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He shook his head. Controlled hilarity at America, part of his cure. ?You
people 
Lurch gazed at him with reverence. He knew why their rendezvous was at
this location. She didn t need to tell him that she saw him as a new FDR, bearing
the great American s banner into the future that shaped so darkly, not only for
Europe but for all the world. ?I know you ll do it right.
Ax met the President at seven a.m. in a room with a tasteful repro version of
the Insanitude s frozen-in-time décor; but stunningly clean. It wasn t the top
venue, but at least it was in the West Wing. It was like meeting the most sacred
icon of someone else s religion. You re not a believer, but you re affected by the
aura. Mr Eiffrich talked about the quarantine (though it was not, he pointed out,
strictly his baby). The need for it, and the reasons why the goalposts for restored
connectivity had been moved. Yeah, several times . . . Ax didn t get the feeling
anything was shifting. He got the feeling that the leader of the free world didn t
know what the fuck to do with the funky green Ceremonial Head of State of a
former world-class country, that s totally gone to the dogs
The party moved on to a buffet breakfast. Ax and the President stood side by
side, having scrambled eggs spooned for them. You could get caviar, genuine
Russian, with your eggs. Ax declined the luxury. Got any boiled babies?
He kept his tongue behind his teeth. No Lennonisms. ?I can t get over your accent, said Mr Eiffrich.
Ax was tired of hearing that persons of colour were supposed to speak the
same piccaninny who s-in-the-house argot, wherever in the world they were
brought up. He was equally tired of hearing that idiotic circumlocution persons of
colour . He was the only non-white on the eating side of the napery this morning.
?Put me in the front room, turn out the light, you wouldn t know if I was black
or white.
?Hm. I was expecting Estuary English, because you all seem to speak that way
now, with some Caribbean, usually it s Jamaica. But I can t get your mix at all.
?It s West Country, said Ax. ?With Manchester-Merseyside. The whole music
biz is affected by that, it s historical. Some US English, from tv culture. But
there ll be Jamaica in there, a little. And my mother s from the Sudan.
?Oh? North or South? They moved on along the table.
?North. But she s a Christian.
An acute glance. ?How d she take your conversion?
?My mum takes everything well, Mr Eiffrich.
?Call me Fred. C mon, let s eat. Let s talk. Tell me about the Amsterdam gig.
My niece, she records everything and sees nothing, you know what I mean?
The freshness of the morning had gone before Ax left the White House. He
drifted at random over green lawns and came to rest at the feet of yet another
eighteenth-century minor deity. How the crowds vanish in the vastness of the
sacred places, I m in the ancient world again. He remembered his first meeting with Mohammad, at the
end of the Islamic campaign. The recognition, the
feeling of rightness. His encounter with Mr Eiffrich had been nothing like that.
But it had been a good conversation, good business, a good beginning for a task
could be passed on to others; and Ax could start planning his return trip.
It appeared, amazingly enough, that it was Ax Preston s England that had
been snarling-up global connectivity (something he would have had to spin, in
Europe, if he wasn t quitting!). Not the raging civil disorder and social collapse
on the Continent, oh no, no, no. It was the rockstar with the hippy army, taking
over Buckingham Palace. And here s me thinking we were the ones that looked
sensible and reassuring. There you go, no accounting for taste: but now the
President had met Ax, and decided he s an okay sort of guy (the Ax effect again,
weird how it hardly ever fails).
The President of the USA might be only a titular monarch, kind of a Fujiwara,
feudal Japan situation, with the great lords of commerce calling the shots. But he
had friends in high places, reverence for his traditional standing . . . and that s
how things work. Person to person, it always comes back to that. A smile, the
look in someone s eye, an exchange of pheromones, and everything flows.
He sat on the plinth of the statue, thinking about his lovers. He d been
thinking of them a great deal while his mind was on its journey to recovery,
feeling terrible about the way he d left them. How bewildered they must have [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]