Desolation Road

by Ian McDonald

  “I know where those spurious prophecies about the factory came from, Chamberlain. I am not one-third the fool you take me for.”

  In her audience chamber she sat enthroned, illuminated by a single shaft of sunlight caught by angled mirrors high in the dome. Around her feet were strewn flowers and tangles of metal swarf, before her a line of pilgrims with nine-pointed starbursts painted on their brows stretched into the gloom. A chilly piety leaked into the air.

  “This place needs more light,” Taasmin Mandella whispered to herself, picturing a Panarchic hand lifting the top off the Basilica like the lid on a jar of pickled gherkins to let the full light of day flood in.

  “Pardon, madam?” asked an attendant Poor Child with a metal head.

  —Poor Child, thought Taasmin Mandella. As the line of healings blessings prophecies petitions forgivenesses shuffled forward she found herself looking up at the reflections of the clouds caught in the roof mirrors and thought of her nephew fighting for the things her power had been given her to fight, out there in the desert sun, under the open sky and the eyes of the Panarch. Spirituality in action, faith in brown shoes, the knife edge of revolutionary love. She was right to pledge assistance to Concordat. For all their human sins, they upheld humanity, life and freedom before the Company's crushing sterility, machine regimentation and annihilation.

  “Lady, the Old Women of Chernowa.” A gaggle of black-shawled gap-toothed grandmothers bowed amid the flowers and swarf. They carried an ugly wooden effigy of a small child. Clumsily carved, ineptly painted, it wore an expression as if a sharp implement were being inserted into its backside. “They bring a petition, madam.” The attendant bowed respectfully and gestured for the Old Women of Chernowa to approach.

  “What is your petition?” Sun glinted on clear cold water, leaves cast dappled shadows in leisurely shade; Taasmin Mandella hardly heard their pleading voices.

  “…take away our sons and our sons’ sons they take away our freedom, our nobility, they take all we have and give it back to us in dribs and drabs; this they call ‘industrial feudalism,’ and for this we are meant to thank them….”

  “Stop. You are from Steeltown?”

  The oldest and most venerable of grandmothers cringed low in dread.

  “Stand up, all of you.” Sunshine and shade and clear cold water evaporated in the light of the higher sun. “You are from”—she searched her memory, cursing herself for her inattention—“Chernowa in New Merionedd?”

  “That is so, madam.”

  “And you are oppressed by the Company…strikers, I take it?”

  The youngest grandmother pushed to the front of the gaggle.

  “Lady, they have cut off the food from our bellies and the water from our lips, the light from our eyes and the power from our fingertips, they have driven us out of our homes so that we must either leave our families, or else live like animals in rude huts of plastic and card! Grey Lady, we petition you, help us! Pray for us, intercede for us, bring the cries of the oppressed to the ears of the Panarch, let him shine his favour upon us, bless us…”

  “Enough.” The effusive woman crept back to her place, shamefaced at her outburst. “What is that you have with you?” Eldest Grandmother held up the ugly statue.

  “This is our icon, the Bryghte Chylde of Chernowa, who by the intervention of the Blessed Lady saved our town from destruction by a falling space-elevator shuttle through summoning a mystic wind and blowing the danger away.”

  Taasmin Mandella had heard of the miracle of Chernowa. The town had been saved but shuttle and all two hundred and fifty-six aboard had been vaporized. A better class of miracle would have saved both, she thought. And it was an exceptionally ugly statue.

  “Bring it here.” Taasmin Mandella stretched out her left hand toward the icon. Pulses of light flowed up the circuitry in her dress and gathered around her left wrist. Her halo brightened to such an intensity that it threw shadows into the farthest recesses of the audience hall. She felt a wave of innocence break over her: the inner symphony resumed in her heart and she was free and forgiven. Metal streamers like ropes of printed circuits flowed from her hand and wrapped the Bryghte Chylde of Chernowa in a web of electronics. The congregation of the faithful watched in utter awe as the coarse wooden skin of the icon was overlain by a film of circuits. Electricity sparked along its limbs, fusion-light glowed in its eyes, and from its lips issued a stream of machine-code gibberish.

  The transubstantiation of wood to machine was complete. Pilgrims fell to their knees. Some fled the basilica in fear. The Old Women of Chernowa made to bow, but Taasmin Mandella stopped them.

  “Take this and show it to my nephew. It's the answer he's been waiting for. Take him my blessing too: God is on your side. You are not property.” A surge of holy mischief made Taasmin Mandella raise her left fist in a clenched-fist Concordat salute. She stood so that everyone might see the Grey Lady's Solidarity, then swirled her robes and strode from the dais.

  “There will be no further audiences today,” she shouted to her bionic majordomo. She watched her fluster in confusion, then hurryscurry to tell Inspiration Cadillac. She did not care. God had broken through, war was declared, she had made a free act of conscience. War was declared and she was happy happy happy.

  “And I am not property either,” she told her reflection in the clear cold water of her garden pool.

  Anyone presenting a Concordat card to either of the proprietors of the Mandella and Das Hot Snacks and Savouries Emporium was entitled to eat freely of the wonderland of cooking sausages, grilling kebabs, chickpea fritters frying merrily in the deep fryer and assorted bhajis, samosas, pakoras and tiddyhoppers. This was a gesture of filial solidarity on the part of the Mandella half of the Hot Snacks and Savouries Emporium; it was having a ruinous effect on the enterprise's profitability, but the Mandella half knew the Das half had sackfuls of golden dollars salted away from his days, now sadly remembered, as town handyman, freebooter, goondah and bum which would bide the emporium over the Concordat crisis.

  The Hot Snacks and Savouries Emporium was of remarkable, even unique, construction. The front half came from an aged riksha which had laid for three years behind Ed's Shed, the back half was adapted from a disused ’lighter galley augmented with fold-down bar seats, piped music, gaily coloured paper lanterns, and a plethora of holy icons, medals, and paper prayer tickets. Each morning before the first light touched his window the Das half of the partnership would kick the riksha half of the emporium into asthmatic life and drive the ungaintly contraption down the narrow alleys, dodging chickens, goats, llamas, children, trucks until he found a good place to park. Almost invariably this was across the street from the Pentecost Sisters’ General Merchandise Store so that Rajandra Das could smile charmingly to them when they came to open the store at eight minutes of eight and they, in turn, could invite him in for mint tea at the hottest time of the day. By the time the Mandella half of the partnership arrived (the half with the needle-sharp business acumen, the genetic bequest of his rationalist father) there would be sausages frying and biggins of mint tea or coffee venting perfume into the air and a line as long as a free breakfast clutching their Concordat cards.

  On the 66th day of the strike Rajandra Das was wrapping a sausage as long as his forearm to hand to a striker whose face he recognized vaguely when he froze in mid-wrap.

  “R. D.,” said the Mandella half. “What you seen?”

  Rajandra Das automatically handed the sausage to the striker.

  “It's him.”

  “Him?” Kaan Mandella looked but saw only a dark-haired middle-aged man watching from the end of the street.

  “He had the gall to come back, after what he did.…” Kaan Mandella looked again but the figure was gone.

  “Who was he?”

  Rajandra Das did not say but he maintained a vengeful tightness all day that was most uncharacteristic. When the Hot Snacks and Savouries Emporium was safely parked for the night, Rajandra Das paid a call on Mr.
Jericho.

  “He's back,” he said, and when Mr. Jericho learned who was back, he sent Rajandra Das to gather up all the Founder Members, with the exception of Dominic Frontera, and while Rajandra Das was gathering up all the Founder Members he went to the drawer where he kept his needle-pistol and took it out of its silk wrapping.

  At twenty forty-five Mikal Margolis, chief of security for the Desolation Road project, was going to have a bath in his managerial apartment. The preliminary undercover survey of Desolation Road was complete, the Company could move against Concordat at any time and crush it, it had been a hard day and a long hot bath was what he needed. He opened the door and saw the pointing end of an antique bone-handled needle-pistol.

  “Don't slam the door,” said a voice he had forgotten. “I can shoot you dead through it if I have to. Now, please come with me.”

  As Mikal Margolis was redressing, Mr. Jericho noticed the Company uniform.

  “I didn't know that.”

  “Well, at least there's something you don't know. Chief of Project Security, no less.”

  Mr. Jericho said nothing but added a further crime to the charge-sheet in his mind. He led his prisoner by sideways and byways to the perimeter wire. A thread of pure electric tension connected the nose of the needle-pistol to the nape of Mikal Margolis's neck.

  “Under here,” said Mr. Jericho, indicating an open culvert hatch Mikal Margolis had not even known existed.

  “How did you find me?” asked the prisoner as the two men splashed through the sewage of Steeltown.

  “Damantine disciplines, though that won't mean anything to you.”

  But it did, and Mikal Margolis suddenly knew a lot about Mr. Jericho. And he also knew that for all his Freelancer-trained senses, he could not escape from his captor. So he let him lead him out of Steeltown and into Desolation Road.

  The kangaroo court was convened in Rajandra Das's storeroom amid crates of chick peas donated to Concordat by the Association of Meridian Street Traders. Looking around him, Mikal Margolis recognized the Mandellas, the Gallacelli brothers, the Stalins, Genevieve Tenebrae holding the globe containing her husband's ghost, even the Blue Mountains father and daughter were there. He shivered. It was like being tried by a parliament of ghosts. Then he saw Persis Tatterdemalion.

  “Persis, what is this? Tell me.” She looked away from him. Mr. Jericho read a formal charge. He then asked the defendant how he pleaded.

  “Tell me, is Mother dead then?” the defendant asked.

  “She is,” said Rael Mandella Sr.

  “That's good. I would not have liked for her to see this.”

  “What is your plea?” asked Mr. Jericho.

  “Guilty as charged.”

  And all the jurors agreed. All of them. Even Persis. Even the ghost.

  “You know what to do then,” said Mr. Jericho, and for the first time Mikal Margolis saw the rope. As he was led up to the makeshift scaffold (a pair of store step-ladders), he felt neither rage nor hatred but only an overwhelming sense of disgust that the man who had taken on the Bethlehem Ares Corporation and won them to him should meet such an ignominious end. The noose was placed over his neck.

  “Don't you feel any remorse at all?” asked Genevieve Tenebrae, a twisted, pale thing, a hermetic troglodyte. “Don't you feel anything for poor Gaston?”

  Poor Gaston, was it? Philandering bum.

  “I was a kid then,” he said. “Crazy, mixed up. These things happen.” He looked at Persis Tatterdemalion and held out his hands. “Look, Persis. No trembling now.” The vigilantes bound those steady hands and then argued over what consignatory words to use over the condemned's soul. Mikal Margolis wavered at the top of the step-ladders and felt his fury grow. He could not accept that he must die so stupidly.

  “Have you quite finished?” he shouted.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Mr. Jericho. “Drop him.”

  Rajandra Das kicked the step-ladder from under Mikal Margolis. Mikal Margolis felt a fist of iron try to tear his head from his body, then there was a snap (—My neck, my neck!)…and he thumped onto the straw.

  “Goddamn cheap rope!” someone shouted. Mikal Margolis rolled into a stand and charged head down at the lightswitch. The room was plunged into blackness and shouting just as one of Mr. Jericho's needles took the skin off his cheek. Mikal Margolis blundered out into the street and zigzagged chicken-fashion toward the wire gates of Steeltown.

  “Help, help, murder!” he roared. Security men piled out of their portable cabins and menaced the street with their gun muzzles. Mr. Jericho, taking careful aim with his needle-pistol, put his weapon up.

  “Out of range. Sorry. Too much cover.”

  “The bastard got away!” wept Genevieve Tenebrae.

  “Second time!” said Rajandra Das, watching the guards swing wide the gates to admit the escapee.

  “There won't be a third either,” said Mr. Jericho. No one was quite sure what he meant.

  The meaning of Mr. Jericho's comment became clear on Tuesday 12th November, when the Bethlehem Ares Corporation crushed Concordat.

  It was a very efficient operation, no less than would be expected of the Bethlehem Ares Corporation. They knew exactly where to go and whom to take. They entered houses, smashed through barricaded rooms, raided hotels, bars, offices. The wire could not contain them, they slammed through the streets of Desolation Road in their black and gold armoured vans. Bursts of MRCW fire ripped the air. Dominic Frontera and his policemen were helpless before them. They were disarmed by the black and gold raiders and locked in their own town jail. Others who tried to obstruct them were treated less gently. Some were shot in kneecap or elbow. The fortunate few had only their fingers mashed under MRCW butts. Men were dragged from hotels and safehouses and made to crouch against slogan-clad walls, hands behind heads, while junior managers who drank idiotic drinks made from bananas and tapioca picked out line organizers and section reps. Some were taken away in the black and gold vans. Some were released. Some particular troublemakers were simply taken behind those walls and shot through the eye. The daughters wives lovers mothers who had chosen to remain howled in impotent fury. Company security smashed its way into the Tatterdemalion Bar/Hotel Annex and arrested three of the five strike committee members and two innocent pilgrims just to make up the numbers. The prisoners were taken into the back of the bar and shot among the beer barrels and crates. The security men sprinkled kerosene on the floor and burned the hotel annex behind them.

  In the shantytown of Concorde that had sprung up beside the wire to house, the evicted from Steeltown, black and gold security men sloshed riksha fuel over the plastic and cardboard shacks and ignited them. Fire swept through the township faster than the citizens could run from it. Within minutes the community of Concorde had been reduced to ashes.

  Security respected neither boundary nor conscience. Sweeping protesting Poor Children aside, they emptied the Faith City dormitories and searched the lines of faces for the features on their arrest sheets. The sanctuary of the Basilica of the Grey Lady was desecrated by a charge of gun-toting security men, but by the time Taasmin Mandella arrived from her meditations the Bethlehem Ares Corporation had swept through and passed like a typhoon, leaving a trail of devastation and mayhem.

  The Company rampaged through Desolation Road, indulging any petty whim that took it. The civil authorities were powerless to assist. It became evident that there was a secondary, more sinister aspect to the violence. The homes and businesses of the founder members of Desolation Road were singled out for attack. As the smoke went up from the Bar/Hotel Annex, the offices of Gallacelli & Mandella Developments were destroyed by a colossal explosion. Just around the bend in the alley the Mandella and Das Hot Snacks and Savouries Emporium was broken into pieces before the proprietors’ eyes.

  “Hope you're satisfied!” shouted the Das half of the partnership. “I hope you're goddamn satisfied!” Both partners gave clenched-fist Concordat salutes to the guards’ retreating backs.


  “We is not property!” cried Rajandra Das. The security men came back and beat both of them to the ground with their weapons.

  Five guards burst into the Mandella hacienda on the pretext of searching for Rael Jr. and turned the place upside down.

  “Where is he?” they demanded of the saintly Santa Ekatrina, MRCW muzzle to her temple.

  “Not at home,” she said. Out of frustration and petty vengeance they slaughtered every animal in the farmyard. They smashed every stick of furniture, overturned the pots of lentils and stew in the kitchen, destroyed the house solar collector lozenge, and made to break apart Eva Mandella's tapestry loom.

  “I wouldn't touch that if I were you,” said Rael Mandella Sr. with the deadly calm a hunting rifle in the hand affords. The security men shrugged (old fool, old stupid man) and raised their MRCW butts. Rael Mandella let out a howl of slaughtered animals overturned pots smashed solar collector and threw himself between the guards and the loom. An MRCW missile blew his chest away and threw him across the tapestry frame, where his blood stained the half-done history melodramatic red.

  In the smoke and blood and stench of burning flesh the small polite cough almost went unheard, but it was just enough to make the murderers turn around. Before them stood Limaal Mandella. In his hand Mr. Jericho's needle-pistol. On his face a terrible terrible smile. Before fingers could touch firing studs they were all dead, a needle square between every pair of eyes, fired with the matchless speed and accuracy of the Greatest Snooker Player the Universe Had Ever Known.

  Even as his grandfather lay sprawled and dead across his grandmother's loom and his father stood terrible and triumphant by his weeping mother with an Exalted Family needle-pistol cradled in his hand: even as all this came to pass, Rael Mandella Jr. in the company of Ed, Sevriano and Batisto Gallacelli were stealing a Bethlehem Ares Steel cargo ’lighter from the field behind Steeltown.