Castles Made of Sand (36 page)

‘But you did have a ground plan?’

‘Are you recording? I suppose you are, since you record everything. Look, why don’t you give me a list of the questions, and we’ll work something out.’

Takes one to know one. He had spotted at their second meeting that she had a gizmo of somekind in her head. Eyesocket cam, probably. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, crestfallen. ‘I should have asked permission.’

‘Well, it’s customary. But don’t worry about it, I don’t mind.’

So Ax talked—about the Rock and Roll Reich, and the poisoned world, and the music, and Utopia. Luckily people need to be good to each other, it’s as natural to us as greed and murder, arguably more natural, by a small but vital margin, or we wouldn’t have this problem as there would not be several billions of us… They had settled in the Yemen exhibit, a peaceful little upper room with dark red velour couches around the walls.

‘What about the music, is it still important? Or has it become irrelevant?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that.’ Ax turned the ring on his right hand, wondering if this inteview would ever be published. He didn’t see how. ‘I think it’s important, because when we need to prove we have the right to lead, we present our credentials by getting up on stage. By our mastery of the music, our skills, and passion and knowledge… Rock music is about
self-expression
, which has its dangers, but it’s an improvement on who has the biggest war-chest.’

‘But can that kind of power endure? Will the Reich last a thousand years?’

‘I never expected it to last. Something will survive. Nature is profligate, a lot of wonderful things are ephemeral, doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile—’

He was thinking of the love affair. The American girl nodded respectfully.

‘What will you do with this? I thought you weren’t allowed to re-import any kind of digital device once you’ve taken it out of quarantine. Won’t your gizmo be spotted at immigration and destroyed, with all your records?’

‘Not if I declare it. I plan to do that, and have the recording bonded until it can be cleared for downloading. It won’t lose value… There’s just one other thing. Why did Sage write a track about Watergate? That’s so weird.’

He sighed. Okay, forget the Ax Preston spiel. Aoxomoxoa is
much
sexier. Tell me. ‘It’s a beach.’

‘Oh. In what sense? Uh, what kind of a “beach”?’

‘A beach with sand, not an ancient political scandal. A surfing beach in Cornwall.’

She nodded, with the look journalists get when they know you are winding them up. Moving on. ‘Where are the other musketeers this morning?’

‘The other musketeers?’

‘Arek and Alain,’ explained Lurch, with a shy grin.

‘Oh yeah.’ Ax smiled at her. ‘Then I suppose I’ll have to call you D’Artagnan.’

She blushed with pleasure, and looked sweet—a triumph of the human spirit. She’s a very good kid, and when you get to know her you can see it shining, no matter if she’s, er, not conventionally attractive. He’d put some effort into protecting Lurch from the ribald cruelty of the techno-greens (both male and female). But he hadn’t had to make a big deal of it, even with those who most hated and despised the USA. People liked her.

‘The other musketeers are coming down from this,’ he said.‘They have things to do, places to go. They are packing.’

Lurch drew a deep breath. She gazed at him so nervously and solemnly that for a frightful moment he thought he’d have to deal with a sexual proposal. She wants me to take her virginity (no question she’s a virgin). Oh, great.

‘Ax, would you come to the USA?’

He grinned. ‘Yeah, probably, if anybody asked me. I’m a rock musician.’

‘I’m asking. I’m, um, the truth is I’m here for the Internet Commission. I’m empowered to ask you to come back with me and talk about ending the data quarantine. They want to meet you in person. You’re the one they trust.’

Ax was thrown into turmoil. His sense of destiny was rekindled. He had
seen
that Kathryn Adams was worth cultivating, and here was his reward. But the dazzling offer, paradoxically, cruelly, made him feel that he must get back to England. If his lovers wanted him, in spite of everything…then he would go straight home, and the Internet Commissioners could wait.

He couldn’t bring himself to call them direct, though security had been relaxed and he could have done that. He called David Sale instead. He didn’t mention the data quarantine (he didn’t trust the connection that far). He said he’d been asked to intervene in something, and it meant a few more weeks away.

He was still going to quit. But this wasn’t the moment to announce his resignation.

No problem, said David. You have a
wonderful
deputy. You carry on with the great work! He wanted to know how Ax felt about Sage and the Zen Self.

‘He’s been getting some amazing results, but he’s pushing himself
very
hard. I expect you know about it—’

‘Mmm, yeah,’ said Ax. He had not been paying attention to the Zen Self bulletins. ‘So, my partners are getting on fine without me?’

A slight delay. A guilty tone, when David answered.

‘Oh yes… Er, I supposed you’ve talked to them? About this other trip?’

‘Of course I have,’ Ax lied. ‘They want me to go for it.’

So that was how it was. Ax is out of the picture, everyone knows he’s been dumped. Ax can carry on being good will ambassador for as long as he likes, nobody needs him.

He deleted Serendip. He would declare his chip, but he wasn’t going to try taking
her
through US immigration. She was probably a state secret, and a Welsh state secret at that. Goodbye gentle claws in my brain. I’m sorry it wasn’t a closer relationship: some people can be friends with a computer, some can’t… From now on it would be the wrong kind of pidgin Spanish, and the wrong kind of English. He arranged some cloak and dagger stuff to cover his exit, and made the video that would travel back to England.

It had to be short because he was about to break down in tears.

He waited a week in Seattle, confined—no,
asked to stay
—in the hotel room to which he’d been smuggled, in case he was recognised in the street. He thought this was ludicrous until he checked the entertainment and discovered the scads of Rock and Roll Reich sites, cartoons, fanpages, interviews—all pure fiction, none of them admitting this in the smallest print. Oh well, better to be talked about than not talked about… He channel-surfed, honed his openness to unexpected difficulties and off-the-wall opinions, and played guitar to pass the time. From one of his windows he could see into a vacant lot, where two north-west coast native persons had set up house with a mattress and some sodden cardboard. They drummed and sang, on and off, through the drenching spring nights. Just like Brixton, really.

There was a new, exclusive interview with Sage in one of the online glossies. The splash had Fiorinda in a pink party frock, with a wreath of roses (sloppy: she detests pink and she hates cut flowers) gazing up passionately into the eye-sockets of the living skull: a tempting yet decorous opening superimposed—

SAGE ON FIORINDA
When they first met, she was fourteen years old
She’s the wildest, rawest talent in the Rock and Roll Reich
Her boyfriend is the post-human, post-Muslim,
post-modern king of England…
What does Aoxomoxoa really, really think?

He decided he didn’t need to find out.

When the meeting came it was a damp squib. He sat in a spartan office with half a dozen funky leisurewear types, five men, one woman, and they spent an hour saying nothing. Lurch, also present, was deeply, deeply mortified. She asked him to please stick around, more will come of this, give it a chance. Ax had no idea what to do with himself. He had no money. He didn’t care. He lay on his bed in the hotel room, feeling no desire for food, alcohol or any other drug: a million miles away from prayer, without a thought of God, gazing at the Les Paul, which stood in a corner in its case.

On the third day of this themeless meditation the phone rang. He picked up the handset (antique, ivory-coloured, to go with the Art Deco theme of the room). ‘Hi?’ He thought it would be Fiorinda.

‘Hi…’ A male voice, a long pause. ‘Are you Ax Preston?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Uh, heard you were in town. D’you want a gig?’

Thus began the unofficial, low-down, Ax Preston US Tour. He played in the back rooms of bars, in small venues; in the private homes of US musicians. When transport wasn’t provided he travelled by train and bus. He didn’t want a car, and even here, in the heart of empire, air travel was not for normal people any more. He met famous names, he played the Blues where the Blues were born. He slept in cheap rooms and unbelievably fancy rooms, and walked around semi-tropical towns at night when he couldn’t sleep, talking to anyone who offered. He felt like Johnny B. Goode. He knew that to many of the people he met, punters, promoters and musicians equally, he was a curiosity (the post-Muslim, post-modern king of England). But to others he was an interesting, pretty-good guitarist; which was all he wanted to be. And the fingers still worked, though it seemed to him he couldn’t remember the last time he had really played.

Something drained out of him. Some kind of demon.

He knew for the first time how utterly, insanely burnt-out he had been before he left England. He knew that his task as Dictator was over, but that he would return to the struggle, in some way. He had lost everything, and he was happy.

He was in this mood when he got the call summoning him to Washington, DC. It turned out Lurch was a genuine fairy godmother. Ax was going to meet the President. She came to DC herself, and they had a rendezvous at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial Park: FDR looking vulnerable and chipper in his wheelchair by the gift shop, handsome walls of dark red granite, water features. A soup kitchen line of poor people, executed in bronze (strange notion). I HATE WAR, said the writing on the wall. THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF. Lurch was
exalted
, and jittery. They took the lunch she’d brought to a quiet spot by the water. He understood (with more sympathy than he’d felt in Amsterdam) that he was a figure of noble romance to this redoubtable girl; poor kid. On the other hand, she was nervous as a mother hen about the impression he would make on Mr Big.

‘Don’t wear your
it’s the ecology
teeshirt.’

‘I was thinking of wearing my Deep Throat suit.’

‘Huh?’ said Lurch, looking seriously alarmed.

‘Watergate,’ said Ax. ‘Sorry.’

‘Oh. You can see the building you know, it’s on the bus tour. Ax, Fred’s truly smart, but he has to have a handle to pick things up by, and
he thinks you’re in charge
—’

Ax laughed. ‘Whereas you know I’m not. It’s okay, I’m used to that problem.’

Two majestic, angular herons flew over, low and strong like cruising missiles. Grey squirrels and the sparrows chattered in a wealth of green. A squirrel came over and peered at them enquiringly. Ax broke off the crust of his sandwich.

‘Hey, you mustn’t feed them.’

‘Why not?’

‘It creates an artificial food chain.’

Well, God forbid the great US nation should
create an artificial food chain
.

He shook his head. Controlled hilarity at America, part of his cure. ‘You people—’

Lurch gazed at him with reverence. He knew why their rendezvous was at this location. She didn’t need to tell him that she saw him as a new FDR, bearing the great American’s banner into the future that shaped so darkly, not only for Europe but for all the world. ‘I know you’ll do it right.’

Ax met the President at seven a.m. in a room with a tasteful repro version of the Insanitude’s frozen-in-time décor; but stunningly
clean
. It wasn’t the top venue, but at least it was in the West Wing. It was like meeting the most sacred icon of someone else’s religion. You’re not a believer, but you’re affected by the aura. Mr Eiffrich talked about the quarantine (though it was not, he pointed out, strictly his baby). The need for it, and the reasons why the goalposts for restored connectivity had been moved. Yeah, several times… Ax didn’t get the feeling anything was shifting. He got the feeling that the leader of the free world didn’t know what the fuck to do with the funky green Ceremonial Head of State of a former world-class country, that’s totally gone to the dogs—

The party moved on to a buffet breakfast. Ax and the President stood side by side, having scrambled eggs spooned for them. You could get caviar, genuine Russian, with your eggs. Ax declined the luxury. Got any boiled babies?

He kept his tongue behind his teeth. No Lennonisms.

‘I can’t get over your accent,’ said Mr Eiffrich.

Ax was tired of hearing that persons of colour were supposed to speak the same
piccaninny
who’s-in-the-house argot, wherever in the world they were brought up. He was equally tired of hearing that idiotic circumlocution
persons of colour.
He was the only non-white on the eating side of the napery this morning.

‘Put me in the front room, turn out the light, you wouldn’t know if I was black or white.’

‘Hm. I was expecting Estuary English, because you all seem to speak that way now, with some Caribbean, usually it’s Jamaica. But I can’t get your mix at all.’

‘It’s West Country,’ said Ax. ‘With Manchester-Merseyside. The whole music biz is affected by that, it’s historical. Some US English, from tv culture. But there’ll be Jamaica in there, a little. And my mother’s from the Sudan.’

‘Oh? North or South?’ They moved on along the table.

‘North. But she’s a Christian.’

An acute glance. ‘How’d she take your conversion?’

‘My mum takes everything well, Mr Eiffrich.’

‘Call me Fred. C’mon, let’s eat. Let’s talk. Tell me about the Amsterdam gig. My niece, she records everything and sees nothing, you know what I mean?’

The freshness of the morning had gone before Ax left the White House. He drifted at random over green lawns and came to rest at the feet of yet another eighteenth-century minor deity. How the crowds vanish in the vastness of the sacred places, I’m in the ancient world again. He remembered his first meeting with Mohammad, at the end of the Islamic campaign. The recognition, the feeling of rightness. His encounter with Mr Eiffrich had been nothing like that. But it had been a good conversation, good business, a good beginning for a task could be passed on to others; and Ax could start planning his return trip.