Free Rainbow Bridge by Gwyneth Jones

General of the South West was in uniform. He smiled, disarmingly. ‘Mr Preston, good evening. Please imagine that all the proper salutations have been made. I know you’ll want to keep this short.’
    ‘You’re right, and likewise. This is my answer. One day, the ruler of Chu sent two high officials to ask Zhuang Zi to assume control of the government. They found him fishing. He asked them about a famous sacred tortoise, which was kept at the capital in a jewelled casket and had been dead three thousand years. Wouldn’t that tortoise rather be alive and wagging its tail in the mud? The officials had to agree. “Clear off then!” shouted Zhuang Zi. “I, too, will wag my tail in the mud here.” General, you are not asking me to assume control of the government, nor offering me death in a jewelled casket; but my answer is the same. I will wag my tail in the mud.’
    ‘Hahaha! That’s very good! Is that all?’
    ‘I’m afraid you overestimate my importance.’
    The tablet screen winked out. The agent, who had not spoken a word, opened the car door. Ax left the tablet on the seat and walked away. That was it.
    He kept walking, not caring much where he was headed. A frieze of slender tree boles loomed up, twigs stung his face. He was on the brink of one of the heath’s plunging wooded valleys and he knew the self-appointed bodyguard close to him now, the familiar presence like warmth in the cold dark.
    ‘Sage? Is that you?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘That’s not very fucking clever,’ said Ax. ‘Suppose something had gone wrong? You like the idea of Fiorinda left to cope on her own?’
    ‘Insh’allah. You shouldn’t be alone out here.’
    They had been living outdoors since September. They had the night vision of wild animals, they were changing into Ashdown foxes. Or wild boar, timid and savage. Ax sat on a log in the rustling dead bracken, Sage sat beside him.
    ‘How d’you get on with Wang Xili?’
    ‘I played hard to get, it was brief. Who else was following me?’
    ‘It was the Islamics, I’ve sent them back. They’re good, aren’t they?’
    ‘Yeah, but it won’t do… We’ll have to talk to Muhammad, I can’t have those kids following me around. Thank fuck Rich isn’t onto us. That would be hell.’
    ‘Rich is in a world of his own. He thinks the Chinese don’t know you’re here.’
    ‘Corny knows the score. He knows fucking well what he’s leading those damned fools into, and he doesn’t care. He wants it.’
    ‘Carn’ argue with a man in that state of mind.’
    They thought about the irregular army they had joined as rockstar officers, in that long-ago baptism of fire. The idealistic ruffians, the psychos, the villains; some lasting friends. Cornelius had said twenty thousand, he could be right. The Chinese didn’t tolerate recalcitrance, and they were thorough . All those men, and women, were going to die: abandoned and betrayed by Ax Preston and Sage Pender.
    ‘At least they can’t muster many rock bands between them.’
    ‘Not funny, Sage.’
    ‘Sorry.’
    They had spent a decade using the music as a tool of social control, taming the beleaguered English with free concerts; selling Ax’s Utopian manifesto with stirring anthems and spectacular futuristic tech. They had forged rock and roll idealism into a national religion, a passion that made hard times sweet, and it had worked. They believed they could, possibly, do the same again. But the Reich would lose all value to the invaders, awful prospect, if Rich and the barmies started using the same tricks.
    ‘They wouldn’t do it,’ said Ax, after a pause for anxious thought. ‘They’re heartbroken death-wish idiots. They’re not malicious. Well, not much.’
    ‘Mm… In ways it’s going to be worse talking to Muhammad’
    The leader of English Islam had been Ax’s sponsor in the Faith, and a major force in bringing the separatist war to an end. Immensely tolerant, yet respected by the most conservative of his own people,