Charles Stross - The Merchant’s War

"Yes." He looked distant. "Little things like a universal franchise, regardless of property qualifications and religion and marital status. Some of the committee wanted women to vote, too-but that was thought too extreme for a first step. And we wanted a free press, public decency and the laws of libel permitting."

"Uh." She closed her mouth. "But you were..."

The frown turned into a wry smile. "I was a young hothead. Or easily led. I met Annie first at a public meeting, and then renewed her acquaintance at the People's Voice where she was laying type. She was the printer's daughter, and neither he nor my uncle approved of our liaison. But once I received my letters and acquired a clerk's post, I could afford to support her, which made her father come round, and my uncle just mutter darkly about writing me out of his will for a while, and stopped doing even that after the wedding. So we had good four years together, and she insisted on laying type even when the two boys came along, and I wrote for the sheets -anonymously, I must add-and we were very happy. Until it all ended."

Miriam raised her glass for another sip. Somehow the contents had evaporated. "Here, let me refill that," she said, taking Erasmus's glass. She stood up and walked past him to get to the bar, wobbling slightly as the carriage jolted across a set of points. "What went wrong?"

"In nineteen eighty-six, on November the fourteenth, six fine fellows from the northeast provinces traveled to the royal palace in Savannah. There had been a huge march the week before in New London, and it had gone off smoothly, the petition of a million names being presented to the black rod- - but the king himself was not in residence, being emphysemic. That winter came harsh and early, so he'd decamped south to Georgia. It was his habit to go for long drives in the country, to lake the air. well, the level of expectation surrounding the petition was high, and rumors were swirling like smoke: that the king had read the petition and would agree to the introduction of a bill, that the king had read the petition and threatened to bring home the army, that the king had this and the king had that. All nonsense, of course. The king was on vacation and he refused to deal with matters of state that were anything less than an emergency. Or so I learned later. Back then, I was looking for a progressive practice that was willing to take on a junior partner, and Annie was expecting again."

Miriam finished pouring and put the stopper back in the decanter. She passed a glass back to him: "So what happened?"

"Those six fine gentlemen were a little impatient. They'd formed a ring, and they'd convinced themselves that the king was a vicious tyrant who would like nothing more than to dream up new ways to torment the workers. You know, I think-judging by your own history hooks how it goes. The mainstream movement spawns tributaries, some of which harbor currents that flow fast and deep.

The Black Fist Freedom Guard, as they called themselves, followed the king in a pair of fast motor carriages until they learned his habitual routes. Then they assassinated him, along with the queen, and one of his two daughters, by means of a petard."

"They what?" Miriam sat down hard. "That's crazy!"

"Yes, it was." Erasmus nodded, calmly enough. "George Frederick himself pulled his dying father from the wreckage. He was already something of a reactionary, but not, I think, an irrational one-until the Black Fist murdered his parents."

"But weren't there guards, or something?" Miriam shoo her head. What about the secret service? she wondered. I someone tried a stunt like that on a U.S. president it just wouldn't work. It wouldn't be allowed to work. Numerous whack-jobs had tried to kill Clinton when he was in office: a number had threatened or actually tried to off the current president. Nobody had gotten close to a president of the United Stales since nineteen eighty-six. "Didn't he have any security?"

"Oh yes, he had security. He was secure in the knowledge that he was the king-emperor, much beloved by the majority of his subjects. Does that surprise you? John Frederick goes nowhere without half a company of guard and a swarm of Polis agents, but his father relied on two loyal constables with pistols. They were injured in the at-tack, incidentally: one of them died later."

He took a deep, shuddering breath, then another sip of the brandy. "The day after the assassination, a state of emergency was declared. Demonstrations ensued. On Black Monday, the seventeenth, a column of demonstrators marching towards the royal complex on Manhattan Island were met by dragoons armed with heavy steam repeaters. More than three hundred were killed, mostly in the stampede. We were... there, but on the outskirts. Annie and I. We had the boys to think of. We obviously didn't think hard enough. The next day, they arrested me. My trial before the tribunal lasted eighteen minutes, by the clock on the courtroom wall. The man before me they sentenced to hang for being caught distributing our news sheet, but I was lucky. All they knew was that I'd been away from my workplace during the massacre, and I'd been limping when I got back. The evidence was merely circumstantial, and so was the sentence they gave me: twelve years in the camps."

He took a gulp of the brandy and swallowed, spluttering for a moment. "Annie wasn't so lucky," he added.

"What? They hanged her?" Miriam leaned toward him, aghast.

"No." He smiled sadly. "They only gave her two years In a women's camp. I don't know if you know what that was like... no? Alright. It was hard enough for the men. Annie died-"he stared into his glass"-in childbed." "I don't understand-"

"Use your imagination," Erasmus snapped. "What do you think the guards were like?"

"Oh god." Miriam swallowed. "I'm so sorry."

The boys went to a state orphanage," Erasmus added. "In Australia."

"Enough." She held up a hand: "I'm sorry I asked!"

The fragile silence stretched out. "I'm not," Erasmus said quietly. "It was just a little bit odd to talk about it. After so long."

"You got out... four years ago?"

"Nine." He drained his glass and replaced it on the Occasional table. "The camps were overfull. They got sloppy. I was moved to internal exile, and there was a- What your history book called an underground railway. Erasmus Burgeson' isn't the name I was known by back then."

"Wow." Miriam stared at him. "You've been living under an assumed identity all this time?"

He nodded, watching her expression. "The movement provides. They needed a dodgy pawnbroker in Boston, you see, and I fitted the bill. A dodgy pawnbroker with a hisstory of a couple of years in the camps, nothing serious, nothing excessively political. The real me they'd hang for sure if they caught him, these days. I hope you don't mind notorious company?"

"I'm- " She shook her head. "It's crazy." You were writing for a newspaper, for crying out loud.' Asking for voting rights and freedom of the press! And those are hanging offenses? "And if what you were campaigning for back then is crazy, so am I." Her eyes narrowed "What's the movement's platform now? Is it still just about the franchise, and freedom of speech? Or have things changed?"

"Oh yes." He was still studying her, she realized. "Eighty-six was a wake-up cry. The very next central council meeting that was held-two years later, in exile- announced that the existence of a hereditary crown was a flaw in the body politic. The council decreed that nothing less than the overthrow of the king-emperor and the replacement of their Lordships and Commons by a republic of free men and women, equal before the law, would suffice. The next day, the Commons passed a bill of attainder against everyone in the movement. A month after that that pope excommunicated us-he declared democracy to be mortal sin. But by that time we already knew we were damned."