Desolation Road

47

It was a beautiful day for a march.

So said the steelworkers buttoned up in their best clothes, full to the gills with breakfast pineapple and fried egg, striding out into the crisp morning sunlight.

So said the railroad men, straightening their peaked caps and examining the burnish of their brass buttons before stepping out to join the growing throng.

So said the truck drivers, all suspenders and check shirts, inspecting their worn denims for the professionally correct amount of dirt.

So said the crane drivers, so said the rolling-mill operators, so said the steel puddlers and the drag-line drivers, the furnace men and the baling men, the separator men, the washers, the grinders, the fusion-plant operators; and their wives, and their husbands, and their parents and their children: they all said as they stepped out of their buff-coloured front doors that it was a beautiful day for a march.

As they streamed toward Industrial Feudalism Gardens their feet stirred up pamphlets only minutes before bundled out of the rear seat of a small, fast propeller ‘plane to snow down upon the roofs and gardens of Steeltown. The printing of these pamphlets was coarse, the paper cheap, the language blunt and uneducated.

THERE WILL BE A MASS MEETING ON SUNDAY 15TH AUGTEMBER AT TEN MINUTES OF TEN. A PARADE WILL FORM UP OUTSIDE INDUSTRIAL FEUDALISM GARDENS ON THE CORNER OF HEARTATTACH AND 12TH AND MARCH TO THE COMPANY OFFICES TO DEMAND AN EXPLANATION OF THE DEATHS OF

(and here the crude broadsheet named the poor, silly protestors)

AND RECOGNITION OF THE RIGHTS OF EVERY SHAREHOLDER. RAEL MANDELLA, JR., WILL SPEAK.

Rael Mandella waited on the corner of Heartattack and 12th dressed in his father’s most elegant black snooker suit.

“You must look the part,” Santa Ekatrina had told him that morning. “Your father was a fine figure of a man when he took on the world, you must be no less when you do the same.”

He looked at his father’s fob watch. His five colleagues: pamphleteer, brother of martyr, disaffected junior manager, political firebrand, empathist, looked at their respective timepieces. Ten o’clock. Tick tock. Rael Mandella Jr. rocked forward and back on the heels of his father’s black snooker shoes.

What if no one showed?

What if no one were prepared to defy the Company, to defy the warning messages broadcast from the black and gold vans, the new ones more like armoured cars?

What if no one were disloyal? What if every hand was a Company hand, every heart a Company heart?

What if no one cared?

“Beautiful day for a march,” said Harper Tew, and then they heard it, the sound of a thousand buff-coloured front doors slamming, the sound of a thousand pairs of feet stepping into the morning and falling into line and the sound swelled and swelled into a gentle roar like that of a forgotten sea. The first of the marchers rounded Industrial Feudalism Gardens and Rael Mandella’s questions were answered.

“They did!” he shouted. “They cared!”

The procession formed up under the banners of its constituent trades and professions. Here truck drivers gathered under the symbol of a snarling orange truck, here puddlers and pourers carried the likeness of a glowing white ingot, here a black and gold locomotive snapped proudly in the air above the freight handlers and drivers. Those without banner or emblem gathered under regional flags, holy icons and various slogans from the humorous through the scatological to the venomous. Rael Mandella Jr. and his five deputies positioned themselves at the head of the procession. They raised a furled banner. The release was pulled and the wind streamed out the pure white ground emblazoned with a green circle. A rumble of puzzlement passed through the procession. This was not the banner of any known trade, profession, region or religion represented in Steeltown.

The whistles blew, airhorns trumpeted, and the march made the short and pleasant walk from the Industrial Feudalism Gardens through the belching burning factories to the befountained and statued Corporation Plaza. It took twenty minutes for Corporation Plaza to fill, and as the marchers passed through the ringing steel canyons that led to the offices of the Company, shouts of encouragement volleyed from the shiftworkers on their gantries and catwalks. Counting heads, Rael Mandella Jr. estimated a full third of the workforce was present.

“Can’t see any police around,” he said to Mavda Arondello. “Shall we begin?” The gang of five nodded. Rael Mandella Jr. summoned up the mystic anger and let it pour through his loudhailer into Corporation Plaza.

“I’d like to thank you all, all of you, for coming here today. Thank you, from myself, from my friends here: I can’t begin to tell you how much this means to me, how it felt to be marching with all of you behind me. The Company has bullied us, the Company has threatened us, the Company has even killed some of us, but you, the people of Steeltown, you rise above the bullying and the threats.” He could feel the mystic current flowing now. He snatched the green on white banner and let it fly in the wind. “Well, today you can be proud of yourselves, today we are giving a name to that strength and determination, and when your grandchildren ask at your knee where you were on Augtemper fifteenth, you can say, yes, I was there, I was in Corporation Plaza, I was there when Concordat was born! Yes, friends, I give you: the Concordat!”

Puzzlement yielded to expression. Rael Jr. turned to his deputies and shouted over the clamour, “Well, did I do it right?”

“You did it right, Rael.”

When there was quiet he held high a crumpled sheet of paper.

“I have here our Manifesto; our Six Just Demands. They are fair, they are just. I will read them to you, and to the Company, so that it can hear the voice of its Shareholders.

“Just Demand One: Recognition of a Shareholders’ Representative Organization, namely Concordat, as the official voice of workforce and management alike.”

“Just Demand Two: Withdrawal of Company specie redeemable only in Company commissaries and the introduction of government legal tender, New Dollars.”

“Just Demand Three: Full labour force representation and consultation on all matters pertaining to the labour force, including deployment, shift work, overtime, production quotas, automation and efficiency programmes.”

“Just Demand Four: the gradual scaling down of the system of industrial feudalism in private life, including the spheres of education, recreation, health and public services.”

“Just Demand Five: Full freedom of expression, association and religion recognized for all Company members. All property to be held in common by all Shareholders rather than by the Company on the supposed behalf of all Shareholders.”

“Just Demand Six: Abolition of the system of promotion based on spying and informing on workmates.”

After reading the Six Just Demands, Rael Mandella Jr. folded the sheet of crumpled paper, then his arms, and waited for the Bethlehem Ares Corporation’s reply.

Five minutes passed. Five more and the early siesta sun began to pour heat and sweat into Corporation Plaza. Yet five more minutes passed. The people were patient. The five deputies were patient. Rael Mandella Jr. was patient. After twenty minutes a glass and steel door in the glass and steel face of the Company offices opened and a man dressed in the black and gold of Company security stepped into Corporation Plaza. His cross-polarized helmet prevented his face from being seen by the demonstrators, but it was an unnecessary precaution for there was no one present who could have recognized him as Mikal Margolis.

“I am required to inform you that this assembly is unlawful and that its organizers and participants are guilty of an offence against section 38, paragraph 19, subsection F of the Bethlehem Ares Corporation Assemblies and Associations Ruling. You have five minutes to disperse and return home to enjoy your rest days. Five minutes.”

Not a figure moved. The five minutes ticked away on Limaal Mandella’s fob watch and the tension wound tight around Corporation Plaza. Rael Mandella Jr., sweating in his father’s best championship suit, was horrified to realize how few of such brief five-minute periods went to make up a lifetime.

“One minute,” said the black and gold security man. The internal amplification circuits in his helmet lent his voice the ponderous weight of the whole Bethlehem Ares Corporation. Yet the protestors radiated defiance mingled with a colossal disbelief that the Company would use force against its own Shareholders.

“Don’t do it,” whispered Rael Mandella Jr. to the black and gold elemental.

“I must,” said Mikal Margolis. “I have my instructions.” Then he shouted at the very heaven-ringing peak of his amplification, “Very well. You have neglected the Company’s warnings. There will be no more. Commandant Ree, disperse this unlawful assembly.”

Then the shots rang out.

There were screams. Heads turned this way, that way, the crowd surged like stirred porridge. Security guards stepped from concealment and advanced on the crowd, a black and gold fringe firing volleys of shots into the air. The crowd panicked, orderly demonstration turned to rabble. Placards waved wildly, banners were snapped and trampled, the people wheeled and heaved. The black and gold line fell upon the hem of the demonstration in a baton charge of shock-staves. Swearing roaring panic filled Corporation Plaza. The security men cleared wedges before them, but as they struck toward the heart of the demonstration, the resistance solidified before them. Shock-staves were ripped from hands, riot shields ripped away. Somewhere at the edge of the battle someone was using a fallen guard’s flechette gun to fire erratically at the advancing line. Guards and demonstrators broke on each other like waves. Canisters of riot gas trailed orange streamers through the air. Handkerchiefs over their faces, the demonstrators threw them back at their assailants. They were holding them… the demonstrators were holding them… security withdrew, regrouped, deployed riot shields, and advanced behind a withering broadside of fiechettes and soft plastic splat bullets. A detachment burst from the doors of the Company offices and stormed the steps, intent upon Rael Mandella Jr. and his colleagues. With a roar of defi ante a young truck driver (plaid shirt, red suspenders, dirty denims, wife and two children) hurled himself at the black and gold assailants armed with a heavy shock-stave. The security commander lowered his flechette gun and point-blank blew the berserker’s head into a red smear. The shot and the blood galvanized the attackers. Riot guns swung down into short-range positions and ripped shot after shot into the terrified pandemonium. Hands, legs, shoulders, faces, flew into red shreds. Those who fell were trampled by the swirling masses. Rael Mandella Jr. ducked under the blast of a security guard aiming for his head and floored him with a fullblooded kick to the balls. He snatched up the riot gun and charged, roaring, at the advancing guards. His maniac fury broke them. They scattered. Mikal Margolis, isolated before Rael Mandella Jr. and his crazed deputies, tactically withdrew.

Rael Mandella Jr. took up his loudhailer.

“Get out of here, all of you! They’ll murder you! Murder you all! There’s only one thing the Company understands. Strike! Strike! Strike!”

Bullets splintered the concrete facade of the Company offices and showered Rael Jr. with shards. His words carried above the song of battle and the cries of the crowd took on pattern and form.

“Strike strike strike!” they chanted, pressing counterwedges through the police lines and holding them open with shock-staves and riot guns. “Strike strike strike!” The crowd broke through the encirclement and fled down the open streets crying, “Strike strike strike.” The security guards sniped at their heels with flechette shot.

Hours later the guards were still searching Corporation Plaza for Rael Mandella Jr., poking between the crushed placards and the snapped banners and the discarded helmets, checking the bleeding and the wounded and yes, even the dead, for dead there were, and they looked into the faces, of the keeners who knelt disconsolate by the sides of sons, fathers, husbands, wives, mothers, daughters, lovers to see if they wore the face of the traitor Rael Mandella Jr., the fool who had brought this down upon innocent people. They expected to find him wounded, hoped to find him dead, but he had escaped in the black burnoose of an old woman from New Glasgow, dead of contagious panic. Clutched to his chest were the Six Just Demands and the furled green and white banner of Concordat.