FOUR
Das War Diana

"I'm not a political animal but I think the biggest disease this world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved."

—As above.

HAMPSTEAD HEATH WAS a chaos of churned mud and tortured metal given exotic beauty by the movement of evening sunlight through lazy grey smoke. In the silence a few bustling ravens cawed. Hunched on blasted trees they seemed profoundly uneasy. Perhaps the character of the feast upset their sense of the natural order. They were old, conservative birds who still saw some kind of virtue in harmony.

The house the team occupied had a wonderful view all the way across the main battlefield. Its back wall had received two precise hits from an LB7. The body of the soldier who had been hiding behind the wall was now under the rubble. Only his feet remained exposed. Mo had already removed the boots and was polishing them appreciatively, with the previous owner's Cherry Blossom. He held them up to the shifty light. "Look at the quality of that leather. The bastards."

He was upset. He had been convinced that the boots would fit him.

"You turn people into fiction you get shocked when they die real deaths." Little Trixibell Brunner, never less than smart, had agreed to meet them here with the remains of her squadron.

"Bastards!" Clinging vaguely, her mother drooled viciously at her side. Lady Brunner was having some trouble staying alive.

Trixi lifted disapproving lips. "Mum!"

The infusions weren't working any more. Uncomfortably wired, Lady B muttered and buzzed to herself, every so often fixing her bleak eyes upon some imagined threat. Maybe Death himself.

Jerry was trembling as usual. His mouth opened and closed rapidly. Lady Brunner smiled suddenly to herself as if recalling her old power. "Eh?" She began to cackle.

Trixi let out a sigh of irritated piety. "Mother!"

Until a month ago Trixi had been Toney Flair's Chief Consorte and tipped for the premiership when her leader and paramour took the Big Step, which he had promised to do if he had not brought the nations of Britain to peace by the end of the year. He would join his predecessors in US exile. It was the kind of example the British people now habitually demanded.

Trixi, growing disapproving of Toney's policies, had uttered some significant leaks before siding with the Dianistas whom she had condemned as upstart pretenders a week earlier. But at heart, she told them, she was still a Flairite. She was hoping her actions would bring Toney or his deputy Danny to their senses. Until the Rift of Peckham they had supported the Dianist cause. She would still be a keen Dianista if those twin fools the Earls of Spencer and of Marks, claiming Welsh heritage, hadn't allied themselves with the Black Stuarts and thus brought anarchy to Scotland. Rather than listen to all these heresies, her mother had stood in a corner putting pieces of Kleenex into her ears. One of her last acts in power was to make them both Knights of St Michael.

A shadow darkened the garden.

Jerry was compelled to go outside and look up. Limping over low was the old Princess of Essex, her gold, black and fumed oak finish showing the scars of recent combat.

Mo joined him. He gazed approvingly at the ship. "She always had style, didn't she?" he said reverently.

Jerry blinked uncertainly. "Style?"

"Class." Mo nodded slowly, confirming his own wise judgement.

"Class." Jerry's attention was wandering again. He had found a faded Hola! and began to leaf through it. "Which?" For the last couple of centuries Britain had seen her monarchs identify their fortunes first with the aristocracy, then with the upper middle class, then with the middle class and ultimately with the petite bourgeousie, depending who had the most power. No doubt they would soon appear on the screen adopting the costumes and language of East Enders. They were so adaptable they'd be virtually invisible by the middle of the century ."Style? Where?"

"Essex." Mo pointed up.

As if in response, The Princess shimmied girlishly in the air.