Band of Gypsys by Gwyneth Jones Read Free Book Online

around. But I need to grok the idea. I wonder if Toby would give me his code to look at. Just a rough cut?’
    ‘Not if he has any sense, Aoxomoxoa—’
    ‘Who he? Oxo what? Never heard of him. I’m a harmless ignr’ant old codger. Wouldn’t know a dirty stage coup if it jumped up an’ bit me.’
    They laughed, white-water fishes, alight with the joy of battle. ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ suggested Fiorinda. ‘You can coach me in your wicked ways.’
    In St James’s Park, the blossom trees shed petals on steely waters, the Pelicans shivered on Duck Island. It’s April and we live on the same latitude as Moscow, same as we always did. No big deal, but haven’t we done enough? Say what you will about our whacky adventures, surely the world’s carbon emissons have gone through the floor? Not so, say the scientists (as far as they can be heard, through all the rest of the clamour of bad news). Global indicators, where science gets through the NeoFeudal curtain, show no respite. Climate chaos continues and the seas are still rising. You can’t turn an aircraft carrier on a sixpence, but not to worry, the real freeze is unlikely to hit the UK this century.
    ‘Sage,’ said Fiorinda. ‘If I go loopy again—‘
    ‘You won’t.’
    ‘I don’t believe I will, but if … Get me away from here. And keep people like that away from me. Don’t let Toby Starborn anywhere near me .’
    ‘Sure thing.’
    The Triumvirate resumed the quiet talks they’d begun before they left for Paris—with people in the Permanent Civil Service who’d served Ax’s cause for a long time, with Techno-Utopian campsite luminaries of the Permanent Festival; with a group of Countercultural MPs, known as “the Rebels”, who were openly at odds with NeoFeudal government policy. Meetings were hidden under the useful heading of Volunteer Initiative business, and most of the discussion genuinely was about how to feed the masses, without fossil fuel and preferably without slave labour—the same topic that was dreadfully occupying governments of good will everywhere. Much more quietly, Ax and Sage had resumed contact with the Pan-Asian Techno-Green-Utopians who’d once helped Ax to bust the Data Quarantine, on a secret remote-access trip to Hiroshima. As if overnight, the Chinese had a hugely expanded sphere of influence, known as the “Great Peace”. What was going on there? The great unknown of post-Crisis global politics, the story that Westminster didn’t seem to want the country to know, was puzzling work. Suddenly it’s brought home to you can’t take a plane-ride and find out. You have no idea what’s really out there, no idea what might be hidden. No idea, no matter how you safeguard yourselves, who that is, claiming to be an old friend, on the other end of the line.
    Closer to home there was ominously named Neurobomb Working Party. The government wanted to know the truth about what had happened last summer, around the A Team event; and exactly what part the Triumvirate had played, the year before, in the assassination of the so-called “occult monster”, Rufus O’Niall. Their wish must be granted, they could not be put off forever.
    The Working Party came to Buckingham Palace, and were escorted to the upper floor of the North Wing by a young man with floppy, paint-box crimson hair, wearing the dress uniform of the Barmy Army. Ax’s militarised hippies had been disbanded, but he was allowed, for the time being, to maintain a token, ceremonial force in the old Palace; otherwise known as “The Insanitude”. The ruling classes of Second Chamber England viewed the survival of the Barmy Army with horror, but in this case the visitors were relieved to see that their guide carried a holstered sidearm. The North Wing had served as emergency secure accommodation for the most dangerous ‘refugees’, in Boat People summer. The criminal refuse were still in occupation, like rats in a sewer.
    The meeting room was not generously