“You’ve been weaving history for long enough; now you can actually be in it,” she told her mother-in-law. A ghostly film of white rice-starch settled over the room and quite surprised Limaal Mandella on one of his increasingly rare returns from his hermitage at the top of Dr. Alimantando’s house.
“What is going on?”
“A strike is going on,” sang Santa Ekatrina, never so happy as when ladling out bowls of lentil curry to a long line of strikers. The curry-eating steelworkers pointed at Limaal Mandella and muttered in recognition.
“Child of grace, not even my own house is sacred!” he exclaimed, and shut himself up in Dr. Alimantando’s house to delve deeper into the mysteries of time and temporality.
Rael Jr. and his strike committee watched the first of the food consignments arrive at Desolation Road. On the far side of the railroad tracks Gallaceili/Mandella Land Developments had marked off several hectares with orange plastic tape preparatory to construction of a big new housing complex for the town’s projected population mushroom. The orange grid squares made a perfect landing field for the three chartered relief ’lighters to set down and offload thirty tons of assorted comestibles.
“Sign here,” said the pilot, proffering a bill of receipt and a pencil to Rael Mandella Jr. The supplies were passed by human chain to the storehouse of the new Mandella and Das Hot Snacks and Savouries Emporium. The crates and boxes bore the stencilled names of their donors: the Little Sisters of Tharsis, Great Southern Railroads, the Argyre Separatists, the Friends of the Earth, the Poor Madeleines.
“What does this do to the strike fund?” asked Rael Jr., counting off crates of cabbages, lentils, soap and tea.
“Not having to expend so much on food, and with the successful introduction of the ration coupon scheme against cash payments, I’d say five months.”
When the last sack was inside Rajandra Das and Kaan Mandella’s warehouse, the doors were double-locked and a guard posted. The Company was not beyond acts of petty arson.
“Production figures?” asked Rael Jr. It was growing increasingly difficult to maintain order in strike committee meetings now that his mother had turned the family home into a cantina.
“As I estimated.” Harper Tew smiled with self-satisfaction. Before the strike he had been a subassistant production manager; somehow the Company had failed to purge the humanity out of him. “Steel production is down to a trickle, less than eight percent of total capacity. I estimate the Company should be approaching economic make-or-break point in about ten days.”
At five o’clock in the morning of the sixteenth day of the strike Mr. E. T. Dharamjitsingh, a striking train engineer, his wife, Misa and eight children were woken from hungry sleep by the unmistakable sound of rifle butts breaking down the front door. Four armed security men burst into the bedroom, MRCW muzzle first.
“Up dressed out,” they ordered. “Five minutes.”
As they fled down 12th street clutching hastily snatched valuables, the Dharamjitsinghs saw an armoured van draw up and a team of armed men start in on the buff-coloured doors of every house on the street. Behind them they heard shouts, shots and the sound of smashing furniture.
“Not this one!” a sergeant yelled to his men, eager to boot down a buff front door. “This one’s loyal. Leave them be. Next door.”
Two hundred striking families were evicted that morning. A further two hundred were unhomed the following dawn and the day after that two hundred more. The streets of Desolation Road were filled with unsteady ziggurats of furniture topped off with sob-eyed children. Families sheltered under improvised tents made from bed-linen and plastic refuse sacks.
“This is bankrupting us,” declared Mavda Arondello. “We can’t afford to keep evacuating children and dependants out of Desolation Road to safe houses in the Grand Valley. The train fares are horrifying: at this rate the strike fund’11 be empty in less than two months.”
“Go talk to your aunt, Rael,” said Santa Ekatrina, white as a ghost with rice-starch, flour and selfless labour. Families were not just fed now, but also housed in the Mandella homestead, sleeping on the bedroom floors, fifteen to a room. “Taasmin’ll help.”
That same evening a sealed train steamed slowly through Desolation Road Station. From behind the counter of his trackside food bar, Rajandra Das noticed the locked doors, the shuttered windows and the carriage plates that showed it to be made up of rolling stock from all across the northern hemisphere. The train ghosted across the switchover and into the Steeltown sidings. Security men cleared the freight yards and imposed a strict curfew, but Rajandra Das could see what those shut away behind window blinds could not see; the armed men in black and gold escorting grim-faced men with bags and suitcases into the newly vacated houses.
At six o’clock the sirens cried and a thousand and a half strike-breakers got out of their stolen beds and put on their working clothes and marched under heavy guard along the radial streets, along the Ring and past the mobs chanting “scab scab scab!” into the factory. Then smoke trickled from the cold chimneys and the rumble of dozing machinery shook the air.
“This is serious,” Rael Mandella Jr. told his strike committee. They had moved to the Bethlehem Ares Railroad/Hotel (recently renamed, more honestly, as had always been the intent, BAR/Hotel by painting out the periods) due to pressure of mouths in the Mandella family home.
Harper Tew estimated production would be back to sixty percent nominal within ten days.
“We’ll miss economic break-point by fifty-two hours,” he said. “Unless we can find a way to bust the strikebusters, Concordat is all folded up.”
“We’ll take care of the scabs,” said Winston Karamatzov. A dark nimbus seemed to gather around him.
“At last the Action Group has something to report,” said Ari Osnan.
“Quiet.” Rael Mandella Jr. locked his fingers and was suddenly terribly terribly empty. The vision, the spiritual wind, the mystic power which had driven him before it like a rail-schooner, which had set a burning coal on his tongue, faltered and failed him. He was human and isolated, weak and fallible. Events had trapped him. He could not say no to the Action Group organizer and by saying yes he would become the creature of the mob. The dilemma had pinned him perfectly.
“Very well. The Action Group must do what is necessary.”
That night the Economic Analogy Social Centre burned down. Among the sifted ashes Dominic Frontera and his constables found the remains of eighteen strikebusters, a Company kindergarten teacher, the proprietor, his wife and twin babies. That night a strikebuster was knifed fifteen times on the corner of Heartattack and Ring. By a miracle he survived to carry the scars to his grave. That night three of the strangers were abducted to an empty signalman’s hut, where they were stripped, tied to chairs, and had their genitals snipped off with a pair of garden shears.
That night Rael Mandella Jr. slipped home and confessed his doubts, his failings, his helplessness to his mother. Despite her absolution, he was not absolved.
Violence multiplied violence as night followed night. Atrocity piled upon atrocity. Although sympathetic to the strike, Dominic Frontera found he could no longer turn a blind eye to the madness and mayhem rocking his town. The Company had threatened direct action against the perpetrators though their security men held no authority beyond the wire. Dominic Frontera had promised the Company security chief immediate action though uncertain how he might deliver it. He went to visit Rael Mandella Jr. in the Bar/Hotel.