Free Castles Made of Sand by Gwyneth Jones Page A

me,’ said Ax, ‘I need your teacher. Sage, do you mind?’
    Not ambling, stumbling. As was grey in the face, hands visibly shaking.
    ‘Okay, class dismissed.’
    The children scattered, Ax sat down. ‘Sage. Do you think you’ll live to be old?’
    ‘Oh yeah,’ said Sage, judging that live fast die young was not what Ax was looking for. ‘Very old.’ He spoke slowly, gently taking Ax’s wrist in his left hand. ‘I reckon I’ll quit gigging when I’m a hundred, before it gets undignified, an’ I’ll take up gardening. Or I’ll keep koi. I like fish. Ax, what the fuck have you been doing to yourself?’
    The pulse was not good.
    ‘I met Verlaine. He gave me a, stuff called snapshot. Oh God, Sage— ’
    ‘Sssh. Let’s see.’ Sage touched his righthand fingertips to the sweat on Ax’s upper lip and put the taste in his mouth. He had enough of the drug in his system that he might get some idea of what had happened—
    ‘Oh,’ he said, sombrely, a moment later. ‘Unlucky, Ax. You have to be careful with Snap. It goes for the jugular, if you give it a chance. Well, it seems I can tell you two things. What you saw is further off than you think. And I will be there.’
    Ax’s heart gave another terrible leap. He was in a garden, and this old man was crying in this other old man’s arms. Oh God , those arms, still hard and taut, carrying with them such a freight of memory, of decades, of conviction, of reality , oh God, unbearable —
    Wrong thing to say… Sage saw Ax’s eyes burst wide in horror and had to catch the falling body. ‘Ah, no . Ax, babe, I didn’t mean to sound like that, I’m a bastard, you caught me off guard. Hey, it doesn’t last , it’s a bad dream, it’ll be gone, few seconds, hang on—’
    But Ax was out. Sage laid him down, slapping his phone implant—
    ‘George! George , get over here. Now . Bring the First Aid… Shit . Where is that little fucker? I will kill him.’
    Ax came to lying in an outdoor passageway backstage of the Blue Lagoon. George Merrick was beside him, the white picnic hamper that was the Heads’ First Aid kit open on the grass. Bill Trevor was sitting in a plastic chair, between the two of them and the world, casually on guard. There was no one else around. He took a deep breath and sat up. Had he walked here or been carried here? Some fleeting memory of a dream, gone the instant he tried to focus on it, and what happened ? I took some brain candy from Verlaine, that nearly gave me a heart attack.
    ‘Hi, George,’ he said. ‘What’s the screen say?’
    George took a pull on a fat joint, and handed it. ‘Sez you’ll do.’ He peeled a telltale from the back of Ax’s hand, stowed it and shut the box. ‘Looks like snapshot’s not your drug.’
    ‘I would agree,’ said Ax, with feeling. ‘Ah, shit, my head. Got any painkillers?’
    ‘You’re not supposed to take that stuff except in lab conditions. You c’n have a half an aspirin. Pain is a warning, Ax. It’s there ’cos you need it. You driving?’
    Head Ideology occasionally bears a suspicious resemblance to Primitive Methodism at its most hardnosed. If you’re meant to suffer you suffer , fuck it. But George and Ax had had that conversation. Never argue with a Cornishman about his religion.
    ‘No, I’m not driving. Think I’ll pass on the aspirin. Where’s Sage?’
    George and Bill exchanged a glance. George decided Ax didn’t need to know what was probably happening to Kevin Verlaine right at this moment.
    ‘I think ’e went back to his class.’
    ‘Right,’ said Ax, who had clocked the glance. He leaned over to give the joint to Bill: and decided he would make no more pathetic attempts at reconciliation. Enough is enough. In future he would play this exactly the way Sage wanted it.
    Life goes on. Fiorinda recorded her vocals for the Heads’new album (still under tight wraps) at the Battersea studio, and though she didn’t pretend she was having fun you’d never have known it