Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

Shareholders 108462793 and 93674306 were absent from work the next day, and the next, and the next, and then the line supervisor informed the shift that they had volunteered for redeployment to another line because of manning shortages. Johnny Stalin would almost have believed it had he not heard the sounds of Company police raiding Delahanty’s rattling from his air conditioning slot. He had had to turn his radio up quite loud to drown out the shouts and cries. Shareholder 396243088 next door had banged on the wall most unpleasantly for an hour or more for him to keep it down.

Two days later Shareholder 396243088 made a joke over lunch about the sexual conduct of Company directors during board meetings. Johnny Stalin had roared with laughter like everyone else. Unlike everyone else, he sent a little note to the grey suit.

“I accuse Shareholder 396243088 of not subscribing to Proper Thought with regard to the Company, its Venerable Board of Directors, and the principles of industrial feudalism. He is disloyal and disrespectful and I suspect him of holding pro-union sympathies.”

When Shareholder 396243088’s job as Section Overseer suddenly became vacant ("Relocation and Promotion,” said the line supervisor), Johnny Stalin was the youngest man ever to be promoted to the position in the light agricultural engineering division. He held the credit rating of a man five times his age and experience. The Model Worker of the Year (light engineering section) awards came upon their annual rounds. Johnny Stalin anonymously exposed a system of petty corruption and pilfering with connections as high as junior management and, by good timing, became Model Worker of the Year (light engineering section) just two days before the corporate axe fell on twelve jobs in the agricultural division. In a sound display of Shareholder solidarity, Johnny Stalin declined to attend the Company tribunal sessions in which the twelve defendants were charged by the court of workforce and management alike and summarily dismissed. “It could have been any of us,” said the Model Worker of the Year to his colleagues on Shift A as they sipped tangerine daiquiris in the newly refurbished Delahanty’s Bar. “It could happen to anyone.”

It did. It happened to Shareholder 26844437 (I suspect Shareholder of engaging in industrial espionage and gross betrayal for rival companies which I, being a loyal and true Shareholder, shall not mention by name, respectfully, J. Stalin) Shareholders 216447890 and 552706123 (I suspect Shareholders of having illicit sexual congress on Company time, respectfully, J. Stalin), and Shareholder 664973505 (I accuse Shareholder Line Supervisor on Production Line 76543, Light Agricultural Engi neering division, of laxity, sloth and absence of zeal in promoting the Ninefold Virtues of Industrial Feudalism, respectfully, J. Stalin).

It was merely a matter of time before the grey suits invited this paragon of industrial virtue to join junior management. It was then that he discovered that there had not been one grey suit, but eleven of them, now covering three sides of an oak table, all of them rolled off whatever production line it was that manufactured junior managers. At the head of the table sat the oldest junior, the grey suit to whom the other grey suits deferred. At the bottom of the table, a respectful distance from the luminaries of the managerial castes, stood Johnny Stalin. Oldest grey suit made a short speech filled with expressions like “model worker,” “shining example,” “productive unit,” “Company loyalty,” “Higher values,” and “Shareholder who understands the principles of Industrial Feudalism.” Johnny Stalin carefully memorized these cliches to use in his own speeches of praise and exhortation. After the interview, sticky cocktails were served, congratulations delivered, and Johnny Stalin bowed himself out of the presence of the managerial caste. On his return to his numbered room he found an envelope containing his relocation documents to the production management training unit pushed under his door. On the back of the door he found a standard-sized paper suit, grey, hanging from a plastic hanger, grey.

Wisdom, capital of the world, stands upon forty hills by the edge of the Syrtic Sea and its crystal towers are draped in curtains of green vines and summer blossoms. Llangonnedd is built upon an island in a lake and over the centuries has burst these bounds to grow whole districts that float upon a lattice of pontoons or perch precariously upon thousands of pilings. Lyx stands upon both lips of a great chasm and across its twenty bridges, each the masterpiece and care of one of the departments of the Universuum, go the hooded and gowned Masters of the Faculties, and from its short cylindrical towers fly ten thousand prayer-kites, supplications for the continued wisdom of the Masters of Lyx. The ROTECH redoubt, China Mountain, is a federation of a hundred small villages set in an exquisite parkland. There is a village suspended from the branches of trees like the woven nests of certain birds, another is made from exquisitely glazed and fired porcelain, another stands upon a floating island in a lake, another is of gaily painted caravans and pavilions that wends and wanders through the woods, another is built upon a web of diamond filaments caught between the pinnacles of China Mountain peak.

These are some of the great cities of the world. To this list, Belladonna must be added. Without doubt, it is the peer of any mentioned here but its wonders are less apparent. To the traveller coming upon Belladonna across the dry and dusty Stampos all that can be seen of her are a few dish antennae, a tall air-traffic control tower, a few dirty adobe lean-tos, and several square kilometres of tyre-marked runway. Yet Belladonna is there, present yet unseen like the Divine essence in the Paschal host: it is no lie, the wickedest city in the world awaits the traveller, just a few metres beneath his feet, like the ant-lion, hungry to draw men down its maw.

Belladonna is proud of its appetites, proud of its wickedness. It is an old hard bitch of a city; a port city, a sailor’s whore of a city. It is always three o’clock in the morning in Belladonna under the concrete sky. There are more street corners in her than anywhere in the world. And in a city with more bars, sushi houses, tavernas, sex boutiques, wineries, whorehouses, seraglios, bath houses, private cinema clubs, all-night cabarets, cafes, amusement arcades, restaurants, pachinko parlours, billiard halls, opium dens, gambling hells, dance palaces, card schools, beauticians, craps joints, body shops, massage parlours, private detective’s offices, narcotics refineries, speakeasies, saunas, bunco booths, gin palaces, bondage basements, singles bars, flesh markets, flea markets, slave auctions, gymnasiums, art galleries, bistros, reviews, floor shows, gun shops, book stalls, torture chambers, relaxariums, jazz clubs, beer cellars, costermongers’ barrows, rehearsal rooms, geisha houses, flower shops, abortion clinics, tea rooms, wrestling rings, cock pits, bear pits, bull and badger pits, Russian roulette salons, barber shops, wine bars, fashion boutiques, sports halls, cinemas, theatres, public auditoria, private libraries, museums of the bizarre and spectacular, exhibitions, displays and performance areas, casinos, freak shows, onearmed-bandit malls, strip shows, side shows, tattoo parlours, religious cults, shrines, temples and morticians than any other place on earth, it can be hard to find one man if he does not want to be found. But if he is as famous as Limaal Mandella, then it is easier to find him in Belladonna than in any other of the world’s great cities, for Belladonna loves to flatter famous men. There was not a street sweeper or shit shoveller who did not know that Limaal Mandella, the Greatest Snooker Player the Universe Had Ever Known could be found in the back room of Glenn Miller’s Jazz Bar on Sorrowful Street. Likewise, there were few people who could not stream off Limaal Mandella’s lists of conquests, Belladonna being a city where lists ascribe greatness. There is not a single great Belladonian who has not several great lists behind him.