Band of Gypsys (29 page)

It was many hours before the search parties found him.

Hungry Ghosts

Sage remembered that before the fatal debate his son had been taken from a police station, with the knowledge and consent of the Metropolitan Police, for a vicious illegal interrogation. And he had been powerless to pursue the culprits… He had ignored this warning. They had ignored all the many warnings that it was time to quit. They’d come back to England to reprise the dictatorship the way Ax had originally intended. Charm offensive, softly softly: but you can’t do that. You can’t return to the same fucking poor situation you held in check with an army at your back, and say let’s play nicely. They don’t know how to be nice, they’re institutionalised.

He understood the depth of Ax’s distress now, that staring-into-nothing mood. We took on the bad guys, and we did not SEE their priorities, we only saw our own. That’s our unforgiveable worst crime.

England’s nameless, unaccountable secret police chief entered the room, in a motor chair. A rigid plastic collar, swathed in white silk, held Lord Vries’s chin at a haughty angle. He was a nineteenth century dandy, ineffably sleek, blond and pink, a true blond, not a shade of vulgar yellow in it.

Sage grinned. ‘Is the collar permanent?’

The chair glided over to a desk: Jack flicked a switch. ‘We are now recording. You have consented to this procedure, Mr Pender?’

‘I’ve consented.’

Jack rose and came to him, using the cane that had been balanced on his knees. Walking didn’t come easily. Got a brace under his clothes to keep that neck in alignment, Sage guessed. ‘Two realtime cognitive scanners were stored in the building on Battersea Reach. We searched the premises some weeks ago, including the rooms under the basement, and found nothing. The residents, including Mr Merrick, Mr Trevor and Mr Stannen, denied all knowledge of the whereabouts of the controlled neurological equipment.’

‘So do I.’

‘It is illegal to possess, or have in your possession, the precursors of weaponised magic… I don’t want to bring the Heads in for questioning, Sage. Or any of your employees. They aren’t criminals. That’s why it’s best if you tell me where the scanners are.’

‘I can’t tell you what I don’t know. But you’re welcome to try.’

He wanted to ask what was being done to Ax and Fiorinda. What had happened to his lovers, if he was here… But he shouldn’t show anxiety. Keep things simple. Humiliate someone, he will humiliate you back if he can, and they had humiliated Jack Vries, in public, in the House of Commons. It’s a fundamental law: bastards have feelings too, forget that at your peril. So I take my licks, Jack will feel better, and maybe I’ll survive.

The white tiled walls of the room gleamed. What happened to Peter?

‘Do you know what day it is?’ said Jack, leaning on his cane.

‘Er, Thursday? Evening?’

Dad is at the restaurant, thinking how fucking unreliable I am.

‘It is the night of the full moon, of the seventh month of the Chinese year. The Chinese call this the moon of the hungry ghosts. We call it
Lúnasa
. It adds up to a time of great power. If you can’t help us to locate of the scanners, then this interrogation may precipitate a transformation, which would be another answer to our inquiries.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

‘As long as you understand that you may involuntarily incriminate both yourself and the President; and you still consent to the procedure.’

‘Jack, be serious for a moment and listen to me. I’m not superman, and I’m not a werewolf. The rules
have not changed
. I took part in a very high tech neurological experiment, the ‘A’ team took part in another, and outside of those conditions “magic”is as futile as it was a thousand years ago. Your time of great power is a crock too, you can’t make the Chinese and the so-called ‘Celtic’ calendars add up, because they don’t. None of it adds up.’

Oh, fuck. I ought to be humouring him.

The dandy moved his poised head carefully from side to side. ‘You’re the one who doesn’t understand, Sage. In all my studies I never had one single unequivocal proof that I could move the world: yet I believed. I am a believer, I am a practitioner of sacred truth, and you have proved my faith, and the faith of millions like me.’

Fiorinda had told Sage that if the Second Chamber did try to build an n ‘A’ team, Jack Vries would be the most dangerous candidate in England. He stared up at the dandy, pitiless secret policeman, this deadly knowledge running through him.

‘You don’t want Olwen’s scanners. They’re useless to you.’

Jack took a deep breath, and set out on the difficult journey back to the desk. Sage watched, with a terrible shrinking in his throat and belly, a tremor in all his limbs that he could feel through the chemical paralysis.

Flick of a switch

‘The interview was halted for a call of nature.’

‘Let me speak frankly, off the record. You’d better understand that nobody is going to stop this, and I am not afraid to touch Joss Pender’s son, don’t make that mistake. The Lord and the Lady are sacrosanct, you are not. If you’re bluffing, I suggest you stop bluffing now.’

‘I don’t know where the scanners are. I consent to the procedure.’

The equipment was Pacrim, Indonesian: about fifteen years’ old. This pointless torture machine is how the British government was spending my taxes, when I was a filthy rich bad boy, back before Dissolution. So remember, this is not new bad news… A mask came down, a stiff gag pressed between his teeth, his eyelids were delicately drawn back. Was Lord Vries still in the room? He didn’t know. Fine, flexible needles slid around his eyeballs, and probed deep. He had been told the nerves would suffer no damage, unless this went on for a long time. He was afraid it could not be true.

He was back at the Insanitude, in Allie’s new office. He said to her, ‘You never did get your eyes lasered, did you?’ Allie said, ‘I’m fine with contact lenses, thanks.’ He was afraid for her: she’d be helpless when there were no more contact lenses in the shops. ‘You should do it, stop pissing around. Eyes are important. Go to Cardiff. Take DK with you. Once you’re there, don’t come back.’ If he made it plausible enough she would leave.

He returned to other scenes, and told other people. Get out. It’s over. Go! But Sage must not get out from the house of pain. Don’t start meditating, or you will die. Die, hear that? So DON’T.

The Stranglers alternated with Schubert, first movement of the B flat piano sonata D960. Both good, neither of them touching the pain.

He visualised the muscles of his face, the cascade of tiny spasms that added up to the word
agony
: which would not be written, because the anaesthetist who was standing by had upped the dose and he was completely paralysed. He could hear them murmuring about what they saw on their screen, the voices neutral, unintelligible…
The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals
, Charles Darwin, a very useful work, ancient photographs pored over by the teenage Aoxomoxoa. Images that had fascinated him, when he was thinking out how to build the avatar mask. How to map the muscle-fibre contractions, by mental reverse engineering. Are all artists part-butcher? Yes.

We cut open the world. I am a vivisectionist, no wonder I have bad dreams. Surprisingly, he could still think. Why couldn’t he black out? The immense vitality that was his birthright, that had carried him to the Zen, was not his friend now.

The sessions ran together, the spaces between were pauses of calm clarity, and he was not aware that he was losing track of time, of place. He saw the world the way the bad guys had seen it, with COGNITIVE SCANNERS all huge, and everything else dwindled, two dimensional. A couple of times he thought of saying why don’t you ask my dad? But he was in uncharted territory. Ax’s failsafe arrangements had assumed Joss Pender was safe from reprisals: can’t assume that now. For once in my life I would have screamed for you, please help me daddy. But I daren’t.

Illuminations. A clear glass, standing on a red-gold velvet tablecloth. At first he thought it was a remembered detail from an old picture, a Chardin? No, more modern. Eventually he realised the painter was himself. The glass was Ax, and the velvet was Fiorinda. But where am I? He was worried, he was afraid he had disappeared from the relationship, something he was always afraid of, because they are locked in process, I am just their catalyst, the medium; whatever. Then he knew: I am the picture, of course. The picture of the world that the mind makes is the
I
that sees the picture, it’s a paradox.

He began to code himself.

On the first night they were alone something unprecedented happened. It was about an hour after they’d been escorted back from Rick’s Place. They were were in the wired, after-the-show mood, cruelly compounded by Sage’s absence, but no motormouth jabber tonight. Ax was building card houses, Fiorinda was pretending to read, but turning few pages. The bell that summoned them to the Moon and Stars receiving room rang. They stared at the row of antique chimes above the door of the red chamber… Ax moved first. He went to her, took her hands and kissed them.

‘I’ll get it. Stay here.’

He went through the suite preparing himself, a reflex long established. Allah Akbar, be ready to die, do it well, be glad it will be beside her.

God is good.

The Moon and Stars room was empty, likewise the antechamber with its doors to the outside world. Someone knocked, a discreet, respectful tap, and he felt a change, a shift deep in the murky entrails of this impossible situation. A manservant in black and white stood in the lamp lit corridor, pair of guards behind him with parade ground faces. He proffered a silver tray, in white gloved hands. On the tray lay a mobile phone of venerable design.

‘A call for you, Sir.’

‘Is that you, Ax?’

Ax stepped back into the antechamber and closed the door. ‘Who’s this?’ He knew he should know the voice, but he didn’t.

‘It’s Joss, Joss Pender. Listen, Sage has gone missing.’

‘What—?’

‘I can talk a little, not much. He was supposed to meet me at a restaurant, he didn’t turn up. He reached London. He was with Allie at the Insanitude, then we know he went to Battersea, probably on foot. He went out with Cack Stannen, George and Bill were at the Party in the Park. Then we lose him. They found Cack about ten, wandering around Clapham Junction. George and Bill are talking to him, but it’s difficult to question Peter. Sage didn’t have a phone, no chance of a trace. There may have been some ex-barmies at the Warehouse, earlier today. They may have been offering some kind of information.’

‘Have you? I mean, who else knows about this?’

‘Yes,’ said Joss, dryly. ‘We’ve informed the police. No news yet.’

‘Joss,’ said Ax, thunder in his head, a fury of helplessness. ‘Be careful.’

‘I’ll be careful. I’ll find him, Ax, don’t worry. I have my resources.’ The older man’s voice sounded calm, resolute, fatherly. ‘May I speak to Fiorinda?’

Ax sprinted to the red room, but before he got there the phone was dead.

Greg Mursal never stayed at Wallingham, so far as they were aware. He came down for meetings, and went away again. Lady Anne, the governor of this royal prison, was punctilious in her respects. They did not hear her comings or goings, buried alive as they were, but she would send messages to the Moon and Stars suite: announcing her movements. The next morning a handwritten note arrived, presented on a silver salver. It said she would be remaining at Wallingham, at their disposal, ‘during this distressing time’. A gracious turn of phrase. They wrote back, asking to be informed of any news at once: and prayed for another phonecall from Joss. It didn’t come.

They hoped for something from “Rick’s Place”, but Bill and George didn’t turn up, and the Scots were still in England, but not scheduled to return to Wallingham this week. The punters knew that Sage was out. He had ‘business in town’ (euphemism: everyone knew the real situation, of course). But they worked the crowd, brought up against the fact that they had no friends here, without detecting the slightest rumour that he’d vanished; or that he’d broken his parole. They told themselves that if the disappearence was being kept quiet, that meant it was all right. The enemy had decided that the lawyer-meetings couldn’t happen after all: but Sage was okay and coming back. He should have returned on Sunday morning. He didn’t, and Lady Anne regretted to inform them that there was no news.

The royal prisoners sat at either end of the dining table, a manservant behind Mr Preston’s chair, a womanservant behind Miss Slater’s. Mr Pender’s place was not laid. Courses were presented, in elaborate sequence: an entrée of cold cuts, as it was a Sunday. An asparagus soup, a superb round of beef, with several dishes of plainly cooked vegetables. Traditional English cooking was the rule… They were living dolls in a doll’s house, the Wallingham servants callous children, who insisted on keeping up the dreadful game. Fiorinda barely ate at these meals, she had lost too much weight in two months, it scared Ax. But she did not look weak on it. She looked electric, her pale skin burning from the inside: she was live wire.