“the fire has been kindled and it can’t be put out anymore,” and “may the dead not have died in vain!” As Valeri lives among them, he looks up sometimes and sees flying overhead jets belonging to the air force, in formation, it suddenly occurring to him these are times of intimidation. Still in this early period open sedition is confined to the apartment blocks and the sprawling shantytowns wherein the working class live, in the distance the wealthy man’s gleaming, glass-and-steel towers looming as a stark reminder of the invasion drawing nearer with each day.
Nothing will happen, not this time, nothing besides a few broken bones and a few scraped knees. As the crowd thins out, the storm troopers linger just long enough to see the last of the troublemakers leave, once satisfied the day has passed and the threat has faded returning to their barracks as they’d started out the day. Most of the troopers felt no anxiety, no fear at being confronted with such a crowd, but there’s one young trooper among them who through he’d never make it through the day. There’s always at least one. Before Sean Morrison and the other students from the polytechnic can join in, the police move in. With military precision they arrest the leaders of all the student groups, Sean in the hall when the police break in and push him to the ground. There’s a lot of screaming and shouting but no blood is spilled, Sean soon cuffed in the back of a lorry along with the other student leaders. Speeding for the station, the police put him in a cell and leave him without having said a word to him through this whole affair. But Sean’ll be back out soon enough. Most of the students taken in by the raids will be, too. The police don’t have much evidence against any of the students, and they’ve broken too many laws themselves in bringing the students in. But the damage is done. The police have waited until the students and their consciousness reached its apex, then moved in, throwing the student groups into chaos. Sitting in his cell with the others, Sean thinks himself a fool for having traded in dissent so openly. But when he walks out of jail the next day to the embrace of friends and family, he’s learned a valuable lesson that he’ll soon put to good use.
In a few months, when there comes the moment at which a definitive moment will be reached, all it will take is that one trooper, perhaps not this particular trooper but some other, to give in to a moment of weakness. And when one of them gives in to weakness, so will another, then another, then another, all of them faltering at exactly the moment when they, for their own sake and for the sake of the wealthy man they serve, should be steadying themselves again. This time, Hannah can’t make it in to the hospital, the trains having been shut down and the streets closed to all traffic, leaving her no way to get to work.
“Well, now we’ll see what comes next,” she says to herself, “but what is there to talk about?”
A young man named Lawrence Jackson accompanies her, having met her only some weeks earlier in the middle of a power outage on one of those long summer nights.
“Who’s room is that?” he asks, pointing at Valeri’s.
“My roommate’s,” she says, “but he’s out all the time. Working. Taking part in these rallies. He likes to think of himself as a rebel. But so far all he’s rebelled against is good housekeeping.” She turns back towards Lawrence. “But enough of that,” she says, “we’ll leave as soon as the power comes back on or dawn breaks. Whichever comes first.”
“Am I interfering?” he asks.
But she doesn’t answer. Instead, she leans in for a kiss. In the basement of that disused shop, Darren Wright listens intently to the impassioned sermons delivered by the rogue priest. The police raids and the mass unemployment have driven the faithful in increasing numbers to these underground ministries; once only some dozens, now hundreds visit this particular priest to hear the gospel of revolution. Tonight, the priest declares, “and in the book of Acts, chapter five, verse twenty nine, the apostle Peter declared ‘we ought to obey God rather than men.’ Brothers and sisters, we have seen the police evict the working class from our homes, and we have seen the police arrest they who would deign to take to the streets in outcry.” All are taking in every word, amid the leaky pipes and the damp, mildew-laden air the fire and fury reaching the hearts of every man and woman. The priest continues, “in the Bible we are taught to ‘heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.’ Brothers and sisters, I tell you this: if we are to answer this call to ministry, we must cast out the demons who have lived in our government, who seize the fruits of our labour from us, and who use force against us should we dare oppose them. In service of Christ we must willingly enslave ourselves to the cause!” Again Darren feels the electric sensation running the length of his spine, compelling him to shout out, “amen!” Soon enough this rogue ministry will surge to the forefront and make its own war for the salvation of the working man. As it is written in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, ‘For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.’ And so Darren knows their ragged, haggard congregation not only will but must inevitably surmount the overwhelming power massed against them; in fact, their time is sooner than any could know.
It’s the second kiss they’ve exchanged throughout their friendship. Laurence, who had been with his share of women since he was a teenager, thinks of this woman as different, the experience of having taken in with her making him feel so much younger than he was. He breathes in the perfume of her hair and seems to see her eyes in the darkness. “I love you, Hannah,” he says. “Don’t say that,” she says. “Why not?” he asks. “It doesn’t lead to good things when men say that to me,” she says. “Then why am I here?” he asks. She doesn’t have an answer. Theirs is a secret romance, secret even to either of them. As if to punctuate the silence, a distant explosion rattles walls and shakes glass like a rolling thunder, the night guaranteed to be dark. It’s only a gas tank at some industrial state bursting into flames, but neither Hannah nor Lawrence know it. Hiding out, they make it through the night, fearing to fall asleep in each other’s arms they sleep in either room. In the streets outside Garrett Walker’s new residence, there’s the noise of sirens wailing and the cracking thunder of gunfire in the distance. Since taking up residence with his mother-in-law, Garrett’s found work, here and there, odd jobs fixing leaky pipes and broken-down cars, never enough to support a family. But when his daughter doesn’t come home one afternoon, he takes to the streets in search of her. Though only sixteen, she’d taken to hanging at a local college in Surrey, and it was at this college when she was caught up in the police raids. It mattered little that she was only a casual observer. The police took in anyone who looked at them cross. After some hours, while he’s in the middle of searching through a back alley his phone rings in his back pocket, inspiring in him a creeping dread. It’s his wife. She says, “they’ve got her.” Immediately he turns back, through the twilight’s shadows a desperation welling up in him, as though some part of him fears by the time he makes it to the station his daughter will already be dead.
But we’re not quite there yet. In the night, a blackout strikes, this not one of sabotage but still enacted deliberately. The signs are already mounting of the impending collapse, not of the way of things but of the current boom, brought about not by the working man’s mounting resistance but by the wealthy man’s repeating cycle of greed. Looking out across the city, already the skeletal towers are reaching higher for the sky than ever before, the wealthy man in a frenzy to wring every last ounce of wealth from the way of things before it all goes up in smoke. After Valeri’s spent the night in the streets, shouting and screaming and hurling abuse at the officers who stand them down, he returns to the mill and finds posted to the front door a notice of closure. Looking back, he sees the short, stocky figure of Murray beside the taller, lankier figure of a man named Arthur Bennington. “What is this?” Valeri asks. “The boss came around twice,” Murray says, “he’s been looking high and low for someone to take his place but couldn’t find anyone. He’s afraid to let the plant run with only his subordinates in charge—he thinks they’ll be too weak and the workers will just do whatever they want.” Valeri laughs. “He’s right! If the managers all quit and we ran this place ourselves it would be in much better shape. Safer, too!” Murray nods, and says, “yes, I know that. And so does Arthur Bennington.”