Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones Page B

been held. It was full of lights, people were rushing about. News of the incident in the Park had clearly already arrived. The Organs and the hippie goons left their rifles in the vans, but they were probably still armed: no one dared to make a break for it. Maybe no one even thought of trying. The Pig lead them with a swagger, talking to someone all the while on a radiophone. He used his keycard to pass through security doors, up to the familiar room. How strange the place looked now: the stately indifferent pictures on the walls, the coffee trolley in the corner.
    ‘Sit down.’
    One of the Organs brought in a small tv and put it on the trolley, where everyone could see it. They saw the scene in the Park. Benny Preminder (whose absence from the reception nobody had noticed) was on the screen, standing against a background of flashing lights, darkness, bloodstained people wrapped in blankets, sobbing people being comforted; covered stretchers being carried. The reporter with him was explaining to camera, for probably the fiftieth time, that armed ultra-greens had burst in on the Home Secretary’s reception and opened fire, killing at least thirty people; and that Pigsty Liver and the Organs had retaliated.
    ‘Mr Preminder, what happened here? Can you explain why the security was so inadequate, at an event of this kind? And how did Pigsty and the band come to be armed?’
    ‘These are not normal times,’ said Benny Prem. ‘In extreme cases, normal rules do not apply. If it hadn’t been for Pigsty’s ability to fight back, there would have been a lot more casualties before the police arrived. As it is, many innocent lives have been spared. Surely a horrific incident like this proves that those on the positive side of the Countecultural Movement have to be free to fight fire with fire.’
    This is what it was about, thought Fiorinda. This, not nothing. Feeling like a guilty child. They had all of them stayed out playing by the riverside too long, refusing to go home (but Fiorinda never, never wanted to go home): and this is what happens. The monsters get you.
    ‘Prem can be on the tv,’ said Pigsty, dismissively. ‘He can do the talking. That’s his shit. Now I’ll tell you something Prem doesn’t know. We’re setting off the Green Blitzkreig, as of tomorrow. It’s gonna happen all over, there’s a shitload of us, finally going for it, no more pissing around. We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more. Gonna save our mother earth, in England’s green and pleasant land, and I want to do a proper job of it. The only question is, are you brainy types going to help me?’ He reached down, pulled the big handgun out of the waistband of his leather jodphurs, cocked it and rested it on the table. He grinned at them. ‘Or not?’
    A moment of stunned readjustment, then Ax says, ‘yeah, I’ll help you. Get me some maps.’
    The others sat, bloodstained, immobile and hardly breathing, while the maps were fetched: listening to Pig explain how he’d been approached by Prem and agreed to take over Paul’s plot, but then Pig had decided to take command for himself. Listening to Ax calmly discussing the whole thing; able to realise that Ax was saving their lives. Rob began to get restless, began to twitch like a limb to which circulation is painfully returning, having been cut off. He started to mutter: he killed…gotta…he killed…gotta, can’t let…
    ‘Get him out of here,’ said Ax, casually. ‘He’s bothering me.’
    Fiorinda and DK, who happened to be sitting on either side, took Rob by the elbows and moved him out. Pigsty’s goons didn’t stop them, but followed closely. ‘Get me a phone’, said Fio, imitating Ax’s manner; and this worked. A phone was produced. But then she couldn’t handle it, so DK called The Eyes. They were safe. They were still in the Park, but they could leave. They would come at once. ‘What’s going on there?’ DK demanded.
    ‘I don’t fucking know,’