Read Online Band of Gypsys by Gwyneth Jones - Free Book Online Page B

pulled out a springy red curl and picked at the end of it.
    Chip surveyed the empty table. ‘This Crisis. We thought we knew what a Global Crisis was, but then you get magic psychopaths, you get concentration camps in Norfolk, Paranormal Thermonuclear war, you get… Well, you see what I mean?’
    ‘There’ll be no Paranormal Thermonuclear war,’ said Verlaine, gloomily. ‘No Techno-Magical Utopia either. The bad guys will turn the weirdness into field guns and nerve gas, same as they always do. People like us will be suppressed out of existence, and the doors of perception will be slammed shut, same as it ever was .’
    Fiorinda laughed. ‘You’re probably right. We’ve consistently been afraid of the wrong thing, every time: I’ve noticed that. We won’t get no Hell dimension, something much worse and totally unexpected will come along instead.’
    There were snow flurries in Berkshire on the eve, but Mayday itself dawned chilly, bright and fair. To the Second Chamber’s chagrin, President Ax and his inner circle—the radical rockstars known as “The Few”—would not be appearing live on Main Stage at Reading. Instead they converged on Brixton: Allie Marlowe and Dilip Krishnachandran by taxi, from their amicable separation at the Insanitude; Chip and Verlaine on their bikes from Notting Hill; Rob Nelson and the Powerbabes from Lambeth, in the Snake Eyes’ Big Band’s minibus—bringing with them Anne-Marie Wing, Smelly Hugh and their kids, who’d all come up from the Rivermead Permanent Festival site, the day before. Ironically, considering the Second Chamber’s Green pretensions, there was no public transport on the public holiday.
    By nine am everyone was in Fiorinda’s music room, watching State Event prelims with the helpless fascination of long habit, while a crew of Aoxomoxoa and the Heads techies set the place up as a b-loc studio. Countless street party committees were setting out chairs, crowds in sleeping bags huddled at Big Screen locations. Church bells were swinging, the ropes pumped by hearty and broad-minded Christian-Pagans. Hawthorn blossom unfurled in the hedgerows (CGI, because the flowers were being sulky). Maypole ribbons whirled and wove, last year’s organic bunting fluttered again. In Reading town the route of the motorcade was thronged, although the public knew that Ax and his courtiers weren’t actually going to pass by in the flesh.
    Here they were again, back to where it all began! The Festival Site by the Thames at Rivermead, where thirty thousand “staybehinds” were still encamped, faithful to the wild ideals of Dissolution summer—
    The children had been banished downstairs, with a posse of babysitters: except for Sage’s teenage son from a long defunct relationship, who had an exeat from his boarding school for the holiday weekend. The b-loc techies communed in Geekish with Sage; and with George Merrick, Sage’s second in command, who was running the remote site at Reading. The Few gazed at their former selves in old news footage, with the inevitable feelings of psychic dislocation and style-related distress. The stats on the sidebar were impressive. Apparently this State Event was already being watched by 96% of those people who could get to a screen, and who couldn’t get to Reading.
    Wow. Joe Stalin couldn’t have bettered those figures, with a sky-hook.
    ‘I hope the Stonehenge ceremony comes on again,’ said Anne-Marie. ‘I’ve kept missing it. I was up at six, but it was already over.’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ Felice, senior Powerbabe, assured her. ‘it’ll be back.’
    — known as the Few, to discriminate them from Ax’s original group, the Chosen Few , they followed his star to fame and fortune, as the social leaders of the Revolution’s youth culture —
    Fame of a kind, okay, but fortune? Now that is a JOKE.
    Jeers and groans fell silent when the cameras turned to Reading Arena: the lost heartland. ‘The old home town looks the same,’ crooned