Rainbow Bridge (19 page)

Always hearing ’bout that rising tide,
roared the campers.
But we’re still stuck here UP THE CREEK!
Joe grinned, shameless. Toby had presumably also been in on the joke, but no point in nudging him, his mood was worse than ever.

The ‘Daoist nun’ and her missionaries made no remark.

The evening took a worthy turn, after that smashing start. Amateur acts. Norman captured it all meticulously, especially the crowd reactions, but nothing excited him. SWAMP MC were evidently the home favourites. Dressed in sacking, white do-ragged heads and masked in white, they danced onto the stage crouched down like potatoes. One of them had an arresting voice: it turned out to be the jockey from the bus, the girl with the silver hair—

Not exactly original. There was something tame and dull about the whole line-up, this was not the torn, bleeding rock-flesh that Norman sought; not yet. But the Triumvirate, who had never been far away, returned with a generous set of Reich standards, very much what Norman needed; interspersed with what could only be called broad comedy. A gymnastic dance routine that collapsed, because Ax only had little legs. An episode where Fiorinda and Ax taught Sage to play guitar, which involved a very small man on a very tall stool, who came on to arrange a raspberry-pink Stratocaster around Aoxomoxoa’s neck—and concluded with them playing a bravura ‘Apache’ together. The inmates found it all hilarious.

Highly commendable, thoroughly enjoyable, deeply harmless—

Ax, who had shed jacket and shirt during the ‘how to be a guitar god’ sketch, came loping forward, sweat gleaming on his copper-coloured, lean and chiselled torso, guitar slung low, hands above his head, slow-clapping back at the crowd. The lights caught the shine of his eyes, the spray of drops from flying dark hair, and it was the last song, third encore, an old Jamaican rocksteady number (better known to the world in the decadent Blondie version)—

Norman saw the statement he had been brought to England to capture, and was intensely moved. The rock revolution is complete, the rude boys have blown away the rhinestone cowboys, the profit-puppets.
This
is the truth about the music. One man, one figure, small on the wide stage, facing an ocean of humanity:
one
with them, inspiring them, because he is
the best of them.
Superb, patriotic, universal. He worked like a mad man, struggling to get it all down, seamless, before the light of actuality faded. The crowd was in a frenzy, even the soldiers in the director’s box were on their feet, carried away, red-faced in delight—

What impressed Norman was that he knew it was
not
Ax Preston’s ego he saw strutting there, singing his love song to the masses. The guitar-man keeps his formidable ego on another plane, he doesn’t crave adulation. This was iron-willed humility, submission to the greater good. He is the father of his people.

Backstage in the communal dressing room, SWAMP MC were the only Warren Fen stars who’d had the courage to join the A-List party. They fell voraciously on the luxury snacks, and asked Fiorinda and Joe shy questions about Ashdown: their
Woodstock
, and they had missed it. The starvation, the danger, the mud—

‘Only very picky people starved,’ said Fiorinda.

’What was it like being on tour in Sussex?’

‘Mental. Haywards Heath one night, Eastbourne the next.’

‘Fuck.
We’re
going to do a tour, all over Anglia, when we can get permits.’

The luxury snacks comprised a slab of reformed ‘ham’, turned out of its tin, glistening in yellow jelly; a dish of sundried tomatoes, artistically scattered with greying silverskin onions; a tin of withered chocolate biscuits, and a bowl of peach slices. An array of barrel-scrapings, nostalgically familiar to the founder of the Volunteer Initiative. It’s not exactly Jamie Oliver, but you have to feed the drop-out hordes on
something.
The alcohol was a jug of cloudy weak beer. No one touched it except Norman, who sipped crossly at a plastic beaker.

The great director had just discovered that when he’d arranged the onward transport—negotiated for him by the Unoccupied Zone Intelligence Office at Peterborough Fort—he had in fact hired SWAMP MC. They owned a ‘gang’ of fenland lighters, for which they had great dreams; but in the meantime used as a source of income. Norman was not pleased, he felt conspired upon by wannabes.

‘It’s too late to change my plans, but these tricks do not impress.
I am not a talent scout
. I need a crew for the boats, obviously, but
that’s all
.’

‘We have a floating studio and everything,’ Frosty Tucker, young in hope, tried to talk it up. ‘An’ we know our way around, we’ll deal with the tolls, food, an’ accommodation. We can all sleep on the boats if you like.’

‘Never mind that, just tell me how long the trip will take?’

‘About four or five days—?’

The tiger and the wolf had vanished, ‘gone to see a man’: camp code for a hole-in-the-wall serving illicit hard liquor. Norman had ignored their defection. Fiorinda guessed he was briefed to pay no attention if the collaborators disappeared sometimes. But he seemed nervous, under the snappish irritation. He was not so sublimely unaware of Warren’s problems as he made out.

‘Four or five
days
?’ she repeated, suddenly noticing what was wrong with this sentence. ‘What? Where are we going? What happened to Issit?’

They were supposed to leave Warren, tomorrow or the next day, heading for a camp called Issit Farm; around twenty kilometres by water. It was private sector, a Second Chamber build. Likely to be a much rougher ride, but not a long distance trip.

Norman frowned on her. ‘There may have been a rescheduling. Issit was no good, we need contrast. We’re visiting Rainbow Bridge in Suffolk; where the inmates have taken over the asylum. What could be better?’ Cousin Caterpillar wore a fur-lined robe this evening, wide peacock-blue sleeves trimmed in scarlet. He spread his wings, metamorphosing into a plump-bodied butterfly, with a big-eyed death’s head. ‘Did I say the show tonight was
wonderful?
Pure pleasure! Wholesome entertainment, subtle, profound. I see it as a graduation.’

‘I see it as Norman changing the subject.’

‘Fiorinda, we will be perfectly safe. The Unoccupied Zone Intelligence Office assures me there’s no recalcitrant activity in the area we’ll be crossing. We go in peace, we have been
invited
. The Executive Committee welcomed our overtures.’

‘Rainbow Bridge?’ exclaimed Joe, ‘I didn’t know there was a camp called
Rainbow
Bridge
. A Hendrix-themed people-farm! Who the hell thought of that?’

‘The campers,’ Fiorinda told him, distracted. ‘Camps start out with just a number, unless the place already has a name. The campers decide what to call them.’

‘What a blast, wait ’til I get onto my editor—’

Norman glared. ‘You will not “get on to your editor”, Joe. I won’t allow it.’

The Chinese artist-technicians sat in glum silence, in their military uniforms; each of them holding a paper cup of diluted orange concentrate. Toby had not made an appearance after the show.

‘What happened to the staff?’ said Fiorinda. ‘When the inmates took over. Did they join the wild rumpus?’

‘More likely killed and eaten,’ said Joe, cheerfully.

One of the MCs had made himself a sandwich, two slices of pink meat enfolding a rich layer of dried tomato, peach slime and onions. He munched carefully, trying to keep it quiet. The Swamp kids looked from face to face, like dogs trying to understand what’s going on with the humans.

‘
That
was a remark in poor taste, Joe. You know I don’t like ugly humour. Fiorinda, I
told
you I would take you into the unknown. I expect your trust.’

Fiorinda and Joe made their excuses, leaving Norman to get down to business with the Swamp crew. They walked arm in arm to the guesthouse.

‘Oooh, fuck,’ breathed Joe. ‘I’m going to make that call.’

‘You won’t get through.’

‘Someone’s got to know what’s happening to us. This is insane.’

‘The People’s Liberation Army knows what’s happening,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Isn’t that enough? Joe, listen, for all we know, it’s safer than Issit Farm. Norman’s okay.’

But Joe was shaken beyond caution, although the air has ears. ‘Norman says whatever comes into his head. I’ll hook into the Warren callpoint frequency, I won’t use an ID, how will they know to stop the call? Fiorinda, I have a bad feeling—’

She grinned at him, and kissed his cheek.

‘Fear not. We
specified
we don’t do cannibalism.’

‘Live cockroaches?’ asked Joe, with a shaky grin.

‘Definitely nada. I always make sure there’s a no cockroach clause.’

Tucker was waiting for Ax and Sage, outside the stadium after the crowd had cleared. This was not the meeting with the Westberry ‘guys’. This was a side-issue: he wanted to show them something, they knew no more than that; except the bus driver seemed to feel he was taking a very serious step. The rockstars wore anonymous parkas from the guesthouse cloakroom over their induction overalls; hoods well down. ‘Come on,’ said Tucker. There’d been a curfew extension in honour of the concert, but no one had lingered outdoors: they were alone in the alleys. About half a kilometre east of the stadium, between the sweeps of watchtower searchlights, he let them into an access tunnel at the base of the stockade. It was dimly lit by bulkhead lights, the slabs underfoot had a resilience that muffled sound.

‘Why are you living at Warren, Mr Tucker?’ said Ax. ‘You’re not a drop-out.’

‘We live several places, Frosty an’ me. Warren’s a good gaff. Who wouldn’t live here, as long as the gates are open? That’s why it’s stuffed.’

‘What about the commandants?’ asked Sage. ‘Are they coping well?’

‘You want my opinion? There’ll be a warlord for every camp, and Jack Fisher’s on his way. Don’t trust him. Hester’s awright, but she’s chronic sick, got some kind of vax-resistant malaria an’ it makes her weak. Don’t trust her, either.’

‘What happened to the guns? The security guards’ armoury?’

A shrug. ‘They took ’em. It’s not important.’

Through the dull thud of their footsteps they could hear water rushing, somewhere below. Tucker stopped, and drew a breath.

‘I’m comfortable on this side of the Line, Mr Preston.’

‘I think I understand you.’

The man was plunged into dark doubt, and their maña felt paper thin. Almost certainly Tucker was armed, and he could have friends close at hand, they could just vanish. The bus driver sighed, squatted and peeled back one of the floor slabs to reveal an observation hatch. He took a clutch of bent metal rods from inside his jacket, assembled the key, fitted the spider into place and tightened it.

‘Give us a hand, it’s a bugger to lift.’

The plate came up, they rolled it aside. ‘Eight ’er ten grips to the east, on the bottom,’ said Mr Tucker. ‘See what you find. You decide to turn us in to the Chinese, well fuck you. I’ll get the keys back off yer tomorrow.’

He pressed the access tunnel keycard into Ax’s hand, and walked away. Sage shone a pencil light into the hole. A ladder, and a circle of black, moving water.

‘Toss you for it.’

‘Will I fuck. You just had pneumonia.’

‘Walked around with pneumonia, doing fine. I’m fitter than you, and I dive.’

They tossed for it, with a ten p coin Ax kept as a souvenir. Sage won. He stripped off, strapped an ATP flashlight his wrist, left Ax the pencil light, and descended. A minute passed, by Ax’s watch. Sage rose silently, gripping the ladder, a white seal with shadow eyes, a shadow mouth.

‘Well?’

‘Fuckingunbelievablycold, can’tseeathing, try again.’

…Could be worse, could be sewage: can’t smell, but it probably is dilute sewage when the floods are this high. Keep mouth shut. He discovered metal handholds screwed to the wall below water level, and now the instructions made sense. He counted, eight, nine: down, kick, touch a sharp corner, up again. The depth was about three metres, moving moderately fast. Down, grope, okay, yah, there’s contraband in the drain. What the fuck’s that mean? He leaned his forehead against the black, wet wall, thinking: and kicked back to the observation hatch. ‘Ax, do you have a chisel, or a jemmy, or a heavy knife on you?’

‘What’d you find?’

‘Boxes, long and heavy. Arms cache, at a wild guess; long-term. You’d need two blokes and diving gear to get at them in a hurry, where they are now.’

‘Okay, get out, and let’s think how to handle it.’

‘Wait. We know there’s a Resistance cell at Warren, it’s fucking obvious. If the Chinese don’t know, it’s because they’ve decided not to see. Tucker wants us to know something else. Maybe an oxyacetylene torch?’

‘Oh, hey, I have got something—’

Ax pulled the hatch key apart. An arm of the spider was a squared bend of chisel-ended steel, about a centimetre thick. Sage took it down.

He tackled the job methodically: working the plate behind the hasp until the screws loosened, going up for air when he needed to. The current was a problem, but nothing he couldn’t handle. Why’d you give us this, Tucker? Big decision, and yet I felt sure you were recalcitrant to the bone. He shoved the lid up, and groped inside. What is it about these guns? He collected a trophy, and took it back.