Goodbye, Padania Read online

  Daria looked at her shopping and sighed. “Walter,” she said, “Be a darling. Order us some more ice cream.”

  Daria’s last shopping trip in Italy was to buy cosmetics, perfume and hair dye, especially the fashionable white variety.

  The day before, the Italian government had sent its people to work out a deal with her and Aravinda. They would let Daria enter Padania as part of an official Italian delegation, thereby covering her with diplomatic immunity. In return, she agreed to bring only genuine asylum-seekers from Padania into Italy, not economic migrants.

  Although the Italian government would honour its commitments to all refugees, it did not want to be flooded with a tide of Padania’s desperate poor. It would also ignore something its police computers had come up with in Daria’s name: a veritable encyclopaedia of unpaid fines for double parking, speeding and careless driving.

  Her last-but-one spree had been on the tools of the trade she was seeking to graduate from: the best that cutting-edge Italian technology had developed in nanobots and micro-weapons.

  Daria’s holiday was over. It was time to go into Padania and harvest the delirium.

  **************

  Chapter 5

  Worm!

  Republic of Padania, October 2035

  “Bastardo!” The militiaman stumbled after his hobnail boot rammed Davide’s chest and cracked a rib. A green-uniformed companion stepped up in his wake and himself took a kick at the prone youth’s chest. There was a further snap. The second goon unleashed a volley of reflections on the sexual proclivities of the female members of Davide’s extended family, then spat on his face and went to help his hobbling mate. After that, they left him.

  Daria was used to agents of the Padanian government looking for her. Their standard brief had been to end her life, or at least her freedom. Her response was to keep out of their way whenever she could, and to get her retaliation in first when she could not. Now, for the first time, one was before her as a supplicant, begging a deal.

  Daria’s revised status was due to the burgeoning coterie of devoted followers that her expeditions to smuggle people out of Padania had generated. They saw her as a miracle-worker who could break through the Wall at will, a twenty-first century criminal saint whose magic might rub off on them if they stayed around her long and devotedly enough. Unknown to all but her inner circle, she had concluded a covert deal with the Italian government that gave her diplomatic immunity in return for bringing only political refugees out of Padania, and leaving the thousands who yearned to escape from the pariah state’s economic meltdown to find their own way out. If they could.

  Despite the envoy’s respectful demeanour, Daria was taking few chances. She had the aircon system pump a hefty supply of Empathspray into their meeting room. She was surprised he didn’t notice. And it worked.

  After an hour’s light negotiation, the chubby, well-groomed man gave up trying to persuade Daria to make her movement racially exclusive or to renounce its emphasis on hedonistic consumption – a hard virtue to practise in Padania, where the State’s slide toward bankruptcy had left the shops virtually empty, and where a nation of food-lovers was reduced to adopting as its tasteless, government-subsidised staple reconstituted PAP – Padanian Artificial Protein.

  Nevertheless, Daria did agree not deliberately to turn her followers against the Padanian government, who hoped her cult might act as a diversion from people’s everyday privations, an alternative to political rebellion. In return, the government had already called off the hit men, and now, through the Empathsprayed envoy, gave a solemn promise neither to prosecute Daria nor to persecute her followers.

  Davide dragged his broken body to Dardaria – the House of Daria – in the hills overlooking Turin. He was the only one of the “First Fourteen” whom Daria had taken through the Wall to have come back into Padania; the only one who saw it as his duty to take political action to improve the country, to rebel; the only one who thought an uprising had any chance of success.

  Daria gave him shelter, but refused to make his cause that of her followers, even when Davide detailed – and showed her – the extent of his beating. The most she would say was “When the time comes …”

  The Padanian government hastened that coming with mistakes.

  The worst mistake was to reneg on its own tradition of providing circuses before bread. In the face of a worsening financial crisis, it decided to keep three hospitals open by cancelling contracts for television soaps from Paraguay and Pershi’a. Within days, in an echo of 1984, the streets of Milan and even the capital, Bergamo, were heaving with protestors, ordinary citizens screaming in defence of their ingrained right to watch rubbish on telly.

  The next mistake was made by the chief of police, who was also a deputy prime minister. His public comment on the revolt was “The worm is turning.” Within a week, people involved in the protests had painted, dyed, sketched or emblazoned on their cassocks the figure of the turning worm: not a lifelike representation but a hard, menacing creature with laser eyes and fiery breath. The protestors referred to themselves as worms, using the word with pride. The chief of police resigned.

  “Now they know what was in Pandora’s box,” Davide commented when he came to ask Daria again for help.

  “Now is the time,” she told him. “We have to harvest this delirium. But in our separate ways. I won’t have my people involved in politics. I won’t go back on my word. Only the truth is revolutionary. But I may have some skills I could share with your rebels. Simple things like silent killing, disguise, tracking, nanobotics, illusion …”

  “But if only the truth is revolutionary?”

  “It’s up to you,” she said.

  The Padanian State had no intention of being undermined by a bunch of worms. It had the press refer to the militia units as “wormcrushers” and indeed gave the Greenshirts even greater freedom than before to reduce their victims to a bloody mess. It closed more hospitals and used the money to buy black-market “crowd-control” weaponry that the new China had decommissioned but not yet destroyed, and on Korean security experts who could train people to use it to greatest effect. It then swallowed a lot of pride and bought soaps from Italian and Vatican TV, ones that did not even need to be dubbed.

  The protests diminished, but not before the real rebels, Davide’s companions, had done a good job of infiltration and education. They pointed out, for instance, the link between the previous lack of soaps and the enduring lack of soap. By no means all of those who left the city square protests went back to quiet, cold evenings in front of the telly.

  Some made their way to Dardaria in search of an alternative to the madness of Padania, a way of life that would involve them neither in politics nor in having their skulls crushed. Many more came seeking Daria’s professional services in getting through the Wall into Italy or beyond.

  Daria kept her promise to the Italian government, and smuggled across the border only those seeking political asylum, not economic migrants. In return, the Italians kept up her diplomatic immunity and the supplies of high-tech gadgetry, and magazines with beautiful illustrations of traditional Italian cooking, which the deal allowed her to bring into Padania.

  She kept her promise to the Padanian government, and preached no politics. In return, it kept away from the Dardarias on its territory, and actively helped her to get political undesirables out of Padania by turning off the current that coursed through the Wall at the right time, and by providing sound and light effects with which Daria choreographed her crossings, thereby keeping her followers in thrall and enthralling new ones.

  Daria never asked money for any of her services; nor did she ever refuse any that was offered. She felt no compunction about taking money, but she did about her pact with the Padanian government. This she assuaged by training everyone whom Davide sent her for the purpose in the skills of the people smuggler and of the contract killer. It was hard work, but it made Daria feel less like a worm, the old kind of worm.

  **
*********

  Chapter 6

  Better Than Shopping

  Mongreno, near Turin, Republic of Padania, February 2036.

  Shortly after night fell across the city, the fire fights, and the fires, began. From the hills, you could watch them like a dull display of roman candles and sparklers, which brightened when the first power cut doused the city lights.

  Daria leant against the stone Venus on the terrace, unconsciously caressing its cold back as she gazed over the city’s agony. At such times, her followers were wont to leave her alone with her thoughts, inviolate in her silence. Now, the sound and scent of a man approaching with caution sent her into alert mode.

  “Daria …” She recognised the timbre as that of Davide, whose political ardour she was barely able to keep in check, a man whose commitment to overthrowing the Padanian regime had brought him close to death, yet was proving increasingly infectious in a land where hope was just one among innumerable commodities in very short supply. She felt his breath on her neck like a faint, warm caress.

  “What is it, Davide?”

  “I’ve brought someone to meet you.”

  “Another of your rebel bigshots?”

  “Someone you know. Someone you’ve met at close quarters.”

  She turned towards Davide to reprove him for interrupting her thoughts. She glanced over his shoulder at the man following him, and her words froze on her chilled lips. The nose had been broken, the robust frame had lost its hard edges, the skin had regained colour, but the eyes were the same, as was the old-fashioned habit of fixing them directly on the eyes of a person in front of him.

  “Tell me this,” he said. “Did you know I could swim?”

  “I didn’t give it a thought. However, you’re old enough to have been taught as a child.”

  “It wasn’t easy with the cracked ribs you gave me, but at least I didn’t have to pluck your knife out of my chest.”

  “I had other things on my mind. I was hungry.”

  “Aren’t we all? It doesn’t get any easier to find food. That’s why we need your help.”

  “You’re getting all the help I can give you. Davide, tell him about the training.” But Davide had vanished.

  “My name is Mercurio.”

  “I know your name. I know every damned detail of your sordid life, up to the moment of your midnight swim in the River Po.”

  “There’ve been worse lives. I risk mine every day to make amends.”

  Mercurio moved close to Daria. The tall man stared down at her. As their gazes locked, she felt like an eye-contact virgin, resisting penetration. Then he was inside her head, filling her brain with his firm presence, his probing essence. Daria caught the lapels of his heretical overcoat and pulled his frame into contact with hers. His body’s warmth left her dizzy, and her light-headedness, their shared embrace in the cold garden, the physical contact magnifying the mental contact, made her, for the first time in years, ready to give herself as she had once abandoned herself to another older man, Father Francesco Fede, whose face, the way it had been in those last days of his seedy life, now forced itself onto her mind’s eye. And snapped the spell.

  Daria slumped in Mercurio’s arms. Then, inhaling deep draughts of the night’s chill, she pulled herself together. Daria pushed Mercurio away as gently as she’d ever moved anyone out of her personal space.

  “Come back when you have brought the children out of the factories,” she said.

  “To do that, we need your help. We need your followers on our side. But yes, I will come back.” With that, he moved out of her life again.

  The next night that tried to fall on the city of Turin retreated against the light of flares, exploding ordnance and fires.

  Daria’s clandestine afternoon session for rebel cadres on tracking and strangulation techniques had gone well, and in the unsettled evening she brought her local followers into the main hall of Dardaria – the Home of Daria – to affirm their allegiance to non-violence, one of the keys to their protected status that made Mongreno out-of-bounds to the Greenshirt militias.

  Daria noted that several of the men were younger than her. She had wanted to give her followers hope, and values that would keep them off the murderous paths she had followed. Yet the physical hunger etched into their cheeks was matched by a puzzled hunger in their eyes which she had thus far failed to assuage. Well, if she could not give, then she could take.

  Peppe was a friend of Davide, though not a comrade-in-arms. Daria asked him to wait behind as the hall emptied.

  “Peppe, would you do me a favour?”

  “Sure, Daria. Anything.”

  “Come to my room in a while. Spend the night with me.”

  “You mean …?”

  “I mean.”

  “I’m honoured.”

  “It’s the first and last time. You’d better show yourself worthy.”

  “Daria, I will.”

  He did. The flood of his passion triggered the passion dormant in her. Daria felt in it a release far beyond that afforded by plunging a knife between the shoulders of a turbulent priest, a connection beyond any that even Empathspray could fashion between her and the adoring mind of a soul-searching disciple. She felt it again the following night with Michele, the next with Ferruccio, then with Alex, Sandro, Filippo, Daniele, Edù. It felt so much finer than killing, more fulfilling than playing god; it was even better than shopping.

  The civil war reached a watershed. The government had heavy weapons, fewer after every clash. The rebels had growing popular support, and a burgeoning flow of recruits that outweighed their manpower losses.

  On the equinox itself, they took Turin, their first major city. The next morning, the first of the new era, the Steering Committee, which had Davide and Mercurio among its members, announced that the city would henceforth run itself in accordance with Italian and European law rather than with that of Padania.

  This was an attempt to entice Italy and the European Union to take their side in the conflict, but there was substance to it. The first wave of decrees released all children under sixteen from factory or domestic service contracts, ordered them to register for free schooling, and encouraged the “foreigners” who had taken refuge in the woods and mountains to take the children’s place in the economy by restoring full citizenship to residents not born in Padania.

  Few took up the offer immediately. The depleted Padanian army moved west to besiege the city. In vain, for the idea of freedom had breached their rearguard. Turin might fall again in the looming battle, but the eventual outcome of the wider war was scarcely in doubt.

  At last, Daria declared wholeheartedly for the rebels; she gave her followers throughout Padania orders to go underground and help the rebel cause in any way they could.

  In Mongreno, Daria spent three nights alone, cold, hungry and anguished. Mercurio came to her on the fourth. She sensed his limping arrival, greeted him with the sharpened knife in her hand refracting in the candle-light. He smiled. Daria turned its blade toward herself, wielded it to slice open her cassock, stepped into his warmth as he eased her body open to the night. Daria switched the knife to her other hand to make this simpler for him, then slashed it swiftly down behind his back and pulled away the remains of his own clothing. She saw that his old wound had healed.

  Mercurio tended to Daria’s ancient wound throughout the long night. Even in its darkest part, Mercurio reflected in her eyes, spread his touch across her skin, expanded his being into the deepest recesses of her body and mind. As the new day insinuated its urgent foreboding into her consciousness, Daria wondered what else might be worth doing with the rest of her life.

  ************

  Chapter 7

  Meltdown

  The tattooed angel's baby face was serene as he slept. Daria caressed a strand of hair back from his forehead, then swept both hands through her own spiky hair as she slipped away from the place in the bed next to him. Her dreams might be heavy, she reflected, but life was becoming addictive. A
smile engraved the edges of her mouth.

  Her face was set hard when she addressed her followers, later that wet afternoon.

  "I won't stand for it," she said. "Daria's house is inclusive, not exclusive. Anyone who renounces violence is welcome here. Violence is mine alone to use, and then to use only to protect you. Denigration and exclusion are violence, and I won't have them in my house. There are no heretics here because no ideas are heretical. Do I make myself clear?"

  She took the uneasy silence as assent.

  Afterwards, Walter, Daria’s closest adviser, was not best pleased. "The movement has a momentum of its own,” he insisted. “You cannot chain a cyclone."

  "You doubt my powers?" growled Daria, judging distances. Walter backed down, backed away.

  Two days later, a breeze set the trees whispering in the copse beyond the house. Daria stared at blood that marred the smooth face of her lover. Fire battled ice in her heart.

  "We need a sacrifice," Davide whispered at her shoulder, his breath sour with curdled love. "You or him. We can still save his life. You decide."

  Temporarily, ice triumphed.

  "Save him," she said, "I'll be your sacrifice."

  Daria came to her followers for the last time. She kept them waiting in darkness in the meeting hall, only the dais lit, softly, then very brightly when she appeared on it as if from nowhere.

  "My house has been violated," she intoned. "Blood has been spilt in it. Only blood can cleanse it. I cannot take yours, therefore I shall give you mine."