Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

“Up dressed out,” they ordered. “Five minutes.”

As they fled down 12th street clutching hastily snatched valuables, the Dharamjitsinghs saw an armoured van draw up and a team of armed men start in on the buff-coloured doors of every house on the street. Behind them they heard shouts, shots and the sound of smashing furniture.

“Not this one!” a sergeant yelled to his men, eager to boot down a buff front door. “This one’s loyal. Leave them be. Next door.”

Two hundred striking families were evicted that morning. A further two hundred were unhomed the following dawn and the day after that two hundred more. The streets of Desolation Road were filled with unsteady ziggurats of furniture topped off with sob-eyed children. Families sheltered under improvised tents made from bed-linen and plastic refuse sacks.

“This is bankrupting us,” declared Mavda Arondello. “We can’t afford to keep evacuating children and dependants out of Desolation Road to safe houses in the Grand Valley. The train fares are horrifying: at this rate the strike fund’11 be empty in less than two months.”

“Go talk to your aunt, Rael,” said Santa Ekatrina, white as a ghost with rice-starch, flour and selfless labour. Families were not just fed now, but also housed in the Mandella homestead, sleeping on the bedroom floors, fifteen to a room. “Taasmin’ll help.”

That same evening a sealed train steamed slowly through Desolation Road Station. From behind the counter of his trackside food bar, Rajandra Das noticed the locked doors, the shuttered windows and the carriage plates that showed it to be made up of rolling stock from all across the northern hemisphere. The train ghosted across the switchover and into the Steeltown sidings. Security men cleared the freight yards and imposed a strict curfew, but Rajandra Das could see what those shut away behind window blinds could not see; the armed men in black and gold escorting grim-faced men with bags and suitcases into the newly vacated houses.

At six o’clock the sirens cried and a thousand and a half strike-breakers got out of their stolen beds and put on their working clothes and marched under heavy guard along the radial streets, along the Ring and past the mobs chanting “scab scab scab!” into the factory. Then smoke trickled from the cold chimneys and the rumble of dozing machinery shook the air.

“This is serious,” Rael Mandella Jr. told his strike committee. They had moved to the Bethlehem Ares Railroad/Hotel (recently renamed, more honestly, as had always been the intent, BAR/Hotel by painting out the periods) due to pressure of mouths in the Mandella family home.

Harper Tew estimated production would be back to sixty percent nominal within ten days.

“We’ll miss economic break-point by fifty-two hours,” he said. “Unless we can find a way to bust the strikebusters, Concordat is all folded up.”

“We’ll take care of the scabs,” said Winston Karamatzov. A dark nimbus seemed to gather around him.

“At last the Action Group has something to report,” said Ari Osnan.

“Quiet.” Rael Mandella Jr. locked his fingers and was suddenly terribly terribly empty. The vision, the spiritual wind, the mystic power which had driven him before it like a rail-schooner, which had set a burning coal on his tongue, faltered and failed him. He was human and isolated, weak and fallible. Events had trapped him. He could not say no to the Action Group organizer and by saying yes he would become the creature of the mob. The dilemma had pinned him perfectly.

“Very well. The Action Group must do what is necessary.”

That night the Economic Analogy Social Centre burned down. Among the sifted ashes Dominic Frontera and his constables found the remains of eighteen strikebusters, a Company kindergarten teacher, the proprietor, his wife and twin babies. That night a strikebuster was knifed fifteen times on the corner of Heartattack and Ring. By a miracle he survived to carry the scars to his grave. That night three of the strangers were abducted to an empty signalman’s hut, where they were stripped, tied to chairs, and had their genitals snipped off with a pair of garden shears.

That night Rael Mandella Jr. slipped home and confessed his doubts, his failings, his helplessness to his mother. Despite her absolution, he was not absolved.

Violence multiplied violence as night followed night. Atrocity piled upon atrocity. Although sympathetic to the strike, Dominic Frontera found he could no longer turn a blind eye to the madness and mayhem rocking his town. The Company had threatened direct action against the perpetrators though their security men held no authority beyond the wire. Dominic Frontera had promised the Company security chief immediate action though uncertain how he might deliver it. He went to visit Rael Mandella Jr. in the Bar/Hotel.

Rael Mandella Jr.’s personal bodyguard would not permit him to approach closer than three metres.

“This has to stop, Rael.”

The strike leader shrugged.

“I’m sorry, but as soon as the scabs go it’ll stop. It’s their fault. If you want a peaceful resolution, go to the Company, not to me.”

“I’ve just come from the Company. They said exactly the same thing but turned around. Don’t play simpleton with me, Rael. I’ve known you since you were a boy. Now, I haven’t got proof, or names, but the law is the law, whatever my sympathies, and as soon as I have the evidence, the law will be enforced.”

“Are you threatening me?”

Dominic Frontera was only too aware of the futility of threatening with his handful of fat, friendly constables a man who dared the transplanetary empire of the Bethlehem Ares Corporation; nevertheless, he said, “Not threatening, Rael. Just advising.”

By the end of the week all but three hundred strikebusters had left. Of those remaining, fifty-two would be remaining permanently in the town cemetery. The same weekend Concordat held its first martyr’s funeral. Willy Goomeera, 9, single, separator plant operator, had been killed by a blow to the neck with a brick while attempting to close with, and knife, a scab separator plant operator from Maginot outside the Industry Is Ecstasy Infants’ School. Willy was a martyr, the intended victim, turned victor, a monster. Willy was lowered into the earth in a funeral urn draped with the green and white Concordat banner while mother two sisters lover cried a river.

Rael Mandella Jr. and his strike committee attended the funeral.

“So what about the production figures now?”

“Levelling off at about ten percent optimal. I calculate plant profitability to reach marginal in twenty-two days.”

“Strike fund’s only good for fifteen. Mavda, see if you can arrange cash aid from our supporters as well as the regular air drops. B.J., keep hammering at the other Transplanetaries, Bethlehem Ares’s misfortune is their fortune. I think I’ll have that word with my aunt to see if she can release us some free accommodation in church hostels. That should free some money from the rehousing budget.”

The six conspirators bowed and went their ways and the first shovels of fine red dirt thumped down on Willy Goomeera’s ceramic coffin.

Since becoming more than three-quarters mortified, Inspiration Cadillac had grown correspondingly less tractable, thought Taasmin Mandella.

“Lady, you must not permit yourself to become involved in the Bethlehem Ares Steel dispute. You must not confuse the spiritual with the political.”

Grey Lady and Iron Chamberlain were hurrying down the underground passage that led from the private rooms to the public chambers. At the word “political” Taasmin Mandella stopped and whispered into Inspiration Cadillac’s ear, “Thou hypocrite. Tell me, if spirituality does not touch every aspect of life, including the political, how can it be truly spiritual? Tell me that.” She strode off down the neon-lit corridor. Her prosthetic chamberlain’s prostheses clicked and whirred as he bustled after her.