Hallucinating (12 page)
...attack attack attack attack...
Collected in Glastonbury like pebbles 'pon a beach, those of the human resistance who know the score await new moon. Nulight and Kappa are there, wary of one another though not actually at loggerheads. Master Sengel and van der Woofer are there, but not the leather dude or Sir Trance-alot, who are overseeing operations in Tintagel. Amongst the minors knocking around are Partzephanaiah still trying to patch up relations between the Avalon Parliament and the Tor People, the druids Robbie Blacksword and Winston Gongswoon from the Street Community, needed for protection more than anything, and all those of the High Street Community in on the deal—Slim Ciggie and DJ Human, plus Dreadboy the networks wiz. With Djo and Sperm, this makes twelve anxious folk awaiting new moon and the news it will inevitably bring.
And then it is the night of the new moon. Kappa tries to find out if they have any long range communication with Tintagel, but she gets no response. She suspects not. Master Sengel, off-line even before the invasion, would never risk e-leaks to the blue bastards, and seems to be relying on the leather dude.
The sun sets. Glowing salmon clouds fade to maroon, to purple, to grey, and Venus shines bright on the distant horizon. Miles away, the ten-foot beeswax candles of the Somerset Leveller People shine bright, like a swarm of fireflies above a flooded marsh. Avalon is cool; just footsteps echoing on empty streets, and the distant thunk-thunk of peace engines on the Tor slopes. A sense of expectancy made palpable by the atmospherics of post-invasion quietude is abroad tonight.
Then Nulight hears the sound of a motor bike engine. He is standing with Robbie, Winston, Djo and Kappa at the green where the Street Community meets the Greenfield Community.
"Is that him?" he asks, nervously glancing at Kappa.
"Sounds like a Harley," mutters Winston in his gruff voice.
"Gotta be the leather dude," Nulight says, nodding to himself.
The noise becomes louder, fades, is suddenly near, and then at the leading edge of a shower of gravel and grass they see the Harley. But the leather dude has no time for small talk. Without stopping he roars on to the Chalice Well, pointing at them, then in the direction of his master. Nulight can see his expression. The dude is shit scared.
They all run back.
The Chalice Well is chaotic. Master Sengel is distributing magic mushrooms to all and sundry. "Quick!" he shouts, as Nulight and the gang approach.
"Man, what gives?" says Nulight.
"Disaster," says Master Sengel. He points to the rows of electronically enhanced djembes lined up outside the entrance. "Get these shrooms down you, but hold on to your mind—they'll be brain active almost straight away. Come on—they'll be here soon."
"Who?" they cry.
"The aliens!"
Nulight crams his mouth full of shrooms and chews upon Nature's bitter fungal harvest, understanding that Master Sengel believes an attack to be imminent, that they will need to be tripped out if they are to repulse the attack via djembe bass power.
"What happened?" Djo asks Master Sengel.
"Bad luck with the magick bullet. It failed to lodge inside the aliens' knowledge systems, and they were able to remix it into a three minute auton pop single, thereby neutralising its melodic potency. In a nutshell—we're shafted."
Nulight feels his legs go weak. "But, hey," he says, voice quavering, "like, how do they know we're here, man?"
"Oh, they know all right," Master Sengel assures him. "Shroomed up? Right. Grab a djembe and get used to playing it. You're tall, grab that big one with the Celtic twirls. If we're lucky, we can fight them off by acting as an improvisational orchestra."
Nulight runs over to where Kappa stands. The couple walk towards a tree, where they can talk in privacy.
"He knew this was going to happen," says Kappa.
"Who? Master Sengel?"
"He had an idea it was going to go wrong, oh, a week ago at least. He seemed fidgety. He put off firing the magic bullet. Something's up."
"What?"
"I don't know. But if I survive this, I'm going to ask him."
Nulight peers up into the sky. If they survive this...
"Kappa, sweets, it's okay. We can pull through."
"I hope so."
They hug, and for a moment Nulight and Kappa are reunited, as of old. Then they both look up at the clouds and wait.
The mushrooms have their effect. And then the aliens come.
They are a shower of black obsidian shards each trailing a wake of rainbow hue. They swoop like slo-mo hawks, leaving the clouds tie-dyed with their exhaust fumes, so that the sky goes trippy. Nulight lies down in the dust between Kappa and Djo, resting his head against the tree trunk, then, with the djembe between his legs, pointing its lower end into the sky. He taps at the skin. A massive bass boom leaps out, and he can see it radiate at Mach One, looking like pure packet of dark and feline energy. The bass whooms of the others are also leaping into the sky, and the whole appears as a herd of translucent beasts, eating the alien vibes, but also curling up and dying under that inscrutable energy. Then van der Woofer calls out one, two,
three,
four, five,
six,
and suddenly a gorgeous waltz-time vibe is orchestrated, and their djembes are empowered and in unison until the sonic herd becomes an organised stampede reaching out to the parentships.
Those parentships rock and roll like paper darts, but then they send out rainbow shoots, like the roots of some aerial plant neutralising the cosmic sub-bass of the djembe sound wave. And so the battle commences.
With the parentships circling like vultures, it is at first a struggle between colour and bass. The air thrums and bends under the pressure of the djembe orchestra, and Nulight's ears begin to burn. But after some time, the roots are winning. The organised sound of the orchestra is simply not strong enough, and despite the players' trippy vision they cannot push back the descending tide. Now the sky is basically an Yves Tanguy canvas, with the roots of each parentship joining up in order to reflect the sub-bass.
Then Master Sengel brings out his secret weapon. Because he has taken lysergic rather than psilocybin, he sees the battlefield deeper than the others. Like a conductor, he stands and picks up a deraboukah, which, Nulight notices, is electronically enhanced like the djembes. When he taps its bright and resonant rim, a beam of pure Arabic sound stabs into the swirl of colour that floats a few hundred feet above the town. Rents are made as if in stormclouds, and the rainbow root-mass is torn. Great surges of bass vibe pass through these rents, and once more the parentships are tossed upon a sonic sea. The roots break up, and the sky begins to clear.
Just as they think they have made the decisive move, the aliens bring out their secret weapon.
It looks like a pair of blue arms emerging out of the parentship flock. The hands on the ends of these arms take the bass stampede and octave it up one, forty hertz to eighty in a single pinch. Nulight understand that this is the visible aspect of pitch shifter software controlled by the aliens' knowledge systems. They will make the bass harmless by converting it into a tweeting patter.
In vain Master Sengel tries to open up more rents with piercing deraboukah attacks. The sound stabs out like a searchlight beam, but it is too late. And the djembe in Nulight's hands is being affected by feedback, as the bass it produces and monitors is octaved up. It squirms like an injured animal. It wishes to point away from the arms.
The djembe action becomes disorganised. Suddenly Master Sengel turns and runs. "Retreat!" he shouts.
It is the last word of the Glastonbury conflict. Kappa is up on her feet, Djo too, and then the two women pull Nulight up. They stumble away. The sky bleeds colour. The djembes are writhing on the ground like the mutilated bodies of soldiers caught in some horrific bomb blast. The trio flee the scene, bent over, their heads down, eyes half closed.
And that is it. Sticky colour leaches out of the air and covers the Chalice Well like algae. The resistance is over. The very streets of Glastonbury are infected with an alien vibe. Indoors, people cower, though they are at least safe under their roofs. Kiddies scream, though; a terrible sound. Computers are down, servers dead. The air stinks of alien joss. The parentships swoop low, admire their work, then return to orbit a hundred miles up.
...to go out into the country...
After the rout, Nulight, Kappa and Djo find themselves back at the Chalice Well, which is attar stinky and covered with rainbow slime. They have to decide what to do.
First of all, well away from Djo's ears, Nulight and Kappa decide to make a new vow. Nulight says, "I still love you, despite everything—you know, our differences. Let's go out into the countryside and make a new resistance from the raw material out there—the people and their heartfelt music. You and me together again. Yeah?"
Kappa nods.
"A quest," Nulight continues, "a quest to find something that'll send the aliens away forever."
"Our Holy Gr—"
"No!" Nulight frowns. "Man, nuthin' Christian, no
way.
We'll take pagan thought and raw music and weld it into a Gaian whole. Yeah, that'll repel the aliens, something from deep within us, something old and primal."
They call Djo back. She agrees to travel with them, at least for the forseeable future. Then Sperm appears, and he wants to go too. So they become a quartet.
Nice.
They find Master Sengel and inform him of their plan. The man is deflated, pale-faced, depressed. "All right," he says. "Yours is as good a plan as any. At least we are still resisting."
"What will you do?" Kappa asks him.
"I shall remain here and reform my organisation. I still have my people. But I will listen out for rumour of you, and I'm sure we'll meet again."
Kappa nods. "We'll meet again one sunny day. Here?"
"Yes, here. I have no plans to move from Glastonbury."
Kappa hesitates, then says, "You should have fired the magick bullet straight away."
He nods. "I hesitated, hoping for mystical aid. Also..."
Here comes the important bit.
"... I realised that the Tru-Rah scene was not going to be a suitable vehicle. It had no cutting edge."
"Like, no
sword?
" Nulight asks.
Master Sengel nods. "Our metaphor was incomplete, and so the music was too sweet—too pretty, perhaps. I sent my people down to Cornwall to look for Excalibur, but they did not find it. And so it is that your quest gives me hope. Somewhere, out there in beautiful Britain, lies a weapon that will cut the aliens apart. For I still believe in Tru-Rah."
Nulight looks away. He thinks this is nonsense. So he nods and keeps his thoughts to himself. "Goodbye, Master Sengel," he says. "See ya around."
They file away from the Chalice Well.
Out of earshot, Nulight says, "We gotta go out into the country and find the heart of our new music. We'll forge something completely new, yeah, make it good and strong, and then, fuck, we'll
use
it."
"Music as a weapon?" Djo asks.
Nulight shakes his head. "Master Sengel's gobshite did at least point me in the right direction. The thing is not to use music as a weapon—that was his mistake. We need to find a human music that
can't be remixed.
" He pauses, then whispers, "Man, it's out there somewhere, and we gotta find it. And then we gotta spread it."
Everybody understands. The pre-invasion music of the twenty first century, with a few exceptions, was stripped of melody, and therefore of meaning. That was why the aliens were able to use the musical metaphor, develop auton, introduce it to the human world and then take over. Had the music they first encountered been melodic and meaningful, well, the invasion might have been impossible. Or perhaps they were around in the nineteen sixties, cursing the potency of the Beatles...
The quartet must become troubadours, and the tunes they find must become the heart of a new culture.
...PART THREE: THE QUEST...
CHAPTER ELEVEN
...heading for Avebury...
So under hot'n'heavy summer skies the foursome move away from Glastonbury and head north-east to the mystical zone of Avebury, which, they reckon, will be the best place to make for in the first instance. And it is a sad time and a hopeful one; certainly, yeah, a heavy time.
Nulight and Kappa and Djo and Sperm are this foursome, the Farout Four they oh-so-amusingly title themselves. But there are four others, for they have two pack ponies to carry their essential gear—their limited food stores, the water bottles that they refill from streams and brooks, items for bartering (for money is a no-no in post-invasion Britain), clothes and all that stuff; tampons of the ancient Japanese paper variety. And of course their musical instruments. The ponies are called Rubycon and Ricochet, the former a stolid grey, the latter a flighty dun. Animals no.3 and no.4 are a pair of whippets that they have on strings: Incense, who is the darker dog, and Peppermint, who is the lighter. These two mutts are required at night, when sites of camp need to be guarded.
They have their quest to keep them warm at night. They have the sensation of
resistance.
Two days out of Glasto they decide on their name. They are to be the New Pagan Troubadours. Mission: to find beautiful new songs and use them against the aliens. (Quite how is as yet undecided.) Nulight is a new man, energised, vivid, planning, thinking, and happy to be with his beloved Kappa once again. She feels the same. Djo is content with her lot, and Sperm, never one for talking, seems OK.
This being a non-electric band—for the whole point is to reject computer electro knob-twiddling culture—they all have acoustic instruments. Nulight has a trumpet, an instrument that he is rediscovering with joy, while Kappa sings and has her steel-string guitar. Nulight also dabbles with hand percussion and shakers. Sperm is the main guitarist, liking his acoustic Sony 25EK-X six-string and his mandolin, while Djo, shorn of her DJ gear, though not a bad keyboards lady, has managed to find an Indian harmonium that she is learning to play. They hope to find an accordion for her. This, then, is the template of the foursome: guitars strumming, songs and instruments, shakings and patterings of hand percussion. It's a great sound, and they revel in their new freedom.
The weather remains summery as they amble through the Somerset landscape. It is a bit like walking through Tolkien's leafy and pleasant Shire, the land green and welcoming, rivers and streams, no rain, fluffy white clouds chasing each other across the sky.
But they avoid cities, and even towns. A year ago, when global technological society was
remixed
by the aliens, the vast majority of urban dwellers found themselves unable to support themselves, and they died. Economic, political and all communications networks began working to an alien tune, and this tune was incomprehensible. Europe to Britain to America to Japan: all urban societies lacking access to agriculture found themselves living without incoming food. In days, just days, there was panic. Some fled into the countryside, where, repelled by village communities, they died of starvation. Then disease, panic, battles for food, more death, and the cessation of all technological and most mechanical systems. Many appalling tales filtered through to surviving communities. The Wellington Inn minstrels of Boscastle sang such tales, and often they were silenced, because this is a reality too awful to contemplate.
A reality that is now a year old. The land is silent and decentralised. Villages and hamlets are the norm. No cars, an occasional motor bike; a few electric vehicles in the west, where wind power is concentrated and where batteries can be recharged. Many bicycles, alot of horses and ponies. And a hell of alot of walking.
...so, arriving at the circle of stones...
Avebury turns out to be a small community. A few hundred people, not all of them living in the village itself, for there are dozens of new hamlets around the ancient site, have set up an agricultural society which grows enough food to last the year. There being a complete absence of national government, there being little communication from the world outside, the people have arranged themselves into a loose collection of farmers, craftsmen, guards and child-carers. It transpires that a handful of elected elders manage this place. It works because it has to work. The apocalypse left no alternative.
So Nulight and his band arrive the day before Lughnasadh, one of the eight festivals on the pagan wheel of the year—Celtic festival of harvesting and good, golden things from the earth. This being Wiltshire, the soil is phenomenal, deep and really fertile, and Nulight knows there will be many other such communities in the county. He grins. Stonehenge will be reactivated, used, at long last, in the manner that was originally intended.
Kappa wipes the grin off his face with a single glance. They have discussed this before. Millions of Brits have died. It would have been preferable for this not to have happened.
As they walk up the stone corridor leading to the ancient circle, they spot a tall dude hurrying towards them. He boasts a beard, tash and long grey hair, but he is dressed in what looks like a skirt (possibly a sarong) decorated with yellow crescent moons; his upper half bare and sweaty. A few yards away he stops and shouts, "Hello? Who are you?"
Nulight shouts back, "Greetings! We're peaceful, man. No need to worry. I'm Nulight, and this is my band."
"Band?"
"The New Pagan Troubadours. Hey, can we, like,
visit
the circle?"
The dude approaches. "Nulight? You mean—"
"You know my name? Voiceoftibet records."
"Long gone," the dude remarks in a wistful voice.
Nulight thinks he is safe here. He nods. "Who're you, man?"
The dude reaches out to shake Nulight's hand. "Ilex Power. I am one of the elders of Avebury."
"Nice to meet you." Nulight introduces the rest of the band and is mildly freaked out to learn that Ilex has heard of Sperm, on account of being a bit of a six-string mangler himself. Some years ago, anyhow. Ten minutes later they are sitting on grass-hay at the edge of the circle, sweaty, whiffy, but cooling off in the shadow of a huge upright stone. This vibe feels good.
"So tell me why you're here," says Ilex.
"Us and Master Sengel... you've heard of him?"
"Sure."
"Him and us and a few others tried to take out the alien parentship systems with a melodic bullet, but the plan failed. You see, we're on a quest, man, a quest to find new British pagan songs that we're gonna use to resist the aliens. This is our first stop, yeah? And it's really good to see you."
Ilex Power nods. "All this sounds commendable. I can't comment on your chances of success, though. How are you managing for food? You've got no settlement supporting you."
"Man, you're not wrong. We've got some supplies, but we're..." Nulight grins, then laughs. "... we're kinda busking for our food. Living off occasional surpluses, off the land, off our supplies, off what people give us. So it's Lughnasadh tomorrow? Feed us big-style and we'll perform for you. For your festi. That sound cool?"
"It sounds cool to me. I will put it to the others. If we agree, all's well."
"And if you don't?" Kappa asks.
Ilex shrugs. "That is not very likely. I don't claim to be the boss here, but I'm, well, influential. Consider yourselves one of us for a day or so. These are your pack horses?"
Nulight nods. "And mutts for protection."
"Seen any bandits, then?"
"Nope."
Ilex's face turns serious. "You will. Be ready for them. We've heard some pretty hair-raising stories, being so close to Swindon and everything."
"We're avoiding cities and towns."
"Give them a berth of at least five miles. But wherever you go, you'll be attacked."
"Oh, sure, we were always ready for that," Nulight remarks, even though, as a pacifist, he is concerned by the idea of physical combat... hand-to-hand with knives...
Ilex gets up and leads them into the village, where they meet a considerable number of folks. The general look is tatty and grubby, but the cloth here is good and strong, and these are not people on the edge of starvation. It's just that most techno-conveniences are a thing of the past. It's like stepping back to 1900. The air smells of grain and flowers and aerobically decaying sewage. These dudes have got themselves sorted out, which is why they have survived.
"So you had a food surplus this year?" Kappa asks.
"We were lucky," Ilex replies. "There was a tiny surplus of fruit and berries that the community gathered during the autumn after the invasion—plus reserves of, you know, tinned stuff—and then a nice fat grain surplus this year." His face takes on a contemplative look. "Which is why we have had to train up a few strong lasses to guard our granaries twenty-four seven. You can't be too careful these days."
Nulight nods. "Sure. This is the new reality, man."
...ancient fire-festival of the god Lugh...
This must be August 1st. That's the normal date for Lughnasadh.
Anyhow, they sleep well, out in the open in their blankets and stuff, and they wake at dawn. Already people are wandering around preparing for the festi. The New Pagan Troubadours dig out their instruments and begin rehearsing a few tunes, nothing original, nothing yet that is of the land, but melodious songs that people are going to have a good chance of knowing: foot-tappers, mostly, with a few wistful ones thrown in near the end. A nicely rounded set, in other words. And it is interesting to note how many Beatles songs people know, getting on for a century after that eight-year rule. And Nulight, who not so long ago mocked the tunes of Lennon and McCartney, is now, in the solitary silence of his mind, eating his words and regretting his scorn for melody.
Melody, he knows, is the key to this quest.
From whence cometh melody?
Is it possible that Lennon and McCartney have already created a new British folk music to last the centuries? Hmmm...
The festival follows the traditional form. Many people are out in fields of sunny grass, harvesting ears, grinding them into flour and baking loaves from these first grains. This is the annual killing of John Barleycorn. Songs are sung out in the fields as the people go about their task, and there is much merry-making, drinking, and sporting competitions where the youths of Avebury try to win small prizes. It is a whirl of heat and light and action. Shades are worn, but only out of necessity, for today is a celebration of heat upon the earth and the crop maturation this brings.
It is also, according to long tradition, a time of hiring. There are serious men and women who do not partake of the happy festi, and these are older folk who have to hire employees for the coming year. Lugh is the god of crafts skill and of wisdom, and this is reflected in the serious demeanour of the older people.
Elsewhere, young people are making corn dollies from the best ears, shaking out the grains for sowing next year.
It is while Nulight and Kappa are out in a field with Ilex Power and a number of villagers that the first strains of a remarkable song are heard. Nulight stands up, his scythe motionless. He can hear a tune. He raises his hand to his brow to blot out the glare of the sun, and then he can see a group of women in the adjacent field, singing this song. He turns to Kappa and says, "I can hear something."
Ilex says, "That's a local song called John Barleycorn. I don't know who wrote it."
"It's old," somebody else volunteers.
Nulight's spine is tingling as the melody of this Lughnasadh tune passes across the wheat and enters his ears. This is the one! He is sure of it. In a moment he is running through the wheat and standing at the hedge, listening, imagining chords underneath, experiencing the beauty of this simple tune. Oh yes, it has the quality of a folk tune, this one; that strange sensation of being at once familiar and yet brand new.
Kappa is at his side. Soon they have heard the song a few times—there are only eight verses—and they have memorised it. Nulight rushes back to Ilex and says, "This is the one, man! This is our first tune."
Ilex nods. He understands. "You may take it with you on your quest. Mould it into the first song of your set. There should be eight songs in all. The last one, well, that will be something special."
Nulight nods. "Yeah, right—midsummer is special."
Ilex laughs, long and heartily. "You bet! Now you had better go and prepare the underlying chordage with Sperm."
Without answering, Nulight and Kappa run back to the stone circle, where they find Sperm playing on a battered flatback bouzouki that some kind soul has given him. He grins when he sees them, for the pleasure of his new toy. They sit at his side and Kappa sings the song in its entirety, unaccompanied. Sperm takes his Sony 25EK-X and tries a few chords, to find that, as Kappa is singing it now, the lowest chord is an F sharp. Because he desires the ringing open strings of an E, they detune by a tone and reset the song, and after half an hour of work they have captured it—chords and melody and words.
That evening they play their first hesitant version to the crowds eating newly baked bread inside the stone circle. Much ale and cider has been drunk and so there is no shortage of people willing to give an opinion, but the general feeling is that the New Pagan Troubadours have done rather a good job of recasting John Barleycorn. Nulight is so
up
he cannot contain his excitement. Soon he is pissed on cider and dancing around like a madman. It is indeed a jolly evening.
Meanwhile, concealed by deepening night and by a tall stone, Ilex Power and Djo are shagging. (There is no danger of pregnancy as Djo got herself sterilised at the age of nineteen. Regarding VD, she metaphorically flicks a suitably irresponsible V to that possibility.) Afterwards, sipping cider, they discuss the quest.
"You are cool with Nulight's unusual idea?" Ilex asks her.
"I am," Djo replies. "I saw at once that it was going to be good, though I'm still not sure I'll be with them all the way."
"I think you will be."