Midnight Lamp (35 page)

It was eleven thirty when they took a break before the finale. Sage’s immix had so far been lo-key, no different from a lightshow: except that these fx would leave no trace on photographic film or any conventional recording media. In the break, the amphitheatre became a nest of coloured lightnings. Sage was out there alone, doodling on the videographics desks, that the English called visionboards: setting something up, bantering with the front rows. Apparitions flickered over the hillsides and played through the crowd. You might feel a hand touch you, or find an impish face looking over your shoulder; hear the brush of wings, see animals running by: all of it really happening only in your brain. Whatever that meant. Anticipation climbed, some of it mediated by those little immix tweaks. The brain gets very alert in response to out of context perceptions; it’s thinking to itself (so to speak)
what the fuck’s going on.
There was also the thrill of the cutting edge. The people knew they were getting an unprecedented show, devised by the first person to use direct cortical stimuli for entertainment. They’d read it in their programme notes.

Cherry and Dora, Chip and Verlaine, gripped hands at the back of the stage.

‘You realise we’re her occult group?’ whispered Chip.

‘Don’t
say
that,’ hissed Cherry, furiously. ‘This is science.’

‘There’s no difference any more, Chez. Honestly, no fucking lie, magic came in from the cold, finally, last summer. It’s real and it’s staying real.’

‘Fuck off, shut up and c’mon, we’re on.’

There will be no encores, announced Sage. This is it. And I wonder what it can be? A Beatles medley? Laughter. Opening chords, and a
wave
of laughter. Oh, he has them in his hands, like always. But don’t touch him, he’s a real live wire-

Relax!

On
Unmasked
, their collection of golden oldies, the Heads perversely elected to treat the notorious Frankie Goes To Hollywood track as a nursery rhyme. So this was what the Few enacted, to that joyous childish beat. A kids’ version, a Disneyland version, a little child on tiptoe, dazzle-smiled at a wonder show (can you imagine sex like that?), and it segued into the immix finale which took possession of the Hollywood Bowl: something wicked and innocent, a puckish spirit, doing sneakily impossible things, so that the audience saw the dancers on stage dancing into the air, and they went marching around up there, candy-coloured costumes repeating in mirror cascades, bright-eyed faces springing into focus and flying away again; bands of dancers arm in arm, high-kicking, treading hamster wheel circuits on the darkness, spinning into spirals, a Busby Berkeley phantasmagoria, a mocking, teasing, thrilling compliment to tinsel-town.

The Los Angelenos loved it. They were on their feet, en masse, clapping and prancing, chanting the lyrics, grinning in delight. When the wheels ran down and the children all came home, and there was no one left on the stage but the maestro, they stayed on their feet yelling and stomping, until he’d put away the last of the coloured toys, to the fading notes of a nursery rhyme, on solo guitar.

Ax came out of the shadows. ‘This is for Fiorinda,’ he said quietly, leaning to the old fashioned upright mic that had been set up, under cover of the Immix. None of her music had been played all night. Silence fell. Ax played, and the two men sang, yearning close together. No fireworks, no sexy electric frisson between the guitar man and the crowd-teaser this time.

Put your sweet lips a little closer to the phone
Pretend that we’re together, and alone—

The sound of their voices, Ax’s lighter tone blending with Sage’s soft and deep, died away. The stage was perfectly dark now, except for their single spot. Every light in the canyon was quenched, and Fiorinda’s voice came from very far away, but quickly growing clear and strong.

The Angelenos held their breath, anticipation ramped til their ears rang. Sage stepped back behind the desks, and donned an eyewrap. ‘That means he’s doing this live,’ whispered an Immix vet in the cheaper seats, wisely, to her novice friend. ‘He’s reading what’s happening to the code when it hits us, and feeding the results back into it. I didn’t know you could do that in an open space.’

‘Sssh!’ muttered the neighbour—

Ax moved into the solo that he’d written for ‘Love Is Like Water’ on
Yellow Girl
. He was aware of the Few behind him in the shadows, and Sage beside him, incandescent with nervous energy. He was so afraid he was going to lose both of them, he wanted to yell STOP THIS, but the words fell and broke on the boards. All he could do was play, fear like the taste of metal in his mouth, she was my country, I lived in her,
I’m going to lose both of them
, right here and now, because Sage is trying to cut and paste
the real world
as if it’s the software of a video game, as if reality can be chopped about like graphics code, but there’s only one way he can do it, and he’ll never come back this time.

But he must play, and feel the others with him—

Something appeared in the sky above the canyon. It seemed like a leaf-shaped split in the sky, then it was a flame, a shooting star, flying towards them from high up in the darkness, spinning as it flew. ‘Ah!’ breathed Dilip, falling to his knees, ‘Ah, Shiva Natraj!’ Allie Marlowe pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, but she could not control what she saw, nothing would blot out the letters, Yod-Hé-Vau-Hé,
damn you Sage, don’t you do this to me!
She realised in horror that she was resisting the immix that would bring Fiorinda home, and let the name of God fill her mind, so be it, ה ו ת י whatever image works.

I can do this
, thought Sage, amazed,
not well
, (the code flowed into his eyes and out of his fingers, the hand/eye physicality an essential adjuvant), nothing like as slick as in nature, but I can see, wow, have to be fast, what needs to be done and get there, by any means necessary, but my God! He genuinely had not understood, had barely thought about what he would have to be doing to get her back: only seen the result he needed and the ways to reach there, oh, fuck! You and I, Janelle Firdous, movie maker, because you lead me here, are the first two people to decipher information space. Jan, where are you, you should be here!

Look!

Look! What we can see!

And nothing more, because at this point Sage lost it, completely. He couldn’t think, he had become a white-hot conduit for what was happening. The clouds parted and down she came, flying, wearing the image that Sage’s code had clothed her in, a summoning from an antique fantasy game, and landed tiptoe, in front of Ax, a slender opalescent goddess, power gleaming in the swell of her naked breasts, grey eyes astonished. Sage left the desk, they fell at her feet, they held her hands, warm and living, for a moment
she was there
, not a goddess, not a ghost, Fiorinda standing on the stage clutching their hands, opening her lips to speak, the penumbra of another place around her, and something stands out, what the fuck is that…?

Sage cried, ah, shit, no, no, no, please—

She was gone.

Ax came out of a monstrous, wracking, dry orgasm to find himself on his knees on the stage at the Hollywood Bowl, clutching Sage’s hands, in the blank of his mind something saying,
I did not fail, in England. I did well
.

‘There was something in the way,’ whispered Sage, his face taking shape from primordial nothingness, white and shadowed, drained and haggard as if he’d run a marathon (where have I been?, wondered Ax: where was I just now?).

‘I nearly had her, Ax, but there was something in the way.’

He wiped his eyes.

‘But I know. I
know
.’

At seven am the morning after the concert, the Few had gathered in the dry whirlpool. Doug and the security crew were with them: Sage and Ax had been out in the courtyard to watch the morning sky, and had brought the guards indoors. They could afford to leave the gatehouse empty, they surely had plenty other professional minders, out there in the dunes. The smouldering herbs in the Aztec bowl were a different mix: a sharp, arousing acrid scent, not that they needed anything to wake them up. They were still in the penumbra, the aftershock of last night. The spa was intensely blue, the echoes supernatural; every friend’s face supercharged with meaning.

If the Few were glowing, the leaders of the pack were incandescent. They sat with her empty place between them, poised on the edge of flight, radiating the insane degree of energy and will that had once
ruled
the English nation: only more so. Ax had his timber wolf look: steely power; smiling alertness. Sage was like a beautiful gargoyle, a grin he couldn’t control, wide-open eyes on fire.

‘Now we have to go to this meeting, and ideally we won’t be coming back… Ah, sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it came out.’

They were to meet the secret Committee, at the Digital Artists village this time. They meant to go after Fiorinda straight from there, because they felt time was running out fast. They did not know where she was
yet
, but no problem, they knew where to get the information. They were frightening their friends—

‘We won’t be coming back because we’ll be leaving LA directly,’ Ax clarified. ‘So this is the last briefing-’

‘What if the fuckers pin you down and throw you in stir?’ asked Rob.

‘Why should they?’ reasoned Ax.

‘They won’t,’ said Sage, with really alarming assurance.

Because they’ll spot that you’re off your heads, thought Rob: but it wouldn’t help, so he didn’t say it. Truth was, he didn’t want to hold them back, if he had known a way to try. They were convincing him, just like long ago.

‘Oh shit,’ said Dora, ‘
Don’t
go in there and shoot your way out, Sage.’

Sage heard Fiorinda’s voice, just her sweet, womanly and exasperated tone.

‘I won’t, Dor. I may not sound like it, but I’m in control. Truly. But we’re leaving you, so before I go I want to teach you all to die.’

The Few accepted that they weren’t coming on the rescue expedition. Doug and his men were not so happy, but they were staying behind too.

Doug bristled. ‘No one’s gonna die, Sage. This place is very defensible. If a situation develops, we’ll handle it an’ scream for the cops.’

Ax said, ‘We know you’ll handle any conventional trouble Doug.’

‘It’s something I can do,’ Sage explained, carefully. ‘I’ve thought of it before, because we get into these bad situations, but then it’s gone out of my mind, and this seems like the moment. I can’t make you invulnerable, some of you refuse to pick up a weapon. I’d feel happier if I knew you had a way to leave this mortal coil and be okay about the experience, no matter what.’

They knew he was talking about the doomsday scenario. Nobody cared to ask what Sage
knew,
if he had found out, last night, when he touched Fiorinda, that she’d been right all along and the Fat Boy was coming—

‘I’ll take it,’ said Cherry, at once. ‘That sounds worth knowing.’

‘Good. What about the rest of you?’

Dilip, Chip and Verlaine, the Zen Self neuronauts, glanced at each other. That was interesting, something going on with Chez. There’d never been a girl labrat. It would have to wait for another time.

‘Will this be a religious thing?’ asked Allie. She had not forgiven Sage for pasting the Tetragrammaton on the inside of her skull, where it lingered, slowly degrading. ‘Because if it is, I don’t want it.’

‘No, it will be a brain chemistry thing, involving neurosteroids and a trick mental exercise. An’ I didn’t
do that
to you, Allie. I push the buttons, I can’t help what comes up on your screen.’

The rest made their feelings known, nobody left the basement. Sage tested them for contraindications, dosed them, and taught them how to use the altered state which they’d now be able to trigger, in extreme conditions. The whole thing took about an hour and a half. And then goodbye, no big farewells.

You’re on your own, folks.

They raced up the stairs to the Triumvirate suite, already doomed to be rockstar late for the meeting: but Allie would get onto that. Their packs were in the Rugrat. Ransacking the rooms for last minute items took only minutes. They still needed to shower and change their clothes, but when the ransacking was done they crashed. Needless to say, they had not slept.

‘We ought to eat.’

‘How about alcohol?’ suggested Sage, ‘plenty of calories in alcohol.’

‘Okay, go for it. Me too.’

The tequila was cool but not frosty, and it calmed them. They sat facing each other, across a stylish coffee table, and it’s strange how memory works. Sage suddenly remembered a night that had not crossed his mind for years. At the end of the Islamic campaign, they’d sat together like this in a hotel room in Leeds, and he’d declared his love and his allegiance to this man, his brother-enemy, his rival. Nothing homosexual, mind you. Good God, no.