He walks among the forced idleness of the track-layers. He shouts at the tunnellers to put down their picks and go nude and run away north into the unknown places of the continent. He shouts at them to copulate with the spiders in the dust. They are all draped in threads from the Weaver’s spinnerets. They are knotted in a new configuration.
—We saw a Weaver, Judah says. —Most people never see that. We saw a Weaver.
The next day the women strike.
—No, they say to the men who come to their tents, and who stare at them uncomprehending. The women stand together in a militia, holding what weapons they have. A picket of rags and petticoats.
There are scores of them, determined and surprised by themselves. They turn away the hammermen, tunnel-men, gendarmes. The rebuffed gather. A counterdemonstration of surly lustful men. They mutter. Some go to masturbate behind rocks; some simply go. Many stay.
The dust of the two gatherings rises as they face each other. The gendarmes come—they do not quite know what to do; the women are doing nothing but refusing, the men are only waiting. —No pay, Ann-Hari says, —no lay. No pay no lay no pay no lay.
—We’ll not do it no more for promises, she says to Judah. —Since we come here and there ain’t no money, they been doing and doing it on credit. Our men, our gendarmes, now the new lads. And they ain’t had women here for a long time; they hurt us, Judah. They come and say put it on my tab girl and you can’t say no and you know they ain’t going to pay.
—Cyra lost her eye, she said. —Some tunnel-man comes, put it on my tab, she tells him no and he knocks her so hard it splits her eye. Belladona had her arm broke. No pay no lay, Judah. Money first from now.
The women defend Fucktown. They have patrols with sticks and stilettos; there is a frontline. They take turns to watch the children. There must be those among them who are not happy with the confrontation, but they are quietened into solidarity. Ann-Hari and the others swish their skirts and laugh while the men watch. Judah is not the only man who is a friend to these infuriated whores. He, Shaun Sullervan, Thick Shanks, a clutch of others watch together.
—Come on girls what’s this then, says a foreman. —What’s the story? What are you after? We need you, beauties. He smiles.
—Won’t be beat down anymore, John, Ann-Hari says. —Won’t take promises. You pay; until then no lay.
—We ain’t got the money Ann you know that sweetheart . . .
—Ain’t my problem. Have your man Wrightby pay his men, then . . . She jigs her hips.
That night a group of men try with something between lightheartedness and anger to push their way past the picket, but the women block them and beat them hard and the men retreat holding split heads and screaming in astonishment as much as pain. —Stupid fuckpig bitch, one man screams. —You stupid bitch, you smashed my fucking head, bitch.
They do not let the men touch them the next day and there is no longer novelty or near-humour to the situation. A man takes out his cock, shakes it at them. —Want payment? he shouts. —I’ll give you payment. Eat this you fucking dirty moneygrab sluts. There are those in the crowd of men who have enough affection for the women they have travelled with that they do not like that, and they hush him, but there are others who applaud.
—Get money, and come in, the women shout. —Don’t blame us, horny bastards.
There is another attempt on their camp. This time it is led by the tunnellers. It is a rape squad intent on punishment. But there is an alarm, a panic from Remade women sent to clean clothes near the Fucktown tents. They see the men creeping and yell, and the men are on them quickly and attacking to silence them. A squad of the prostitutes come running.
Men are stabbed, a woman’s face is broken, and when the prostitutes have overcome the intruders one of the Remade women is found concussed and leaking from her head. The whole women hesitate briefly before they carry her in to tend her.
In the morning the tunnel-men strike. They gather at the tunnel mouth. The foremen run to negotiate. The tunnellers have their spokesman: a thin man, a weak geothaumaturge, his hands stained basalt black by the stone he makes into slurry.
He says, —We go back in when them girls let us back in, too, and his men laugh. —We’ve got needs, he says.
The prostitutes and tunnellers have made demands. The graders will not work. The track-layers cannot, and only sit in the sun and play dice or fight. It is becoming violent like a prairie town. The perpetual train sits. The gendarmes and foremen confer. There is rain, but it is hot and unrefreshing.
—Mate with the spiders, the old man says. —It’s time to change.
Everything is still. Only the bridge is being built, and now in the evenings when the bridge crews come off their work, some cross the ravine to their sister encampment, because they want to see the trouble. They come—hotchi in spines, apes trained and constrained by Remaking, Remade men given simian bodies. They come to see the strikes. They tour from one to another.
The newspapermen on the perpetual train, who have been despatching their stories when there are messengers, suddenly have something new to cover. One takes a heliotype of the picket of women.
—I don’t know what I’ll say, he says to Judah. —They don’t want me talking about tarts in The Quarrel.
—Take all the plates you can, says Judah. —This is something you should remember. This is important, he says, and it is his oddity, his beatific innard that speaks. His breath leaves him a moment at the thought that he can hear its words.
—We are all spiders’ children, says the mad old man.
There are handwritten Runagate Rampants on the rocks.
This is not three strikes, or two strikes and a half. This is one strike, against one enemy, with one goal. The women are not our opponents. The women are not to be blamed. No pay no lay they tell us, and that can be our slogan too. We will not lay another tie, another rail, until the money promised is ours. They say it, and we say it too. We say: No pay no lay!
When the overseers and gendarmes realise that the disparate groups are not tiring of the strike, will not exhaust themselves with recrimination, there is a change. Judah feels it when he rises and sees the foremen moving with new purpose.
It is already hot, he is already sweating, when unbreakfasted he goes to the tunnel mouth with others from the idle workforce. The tunnellers are arranged like a fighting unit, and they carry their picks. The foremen and gendarmes are before them, with a corps of tethered Remade.
—Come on now, says an overseer. Judah knows him. He is the man they bring in to do unpopular things. There is a delegation from the prostitutes, twelve women walking close together, headed by Ann-Hari. The tunnellers begin derisive calls. The women only watch. Behind them all the train wheezes like a bull.
The overseer stands before the Remade. He turns his back on the strikers and looks at the motley Remade in their integuments of foreign flesh and metal. Judah sees Ann-Hari whisper to Thick Shanks and another man, sees them nod without turning. They are staring at the Remade who have been gathered. One of them, a man with pipes that emerge from his body and enter it again, stares back at Thick Shanks and moves his head. He stands by a much younger man with chitined legs emerging from his neck.
—Pick up the picks, the foreman says to the Remade. —Go into the tunnel. Cut the rock. We’ll instruct you.
And there is a silence and no motion. The gendarmes have interposed between the strikers and the Remade.
—Take the picks. Go into the tunnel. Follow it to the end. Cut it.
There is silence again a while. The men of the perpetual train know how the Remade are being used, and some begin to shout scab, scab preemptively. But the shouts die because none of the Remade are moving.
—Take the picks.
When there is no movement still, the overseer strikes with his whip. It lands loudly and with the blossoming of a scream. A Remade drops, hands to his opened face. There are fear noises, and some of the Remade start and begin to move but one of
them makes a low command and they shudder and hold, except one who breaks and runs for the tunnel and shouts, —I didn’t want to and I won’t, you can’t make me, it’s a stupid plan, it’s a stupid plan.
The others do not look at him and he goes into the dark. The young man with the insect-leg tumours is shaking. He is looking hard at the ground. Behind him, the piped man is saying something.
—Take the picks. The overseer moves closer to the Remade.
Something rises in Judah. There is muttering and an anger around him.
—Take the picks or I’ll have to intervene to stop troublemakers. Take the picks and go in or—
People are beginning to shout now but the overseer speaks over them.
—or I will have to take action against . . . He looks slow and ostentatious over the terrified Remade, one by one, pauses while he looks at the piped man, the only one who even momentarily meets his eyes, then grabs the trembling boy, who cries and stumbles. —Or I will have to take action against this ringleader, the overseer says.
There is a moment without speech or sound, and he motions two of the gendarmes, and as they move in the crowd begins to shout again, and the gendarmes beat the young man down.
And as if he were with the stiltspear singing, Judah sees in time gone thick. He watches the descent of the billy clubs, the fumbling of the boy who covers his head and his chitin embellishments. He has time to watch the moving of birds above them. He has time and a fascination for the faces of the crowd.
They are stricken and cannot look away. The piped Remade man who was the boy’s protector has his teeth set, the track-layers are opened up with pity, the tunnel-men stare in the shadow of the rockforms with bleak astonishment, discomfort, and everywhere Judah looks as the cuffs land and the gendarmes hold back the crowd he sees a hesitation. Everyone is hesitating and tensed and looking at each other and at the howling Remade boy and the batons and looking at each other again and even the gendarmes are hesitating, each blow taking a moment longer to land than the previous, and their colleagues raise their weapons in uncertainty and there is a swelling of voices.
Judah sees Ann-Hari, held back by her friends, scratching the air, and she looks as if she will die of rage. And people hover as if steeling to dive into something cold, look to each other still, wait, wait, and Judah feels the thing in him reach out, the oddness and the good in him reach out and push them, and it makes him smile even in this blooded heat, and they move.
It is not Judah who moves first—he never moves first—or the Remade with the pipes, nor Thick Shanks nor Shaun but someone quite unknown in the forefront of the tunnel-men. He steps out and raises his arm. It is as if he pushes through a tension that has settled on the world, breaks it and pours out into time like water breaching its meniscus and others come with him, and there is Ann-Hari running forward and the Remade intervening to hold back the nightsticks and whips of the gendarmes, and Judah himself is running now and wrapping his work-hardened arms around the throat of a uniformed man.
Judah’s ears are stopped with a hot tinnitus, and all that he can hear is the beat of his own rage. He turns and fights as he has learnt to fight in brawls along the sides of the rails. He does not hear but feels the firing of guns as shoves in the air. Energy boils in him in hexes, and when he grips a gendarme, in a moment of instinct he makes the man’s shirt a golem that wriggles on his body. Judah runs and fights, and what he touches that is lifeless he gives instants of ablife and makes obey his orders, to struggle.
The gendarmes have flintlocks and whips, but are outnumbered. They have thaumaturges, but they are not the militia: there are no spit gobbets of energy or transformations on the strikers, only base charms the railroaders can match and survive.
There are more cactus-men among the track-layers than there are cactus overseers. They run huge through the TRT guards and lay green fists on them, breaking them easily. They shield their friends; the gendarmes are not carrying rivebows that can slice them apart.
The piped Remade man drags the body of the insect-altered boy. The man pulls coal from his pocket and smears it into his mouth, leaving his lips black. He runs. The gendarmes who can still move are retreating. Others litter the ground, beside broken Remade and free men. It is so fast.
Judah is running. He drips. Gendarmes swing their weapons and are overcome by Remade out of shackles. They shoot and Remade fall. By the train, the gendarmes are regrouping.
—We have to—Judah shouts, and the piped Remade man is beside him and nodding and shouting too, and there are those who obey him: Remade and free whole men and women, there is Ann-Hari, there is Shaun, and they take their orders from this nondescript Remade man.
—You, he says to Judah. —With me.
They round the curve through dead trees and there is the perpetual train. It breathes its smoke and it spits steam as they come closer in mangy army. Its cowcatcher is splayed like ruined teeth. Its chimney flares, seems a funnel sucking up the energy of the sun. And all over figures jump from it and to it, from the bunks on its roof, from the trucks where the free men sleep, from all of it, staring as those who approach, gendarmes and strikers, shout. The two sides try to win them over as they run.
—they, they—
—get down, it’s the bastard Remade—
—they shot us down, they beat us—
—disperse you bastards or I’ll godsdamned shoot—
—stop them, Jabber, fuck stop them fuck’s sake—
The gendarmes fringe the train in raggedy formation, guns out, and the surge of the curious and the angry strikers—tunnellers, prostitutes, Remade—skitters to a stop. The gendarme retreat to their teetering guntower.
Now there is a long moment between a standoff and a confusion. Ann-Hari and the piped man approach. He looks emotionless. Ann-Hari does not. Behind them is a pitching army of Remade. They do not march, they shake their legs, some still ringed by the fringes of shackles opened with stones and stolen keys. They do not march, they almost fall with every step, and the sun makes them vivid in mongrel colours. The sun cuts sharp edges around the weapons they have made.
They raise slivers of the fence that has contained them. They swing the chains that tethered their feet. They grip shivs, pot shards embedded in wood. There are scores, and then hundreds of them.
—Jabber who let them out, what you done? someone shouts hysterically.
The thing in Judah swells up to see them. It bloats him; it moves like a baby in his belly. Judah shouts for them, a welcome, an alarum.
Men on all fours become bison-men, carrying men wrapped about with limbs, and women walking on elongated arms made of animals’ parts, and men stamping on piston legs like jackhammers come alive, and women all over whiskers, or with finger-thick tendrils feeling through their skin, and tusks stolen from boars and carved from marble, and mouths become interlocked gears, and switching tails of cats and dogs frilling waists like skirts and sweating in inks from Remade glands and astream with a rainbow mess, and this aggregate of criminals, this motley comes closer in freedom.
The gendarmes have withdrawn. They are in their armoured cab, in the guntower. Some have grabbed mules and horses from the tracks’-end corral and gone.
—No no no.
Many among the tunnellers and the track-layers are aghast at the freeing of the Remade. No one is sure who did it, how. Some stolen keys, a moment that went through the kraal of tethered criminals (though still there are a few who will not emerge, who cling to their irons).
—This ain’t what we’re here for. This ain’t what this was. A tunneller is shouting at Shaun Sullervan, disdaining to speak to Ann-Hari or the host of Remade stretching their limbs. —I didn’t want that boy to be beat, it ain’t nothing he’d done, but this is stupid. What are you going to fucking do? Eh? We have . . .
He looks at the blinking Remade, who stare at him. He twists a little.
—No offence, mates. He is speaking to the Remade now. —Look, it ain’t my fucking business. You seen we
won’t let them beat you down no more. But, but, you can’t, you got to go back, this is . . . He indicates the guntower.
It is late. There is a siege and a strange siege calm.
—People have fucking died, the man says. —They’ve died.
The boy with the insect additions is dead. Other Remade were dropped by bullets. A cactus-man was split by a moment of flying wood. Gendarmes have been piled up, broken on mallets, on spikes, on the ersatz weapons of the railroad. There are dazed mourners by trench graves.
Hunters return. Prostitutes sit on rocks in that deserted middle of the world and watch the train. Its firemen and brakemen agitate as the giddy Remade fill the boiler and pull levers and those with boilers of their own steal the high-grade coke. People mill bewildered and ask each other what has happened. They look at the sun and the shifting tree corpses and wait for someone to come into control.
A strange angst because there is such calm here now and it cannot sustain. The gendarmes have taken the guntower and one other car: the Remade have the rest of the train. The iron tower cracks in the heat, and the weapon at its top swivels.
The free men want to treat Shaun and Thick Shanks as leaders of a Remade rabble, but Ann-Hari stands with them, and with the pipe-woven man, whose name Judah learns is Uzman, and with other Remade.
—Take your boys back in. What you think they’re doing in there? the free workers’ speaker says. He points at the tower. —Getting ready is what. To take you. Now, we made our point. If you go back now, they’ll pay us up, and there’ll be no, no penalties . . .
He speaks to Shaun, but it is Uzman answers.
—You’ll get your money, and you’re telling us to give this back? The train?
He laughs, and the craziness of what the free men are asking is very evident. They want these Remade to unfree themselves. Uzman laughs. —We ain’t decided yet what we do here, he says. —But we decide.
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