Rainbow Bridge (31 page)

‘It’s in her notes,’ said Bill. ‘We’ve got them here.’

‘We are Gaians. We do not use the knife on a mother’s body.’ The woman raised her hands, as did many of the others, making the goddess mudra popularly known as ‘the yoni with eyes’. ‘The mother’s body is Gaia.’

‘She needs a Caesar,’ repeated George, sweat of panic breaking out.

‘And she’s going to
get
one,’ snapped Bill.

George had an automatic pistol under his coat. It wasn’t contraband. General Yen had required them either to assign a firearms officer, or have armed squaddies on their sites. He’d brought it with him, thinking recklessly,
power is power
. Better do it now. He slipped his hand into his jacket. The armed women saw the movement. Their eyes flashed, in fear or readiness. All these years, unlike Ax and Sage, George had often been carrying, never fired in anger. But there’s got to be a first time—

Fiorinda stood where George had set her down, looking up at the Grey Lady of Amsterdam. The Grey Lady looked back at her; the wooden totem stooped to lay her hands Fiorinda’s shoulders. ‘Thank you,’ said Fiorinda.

Oh, fuck. Better do something, before George gets in awful trouble—

‘Holy Mother.’ She gripped the back of a chaise lounge, solid Victoriana. They saw her reckless mouth pulled into a tight line; she breathed short, let the contraction pass and spoke. ‘I’ve got a brilliant idea.
Make an exception
. Just for me.’

The Holy Mother, thank God, agreed to let them bring a surgeon. But it must be a woman, and she had to be brought to the Priory: Fiorinda wasn’t going anywhere.

Allie stayed with Fio, the van was handed over to them outside the house. George took the wheel: Charm was so knocked back by the trap she’d led them into that she didn’t protest at his male dominance. It was starting to rain.

‘They had no right to fucking snatch your scarf like that, Janan,’ said Bill. Janan was George’s ladyfriend.

‘They
hate
Islam at that place,’ she said. ‘It’s prejudice, they don’t know who I am. Women-hating bastards can be any religion.’

A few metres down the track George pulled up. Rain smacked the windshield. He checked the fuel gauge, not bad, he made sure the Routemaster was up to date. Find a female surgeon, quickly. Does it have to be an obstetrics specialist, or will a fucking vet do? He was very shaken.

‘Are you okay, George?’

‘Need to regroup. Can you help us, Janan?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Why not use a phone?’ demanded Bill. ‘If not, we could be screwed.’

‘And get overheard by the liberators? The wimmin are
Gaia worshippers
, mon,’ snapped Charm. ‘That’s Counterculture wi’ a bullet. Fio
can’t
be in there.’

‘Right, so we agree on a story—’

One of the warriors had followed them. She rapped on George’s window for him to lower it, and stuck her head in. ‘Whoever you bring back, better not be a Muslim. Don’t care who it’s for.’ She glared at Janan. ‘We only take Islamics if they’ve packed it in.’ She withdrew her head, and hurried off into the rain.

‘Great,’ muttered Bill. ‘Bet that narrows it down, round here, eh, Janan?’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Charm, doubtfully. ‘But it’s desperate.’

Allie waited in the birthing room. The Gaians brought Fiorinda, bathed, and dressed in a sleeveless grey shift. Her eyes were quiet, she was smiling. ‘Fio,’ whispered Allie, ‘is this place okay? Are you going to be okay?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Fiorinda, sadly. ‘Maybe not. Maybe my little shoot is going to die, because she can’t get out. But I’m sorry I lost it. I’m all right now.’

‘I’ve got your bag here. Do you want anything?’

Fiorinda recoiled, her pupils flaring. ‘Put that outside! Get it away from me!’

She changed her mind later, she had to have the tapestry bag in sight, but as far away as possible. Allie had to move it around the room few of times.

The contractions slowed, but Fiorinda had no peace. Her body shook with useless pain, shook with useless pain. The midwives—a succession, as Birch brought her colleagues for consultation—examined her at intervals. Fiorinda’s cervix was damaged: whatever the Gaians tried, it refused to dilate. They said
every labour is different
, and
it’s early days
, but Allie knew they were scared.

The rain continued, beating on the walls and windows of the Priory, the bare trees and the grey dales. Allie had been her sister’s birth-partner, she’d looked forward to sharing this day with Fiorinda. She was well-prepared, but she soon stopped asking questions. The midwives had a lot of skill, powerful herbal medicines, and not much tech. There was nothing they could do.

Fiorinda thought of going to look for a sharp knife, but Allie would stop her, the nuns would hold her down, let me keep some dignity.
I cannot get out, said the starling
… Shoot will not die straight away, soon I will think of something. Crouched at the head of the bed, nursing her rigid belly, she heard the scraping of Allie’s chair. Hands coaxed her to lie down, as the spasm passed. A face looked at her, a Chinese face, framed between a military cap and a streaming wet raincape. Oh fuck, we’re busted. She was past caring. The face said something in Chinese, went away, and there was Charm Dudley’s triumphant mug instead.

‘Who loves ye, princess? Here’s the lady wi’ the knife. We got hor frem Skipton Fort fre ye, affta gannin aal around the houses.’

‘They don’t have women.’

‘They dee, man. People’s Liberation Army lasses don’t bother dressing up in girl-suits. Ye dinna haveta, princess. It’s not law.’

When she grasped that she wasn’t going to be moved to a Chinese military hospital, Fiorinda was so relieved she got arrogant and reminded everyone she’d booked an epidural. She was frightened of a General, you woke up sterilised; or had that happened later? The surgeon and her anaesthetist said (in US English) no way, lady, you’re going under. They assured her they would do it by acupuncture needles, which didn’t sound too good. She held Allie’s hand and watched them get ready, capped and masked, the sound of the rain.

‘Elder Sister is not alone,’ she murmured. ‘What’s your name?’

The knife-lady said, in English, ‘Doctor Mao. My name is Mao Huafeng.’

‘Hua means flower,’ said Fiorinda, ‘what character is Feng?’

‘I’ll write it for you. Now relax.’

She felt a change in her blood, a new mix of hormones, the sweet flowing oxytocin, which she thought she would call Sage, and something slippery, fibrous, darker, that’s the prostaglandins, I’ll call that my Ax. Oh, she thought, mutinous, I was just scared, I could have done it by myself.

Later, when Fiorinda’s friends poured out their epic tale, she found it hard to believe it had all happened in daylight. What she remembered was waking from the anaesthetic to find Huafeng and the anaesthetist gone, a Gaian midwife putting her baby into her arms and a very confused dream about Sage’s van in the middle of the night: her father grinning, a garden with no flowers, George being attacked by fairy warriors; and the Grey Lady. All right, she had been in a poor state, but
surely
it had been dark, the whole time. She didn’t argue the point. The Few brought gifts, warm clothes and food, and toys the baby might like in a few years’ time. They gabbled about driving all around the hospitals, running out of fuel, and finally resorting to Skipton Fort, in desperation. Charm had a personal contact there, who’d got them directly to the women’s medical team office. They’d explained how Ms Slater had been caught short, and forced to seek help at an unfortunate venue. Dr Mao had agreed to come to the rescue, no reprisals for the Priory.

Charm claimed a victory for dyke internationalism. Fiorinda thought it was typically Chinese. They make the rules, they break the rules, as it suits them.

They were dancing in the rain, Charm said. All the Chinese, in their pretty uniforms,
dancing
in the rain, on a parade ground walled in white-gold
di
—

She had a neat wound across the top of her pubic hair, which reminded her queasily of Toby Starborn. The grey-clad nurses left her alone a great deal; and that was good. Between feeding and nappies, getting her wound dressed and meals she didn’t like, she practised walking about, holding her baby. Chinese soldiers, dancing in the rain. Yen’s troops were from the north, they came from country that was no longer habitable, oh, that’s another problem…

She knew no one else had seen the statue come alive. The Goddess stooping to touch her shoulders had come from deep inside herself, where there was an open door to the silent ocean; where her father and all the demons that had ever scared her vanished into nothing. Things like that would happen, more often. The aberrant observations had been validated, and their power would grow. Oh, the genie’s not going to go back into the bottle. But she hoped and believed that the superweapon could still be erased. She had sweated and fought with all her power against the rise of the magical world view, but the strange world on the other side of this transistion time wouldn’t be all bad. Let go, let go. She lay for hours holding the baby’s tiny hand, and learned acceptance, and made her peace.

The Few only visited her once. Her boyfriends didn’t even call. When she braved the tapestry bag, which had terrified her in the birthing room, because the saltbox was in there, she discovered she didn’t have a phone with her. The nurses said that she should treasure this sacred time with her new baby. It dawned on her, after a few days, that she was (in the nicest possible way) a prisoner. Or so they thought. She had clothes and money. Fuck it. When I’m ready, I’ll simply walk out.

On the seventh, or maybe eighth, night she lay awake, the baby sleeping in her cradle at the end of the bed. Her room was on the first floor, at the back of the house. Every night the nurses closed her curtains, Fiorinda waited for the women to go, and opened them again… From her bed she watched tossing branches and the dim, rain-filled sky; and listened to stealthy movement. Someone was climbing up the wall. The catch on her sash window shifted, as if it were haunted. The lower half rose, a figure clambered in. Fiorinda didn’t stir. It was thrilling to lie and watch, unsuspected; and yes, it
was
goodbye to a sacred time, no more just you and me, baby—

She sat up, struck a match and lit her bedside lamp.

‘What did you do to the guards?’

Sage pulled off his balaclava. ‘Nothing. What guards?’

‘We came over the wall,’ said Ax. ‘From the moor, like foxes.’

‘We’ve been in Skipton, trying to get inside here. Finally suborned a nun—’

‘A pub-going nun: she told us which was your room.’

‘We were fucking scared, we thought she might be pissing us around, an’ we’d find ourselves invading Mother Superior’s boudoir—’

Fiorinda laughed. They were like little boys, bringing her the wild dark and the fresh night air and their delight in adventure. Then for a moment they didn’t know what to do with each other. Such a transition, they felt like strangers.

Sage came to the bed and sat down. He took her hands. ‘I wasn’t there,’ he said. ‘Oh, Fiorinda. I did it again. I left you all alone.’

So the Few had talked. All right, I had a slight fugue. Can’t I
ever
lose the plot without people telling tales? ‘It was nothing,’ she said. ‘I was in no danger,
truly
.’ She wanted to brush it off, but his gravity invaded her. She felt the weight of his dying body in her arms, and the whisper of the tide at Drumbeg, through the hands of the living man. ‘You did not desert me, Sage. You never will. You are always with me, on the beach at Roaring Water Bay.’

Ax peeled off his own terrorist headgear, went to the bedroom door and turned the key in the ancient lock. Should give them time to hide under the bed if the nuns came. Fiorinda was holding Sage and whispering: Ax felt they had private business; he wouldn’t intrude. His attention was caught by the cradle, at the foot of her bed.

Oh, God. That’s the baby.

A pair of candles stood on the mantelpiece. He lit one, and took it to the cradle. That’s Fiorinda’s baby girl. That’s what this was all about. She seemed big for her age, but he had never really
looked
at other newborns. She lay on her back, the dome of her head covered by a fine dark thatch, her little mouth snuffing at the edge of a knitted blanket. Insenseate need to get closer, he set the candlestick on a stand that held baby-care things and knelt, brooding over her.
Hi, little shoot, d’you remember me? Good news, You can have a proper name now…
That blanket’s getting in her mouth. He reached into her domain, very carefully, his hand seeming rough as a brick and enormous, to tuck it back. The baby opened her eyes and gazed up at him, without a sound.

‘Hey, Sage—’

‘Yeah?’ Sage sat up and hugged Fiorinda hard, making her yelp. ‘Sorry.’ He wiped his eyes with the side of his hand. ‘What?’

She was grinning at him like starlight.

‘Think I’ve got something of yours over here, maestro.’

Sage sat on the bed holding the baby, having picked her up with an insouciant confidence Ax envied. Ax, however, had Fiorinda, warm and pliant against his side, and thought it a fair exchange. ‘Oh, hey, you have a souvenir from Elder Sister. A memento of our Anglian adventure.’ He reached for his backpack and gave her the present, still wrapped in rather battered gold tissue.

‘It’s not for the baby?’ Only baby presents were interesting.

‘She didn’t know your baby would be born.’

The package held an envelope, and a jewellery case with a message taped to the lid, saying DECORATIONS WILL BE WORN. It was diamonds.

‘Hmph,’ said Fiorinda, and set them aside; ‘very nice.’ She opened the envelope and scanned the document inside, a wry smile dawning.

‘What is it?’

‘Unbelievable. It’s your papers, Ax.’

Overseas Chinese were safe, judged citizens of the Sphere. It was the ethnics of satellite nations, and the Debatable Cases, who had the problem. How many mixed-race persons can
prove
, once suspicion has been raised, that they are ten generations clear of Chinese DNA? Not fucking many, especially given that ‘Chinese DNA’ was a meaningless punitive concept to start with. Not Ax Preston, with those pretty almond-shaped brown eyes, and no idea what’s in his dad’s family tree. As far as they knew there had been no forcible transfers from England to Guangdong re-education camps; yet. But it was a threat the Chinese had used routinely in other countries.