They all laughed, except Janis. They rested in the ruins of a gutted gas-station, smoking. There was no danger; there was no petrol.
‘We’ve done it,’ Janis grated. ‘We fucking did it ourselves.’ She saw the fetch nodding vigorously, in a patch of sunlight. ‘We pushed the barb into the cities. It’s in the blood now. In the bone. Like radioactivity. “Barb”, ha, ha. Can’t get them out.’ She felt dizzy and weak and reckless. She looked around at faces that faded like fetches in the sunlight.
Dark now, even the sunlight. Everything tipped sideways.
When she came round she was in a camp-bed. Wills came in and told her she was at least five weeks overdue for leave.
‘You should have told me, Taine.’
‘I didn’t know,’ she said surprised at herself. ‘I thought we just had to keep going.’
‘Yeah, we do,’ Wills said. ‘But not all the time.’ He grinned. ‘Enjoy your leave, soldier.’
She made her way back to Uxbridge, astonished at how normality itself had shifted, at how much everything cost. Transport took tattered wads of her star-stamped sterling dollars: the Republic’s currency, stellars. Good for astronomical prices, the joke went. She arrived at the flat early in the morning, reached in her pocket for a key, then laughed at herself and rang the bell. Sonya came to the door, blinking, and stared at Janis before bursting into smiles and tears and giving her an awkward, leaning-over hug; she was four months pregnant. Jerome joined them a moment later, and made breakfast.
She tried to eat slowly, like a civilian, half-listening to Sonya’s resumé of all that had happened to all their acquaintances, half-answering her questions, while scanning the cable channels with a sharper hunger. She paused at a suddenly familiar name…
‘…would you advise, Mr Wilde?’
Wilde. Moh had talked about him…she’d come across articles here and there that Jordan had written, arguing or agreeing with him…
Cut to a face like an Amerind tribal elder, looking directly at the camera, not at the interviewer: ‘There may come a day for a last stand. But this is not it. I appeal to all who may be considering it: don’t. Don’t destroy our town to save it. Remember how the West saw off the Stalinists and the Islamists. The fun-loving, freedom-loving decadent West undermined and subverted its enemies by making them be like itself, not by becoming grim and hard and serious like them. Those who had the most laughs had the last laugh. So when the soldiers come in, let them be welcome, and life may surprise us.’
‘Thank you, Mr Wilde. Of course we’ll be following this situation very closely, but right now we have to take a break—’
Breakfast-food commercial.
‘Any idea what that was about?’
Sonya frowned. ‘Politics?’ she suggested.
Janis found her room as she’d left it, still a mess. She checked her maiclass="underline" most of it had been forwarded from the university. Offprints were still coming from Da Nang Phytochemicals. And the grant cheque, in B-marks: a fortune. She figured she was owed it – the project had been a success. She would cash it hurriedly to gold, body-belt the Slovorands.
She found an invitation to a wedding. She looked at it, took in the date. She looked at the time, looked at herself in the mirror, then went to look for Sonya.
Some things didn’t change.
20
The Queen of the Maybe
She pushed open the heavy door of the Lord Carrington, flashed her invitation at the door heavy, and walked into a haze of smoke and a tolerable volume of music. The Precentors were on the stage, their images faint in the filtering sunlight of a February afternoon.
She smiled to herself, remembering, and looked over the crowd as she absently passed her coat – and a bag containing the dismantled parts of the gun – to a small woman sitting between two overloaded racks of coats and weapons. She slung the small leather bag containing the gun’s CPU over one shoulder. Glancing down, she saw sensors peering over the edge of the bag, hooded by its flap. She brushed her hands over her dress – black velvet bodice, short bottle-green taffeta skirt over black net – feeling strange and exposed in it. It had been months since she’d worn anything but combat gear or put anything on her face that wasn’t meant to hide it.
Jordan was sitting at a table talking to some people she vaguely recognized from the Collective. He saw her, stared at her for a moment and then jumped up and bounded over to her. They threw their arms around each other.
‘Oh, wow, Janis! It’s great to see you. Good of you to make it.’
‘Hey, good of you to ask me, man. Congratulations.’ She caught his shoulder and held him at arm’s-length, looking him up and down critically. He had lost weight and seemed to have gained height. Black boots, black jeans, black leather coat, plain white cotton shirt with a black bootlace tie. ‘Very smart you look too. Kinda like a gamblin’ mahn…or a preacher mahn…hey!’ she added with mock suspicion. ‘You didn’t do it in a church, did you?’
‘Haill, no!’ said Jordan. ‘We got a ceremony from the British Humanist Association.’ He laughed, and repeated, as if amused and amazed by the whole idea, ‘The British Humanist Association! God, I had no idea atheism could be respectable.’
‘Songs by Carly Simon, readings from Alex Comfort, that sort of thing?’
‘That sort of thing.’
‘I wish I could have been there,’ Janis said. ‘But I only got back this morning to my old flat in Uxbridge and found the invite. This is my first leave. Uh, thanks for your letter. Did you get—?’
‘Yeah, I did, Janis. Thanks.’
He looked at her so sadly that she wanted to grab him and tell him everything, but instead she squeezed his shoulder and said, ‘I’m all right, Jordan. Now come on, take me to see your—’
She saw the bride coming round the corner of the bar and walking towards them; she held the image, taking it all in, storing it not only for the ghost that shared her vision but for herself. The girl was eye-wateringly beautiful; in her wedding dress she looked like a princess of the galaxy from an improbable future. Her hair, a nimbus around her head and falling back between her shoulderblades, made any veil redundant. Her dress fitted closely to her arms, breasts, waist and hips, twined with flower and leaves, re-embroidered in blazing natural colour on white lace. The lace flowed away into a crepe skirt which flared from above the knee, floating freely when she walked, hanging almost vertical when she stood still.
Janis blinked and took the hand that had been held out to her.
‘Hello, Janis.’
‘Hello, Cat. It’s wonderful to meet you. And today. I don’t know what to say. Congratulations.’ She hugged Cat and Jordan together. ‘Goddess, Cat, you look incredible. I’ve never seen a dress like that anywhere.’
‘Thank you.’ Cat smiled, stretching and flexing her arms. ‘I feel as if I could do anything in it. Run, swim, walk up walls. Fly.’
Jordan answered the unstated question. ‘She’s not telling,’ he said. ‘I suspect an arrangement with a colony of nimble-fingered faerie folk.’ He looked past Cat. ‘Just a minute.’ He plunged into the crowd and tapped a young woman on the shoulder and started talking to her.
‘Does he often rush off and talk to strange girls in pubs?’ Janis asked.
‘All the time.’
Janis had worried about this moment. If she and Jordan were affected by Moh’s death, how must it be for Cat, who had known him longer than either of them, loved him for years? She wanted to acknowledge this, yet didn’t want to cloud Cat’s happiness. Just standing next to the woman was like being in a sunlit garden.
‘Drink?’ Cat asked.
‘Uh, vodka-cola, thanks.’