Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [8]
‘We’ve all fought alongside people we didn’t exactly see eye to eye with.’ She smiled, almost tenderly, almost conspiratorially. ‘“There is only one party, the Party of God”, remember?’
Kohn struggled momentarily with the politics of that particular past conflict and found it was all either too simple or too complicated.
‘The Muslims are civilized,’ he said. ‘The gang you were with are enemies of humanity.’
Catherin shrugged, with one shoulder. ‘At the moment they’re the enemies of our enemies, and that’s what counts. That’s what’s always counted.’
There were times when Kohn loathed the Left, when some monstrous stupidity almost, but never quite, outweighed the viciousness and venality of the system they opposed. Ally with the barbarians against the patricians and praetorians…think again, proletarians!
‘What does the ANR think of this brilliant tactic?’
Catherin’s face warped into scorn.
‘They’re being macho and sectarian and elitist as usual. Anyone who wants to fight the Hanoverian state should go through the proper channels – them!’
That was a relief. The Army of the New Republic had an almost mythical status on the Left. Claiming the legitimacy of the final emergency session of the Federal Assembly (held in an abandoned factory in Dagenham while the US/UN teletroopers closed in), it fought the Hanoverians and, it sometimes seemed, everybody else.
‘They’re history,’ Catherin said. ‘And if your little gang of mercenaries can’t get it together to stop defending legitimate targets, you are too.’
Kohn felt old. She was just a kid, that was what it was. Too young to remember the United Republic, hating the Hanoverian regime so much that any alliance against it seemed only common sense…There had to be more, you had to hold on to some sense of direction, even if it was only a thread. Growing up in the Greenbelt shanty-towns, Moh had learned that from his father. A fifth-generation Fourth Internationalist, paying out the thread, the thin line of words that connected past to future. The Party is the memory of the class, he used to say; meanwhile, the workers of the world did anything and everything except unite. Now he, Gaia shield his soul, had thought the Republic a rotten unstable compromise, but that didn’t stop him fighting to save it when the US/UN came in…welcomed, of course, by cheering crowds.
Kohn had no illusions. Most of the opposition would welcome the broadening of the Alliance, even if they saw it as only tactical and technical – a joint action here, a bit of covering fire there. The price would be that the list of legitimate targets would become a good deal longer. His co-op had lived by defending what he still saw as the seeds of progress – the workers’ organizations and the scientists and, if necessary, the capitalists – against the enemies of that modern industry on which all their conflicting hopes relied. The delicate balance, the ecological niche for the Cats, would be gone. For the first time he understood all that his father had meant by betrayal.
His rage focused on the wounded woman.
‘You’re free to go,’ he told her. ‘I’m not claiming ransom. I’m not hostage-swapping. Not pressing charges in any currency. I’ll clear you from our account.’
She sank back into the pillow.
‘You can’t do this to me!’
‘Watch my legs.’
He stalked out, leaving her free. Unemployed and unemployable. Only burned-out, squeezed-dry traitors, double and triple agents several times over, were ever released unconditionally.
At the time he thought it just.
2
Evidence for Aeroplanes
Tomorrow, Jordan thought, tomorrow he would start to live rationally. Tomorrow he would make the break, walk out and leave them, let them weep or curse. Light out for North London Town. Norlonto’s free, the whisper ran. You can get anything with money. Force has no purchase there.
He had thought the same thing on hundreds of previous days.
Jordan Brown was seventeen years old and fizzing with