Rainbow Bridge (53 page)

‘Is it fixed?’

‘Nah. We’ve had to send them all home. Well, we didn’t have to but we were bored. Imploding novel technology fatigue sets in. The music line up will be starting on schedule, more or less. Like I care.’ Sage opened his eyes. ‘We’re heading off to Lambeth soon, Alain. D’you want to come and eat with us?’

‘
Dommage
. I’m afraid I’m Reiched out.’

They went to reclaim Min. They’d come up to London on the sleeper,
en famille,
a fine way to travel, but Ax’s cat had been impounded by the Central Hall porters. Hopefully he hadn’t had to spend the day with small, yappy dogs—

Chip was in his room at the Snake Eyes Commune, two floors up at the back of the original house. (There’d once been one tall, old, terraced house. Now there were two side-by-side, and one across the road.) He’d ceded the Notting Hill pad to Chez and Verlaine, after Christmas. Those two were were getting used to being a couple, very sweet and shy with each other, it was unbearable.

He sat in the winter dusk, looking at his single bed; thinking of the flat. So much history. That long period when their furniture had consisted of a waterbed, a few old sideboards and a virtual décor controller. The night the two of them had decided they would take on Fergal Kearney (
my God
), and rescue Fiorinda from durance vile. His new, Mickey Mouse counterpane looked very mickey mouse. I must get myself proper stuff, he thought. Do I have enough money to buy a house? How do you buy a house? He had no idea. Verlaine had looked after their finances.

What happened to never growing up, was it always just me?

Two floors below the big communal table was being spread. There was socialising going on, while the cadres waited for Ax and Sage and Fiorinda to arrive from Central Hall. Chip knew Rox had arrived, he’d heard hir voice. S/he was almost certain to come looking for him, with kindly sympathy, and he couldn’t stand the idea. The moment he heard the thump of hir cane on the stairs, he’d have to leap up and bounce merrily down to join the fun—

Roar, screech, slam! Roar screech slam! Roar screech slam!

He had dived from his chair, and crossed the room well
down
, as if bullets or broken glass were flying, before he knew it. Traumatic stress flashback, but when he saw what was going on in the street, it turned out to be the right reaction.

My God,
he breathed,
look at that!

but there was no one beside him, missing you so much, Pippin—

BAM BAM BAM—!

He ran down stairs in the dark, in his socks, and peered from the first-floor landing: ooh boy, an armed police raid in anybody’s language. Serious numbers of helmed, booted, gauntleted Chinese, he couldn’t get a clear look at their insignia. He clutched the banister rail, like a child frightened by a nightmare. His view was of the hallway, full of uniforms, faceless faceplates and guns. He could see none of the Communards. He heard
putonghua
at a savage, barking pitch, then Rob’s voice and Felice, going
what d’you think you’re doing? Let’s all calm down…
They were ordered to SHUT UP! (he understood that). Then nothing but Chinese voices yelling, the hammer of booted feet, doors crashed open, breaking glass, furniture overturned—

What’s happened? What the fuck, what the fuck?

He realised he might be the only person who hadn’t been rounded up

He tiptoed back to his room. His phone, of course, was dead as a duck. Time warp. The Reich-In-Hiding had lived in fear of something like this: the Chinese will turn on us, and
they will give no warning
. So now it’s come. He tried to remember what he was supposed to do, he had thoughts of going down and blagging the kids out of it. The Snake Eyes teens, the little ones, Marlon and Silver and Pearl. He would be witty and eloquent, with his basic phrases of
putonghua
. No, better not, it won’t sound the way it does in your head. Much better idea, he must warn the Triumvirate. There was a landline phone on the first floor, in the Big Band office. It was worth a try. He was very scared. He weighed up climbing down a drainpipe, and running off down the street: but the landline idea won out. Hu’s military police (he’d worked out the insignia) were crashing about like a tide of rock and rubble. He made it to the office and dialled, manually, Fiorinda’s no-such-number, the emergency one, which was not traceable to her real phone number. The set was antique, it had strange foibles, he couldn’t tell if he’d got through. Try again; that’s an improvement, but fuck, what do I say? If we’re in trouble and they’re not, I might implicate them. But if they come here they’ll get arrested, full house
—

What was the codeword that had meant the invasion?

Iphigenia
he gasped as gauntlets grabbed him, and threw him away from the desk. The phone went flying. A rifle muzzle stabbed his chest, eyes behind a visor, glaring madly. Okay, okay… Now, remember you’re a good guy, Chip. Project good guy vibes, you’re
not
a criminal. And don’t panic, and be polite.

‘Who were you calling?’

‘The police, of course.’

‘You were not calling the police.’

‘I
meant
to call the police. Not 999, the local number, the local station.’

‘Who were you calling?’

He’d been thrown into an APV, and brought in here with a blanket over his head. He was in what looked like an ordinary police station interview room. He hadn’t seen anybody else. They quickly gave up on the phone call, and asked him did he know a Virginia Dawkins, how random, but he wasn’t going to take a chance. He’d never been in this situation, but he’d heard that once you start answering the questions you don’t stop. Stonewall. He asked where he was, what was all this about, and what had happened to his friends. He said he was outraged and he refused to say anything until they told him what going on. They asked him about Chez’s
medical history
. He was genuinely confused, then it dawned on him, fatally, in a flood of horror. He knew what they must have found out, and he knew he was done for, because the Chinese had seen that flood of horror. He wasn’t hooked up to anything, they hadn’t asked his permission to take biometric readings (joke); but it was obvious.

Everything changed.

Later he was in another room, he knew not where, a very ominous room. They told him that they knew he’d tried to contact the Triumvirate.

‘You wanted to smear them with your filth.
You
are the guilty one.’

‘No I wasn’t. I didn’t. I’m not guilty of anything.’

‘Soon you’ll be questioned further,’ said the one in uniform.

He was left alone. He was still in his own clothes. He hadn’t been searched, just shaken down for weapons; his dead phone and personal belongings taken, such as they were. He thought he’d been in custody about twenty-four hours but he wasn’t sure. No clocks, no meals, although they’d given him water. Maybe it had been drugged. I have disappeared, he thought. I am never going to leave here.

The room was a neuro lab, and that’s not all it was. Mind games and tactics went through his head, a prepared statement, fallbacks, scrabbling ways he might save his life. Cherry was poorly when we were in detention. Nothing was said but we were worried… All right, I thought it was TB, and it’s a notifiable disease. It’s stupid, but that’s why I was scared when you said ‘medical history’. That’s absolutely all there is to it! Okay, so I was terrified. I have a right to be terrified. I thought you’d killed her. You can’t call being horrified at that idea incriminating! Oh yes they can. He looked around him. Prepared statement, fallback, bullshit.

If I don’t want to go out betraying Fiorinda and fucking up utterly, I need a cast-iron strategy for dealing with being tortured; and I need it now.

Once upon a time in California they’d been afraid they were about to be attacked by the worst kind of Neurobomb, runaway chain reaction, a formerly human thing called the Fat Boy. The Fat Boy can tell you to turn inside out and eat your own guts. You’ll do it; and it will be what you do for a subjective eternity. The Fat Boy’s mind works like that. Sage had taught them how to die, a surefire neuro switch they could flip, in case it was the only way out.

The lesson was long gone. Brain chemistry doesn’t last, neurons don’t last, brainstates have to scramble back into life in new shoes every time you remember something. But he started to think about that ranchero house in California, on the beach. The crimson bougainvillaea and the dry fountain, the ten-foot palms in pots that blew over and rolled about in a rainstorm. The drained spa in the basement, where they used to hang out. Blue walls, blue empty pools. Dilip used to say he could see ripples of light on the ceiling; the ghosts of water. The memories made Chip happy. Drained, dry, but happy. He left the interview table, where he’d been sitting like a good child, and sat with his back to the wall and his arms around his knees, in a corner. Not a toilet to piss in, which is not fair. But he didn’t need a piss. There were ripples on the ceiling, ghosts of water, little curves like birds’ wings, crossing and recrossing each other. He watched them, and knew he would be all right.

‘Chip?’

‘Hey, Chip?’

Sage was calling him. He didn’t know where he was.
Where was I just now, is this real or was the other place real?
He opened his eyes, or maybe they were already open, and saw the torture room. He was sitting in his corner, back to the wall. Sage was in front of him, tall Sage in a grey hoodie and black jeans, squatting down so they were eye-to-eye. Some olive-green trousers there too. He followed the trousers upward, and it was General Wang Xili standing beside Sage, in his five-star uniform. No one else in the room. Sage, and General Wang, he thought. Am I rescued? Wang had a very strange, blown-away expression. Sage’s blue eyes were smiling, but—

‘Hallo.’ His throat was very dry. ‘What happened, Sage?’

‘You need some water, here.’ Chip took the water bottle, his hands were very stiff, the fingers didn’t want to bend. He sipped.

‘Can you stand up?’

‘I think so. Am I rescued?

‘Not yet,’ said Sage. ‘But you will be. C’mon, you need to sleep.’

Sage and the General walked him to another cell. Chip had to lean against Sage, because his legs would barely carry him. There was a bed with sheets and blankets, a cupboard and a toilet and a basin. It still looked ominous.

‘What’s going on, Sage? Did I fuck up?’

‘No,’ said the boss, still with that smile that was too deep, coming from too far away, a smile from the edge of the universe: and gave him a hug. ‘Not at all. You’ll be treated okay now. Get some sleep.’

The guard outside the door of the cell saluted, staring straight ahead. Sage walked with the General along empty, cream-walled corridors.

‘Are you having problems with any of the other prisoners?’

One of the other prisoners was Aoxomoxoa’s sixteen-year-old son.

‘No,’ said Wang. ‘Can you
explain
that?’

‘What Chip did? Yeah, I think so. It’s kind of a psychic suicide pill, I taught them how to do it a couple of years ago… I don’t know why he isn’t dead. Must be something he added on his own.’

The Triumvirate had not been arrested. They’d been told that the reason for the raid on Lambeth was classified, they had not been able to find out where their friends were being held. They hadn’t been able to reach the Generals or Elder Sister, they’d been dealing with obstructive, openly aggressive subordinates. But Chip had caused such consternation that the Chinese had finally broken down and called in the expert. Chip had been in the torture room for three days, apparently. He’d been left to look at his fate, the torturers had come back to find him sitting in the corner clothed in quivering light, and nobody had been able to get near him.

They walked. Sage didn’t want to leave the fort. He wanted to shout out their names, to see if anyone shouted back from behind the narrow doors. No guards except outside Chip’s new cell, did that mean the others were elsewhere? Already dead? He kept hold of himself. He must not get locked up.

‘Chip was a neuronaut with me, he followed the Zen Self path for quite a way. No one thought he was a front-runner, but we may have to change our minds. Yogi tricks are
not
magic, Wang. It’s a completely different thing.’

They’d reached double doors, where there were guards again. He recognised the way he’d come in. Wang looked at Sage out of his stunned wonderment, beyond horror, beyond shock, and shook his head. He spoke almost gently.

‘No…
N
o, Aoxomoxoa. The case is clear, the evidence is overwhelming, the culprit has betrayed himself. There is nothing whatever you can do.’

You want to bet? thought Sage. You want to fucking bet, bastard?

‘What happens now?’

‘You’ll be taken back to Reading.’

Fiorinda walked up and down the concourse that had been Rivermead’s great solar, reading the signs. A strip of military utility carpet, beaten by many feet. A drinks machine, serving hot water, green or black tea; like the one on the landship that had taken them to Anglia. Smart noticeboards; homely drawing-pin noticeboards, on the wall and freestanding. All the writing was in Chinese. Spartan armchairs, slippery stiff benches. People passed through here. Maybe they met, accidentally on purpose, to exchange a few useful words; corridor talk. Today the big doors had been closed at either end and the graceful space was haunted by its former identity. The western wall of glass was the same, and there’s the Arts and Crafts enamelled fireplace, disused. There’s where my piano stood.

Ax had tried to call Elder Sister at once. He hadn’t been able to get hold of her. Bad sign, bad sign. The London Chinese had treated them like shit. The vibe was that Hu was responsible, and he was totally hostile. In the end they’d been told they must come to Reading. They’d left Coz and Min at Joss Pender’s. They’d seen Elder Sister and Wang Xili. Bad, very bad. Inhuman faces, Police State voices. They’d been given a room to sleep in, with three camp beds in it, they’d been told they were not under arrest. They’d had the unsuspected horrors of the Pernicious Delusion Screening explained to them. Your friends have betrayed you, there was a viper in their midst. Denounce them! Denounce your own gullibility! Read out this statement of abject contrition! Are you kidding? Do you think we don’t have terror regimes over here, do you think we don’t know we’re screwed whatever we say, you’ll burn us anyway: do you think we never met people like you before?