Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

facts and inferences; storing them for future reference. The little red headed girl was wearing the yellow ribbon, which meant the long stare she’d given him couldn’t have the straightforward meaning.
    Ax liked yellow ribbon people. It was a good institution, he often wore it himself. It meant you could cut a lot of crap. If someone didn’t want the warning to be respected, if they were just trying to make themselves more desirable, too bad. But why did she look at him like that? Fiorinda. He knew the name. Rufus O’Niall’s daughter, but the less said about that the better. Very young, very angsty: and obviously, now he’d met her, not your average baby-star. Pity about the accent.
    Rob was excited about this development with Paul Javert. And yeah, there was something in it. Pigsty the government stooge, recruited beforehand, the rest of them picked up as filler. For what? Didn’t matter really. Whatever was supposed to be going on, it could be useful to be involved. Ax was wondering if he could keep a low enough profile in a small working party, especially with that mouthy fucker Sage around. He wasn’t ready to make his move, not for a long time yet. In that regard, Pigsty would be useful. A good attention—attractor, nice and loud and ugly. The suits were in the mood to abase themselves before ugly , and you could understand why.
    The Pig was right. The government had to make a deal with the so—called Counterculture. The current GM related crop failures, and home-wrecker floods in previously unaffected venues, hadn’t improved a situation that was getting rapidly out of hand. The UK’s share of the world’s weather and food disasters weren’t killers, (if you really want to be scared, look at the multi-drug-resistant TB and viral pneumonia deaths!), but they’d brought public morale to the tipping point. It was I told you so time, and the Extreme Greens, the Hardline Counterculturals, whatever they called themselves, were making the most of it, reaping the whirlwind. There were outlaw bands of eco-warriors roaming unchecked, ‘releasing’ farm animals, trashing science parks, sabotaging consumerism any way that occurred to them—and gaining more support, not less, from Middle England, as the violence increased. And at the back of it all, the great economic meltdown, inescapable anywhere in Europe.
    Classic situation. Frightening situation.
    Got to admire Paul Javert’s nerve. He must have known he’d get slaughtered. But it was pitiful. The fast-track government types thought they were razor-sharp, keen political minds. It went right by them that they’d been breathing the same shit atmosphere, feeding on the same poisons as their idiot voters. That’s how they ended up coming to the only people who might handle the CCM for them, scouting for advertising copy.
    He paused in his pacing. What if he could actually do it, one day? Take control, turn the situation around? Then he could look forward to becoming as deluded and full-of-shit as one of those suits this afternoon; and then later there’d be the fun of watching everything he’d achieved trashed to fuck by the next new wave.
    Unless he saved them the trouble by ruining it all himself.
    Still be worth it, he decided. I understand the deal, and I accept.
    Footsteps, that had failed to penetrate his reverie, suddenly sounded close and loud. A solitary armoured policeman was coming towards him.
    ‘Evening, Sir.’
    ‘Evening, officer.’
    ‘Or morning, I should say. It’s past two o’clock. Would you mind telling me what you’re doing down here, Sir?’
    ‘Thinking.’
    The upper part of the man’s face was concealed: a chinguard reached almost to his nose. The mask of armour studied Ax impassibly.
    ‘It’s not very safe, at this hour. Any ID on you, Sir?’
    Ax felt a white light dawning in his brain: the certainty of destiny. He produced the plastic card that identified him as one of the Home Secretary’s chosen. The policeman