Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [260]
And Israel had declared war on Germany. It was ridiculous. What could they do? I thought, and then I suddenly realised that they’d probably just done it.
I flipped to N-TV for the reaction from Germany. A reporter was talking to the camera, in front of the Bundestag. He was saying something about Frankfurt, and he sounded terrified.
He clapped a hand to his ear, tilting his head.
His face paled, and the screen went white.
His voice, if you could call it that, continued for some time.
The war had ended. The peace process began. For Britain it began with stealth bombers and cruise missiles, and continued with paratroopers and teletroopers and lynch-mobs. The Royalist junta, its American allies and the British counter-revolutionary mobs between them killed about a hundred thousand people in six days. After that they had a country that knew its place in the New World Order.
It was still ungovernable. Under the Republic’s reforms, freeing up the housing, education and labour markets, there had already developed a tendency towards differentiation – self-ghettoisation, as I saw it, especially when it wasn’t spontaneous but promoted by the Republic’s unfortunate encouragement of identity politics. Bombing, invasion and civil war hardened the tendency into an irresistible force, as every minority fled to the dubious safety of its own tribe. Regional assemblies took the hint and drew old borders in fresh blood: North Wales, South Wales, Cumbria, West Scotland, East Scotland…even our own Greenbelt and free trade zones became safe havens, refugees piling in on top of refugees. The militias defended the area as best they could.
The final session of the Republic’s Federal Assembly passed its authority over to the Army Council, a body made up of the few senior officers who had stayed loyal. It called on the civilian population to avoid needless sacrifice and to resume armed resistance ‘at such time or times as the Army Council of the Army of the New Republic shall decide’. They thus gave a shred of legal cover to an indefinitely prolonged campaign of merciless terrorism, as they well knew. Then they all walked out of the former main workshop of the Ford Motor Company’s Dagenham site into the withering fire of the surrounding tanks.
It was probably the proudest moment in the history of British democracy. I watched it in the basement of a safe house on an illegal Iraqi satellite channel, and it made me vomit.
I knew I should be working; there was always another article to send out on the net, another friend or foe to contact, another militia unit’s fate to check; but I was hacking German casualty lists, searching for a name I hoped against hope that I wouldn’t find. The Israelis had tipped their long-range missiles with tactical, not strategic, warheads. Even in Berlin there were more survivors than anyone had expected. There was always a chance…
The phone rang.
‘Dad?’
‘Eleanor!’
‘Yes. Are you all right?’
Was I all right. I felt as if it was I who had come back from the dead.
‘Of course, oh my God, are you?’
‘I’m fine, I saw some terrible things but I’m okay. So’s Colin. We’re at the airport.’ She laughed. ‘Like you said. Sorry I’m a bit late. My flight boards in ten minutes, due in at 1545.’
It was 2.15. I said I’d be there to meet her. After she rang off I immediately called Annette with the news.
‘Is it safe for you to come out?’ Annette asked after we’d finished telling each other several times over of our joy and relief and assurance that we’d neither of us ever given up hope.
I shrugged. ‘I’m not on any “wanted” lists. The mobs have been brought to heel. Looks safe enough to me.’
‘From where you are, I’m sure it does,’ Annette said wryly. ‘Some of the movement people –’
‘Yeah, I know,’ I said. They’d got involved in resistance. Some had got themselves