Chapter 55: Dance the Night Away

Xiùlán

2081

Xavier pushed by and sidled past the other dancers to eventually reach Xiùlán who was swaying spasmodically from side to side to the pulsating rhythm. Like Xiùlán, his eyes were glazed over and his skin pasted with perspiration. He squeezed through the sweaty crowd to Xiùlán, took her waist between his hairy-backed hands, placed his mouth directly over her ear and yelled into it.

"I need a shag, Shoe," he shouted. "I'm desperate!"

Xiùlán placed her hand over Xavier's crotch and felt the contours of his cock through the satin of his trousers. "What are you on, Hav?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary," said Xavier. "E. Coke. Booze. I guess I must just love you, Shoe."

"Yeah, whatever," said Xiùlán, who was tickled by the idea. As if who you fucked and who you loved was ever the same person. "Where shall we go, Hav?"

"The Royal Closet I think. Where else?"

And what better place was there in the nightclub than the Royal Closet? It wasn't designed as a shag room, especially not by its original proprietors, but time and convention had made it the room to go to for a recreational shag and at the same time flaunt to the world just who was currently fucking who.

Although Xiùlán had lived almost all her life in England she still didn't own an English passport. And why should she? She was proud to be a citizen of the Republic of China. Why would she ever want to compromise it by adopting the citizenship of a crappy little country like England? And anyway if she had been born in London rather than Shanghai, she'd now be on her third passport. What was the country called nowadays? It had once been the United Kingdom, then the Kingdom of England and now the Republic of England. These people couldn't make their fucking minds up.

Although she was proud to be Chinese, Xiùlán didn't speak her native language at all well. She knew enough to pronounce her name although she never quite got the intonations. "It's like Shoe Lan," she'd tell people. She knew it meant something, but after every time she found out she then promptly forgot. Fluency in languages wasn't Xiùlán's greatest talent. In fact, she didn't excel in anything of an academic nature. But then again why bother? She lived a privileged life as a Chinese girl in modern England. She was a first-class citizen in a country where the English were the ones struggling to get by. It astonished her that the English Republic had let things slide so far. Sure, there were huge problems back in China. There were plagues, floods, desertification, industrial pollution and a whole host of modern ills. But all this was academic for those in the privileged elite such as Xiùlán's family. Neither in China nor in England, where she was accorded even greater respect than she'd ever know in Shanghai, did Xiùlán need to be troubled by such things.

What Xiùlán did excel in was shopping, dancing and fucking. Her parents knew about the first and they didn't mind at all. Trade between the Republics of China and England was flourishing, especially since England had failed its every attempt to return to the Northern European Union. The very fact it had become so desperate simply underscored the folly of the nation's original decision to withdraw. But where there was profit to be made, the capitalist forces of China and, to a lesser extent, Russia could be relied to fill the vacuum. Since England no longer manufactured anything of value and its service industries had all migrated to foreign shores, what little wealth the country still possessed was mostly spent on purchasing Chinese-manufactured goods.

Xiùlán's parents also knew about the dancing, although she was as discreet as she could be about the fucking. They would want their daughter to be a good wife for a man of means: most likely someone from China, but perhaps even from Russia, Brazil or even, if the pedigree was right, from England. Nonetheless, her reputation amongst her friends as an enthusiastic and adventurous fuck did nothing to elevate her chances in the target market.

And it was in dancing that Xiùlán was currently engaged. She was in the huge and exclusive Buckingham Palace Nightclub where the hosts this night were the Deviation Gatekeepers of Sound. They knew how to put on a good party that fully utilised the acoustic potential of the spacious halls that had once been the London address of the English Royal Family. When England became a republic, there had been great hopes that the legacy of the nation's long history might be treated with respect but the highest bids for the huge palace in Central London were nightclub owners who recognised it as the perfect venue for the rich and famous. There wasn't enough money in the national coffers to bequeath monuments such as this to posterity.

The rhythms were certainly banging. There was a century's worth of good electronic dance sounds and with the right equipment powered by London's own Nuclear Power Station at nearby Battersea the beats pounded out across Pall Mall and over the Royal Parks. Even Lord Nelson on his column shook to the heavy bass rhythm as it traced a long sinuous sound wave alongside Horse Guards Parade where horses were now employed for the unglamorous tasks of carrying goods around the London's shit-strewn streets and beyond the pay booths that generated the income to maintain the Royal Parks (as they were still quaintly known) and kept out the countless vagrants that littered the city's pavements.

But what did Xiùlán care? She was in the midst of flashing lights, banging sounds, a monstrous bass and all her friends. It was always a good night at Buckingham Palace. The queue for the venue trailed all round the parade grounds where soldiers used to change the guard wearing hilarious bear-skin rugs on their heads and down Constitution Hill which was sprayed with graffiti every night and then scraped off the following day by the countless ragged plebs on the nightclub's payroll.

Xiùlán knew the beats she liked and they did the business every time, although their effect was enhanced by the little pills she could buy from the stalls set up for the purpose in the Throne Room. It was amazing how easily the nightclub owners had managed to circumvent the law. Outside Buckingham Palace drugs were still illegal, however much they were widely and cheaply available. Inside you could buy them with credit as easily as you could a new pair of Prada shoes, a Gucci handbag or a Stella McCartney tee-shirt. There were stalls selling all those things as well as downloads of the very same sounds being caned by the DJs.