Rainbow Bridge (37 page)

‘You began badly,’ she said, judiciously. ‘You should not have accepted the Presidency from Fred Eiffrich’s hands. That put you in the wrong from the start. We had been preparing to invade the USA from the moment we knew of the A-team experiment. It had to be done,
they were insane
. The event itself forestalled us, but when the US President offered to let us in, we were ready to move at once.’

So much for the ceding of bridgeheads between friends. He wondered what the hell was really going on in the US now. He wasn’t going to ask.

‘We also had to crush England,’ Elder Sister continued, briskly. ‘The USA built the A-team, but this is the pernicious hotbed where the barrier was first broken. We couldn’t risk seeing the Neurobomb emerge in the hands of the Second Chamber. Please understand, we know that your playboy Minister, Stephen Pender, cannot be weaponised. Still, he is what he is, and knowing the dangers as he does, his behaviour has been unthinkably careless. He is light-minded, and he’s given you bad advice.’

Ouch.

‘As to the “risks” I took in Anglia… You’re right, Mr Preston, I don’t leave things to my officers. I am on the frontline, wherever it may be, that is my rule. But I’m not irresponsible. I was married once, I have a son. He’s in his thirties, he’s very competent, he stays safely at home in Xi’an. When the time is right I’ll step down in his favour. Meanwhile, if I were to die tomorrow there would be no power vacuum. My generals would serve him unswervingly.’

‘Ah. That explains it.’

She grinned again, three-cornered, charming. ‘Of course, I was barely more than a child when he was born. I want to show you something. Watch this.’

She turned to face the dais, and he turned with her. It drew back and rose on its side, a fluid yet mechanical action, like the articulation of the
di
-tracked landships. The Fu pattern disappeared. It was replaced by that superb, China-oriented projection of the globe he’d seen in Wang’s office, in December. Here the notation was English, and the movement of history was frozen.

Scarlet for China and the New Autonomous Regions. Rose-lilac for the Sphere Partners. Pink for the Territories; countries with puppet governments outside the satellite region. Violet for the Liberated Nations, too recently conquered for their status to be clear. The rest of the world was a muddy beige; unfinished surface. He noted that the whole continent of North America, from the Pole to the isthmus of Panama, was pink: he couldn’t recall what colour it had been last time he’d seen this.

Elder Sister counted the swallowed satellites on her fingers, absorbed in a favourite pastime; as if she’d forgotten Ax existed. ‘Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Tibet. And the Philippines…’ (Oh yeah. The Philippines had turned scarlet, sometime since December.) ‘We have promoted the satellites, they are Autonomous Regions now, as you know. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao and Singapore are fully Chinese, of course. Burma, Bhutan, Nepal, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkestan; Developing Autonomous Territories.’

Make a list
, thought Ax, fascinated.

‘Then the Sphere. India-with-Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Australasia-with-Polynesia, Turkey. I left one out, ah, Sri Lanka, I always forget Sri Lanka.’

Those ten, including one cunning, disreputable escapee from the EU, were the ones with the coveted status: not decided on economic or ideological grounds alone, or on geography alone. Tech advancement plays a part, having an ancient culture with striking monuments helps; pragmatism plays a part (Afghanistan!).

‘Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi, the Yemen, Oman, Syria, the Lebanon, the Emirates, Palestine, Israel, ah, and Jordan… Most of that region we don’t have to conquer, they are eager to join us. The ancient nations,
apart from Israel
, will join the Sphere, we’re developing a second class of partnership. North Africa, the Horn and the East Coast—Egypt, down to Mozambique—we plan to treat the same way. The desert Arab nations won’t survive.’

‘What about the rest of Africa? What’s happening there?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘I’ve lost track.’

‘It’s not so bad as you might think. In many African countries things will improve, now that your grasping friends in the USA are finally out of the picture.’

Ax nodded. They both knew that it was China, not the USA, that had given the African continent a near-lethal dose of raw capitalism, just before the Crash. No need to labour the point.

‘The A-team was a wicked blow. But it’s better, it’s getting better.’

‘Okay.’

You have no idea what’s happening a hundred kilometres away, he thought; in self-defence. Unless you go there, and then more than likely you find your most treasured reforms have turned to nightmare.

But Elder Sister had resumed her account. ‘Lastly the conquests: Azerbaijan, a very terrible place. Uzbekistan, our tough nut.’ She glanced at Ax, almost with amused apology. EU “involvement” in the Uzbek resistance had been the utterly specious pretext for the invasion of England, and of Roumania. ‘European eco-warriors, the Belarus and Roumanian guerrillas, had been fighting for Gaia, against the American oil interests there. They were stranded far from home by the A-team, and they could not grasp that we were on their side. We offered to repatriate them, they refused to leave. They refused to lay down their arms, you know the rest. But it’s all settled now.’

Once, in another lifetime, Ax had looked into the inferno of the Caspian Basin from a small plane. He had seen the appalling scale of the devastation in those lands. Lalic the Macedonian, Doctor of Philosophy; Markus the Dacian, fighting for a cause they believed long lost. The fires would be out now: where were Lalic and Markus? Did your liberation kill them? he wondered. Probably.

Her roll-call seemed to be over. No plans for South America? he thought. Antarctica? What are you going to do about those damned Feds?

The projection began to move:
simplicity as a result of complexity
.

‘The
di
is alive,’ said Elder Sister, softly. ‘I believe that in time everything we make will be alive. Once, in the Pre-Cambrian, a balance tipped, a build-up reached its emergence point, a little predator called a trilobite found out what it means to have eyes. This is our Pre-Cambrian explosion. If we can survive, then
this
is where human civilisation begins. It will develop into who knows what new forms.’ She gazed at the world-map like a beautiful woman studying her reflection, like a mother brooding over her child, and he felt her charm. He understood Wang Xili’s passionate devotion, and the atmosphere in that Chelsea flat: the two Generals desperately anxious to repair the slights they feared they’d offered to Elder Sister’s protégés. They don’t resent her at all, whatever she wants she must have.

Phoenix eyes. She loves the world, this megalomaniac. She’s convinced she can make it a better place, although it may take a few massacres. Hey, compadre. I’ve quit, I could not stand the bloodshed, but I remember—

‘Do you know that we had met before the invasion?’ said Elder Sister, turning from her mirror with that disarming grin.

‘
Really?
’

‘Yes. In Shanghai once, years ago, and in Hiroshima later. Maybe we didn’t meet, but we were in the same room. You were visiting the Pan-Asian Utopians by roving presence. I was the Daoist Nun, or someone like that; observing.

‘That’s amazing.’

‘Hm. Is it? You are disingenuous, I’m afraid. About England, and about your own place in the world. The Great Peace holds the heritage of human culture in trust. Little England, cradle of so much history, would have been a special case for us, no matter what. The pernicious delusion must be uprooted, the Counterculture must be stamped out, forbidden technologies must be abandoned, but England’s beauty must be preserved. That’s one reason we have been very careful. The other reason is the Rock and Roll Reich, and its global reputation. You have created one of the pillars of my Utopia. I want to make Reich beliefs part of my world state.’

She held up her fingers for another counting exercise, slim dancer in pearls and gold. ‘You have preserved national unity, and public order, while your consort Fiorinda, Protector of the Poor, has kept “the drop-out hordes” fed and clothed, and under decent, humane control. You have enlisted the masses, and convinced them to work for the good of the state without coercion; you have struggled to outlaw bond slavery and chattel slavery. The target I would add to these is: establish a culture of full civil, personal and family rights for women—’ She raised a moth’s wing eyebrow. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Could you expand on the, er, rights for women agenda?’

‘A girl is a boy,’ said Elder Sister, firmly. ‘A woman is a man.’

‘I’ve heard the slogan. The wording has caused some confusion.’

‘I know. I don’t see why; it’s very clear to me.’

And moving on.

‘In short, we must use high tech to save the living world; and save ourselves from barbarism by caring for each other “like the social animals we are meant to be”. That much anyone could have seen.
You
alone saw that the masses, freed from the slavery of material values, need the release only music and dance can give.
You
have given the world a model of hedonism and wild desire, without anarchy and without moral degeneracy. Obviously you’ve learned from the East, but your system embraces everything that Asia is greedy for about the West. It’s Socialist, it’s Maoist, it’s Confucian; it’s authoritarian—’ She smiled, because she knew he wouldn’t like that.

‘I think you’re too kind,’ said Ax, ruefully.

‘Never. That’s not one of my faults.’

Your son, he thought, if such a person exists, hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of ascending the throne. You’re not capable of stepping down.

‘Now, to business. You have given me England, Ax. Not least by your stalwart performance at Rainbow Bridge.’ That grin again. ‘Thus we see that humanity’s most ancient beliefs can be cleansed of the foul taint of delusion and brought to serve the masses; that’s very good. But England cannot be liberated in isolation, we need to bring in Europe. My plan is that we will host a conference, for which preparations are already in train. It will be held in Free Cumbria, over the Line: that way we won’t have to police Occupied Zone prohibitions. The people of the EU will reject vile technologies later, of their own free will. Delegates will be approved on the basis of right-minded attitudes, not influence or political rank. Cultural, folklore and Rock music issues will be discussed, there will be forward-thinking rallies. Will you take on the task of leading this gathering?’

‘Of course,’ said Ax. ‘If you think I’m up to it, I’ll do my best.’

‘You are too modest.’ It began to sound like a warning. ‘I
know
about you. My officers have been working for months with your Permanent Civil Service, a Chinese-inspired institution by the way. They are told, by humble bureaucrats who could be
dismembered
for resistance, Oh, Mr Preston wouldn’t like that. Oh, but we’ll have to ask Mr Preston. We’ve all been very impressed.’

He’d known Cumbria had to be on the agenda. The EU conference was unexpected. The planet-destroyer watched him, smiling a little.

‘There are hotheads, and pockets of recalcitrance, but by and large Europe’s response to the liberation has been promising. You are the ideal emissary. You haven’t put a foot wrong: you have said not one toadying good word for the Chinese, but you have accepted fate, and committed not one act against us. And now you have a daughter, born under the twin auspices—’ She made the ‘yoni with eyes’ mudra, steepled fingers lifted coquettishly under her round chin, ‘of the 2
^nd
AMID Army Women’s Medical Corps, and of Gaia herself. That was a stroke of luck.’

Ax did not conceal his surprise.

‘Oh, I am at peace with Gaia. Sometimes I don’t like the company she keeps.’

‘I’ve felt the same myself.’

‘You’ll go to Cumbria with your partners and the Few, without a military escort this time. You’ll lead the unofficial official summit, you will give me Europe. Then, quite soon, the mopping up will be over and England will be promoted from Liberated Nation to Territory status. I want you to agree to be my President, in time perhaps President of a larger region—’

So here’s the promised present. Shame it couldn’t have been a nice jigsaw, thought Ax. I’d have liked a jigsaw. The gilt-wrapped package lay between them, for too long. He studied the silken patterns on the rugs.

‘I still don’t think I’m the man for the government job, Elder Sister.’

How would she take this? Chop his head off, or something slower? He risked looking up: and saw amusement in her phoenix eyes.

‘You’re a tough negotiator, Mr Preston. All right, we’ll talk terms another time. Please deliver my congratulations to Fiorinda on the auspicious birth of her daughter. Tell her I admire her very much, by the way; and I hope we can be friends. And, hm, my respects to Mr Pender. Would you like some tea? Black tea with cow’s milk, the English way?’

‘It’s an acquired taste.’

‘Better milk than yak butter,’ said Elder Sister, with feeling. ‘I use skimmed milk, is that all right for you?’

‘We all prefer skimmed milk, it’s a problem. As short of calories as we are, we can’t seem to use all the cream. We have to get the people to believe whole milk is good for them; except the Vegans, of course. Fiorinda’s working on it.’

‘I hope she has more success than with the garlic porridge.’

The tea arrived, in chaste white English china. When the orderly had left them, Elder Sister switched from
putonghua
to US-inflected English. They talked informally about things dear to both their hearts. Food supplies, the fuel crisis (a necessary illusion, it serves us well); fine-tuning the energy audit. He didn’t recognise Lieutenant Chu, or the nun, but knew those other personalities were there beside him. Who is Elder Sister? A performer, an army brat. A romantic, a good-willed despot; a mask.

Wang Xili was looking ostentatiously relaxed when Ax was shown into his office. He rose, smiling, and flicked a lordly, casual hand at his secretary in the corner.