Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [151]
‘That’s why the offices were empty,’ Cat said. ‘They were the ones who were on strike!’
They were probably all Christians. They carried signs hand-lettered with biblical texts, the lines about oppression and liberty and the poor and the rich and the weak and the powerful that BC’s preachers glossed over. They sang the discomfiting, awkward hymns and psalms seldom selected for the congregations.
‘Bash out de brains of de babies of Babylon,’ Cat hummed, gleefully paraphrasing, until Jordan nudged her to stop.
The thought that there were thousands of people in Beulah City who felt suffocated under the tutelage of the Elders, cheated in their dealings with their employers by the master-servant regulations, tormented by guilt and frustration, sceptical about the interpretations of scripture foisted on them (as if the interpretations themselves were anything but the opinions of men), angered at how conveniently God was on the dominant side of every relationship…Jordan found it almost unbearably exciting.
And also shaming, because it had never occurred to him at all.
‘It feels strange to be marching along like this,’ Cat said. Jordan smiled at her shining eyes.
‘I thought you’d been on a lot of demonstrations.’
‘Oh, sure, but first I used to be selling papers, later I’d be running up and down, walking backwards with a loud-hailer, covering the side-streets with a gun.’ She laughed. ‘Come to think of it, I’ve never just been part of the masses before.’
‘Perhaps we shouldn’t be just marching along,’ Jordan worried aloud. ‘Maybe we should be doing these things.’
Cat hissed quietly. When he glanced at her she flicked her gaze from side to side. He started looking out of the corners of his eyes himself, and noticed that, every ten metres or so along the sides of the march, sharp-eyed, hard-faced kids were walking. They’d vary their pace, faster or slower than the crowd, sometimes walking backwards, craning their necks; counting heads, meeting eyes. The Reds, the kids, the cadres.
‘This is organized?’ he said. The horizon all around was joined to the sky by loose black threads. Every few seconds another distant explosion shook the air. Small-arms fire crackled on the edge of hearing. ‘Whose idea was it, walking into a war zone?’
‘It’ll work,’ Cat said. ‘The fighting’s concentrated.’
‘For now.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Cat said. Her tone belied her advice.
Past Highbury Fields, down Upper Street. As they passed on their left the large, old pillared building which the Elders used as administrative offices the songs trailed off and people started shouting. The discordant yells were suddenly swamped by all the kids, the cadres, calling out at once.
‘Settle for what? DEMOCRACY! Restore it when? NOW!’
They varied it with FREE – DOM! and EQUAL RIGHTS! After a minute it caught on, leaving some of the cadres free to argue desperately with those in the crowd who were pushing out, trying to start a charge up the steps. Jordan saw them pointing at the doorways and balconies, and noticed with a shock the black muzzles pointing back.
‘Time to move up,’ Cat said. She tugged his hand. He followed as she expertly threaded her way through the march. Her high, clear voice floated back snatches of whatever the group they happened to be moving through was singing. ‘“So is our soul set free”…’scuse me ma’am…“thus escapèd we”…come on, Jordan.’
At the end of Islington High Street (the couple of hundred metres of office blocks at the foot of Upper Street) was the southern boundary of Beulah City, known derisively from the other side of it as Angel Gate. The checkpoint barriers were down, and a score of Warriors were spaced out across the road. They held tear-gas launchers pointing upwards and had submachine-guns slung on their shoulders.