spraying air, just showing willing. Hand to hand, his strength and size made the crippled paws invincible. And he had used a sword, the legionary’s sword Brock the re-enactment nut had given him. Human flesh gives like butcher’s meat. New to murder, he had felt nothing, it was just
you or me, brother.
Not until after the last battle, the bloody chaos at Yap Moss… I was alone with Ax, in a derelict ballroom it seems to me; we’d just heard the casualty figures. We stared at each other, then suddenly we hugged like mad, no sex in it, not until long afterwards, but
the only way I can stand this is if you are beside me…
Richard walked in: I can see his face. Oh, sorry, he says, kindly (totally mistaken). I can hear his voice.

The dead time whiled away, the empty hotel room hours when you have to stay indoors because of the stupid fans, and the thought of the evening’s gig stales and dries. Sage and Fiorinda joined Joe and the kids. Ax was alone, thinking about those fourteen unstoppable buggers, thinking about making these rooms defensible. When the knock on the door came he knew what was going to happen, and it did. One of the missionaries, placid as Buddha, bowed to him: deposited the tablet in its slipcase, and retreated to the corridor without a word.

‘Ah, Mr Preston. Now, about the
prison service.
’ Wang’s fine eyes kindled with irritation. ‘The numbers employed are
fantastic.
I see no rational explanation!’ The office décor looked like Whitehall again: Ax was getting the hang of this.

‘General, have you ever tried to break up a fight on a dance floor?’

‘No.’

‘I suppose not. Okay, the rule is you may not use lethal force, the threat of lethal force; or even of GBH, grievous bodily harm, which is a legal term in this country meaning serious, lasting physical damage. The aim is to have everyone feel that the right thing happened; ideally including the sinners. It takes numbers, General, same as on a battlefield. You can win when you shouldn’t by luck, but there are no short cuts to overwhelming victory. It takes bodies.’

‘Bodies. I see.’

Something slipped: a very anxious man stared at Ax. Then the General was back, urbane and mildly annoyed, looking out of shot. ‘We will discuss this further. Enjoy your wild rock festival, Mr Preston.’

The Abyssal

Norman had decreed that the whole party should disrobe, and don the short gowns that traditionally distinguished contenders. The cloakroom was none too clean, nor were the traditional gowns; the ‘lockers’ didn’t have locks. ‘I’ll take my robe with me,’ said Norman, expecting no argument. ‘I’ll fold it over my arm, see, like this. It’s antique and rather valuable.’

‘No,’ said the cloakroom manager, with the immoveable confidence of the very fat. She was herself mountainously naked, except for her knitting, the tassels on her nipples and the tinsel decorations in her bouffant hair. The black-leather lederhosen bouncers looked hopeful. They’d been told this was for a video and they should treat the Chinese rock director ‘the same as they would treat anyone.’ Nothing a bouncer likes better than a celeb who personally
asks
for trouble. Ax took the Fu robe from Cousin Caterpillar’s arm, and wadded it into his own locker.

‘Into the unknown, Norman.’

The changing room was unisex, and not very roomy. Fiorinda stripped beside Toby Starborn, Toby’s negative to her positive, each of them keeping their eyes to themselves. Two cloakroom attendants came in, with a special gown for Fiorinda: Toby swooped, and intercepted them. She realised, as he handed it to her (eyes still averted) that he’d known she was pregnant all along. How could he have missed the changes in this body, his obsession. Hey, compadre stalker, thank you.

The Triumvirate’s special gowns were angel wings, cotton-waste dyed a vivid violet and teased into thousands of feather shapes, a labour of love.
Eyot Swingers Club
read the pulsing sign above the Balcony doors,
Over Eighteens Only.
Ten years and a hundred worlds ago, they used to arrive in pretty cars, desperate housewives and scheming dentists; did any of them end up drop-outs? A piece of card had been tacked up, reinforcing the sensible message.