Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

“Lady, with respect, you are letting yourself become emotionally clouded. Ignore the fact that Rael Mandella Jr. is your nephew; you must make an objective decision on whether or not to permit the heretics… pardon, Lady, strikers, the use of our dormitory facilities. Once muddying subjectivities are removed from the issue, the decision becomes clear.”

At the door to her audience chamber Taasmin Mandella halted again.

“Indeed it does, Chamberlain. I am pledging full spiritual, moral and economic support for Concordat.”

“Lady! This is madness! Consider the pilgrims, upon whose generosity we are dependent, will they not be dissuaded by this rash action? Consider the Poor Children, by siding with the heret-strikers you are in effect denying their faith in the holiness of the Steeltown Shrine. You cannot abandon your faithful devotees, both pilgrims and Poor Children!”

“I know where those spurious prophecies about the factory came from, Chamberlain. I am not one-third the fool you take me for.”

In her audience chamber she sat enthroned, illuminated by a single shaft of sunlight caught by angled mirrors high in the dome. Around her feet were strewn flowers and tangles of metal swarf, before her a line of pilgrims with nine-pointed starbursts painted on their brows stretched into the gloom. A chilly piety leaked into the air.

“This place needs more light,” Taasmin Mandella whispered to herself, picturing a Panarchic hand lifting the top off the Basilica like the lid on a jar of pickled gherkins to let the full light of day flood in.

“Pardon, madam?” asked an attendant Poor Child with a metal head.

—Poor Child, thought Taasmin Mandella. As the line of healings blessings prophecies petitions forgivenesses shuffled forward she found herself looking up at the reflections of the clouds caught in the roof mirrors and thought of her nephew fighting for the things her power had been given her to fight, out there in the desert sun, under the open sky and the eyes of the Panarch. Spirituality in action, faith in brown shoes, the knife edge of revolutionary love. She was right to pledge assistance to Concordat. For all their human sins, they upheld humanity, life and freedom before the Company’s crushing sterility, machine regimentation and annihilation.

“Lady, the Old Women of Chernowa.” A gaggle of black-shawled gaptoothed grandmothers bowed amid the flowers and swarf. They carried an ugly wooden effigy of a small child. Clumsily carved, ineptly painted, it wore an expression as if a sharp implement were being inserted into its backside. “They bring a petition, madam.” The attendant bowed respectfully and gestured for the Old Women of Chernowa to approach.

“What is your petition?” Sun glinted on clear cold water, leaves cast dappled shadows in leisurely shade; Taasmin Mandella hardly heard their pleading voices.

“… take away our sons and our sons’ sons they take away our freedom, our nobility, they take all we have and give it back to us in dribs and drabs; this they call ‘industrial feudalism,’ and for this we are meant to thank them….”

“Stop. You are from Seeltown?”

The oldest and most venerable of grandmothers cringed low in dread.

“Stand up, all of you.” Sunshine and shade and clear cold water evaporated in the light of the higher sun. “You are from"-she searched her memory, cursing herself for her inattention-"Chernowa in New Merionedd?”

“That is so, madam.”

“And you are oppressed by the Company… strikers, I take it?”

The youngest grandmother pushed to the front of the gaggle.

“Lady, they have cut off the food from our bellies and the water from our lips, the light from our eyes and the power from our fingertips, they have driven us out of our homes so that we must either leave our families, or else live like animals in rude huts of plastic and card! Grey Lady, we petition you, help us! Pray for us, intercede for us, bring the cries of the oppressed to the ears of the Panarch, let him shine his favour upon us, bless us…

“Enough.” The effusive woman crept back to her place, shamefaced at her outburst. “What is that you have with you?” Eldest Grandmother held up the ugly statue.

“This is our icon, the Bryghte Chylde of Chernowa, who by the intervention of the Blessed Lady saved our town from destruction by a falling spaceelevator shuttle through summoning a mystic wind and blowing the danger away.”

Taasmin Mandella had heard of the miracle of Chernowa. The town had been saved but shuttle and all two hundred and fifty-six aboard had been vaporized. A better class of miracle would have saved both, she thought. And it was an exceptionally ugly statue.

“Bring it here.” Taasmin Mandella stretched out her left hand toward the icon. Pulses of light flowed up the circuitry in her dress and gathered around her left wrist. Her halo brightened to such an intensity that it threw shadows into the farthest recesses of the audience hall. She felt a wave of innocence break over her: the inner symphony resumed in her heart and she was free and forgiven. Metal streamers like ropes of printed circuits flowed from her hand and wrapped the Bryghte Chylde of Chernowa in a web of electronics. The congregation of the faithful watched in utter awe as the coarse wooden skin of the icon was overlain by a film of circuits. Electricity sparked along its limbs, fusion-light glowed in its eyes, and from its lips issued a stream of machine-code gibberish.

The transubstantiation of wood to machine was complete. Pilgrims fell to their knees. Some fled the basilica in fear. The Old Women of Chernowa made to bow, but Taasmin Mandella stopped them.

“Take this and show it to my nephew. It’s the answer he’s been waiting for. Take him my blessing too: God is on your side. You are not property.” A surge of holy mischief made Taasmin Mandella raise her left fist in a clenched-fist Concordat salute. She stood so that everyone might see the Grey Lady’s Solidarity, then swirled her robes and strode from the dais.

“There will be no further audiences today,” she shouted to her bionic majordomo. She watched her fluster in confusion, then hurryscurry to tell Inspiration Cadillac. She did not care. God had broken through, war was declared, she had made a free act of conscience. War was declared and she was happy happy happy.

“And I am not property either,” she told her reflection in the clear cold water of her garden pool.

Anyone presenting a Concordat card to either of the proprietors of the Mandella and Das Hot Snacks and Savouries Emporium was entitled to eat freely of the wonderland of cooking sausages, grilling kebabs, chickpea fritters frying merrily in the deep fryer and assorted bhajis, samosas, pakoras and tiddyhoppers. This was a gesture of filial solidarity on the part of the Mandella half of the Hot Snacks and Savouries Emporium; it was having a ruinous effect on the enterprise’s profitability, but the Mandella half knew the Das half had sackfuls of golden dollars salted away from his days, now sadly remembered, as town handyman, freebooter, goondah and bum which would bide the emporium over the Concordat crisis.

The Hot Snacks and Savouries Emporium was of remarkable, even unique, construction. The front half came from an aged riksha which had laid for three years behind Ed’s Shed, the back half was adapted from a disused ’lighter galley augmented with fold-down bar seats, piped music, gaily coloured paper lanterns, and a plethora of holy icons, medals, and paper prayer tickets. Each morning before the first light touched his window the Das half of the partnership would kick the riksha half of the emporium into asthmatic life and drive the ungaintly contraption down the narrow alleys, dodging chickens, goats, llamas, children, trucks until he found a good place to park. Almost invariably this was across the street from the Pentecost Sisters’ General Merchandise Store so that Rajandra Das could smile charmingly to them when they came to open the store at eight minutes of eight and they, in turn, could invite him in for mint tea at the hottest time of the day. By the time the Mandella half of the partnership arrived (the half with the needle-sharp business acumen, the genetic bequest of his rationalist father) there would be sausages frying and biggins of mint tea or coffee venting perfume into the air and a line as long as a free breakfast clutching their Concordat cards.