Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [44]
‘OK,’ Logan said. ‘OK. Good night, comrades.’
Good years, years when he faced no threats, just dangers: no problems, only difficulties. Building the union and building Norlonto’s towers flowed in his mind into one constructive task, a matter of organizing, of coordinating work. He took on more responsibilities for the union at the same time as he upgraded his skills, learning to handle the new machines – space-platform spin-offs, mostly – that were making on-site work less like trench warfare against raw nature. After a while he came under pressure from the union to become a full-time organiser, from the company management to become a supervisor. He took the union job, got bored after a year, but found it difficult after that to get taken on again by any company. He and Stone set up as a subcontracting cooperative – capitalists themselves. They got work that way all right, and stayed scrupulously in the union’s good books, as well as on its membership list.
He occasionally heard from Logan, or ran into him in bars around the spaceport. Logan had adopted the same solution to his employment problems. He never called Moh to do anything for the Party but would occasionally admit or boast that some piece of political infighting in the space movement was not entirely accidental.
Early one summer morning they pulled up their truck outside a site entrance near Alexandra Port to find their way blocked by a score of people with placards. Some building workers stood arguing with the pickets.
‘Oh, shit,’ Stone said. ‘A strike. Well, that’s it.’ He reached for the ignition key.
Kohn frowned. ‘Just a minute. Don’t see any of the workers on that picket line.’
He jumped out and went over to talk to one of the building workers, a steward he knew.
‘Hi, Mike. What’s the problem? I thought I’d have heard about a strike.’
Mike grimaced. ‘It’s not a strike, Moh, it’s a fuckin demo. Greens. They don’t like what we’re building.’
‘Well, fuck them.’ He looked over the small crowd. Lumpens and petty bourgeois, no doubt about it. Not an honest-to-God proletarian to be seen. The placards had slogans like STOP THE DEATH BEAMS. ‘What is this shit? This isn’t—’ He stopped to think. ‘It’s not a scam, is it, Mike? They haven’t got us working on some military job without telling us, have they?’
‘No,’ Mike said. ‘It’s all legit. Research lab, space-movement sponsored. Nice contract.’
Nice contract all right, Moh thought. Massive walls, klicks of cable, flashy electronics. Test-bed for laser launchers – ‘steam-beams’, as the nickname went. Stick your payload on top of a tank of water, point a tracking laser at it, boil the sucker into orbit.
‘So it’s not a picket line, right? So why don’t we just—’
He noticed Mike pointing with his chin, turned and checked over the nearest greens. Big, tough. Tougher than building workers. Looked like farmers, travellers, bikers. And tooled up: monkey wrenches, very thick sticks on the placards. Heavy electric torches sticking out of pockets. Peasants with torches.
‘Where’s the movement militia then?’
Mike shrugged. ‘Never there when you need them.’
Kohn looked at him, baffled. That wasn’t what he knew of the militia. Before he could say anything a tall, long-haired and long-bearded man in homespun trousers and a greased jacket loomed over them and said, ‘Yeah, the space cadets ain’t comin, so piss off.’
Kohn had already sized up the balance of forces: it was a small site; the workforce wouldn’t be more than a dozen even when they all came in. So he just said ‘OK’, and turned away. He paused for a moment to say to Mike: ‘Get all the guys and gals together, pile on our truck. Talk about it at the union, OK, no trouble.’
Mike nodded and stepped quickly