“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.
48
At six minutes of six the sirens blew. They blew every morning at six minutes of six, but that was not what was different about this morning. Up and down the radiating streets buff-colored doors burst open and poured labour units into the dawn. But that was not really any different from any other morning. What was different was that for every door that opened five stayed shut. Where on any other day a river of steelworkers had poured into the canyon streets of Steeltown, a trickle passed under the archway proclaiming the Three Economic Ideals of the Company: Profit, Empire, Industry. Where on any other day two hundred trucks would have bounced arrogantly through the narrow laneways of Desolation Road, today less than forty made the clangorous trip dodging children, houses and llamas. Where a hundred draglines had once trawled, only ten worked, where fifty bucketwheelers had scooped the scabs from the skin of the Great Desert there were today only five and it was the same from the locomotive sheds to the hell-mouth converters to the ’lighters shut up in their underground hangars.
All because it was strike day.
Strike day! Strike day! Strike day!
Rael Mandella Jr. called his strike committee to order around his mother’s kitchen table. There were congratulations, brief eulogies and declarations of resolution. Then Rael Jr. asked for reports.
“Strike pay’s good for three months,” said Mavda Arondello. “Plus pledges of support from bodies as diverse as the Spoonmakers’ Guild of Llangonedd and the Little Sisters of Tharsis.”
“Nothing much to report on the picketing front,” said B. J. Amritraj. “Company security is still itchy on the trigger. We have to keep a low profile.”
“Intelligence reports that the Company’s already putting out tenders for scab labour, it might be possible to nip this one in the bud by picketing in the major towns and cities, B.J., smuggle out some agitators.” Ari Osnan, chief of intelligence, folded his fat arms and sat back.
“Production down sixty percent,” said Harper Tew. “Within three days all current steel stock will be expended and they’ll have to shut down at least three furnaces. In a week there won’t be a pin’s worth of steel coming out of Steeltown.”
“Action Group, nothing to report.”
Rael Mandella Jr. stared long and hard at Winston Karamatzov.
“What do you mean, nothing to report?”
“Nothing to report: yet. If the scabs come, maybe then I’ll have something to report.”
“Explain please.” Winston Karamatzov just shrugged and Rael Mandella Jr. closed the meeting feeling faintly troubled in his heart.
Next morning all electricity, gas and water was cut off to the homes of striking steelworkers.
“The Company strikes back,” said Rael Mandella Jr. to his strike committee. Santa Ekatrina flitted about her kitchen, happy and singing, baking little ricecakes.
“You’re not going to let them get away with that,” she twittered.
The local Concordat cadres within Steeltown responded magnificently.
“We shall steal power from the Company to cook our meals, we shall run water from Desolation Road, by bucket-chain if we must, and we shall go to bed at dusk and rise at dawn as our grandfathers did,” they said. Midnight engineers ran plastic pipes under the wire and pumped water from the buried ocean out of street-corner stand-pipes into buckets. Armed security guards passed warily by, unwilling to provoke any incident. Santa Ekatrina turned the Mandella hacienda into a soup kitchen and persuaded Eva away from her tapestry history of Desolation Road to stir vast kettles of stew and rice.