Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [155]
The US President announced a new levy of conscription.
The censorship and jamming stopped. There was talk of a new constitution, a revision of the Settlement. A day later there was talk about the revolution, as if it had already happened. They offered a New Kingdom.
‘I don’t go much for intuition,’ Jordan said, ‘but I’ve got a real bad feeling about this.’
It was the fourth day since the faltering offensive had been taken up and taken over by the rising crowds, and the biggest demonstration yet, overflowing Trafalgar Square. The Hanoverian troops were nowhere to be seen, but everyone knew where they were. Invisible lines were not crossed.
The sky was a red shout above the black streets. News-hawks circled overhead, their mikes and lenses and pheromone detectors out like vibrissae, alert for the rumour, the glance, the smell of fear. Jordan and Cat sat on the steps of the National Gallery, drinking coffee from styrofoam cups and muching doner kebabs. (Thirty-five marks: the petty bourgeoisie had thrown itself into the revolution in its own inimitable way.)
‘I know what you mean,’ Cat said. ‘It’s intended. The whole City of Westminster is intended to make you feel like that. Nothing but shops and offices and official buildings and statues. It all belongs to capital or the state. No, it’s more than that. It’s ornate, gross. Centuries of surplus value stored up like fat. This time I hope we level the place.’
‘Well, that’s part of it,’ Jordan said, gazing over the knots of arguing people that filled the square. ‘Not all. We seem to have all this power, the government’s on the run, but we haven’t won.’
‘Damn right we haven’t,’ Cat said. ‘That’s why we’re here. We’re gonna keep coming here until the Hanoverians come out of their bunkers and barracks with their hands up, or come out shooting.’
‘At least some of us will be shooting back.’
Cat looked at him. ‘Not for long.’ She leaned back against the stone, closed her eyes and began to sing as if to herself:
Rise up, all foes of intervention,
rise up, all those who would be free!
Don’t trust the state and its intentions
we ourselves must win our liberty!
He didn’t know the song, but he recognized it with a shiver down his spine: he’d heard it as background noise on history tapes of other demonstrations, in other squares, other cities – Seoul and São Paulo, Moscow and Jo’burg and Berlin. After it the gas-shells would cough, the rifles speak, the bullets sing.
so now we face the final showdown
for the skies and the streets of Earth.
What though they start the fatal countdown?
There are better worlds in birth!
So comrades come rally
and the last fight let us—
Something had happened. A gasp, a whisper, a rumour spread through the crowd in visible shockwaves. Cat broke off singing and sat up, one hand on her ear. She turned and pressed his ear, too, against the tiny speaker. He heard the news of the century’s turning-point while leaning on her cheek with her hair across his face.
America was on strike from coast to coast.
Cat had such a look of triumph that it was as if she’d pulled the whole thing off herself. ‘We always knew this would happen!’ she said. ‘“The West shall rise again” – remember? The American workers have finally told the imperialists to shove it! Yeah, man! Yee fucking hah!’ She jumped to her feet and cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled: ‘US! UN! Remember the West shall rise again! Vive la quatrième internationale!’
A few metres away from them an old man from the Beulah City contingent burst into speech, leaning back and looking upwards at the news-hawks, his fists raised above his head. ‘“Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called, The lady