Iron Council - China Mieville [28]
It had started at the Paradox Concerns, in unorganised complaint at some dismissals, and then had been on the streets with great speed, and shop floors in the surrounds were fractured as others joined the demonstrators, whose slogans had veered from reinstatement of friends to increased wages, then were suddenly denunciations of the Mayor and of the suffrage lottery, were demands for votes. Bottles were thrown, and caustic phlogiston; there were shots—the militia shot back or started it—and sixteen people were dead. Chalked homages appeared regularly at the junction and were cleaned away. Ori touched his fist gently to his chest as he passed the site of the Paradox Massacre.
On Chainday he went to The Grocer’s Sweetheart. A bit before eight, two men left the taproom and did not come back. Others followed, in casual and random order. Ori drank the last of his beer and went as if for the privy, but seeing he was not followed he turned down a damp-mottled corridor, lifted a trapdoor down into the basement. Those assembled in the dark looked and did not greet him, almost as much suspicion as welcome on their faces.
“Chaverim,” he said to them. A category stolen from an old language. “Chaver,” they said back—comrade, equal, conspirator.
One Remade man, and it was the first time he had come. His arms were crossed at the wrists and were fused, and when he clenched and unclenched his fingers it was as if he imitated a bird.
There were two women from a sweatshop under the Skulkford railway arches, knit-machine workers, by a docker and a machinist, and a vodyanoi clerk in light-cloth mimicry of a human suit that he could wear in the water, complete with stitched-on tie. A cactus-man stood. The barrels of cheap beer and wine served as tables for dissident publications: a crumpled Shout, The Forge, and several copies of the best-known seditionist sheet, Runagate Rampant.
“Chaverim, I want to thank you for coming.” A middle-aged man spoke with calm authority. “I want to welcome our new friend Jack.” He nodded at the Remade. “War with Tesh. Militia infiltration. Free trade unions. The strike at Purrill’s Bakery. I’ve word on each of those. But I want to take a few minutes to talk about my approach—our approach, Double-R’s approach—to the question of race.” He glanced at the vodyanoi, at the cactus-man, and began to speak.
It was these introductions, these discussions, that had first brought Ori close to the Runagate Rampant circles. He had bought a copy every fortnight for three months from a fruit-seller in Murkside, and eventually the man had asked him whether he was interested in talking through the issues covered, had directed Ori to these hidden meetings. Ori had been a regular, raising more points and objections, engaging with more enthusiasm—and eventually less—until after one meeting, while they were alone, with affecting trust the convenor had told Ori his real name, Curdin. Ori had responded, though like everyone they still went by Jack to each other within the meetings.
“Yes, yes,” Curdin was saying, “I think that’s right, Jack, but the question is why?”
Ori unfolded his Runagate Rampant, read it in snippets. Exhortations for unity in action that he had seen before, angry and illuminating analyses, columns and columns of strikes. Each workplace, each two or three people who had put their tools down, won or lost, a gathering of twenty or a hundred, a half-hour walkout, the disappearance of every guildsmember or suspected unioner. A catalogue of every dispute, murderous or paltry. It bored him.
There were stories missing. Ori’s frustrations with