Rainbow Bridge (42 page)

‘Because I’m not sixteen yet,’ muttered hairtwister, almost inaudible.

‘Aha! Well tha’s me off the hook because
Rob
is your guardian.’

By the customs of her extinguished people, the Counterculture, Silver’s mother’s old man had pretty much owned her, whoever her biological father was. Smelly Hugh being a proscribed fugitive, she had chosen Rob as his substitute.

‘You’re such a
prag.’

‘Yeah, well, so it goes. It’ll happen to you.’ He sighed, recalling the little outlaw in her smocked dresses, her butterfly wings, who used to run to him, eyes full of childish worship. What a drag it is getting old.

‘Is that a
Geiger
counter?’ she asked, finally distracted.

‘It is.’

‘Is this place
radioactive
then?’

‘Be strange if it weren’t, my dear, considerin’ we are right next door what used to be one of the major nuclear power stations in Europe. Don’t panic, there’s nothen’ dangerous going on. Only a mild hike above background levels. Not a sign of the buried power cables for all their windfarms, though. That’s what puzzles me.’

‘You can’t
see
the windfarms,’ explained Silver, rolling her eyes. ‘They’re just fenced off, like firing ranges. There’s hyposonic noises to scare off the bats and birds, that we can’t hear, and the turbines are invisible so they don’t spoil the landscape. You can only see the little substation huts, or, er, whatever those things are.’

‘Mm. Any idea how they make the turbines invisible?’

‘Cloning. They capture images all around, clone bits and arrange them the way they would be if the turbines weren’t there, like your skeleton body mask.’

‘Not bad. Could could code me a model of that?’

‘For fuck’s sake, not
now
,’ groaned the teenager, disgusted. ‘I thought this was a serious conversation. Is lying on the ground like that part of what you’re doing?’

‘No, tha’s just me, lying on the ground.’ He sat up and studied the board’s results, wireless on his mask’s eyecam. Hm.

‘Is Pearl still walking in those stupid shoes? If she is, she can forget doing the Reich Youth ridge route. She’ll break an ankle.’

‘I don’t care if she breaks both her fucking legs.’

‘But I do, because I am a prag, an’ it would be a huge hassle.’

They had a mass barbecue (special permission for the fellside fire) and a wrestling tournament, which ended with the Cunning Cornish Crusher, veteran George Merrick, undefeated—to the chagrin of the Shield Ring’s champions and the mighty Swedes. They played yat lowping and hikey-dikey. They came to bitter nose-bleed blows over the morality of hunting with dogs. They discussed post-genderism and minimalist music; they had a moon and torchlit Duck Race, with their one long-suffering plastic duck and a flock of paper ones made by Weng Jiang, Chinese Observer voted Mr Congeniality (he took it well). They ran out of meat and ale. The mule trains called on the Mountain Rescue when they lost a drum kit off a crag (Keswick Mountain Rescue not amused, Steadpersons annoyed because they’d been made to look stupid. It should have been
Wasdale
Rescue). Other call-outs included two broken ankles (both caused by yat lowping); a nasty sprain, a tib-fib, and someone’s dog in a crevasse. The Reich Youth party vanished: out of all contact until Death and Famine spotted them taking a short cut over the highest mountain in England, many of them in very stupid shoes. And so they came to the last rendezvous, safely enough. Here there’d be another Landsturm fair; and then the most dedicated of the walkers would complete the circuit back to Coniston.

Chip was ensnared by the evil fan, on the home straight. The Adjuvants didn’t like ‘fans’. They preferred to forget the audience existed, as any genuine Adjuvant aficionado understood. They’d been hiding from this persistent woman since Coniston. But needs must, in the spirit of Landsturm fellowship, so he chattered away on auto, feeling noble. Thinking about how he was now sure Verlaine didn’t want a baby. Did he want them go to Caer Siddi, become Zen monks,
never come out alive
? Was that the secret? Chip had resolved to talk to Chez about this, which would not be a breach of trust because of the platonic threesome. See if she would help him to change, or at least understand, Ver’s mind.

The fan asked him, with a revolting twinkle, was he bisexual now?

Chip said of course, the group marriage, everyone knows about that, but right now he was on a spiritual quest, thanks but no thanks.

‘I didn’t mean
that
,’ she squealed. ‘I meant, are you
both
getting it on with Chez, or is it just Ver? Those two, that’s so hot, but what does
Rob
think?’

And the scales were lifted from his eyes

‘Oooh. I’ve said something I shouldn’t, haven’t I? I’m really
sorry
.’

Like fuck you are, you flesh-eating slime.

Pride would not let him run. He was forced to brush it off, insanely forced to laugh and
flirt
with the hell-bitch all the way to camp, searing agony in his soul.

The mule trains had been unloaded before the walkers arrived. Tents and stages were going up, Cumbrian entrepreneurs assembled their stalls. Blisters, aches and sunstroke queued for first-aid; all was laughter and tears. There was a vote in favour of the World State, a vote in favour of Elder Sister as a special, incredible person (suck-ups). A work party was framing a Landsturm statement, to be posted on Youth and Political Discussion message boards all over the Sphere. Another group proposed to create a masque, like Aoxomoxoa’s masques in the glory days, without immix of course, and perform it up here, unrecorded, pure, for ourselves alone—

Well away from party central Min and Ax slept nose to tail. Mr Pie dozed on three feet; the living skull was singing to the baby:
when it’s midnight in the meadow and the cats are in the heather
… Fiorinda left her boots in their care, and took a packed lunch up the hill for some more solitude.

The day was hot and overcast, Burnmoor Tarn a sheet of iron, the Scafell massif blood-dark as Death’s empty eyes. A house stood by the water, screened from vulgar gaze (fer fuck’s sake, up here?) by big suburban cypress hedges. That was the Lodge; where the Master of the Guild held court on his regular circuit. A wheatear flicked its wings on a boulder, the rough caress of the heather tugged at her bare feet. Ah, those little starfish fingers reaching to the mask, which Coz had loved at first sight, wise child. Just the way I loved him when I was fourteen, and had never seen the fallen-angel beauty of his naked face—

almost fell over Chip, hunched still as a rock in a stand of bracken.

‘Sorry,’ said Fiorinda, ‘I’ll go, er, on.’

‘Why?’

Because you are crying. No, can’t say that; so she sat down.

‘I’ve been thinking about the Zen Self experiment,’ he said, wiping his eyes. ‘How it went. Taking the nasty drug. Getting hooked up like fuck, so you knew your life was in danger, getting shoved into the scanner. Coming back with a keyhole glimpse of heaven or hell, through some moment from your future or your past. The narrative of the visions didn’t mean a thing.’

‘Mm.’

‘The meat was in the
data
, what the cognitive scanner said, how the neurons had fired, whether they’d shifted towards the impossible… I didn’t get the message. All the data was saying VERLAINE IS FUCKING CHEZ.
You
all knew, I see that now. But I was in some dumb narrative about a spiritual quest and I believed in it.’

‘You’re wrong.’

He turned on her, the Few’s sweet black angel, Fiorinda’s beardless counsellor, destroyed by shame and fury. ‘
Shut up
! Don’t give me that! Don’t fucking tell me you all thought we were a hot threesome. I don’t want to insult you, Fio but I’d
never
, gaggh, do it with a girl. The idea
makes me feel sick
.’

Fiorinda clutched her head. ‘Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Chip, I didn’t mean that. The opposite of that. I meant, I’m sure they’re not fucking.’

‘Oh,
really
? So what do you call it? Making love? Sorry I was crude.’

‘Cherry had to tell Rob and the Babes how she feels. But I don’t believe they’ve even kissed. They’re trying to work up the courage to tell you, first.’

A long silence. Fiorinda opened her sandwiches and offered him one.

‘What is it?’

She read the label. ‘Grasmere Dolly Herd corned beef, and brown pickle.’

‘Okay.’

As they munched the inevitable sheep arrived, one of the whiteface shaggy dark kind, and gave them the forlorn look Word must have passed from hilf to hilf, these rockstar ramblers are well gullible, soft as muck, take them for all you can get.

‘Go away,’ said Chip. ‘You’re a vegetarian.’

‘I bet she’d eat beef. I’ve seen sheep acting very suspiciously around a dead cow on Bodmin. And not from starvation; of their own free will, honestly.’

‘I don’t believe you. That’s
disgusting
.’

They shared the second sandwich. Daytime music, non-amplified, rose up to them. The gaudy crowd was like a transparent movie image floating on the moor: very distant, very familiar, very
thin
.

‘We’re not part of that, are we?’ said Chip, absently (the new information sinking in, robbing him of anger, heavy with finality; making him feel much worse).

‘Not fucking likely… Maybe we’re their myth of origin.’

‘If they live that long.’

‘Yeah. I feel embarrassed to be walking among them, but I’m sort of proud we’ve been with this all the way, ever since Dissolution Summer.’

‘You were winding me up about the dead cow, weren’t you?’

‘Was not. Well, okay, yeah. I was a bit.’

Droves of happy wanderers had trotted up Scafell, Scafell was nothing. The Triumvirate and the Few decided to bag Scafell Pike instead. They set out in the milk-cart with the empties, while Steadmen and Hearthwomen were holding their early morning service, raising a solemn, beautiful chorus to the sun. The driver wore a dairyman’s whitey coat and a shapeless cricket hat, and told ghost stories over his shoulder, as they jogged along the old corpse road by the tarn.

Coffins gone astray, incorruptible bodies, revenants.

‘Eh, it’s quiet,’ he remarked, with satisfaction, starting up the auxiliary engine for the rise of Maiden Castle. ‘I remember a time when there’d be hundreds,
hundreds
of Dayglo folk wi’ t’ekking poles up and down this road, any summer’s day. Thick as fleas on the big name peaks, like the London Underground in Rush Hour. Not that I’ve been to London, thank God.’

The churns rattled, the carthorse trotted smartly, ears back, disliking the whine of the two-stroke; or maybe insulted at the suggestion she needed help.

‘D’you ever miss them?’ wondered Ax.

‘Never. It was a sin, what we did for mere gelt, you know, money. We were going to hell like lambs until the Shield Ring woke us up. I pitied them, the hordes in their fancy gear, supping up ‘Nature’, wandering around in packs.’

A pause. They thought he might rephrase that last remark, more tactfully—

‘It won’t happen again.’ He was very sure of himself.

They opted for the short route, half appalled that they were doing this voluntarily, up the beaten path of Lingmell Gill, two by two, three by three, one by one, almost in silence except for the baby; happily babbling in her new carrier.

‘I hate the way it goes
on
, and
on
, and
on
,’ whined Fiorinda, ‘but there’s nothing to it, this hill walking. I can do it, I just don’t like it.’

‘Like swimming laps,’ agreed Dora. ‘Boring, but good for you.’

‘You got no eyes,’ said Felice, her long legs swinging easily, peace in the curve of her big strong mouth. ‘You got no
body
, you don’t appreciate this.’

The senior Babes were walking hand-in-hand, but it wasn’t a hostile gesture. Today they were okay with Chez, who said, ‘You know, I bet we
could
have done it from the top of Scafell, the double whammy route by Foxes Tarn—’

Catcalls. Four days’ gentle hike and she thinks she’s ready for K2.

Narrow waters rushed secretly or flashed white beside them, dippers bobbed above ferny dark pools. Ravens croaking, buzzards wheeling, the gleam of rockroses, yellow gems in the royal purple. The moment you decide to take a drink, they said to each other (four days of experience) the next thing you see upstream is a rotting dead sheep. Chip and Verlaine, who had been here in the bad old days, advised the left fork over Hollow Stones, and led some off-piste casting around, searching for the excellent spot, a green promontory over Piers Gill, where they had picnicked once (crystal clear, that first holiday together; it had meant a good deal to them).

‘All right,’ conceded Fiorinda. ‘It was worth it.’

To their west the blunt scarf of Wastwater under its screes, and further off a bright limb of the sea. Hives of Shield Ring industry lay southward along that coast, beyond the Duddon Estuary. A tiny flaw in the mission statement: those Mountain Goat limos were built by hand by futuristic artisans, but they definitely were not assembled in cottages. Closer at hand, the great hollow of Wasdale Head was a rockery shaped by the vanished pressures of mass tourism. Wherever you looked there were graded paths, paved paths, wheelchair routes, rustic stairways, railed viewpoints. Careful plantings to hide the servers that ran the smart boards; all falling into neglect now, but indelible—

‘It’s a world inside a spaceship,’ said Cherry. ‘I thought it would be
wild
up here, untouched wilderness like I’ve never seen—’

‘Lions and tigers and bears?’ Ver grinned at her. ‘Oh my!’

‘Fuck off. But it’s not. Everywhere you look, it’s worked. It’s so beautiful, but it’s all
fixed
. I look up, I expect to see the landscape going overhead.’

‘Maybe we
are
in a spaceship,’ said Ax, on his back with his hat over his eyes. ‘Travelling on a forgotten mission. It’s just too big to see across.’

Chip peered over the drop, propped on his elbows (he was impervious to ‘heights’). ‘Deep they delved us,’ he murmured. ‘High they builded us, but they are gone. They are gone. They sought the havens long ago.’