Rainbow Bridge by Gwyneth Jones Read Free Book Online

prevailed in the Reich HQ. The marquee, meant for workshops and meetings at summer festivals, was impossible to heat, but they had battened the hatches, lowered the ceiling sheets and were making liberal use of blankets. Cats and babies were tucked away in the security of an inner section. Off in their own space, Muhammad’s Islamic youngsters sat in a neat corral of bedrolls, having a religious discussion in Arabic with their shaykh: Who could have foretold, a hundred years ago, that the creation of wealth would lead to utter destruction? Are the infidel not justified in reproaching GOD?
    It needed no foretelling for us to know that profit amassed by the oppression of the poor was a transgression—
    The Triumvirate had arrived early, lured by the promise of hot showers. Sage was getting his rows reconstructed by Dora Devine’s expert hands, while Ax worked on embedded tangles in Fiorinda’s curls. Call it superstition, but it was important that he didn’t resort to scissors. Desultory conversation passed around.
    Thank God they’d given up storing the tour gear at the Insanitude, before the last disaster struck. Their roadshow had been discovered and impounded, but Hu Qinfu had handed everything back, lacking only the forbidden tech. So he’s not a total crook. Thank God you’re such a hoarder, Allie. The admin-queen had never allowed obsolete hardware to be thrown away—
    Nathalie Que, the Vietnamese ceramics artist who’d been Dilip’s last squeeze, and ended up trapped in the siege, was still with them. She sat close to Allie, by the brazier (the other brazier was with the babies), and kept reaching out to charge it. ‘Don’t be dumb,’ said Allie, catching the girl’s spider-fragile hand. ‘You’ll pass out.’
    As an alternative energy source, ATP was doomed. A gene therapy that allows you to turbo your own chemical energy production, and even add it to the local grid, only works when people have plenty more food than they need.
    Nathalie had lost her terror of ending up in a Guandong re-education camp (a real danger for ethnics of the New Autonomous Regions, the countries that used to be China’s immediate neighbours). Her current dream was that Ax would use his mighty influence to get her repatriated to Hanoi.
    ‘I have relatives, I can prove right of citizenship, if my case is opened—’
    You inherit your boyfriend’s clueless little babe. You hate her, but you get attached to her, as if she was his old coat, and all she wants to do is to leave you too. Allie, arms around her knees, rubbed her cheek against the sleeve of her beloved Gucci jacket. Fuck it. I will have love-affairs with my clothes.
    ‘Natty, you know, Ax might never be able to help you.’
    ‘Oh, he will. I hear the way they talk about him on Joyous Liberation news. The Chinese hold Ax in the highest respect.’
    ‘They don’t say much.’
    Nathalie smiled, with irritating confidence. ‘Wait and see.’
    Fiorinda talked to festinet with an earbead and a throat mike, ignoring Ax’s labour of love. Apparently the extra pease porridge for the free meals had been made with garlic, and the poor didn’t like it.
    ‘Tell them it’s boosting their immune systems… What’s wrong with garlic? Oh, all right, how much garlic?… Okay I will come and taste it…’
    ‘There, all done. The miracle of hair conditioner.’
    The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down to comb their hair . Where’s that from? Ax had a feeling he wouldn’t like the ref if he could place it. He twisted up a handful of springing, shining copper silk, kissed her nape and went to look at the 18 th October map, which was spread on a flexible e-broadsheet, on a table of boxes. The occupied zones made an irregular butterfly bow, south-west to north-east, leaving Cumbria, Sussex and the whole eastern flank untouched. He knew that shape, aside from the anomaly of unoccupied Sussex (and we know why they did that). The Chinese had subdued the Reich’s heartlands,