But Valeri takes her hand in his. “I can’t predict the future,” he says, “but I can tell you I won’t let go of anything. When the police come around here next time there’s no guarantee of what will happen. I’m glad you’re leaving, you need to get yourself out of harm’s way.” Even as he says it, Valeri doesn’t believe it, chiding himself inwardly for encouraging such selfishness in even as his good friend and roommate. Though he wishes there was something he could say to keep her in his life, he knows the fight has frightened her too much for her to stay at his side. Theirs are concerns of a new manner, the hardening of the steel in their nerves contrasting sharply against the gnawing of their guilt against their innards. It’s a terrible, terrible time to be alive, aligned with the forces of evil who strike back against the forces of good. In the end, announces her leave, in the coming weeks to move to be with an old family friend in the Canadian city of Winnipeg. Though Valeri doesn’t know when, or if, they’ll see each other again, he looks on her fleeing the war zone of the streets for the safety of the Scottish highlands as but the end of one chapter in their lives, not the end of their own story. They’ll see each other again. Even if she dies, or he dies, they’ll see each other again in the next world. Their salvation is had not by deeds but by faith.
No matter, he decides, as he turns to Roger and says, “we’ll go without her.” Roger nods. “Gather whatever weapons you can find,” Valeri says, “and when Tonya comes back, we’ll have enough to make a stand.”
“And if she doesn’t come back?” Roger asks. “Then we’ll fight with what we have,” Valeri says. Roger nods. “We should secure the doors and finish boarding up the windows now,” Valeri says. “Agreed,” Roger says, and turns to head down the hall and see to it. But as Valeri himself turns back to his work, there’s the sound of a thunderous explosion and the sudden rattling and rumbling of the floor, the walls, the ceiling. It’s over in an instant. A bomb somewhere nearby, set off by one of the rebel’s remaining cells in the city. Through the night there’s the intermittent sound of gunfire, punctuated by the dull thud of distant blasts. Half a world removed from the fighting on the front lines, Valeri and the rest of the residents at Dominion Courts prepare to join in on the war in the streets, a war over little more than the right to live in their own homes. But even they are aware their struggle has taken on a new character in these recent months, with the residents here preparing for the next showdown while still crowds of demonstrators vent their anger at the slaughter around the world.
Defiant, the working man raises his fist in anger. Dedicated, he marches in the street with the other working men and with the allies of the working man, the student, the parishioner, the soldier, and the migrant the lot of them shouting slogans until their voices are hoarse; still then they shout. At street level, the sound of their shouts dominate the scene and overpowering all others, yet high above the street in the glass and steel skyscrapers that house boardrooms and bright, expansive corner offices the sound of so much rage has softened until barely audible over the subdued thrum of an air conditioner and the swinging of doors open and shut. In the navy, the cruiser Borealis is one of the ships docked in harbour when first the word comes around that war’s been declared. On board, Dmitri is working when a fellow sailor bursts in to tell him. Sometime later that day, Captain Abramovich announces over the ship’s speakers their orders to put to sea immediately and join up with the rest of the fleet for a decisive first strike at the enemy. In the mess hall when the order comes down for all crew to their stations, Dmitri declares, “now we have the privilege of fighting to make sure our people can keep on dying in our own streets.” There’s a chorus of agreement from the others, met with a sharp glare but nothing more from the officer on deck. A year ago Dmitri might’ve been put in the brig for such a remark; things have changed.
“I don’t even know why we’re going to war,” Dmitri later says, manning the gun after a drill’s ended, “so the enemy’s country has attacked a government we’ve got a treaty with. So what? We die because one group of wealthy men need to grow their power over another group of wealthy men. It’s all a crime.” As they steam towards battle, the same sentiment is echoed by crewmen in compartments from bow to stern, the crew almost ready to throw their lot in with the working men dying in the streets. While the working man vents his rage at the world having left him by, the wealthy man plots the next scheme to enrich himself. It seems almost a parody, a caricature of the life the wealthy man leads, yet still it’s not even close to the truth. In this hardened discourse, filled as it is with impassioned pleas and inflamed tensions, the wealthy man still seeks to wring every last pound he can from the working man, chewing up and spitting out so many carcasses until the time comes to reach his next goal. To men like Valeri, these times see him tired and sore, but ready to fight as ever.
25. Hope and Fear
Early news arrives from the front, the nation’s armies having faced off in a faraway land against its declared enemies. A much smaller force humiliates us, routing our troops on the battlefield, scattering our men and massacring them. As news filters back, the wealthy man’s apparatchiks selectively omit certain details and exaggerate others, putting the best possible spin on this humiliation, stopping just short of outright fabrication. But it’s all in vain. The working man and his natural allies the student and the parishioner can’t be convinced by these lies, so many years of being subjected to it having desensitized them to the power of the apparatchik’s so carefully chosen words. And there’s one thing the apparatchiks can’t conceal, can’t omit, the deaths of so many young men, the families of each receiving the news no family should ever receive. Amid crying and shouting and the raising of fists and the scattering of voices into the wind like so many grains of dust, the rebel watches, planning his next move carefully, so carefully, choosing his target like a surgeon about to make an incision with no margin for error. Limping home, the Borealis is part of a retreat disorganized and haggard. Caught in an ambush by a Russian fleet, they fought a confused action in a thick, night-time fog and suffered several direct hits. Once docked, the crew goes ashore, and later that night Dmitri holds a meeting of dedicated crewmen who agree they won’t put out to sea again. “If the order comes down, we must occupy our own vessel,” he says, “and we’ll refuse our orders. Others will see us, and they’ll join in. With no fleet the government will have to declare a truce.” Nods go around the room. It’s decided. There’s no vote taken, but there needs to be no vote.
It’s all come so suddenly, or so it seems, the months, the years having led up to these difficult, impossibly difficult times. As the ghosts of our history’s past linger in the streets, the moment comes when the rebel’s gunmen mount their next attack, their first since the war had begun. But this attack is different, this attack is unique, striking not some random scene in the street nor some of the patrolling storm troopers, instead the rebel focusing his arms on a recruiting office for the army somewhere deep in the city’s centre. A few rounds crack through the air, a crude bomb is thrown into a window, but none of this matters much when held against the grand scheme of things. As the rebel gathers his strength, his is committed only to the minimum needed to keep pressure on his enemies, on the storm troopers who serve the interests of the wealthy man. Never seeking much for himself, the rebel is content, for now, to dwell in his squalor, living underground, using the sewers as roads for his bands of gunmen who leap out of manholes to fire their volleys before disappearing again beneath the streets that produced them. But the Borealis was too badly damaged in action, and isn’t to be ordered out to sea for a while. In the morning, the crew pack the pier and watch as her sister ship, the Australis, puts out to sea, missing her aft gun and steaming under half-power. Parts had been scavenged from the Australis to make the Borealis fully operational, but the Borealis had been so badly damaged there was little of value to be returned. Dmitri watches along with the rest of the crew as the Australis disappears over the horizon, and he says, “we may never see them again.” Though he’s never been one to believe in superstition, Dmitri can’t help but imagine the shiver running down his spine as proof his brothers and sisters at arms will soon meet their end.