Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [128]
‘The war to end war,’ Dafyd said dryly.
Cat turned her head sharply. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Precedents aren’t too good,’ Stone said. ‘World War Three, for starters.’
Jordan choked briefly on his beer.
‘You should read books,’ he spluttered. He snorted hop-smelling froth out of his sinuses, grinning apologetically. ‘Ah, forget it. You been on the net recently?’
Stone and Dafyd shook their heads. Catherin was watching him. He glanced at her only occasionally as he talked, or so he thought at the time; afterwards, looking back, all he remembered of the conversation was her face and a vague recollection of what he’d said. At the time everything was clear: all the bits of information he’d picked up on the net and the street coming together, the buzz that was suddenly so loud in the aching silence left now the ANR had gone quiet. He spun a story of the shifts he’d noticed, in a way that he thought would make sense to the two (or three? what was Catherin into?) politically motivated fighters. And all the time he knew he was winging it, that it was in part guesswork which he could only hope was inspired.
‘Something’s happening,’ he concluded. ‘Happening fast. People are changing their minds, making up their minds by the hour. And they’re coming down on the side of the ANR, or at least against the Kingdom and the Free States.’
Catherin looked interested, Dafyd and Stone sceptical. Jordan spread his hands. ‘Check it out, guys.’
They started to argue. Jordan got another round in. Cat moved over, not looking at him, still arguing, and he sat down beside her, on the outside of the seat this time.
‘No point us talking about it,’ Catherin was saying. ‘You’ve been out on active for a week, and out of your heads when you weren’t, yeah?’
Stone and Dafyd acknowledged the justice of this with hoots.
‘So go and talk to somebody else, OK!’ she said. Something in her fierce stare made the two men suddenly notice some comrades at the bar. They left to join them.
‘Can you help me out of this jacket?’
She turned away in a silky movement. Jordan slid the jacket from her shoulders, resisted the temptation to bury his face in her hair or trace the botanic filigree of thread on the back of her elflandish dress. He looked again at the floating planet, the flaring letters.
‘“Earth’s Angels”,’ he said. ‘This is your gang, is it?’ He began to fold the sleeves when he felt something heavy and bulky in an inside pocket. Catherin took the jacket from his hands at the same moment and laid it carefully along the back of the seat. She rested her arm lightly on it, and settled in a sideways position, facing him.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Polluters tremble when we ride into town on our bicycles…No, I just thought it sounded good.’
‘It’s not “earth” as in “Mother Earth”, it’s “earth” as in “earthly”. Earth’s angel.’ He dared to look at her, to take her all in in a long unbreathing draught of sight. ‘Yes, it’s you.’
She returned his gaze with an appraising look that made him think, Is this how we look at them?, and feel a surge of lust more intense than being the sender of such a look had ever aroused in him. Whosoever looketh on a woman to…he was committed already in his heart.
‘And you’re earth’s preacher,’ she said. ‘I saw you tonight, on the tel.’
‘Oh, that’s, that’s great.’ He took a swallow of beer, his ears burning. ‘What did you think?’
‘I…kind of agreed with it,’ she said. She smiled. ‘But that…isn’t why I’m here.’
He tried not to sound disappointed. ‘I didn’t think so.’ He looked at her, for the first time not seeing her, but thinking. ‘You said something about, uh, how I found you?’
Catherin nodded.
‘And how,’ Jordan asked, ‘do you know about that?’
Her face showed nothing. Jordan was suddenly aware of how little he knew about her, a thought which rapidly changed to how much he wanted to find out…about her, Moh,