“How does she know I’m back?”
“She knows everything.”
New posters appeared on gable ends: PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE: 12 NOVO-DECEMBER 12 OF 12. RAEL MANDELLA JR WILL SPEAK.
Mikal Margolis was in a quandary. The Pilgrimage of Grace coincided with the visit of Johnny Stalin and the three board members. But for the presence of Rael Mandella Jr. he would have been inclined to turn a blind eye to the march, it was futile; great popular appeal, doubtless, but ineffectual. He did not much want to risk another foray into Desolation Road to arrest the troublemakers: Dominic Frontera had obtained a district court injunction against the Company with promise of military assistance should the injunction be flagrantly violated. An undercover operation might be a good idea, but with the town filling up with media hawks, drawn by the children, who had started appearing from every which where, the slightest incident would have the public relations department breathing fire. He’d done enough damage to the Corporate chromework with his heavy-handed police tactics in crushing Concordat. Child of grace, what did they want, a Company or a mishmash of squabbling trade unions? Quandaries quandaries quandaries. Sometimes he wished he had dropped the roll of geological reports down an airshaft and remained a Freelancer. As director of security of the Desolation Road project, he had fulfilled all his adolescent fancies yet still he was not free from gravity. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw that black and gold did not really suit him.
Twelfth November 12 of 12 was beautiful for a pilgrimage. It should have been. Taasmin Mandella had been subtly tinkering with the orbital weather-control stations for a month previous to ensure not a drop of rain would spoil the Pilgrimage of Grace. A large crowd had gathered outside the Basilica of the Grey Lady. Out in the siesta heat the thousand children, arrayed in virginal white, fretted and grumbled and felt sick and threw up and fainted, like any other collection of sinners waiting in the afternoon swelter. At the appointed moment the gongs chimed and the cymbals crashed in the belfries and the great bronze gates of the Basilica swung open on unused mechanisms, and Taasmin Mandella, the Grey Lady of Silence, walked out. It was not even a very dignified walk. It was the tired walk of a woman who behind her machine mask has felt time breaking over her. A respectful distance behind her walked Rael Mandella Jr.; her brother, his father, Limaal, Mavda Arondello and Harper Tew, the two surviving strike committee members, Sevriano and Batisto Gallacelli, and Jean-Michel Gastineau in his guise as the Amazing Scorn, Mutant Master of Scintillating Sarcasm and Rapid Repartee. The halo around Taasmin Mandella’s left wrist burned so deep a blue it was almost black.
The pilgrimage formed up around her: Children of Grace, Children of the Immaculate Contraption (Poor), various Steeltown sodalities carrying votaries, icons, relics and holy statues, among which was the Celestial Patron of Concordat, the Bryghte Chylde of Chernowa. Behind the ecclesiastes processed the artisans, the representatives of the trades and professions of Steeltown gathering under banners that had lain hidden in cellars and attics since the Company destroyed Concordat and yes, even a few defiant Concordat banners, small but unmistakable with their bold green Circles of Life. Behind the artisans came the populace, the wives, husbands, children, parents of the workers, and among them the smaller populace of Desolation Road, its farmers, lawyers, storekeepers, mechanics, whores and policemen. And after them came the goondahs, bums, wastrels and pie dogs, and after them the newspaper, wireless, cinema and television reporters with their attendant cameramen, sound men, photographers and apoplectic directors.
With Taasmin Mandella at its head the procession moved off. As it passed the Mandella residence the hymn singers and psalm chanters fell silent in respect. The gates of Steeltown were barred against the Pilgrimage of Grace. Taasmin Mandella applied the tiniest glimmer of God-power and the locks burst and the gates swung back on their hinges. The back-tracking guards aimed the MRCWs more in fear than anger and dropped them with howls of pain as under the Grey Lady’s command they glowed red hot. The crowd whooped and cheered. Driving the Bethlehem Ares security men before it, the procession advanced toward Corporation Plaza.
Upon a balcony on the glass-fronted Company offices Johnny Stalin’s robot double and three members of the board of directors watched in increasing stupefaction.
“What is the meaning of this?” asked Fat Director.
“I was under the impression that these untoward disturbances had ended,” said Thin Director.
“Indeed, if this Concordat nonsense has been crushed, as you led us to believe, what were those green banners doing there?” asked Middling Muscular Director.
“Impolitic though it is for such a march to be taking place within the project,” said the North West Quartersphere Projects and Developments Manager/Director’s robot double, “it would have been vastly more embarrassing to have taken action against it with the film crews of nine continents watching. I suggest we just swallow the indignity, gentlemen.”
“Harumph,” said Fat Director.
“Intolerable,” said Thin Director.
“Quite uneconomic,” said Middling Muscular Director.
“Mikal Margolis will take care of things,” said Robot Stalin. “Concordat will not rise again.”
The speeches began.
First Sevriano and Batisto Gallacelli spoke of the murder of their father by the lasers of the Bethlehem Ares Corporation. Then Limaal Mandella spoke of the murder of his father by the missiles of the Bethlehem Ares Corporation. Taasmin Mandella nodded for Rael Mandell Jr. to come forward and speak. He looked at the sea of faces and felt a great weariness. He had seen enough platforms, podiums and lecterns for a lifetime. He sighed and stepped forward for the people to see.
From his position on the catwalk of Number 5 converter Mikal Margolis took full benefit of the short step into the public eye to focus his telescopic sight.
One bullet. All it needed. One bullet jacketed in and silenced by Bethlehem Ares Steel. Then there would be no more quandaries.
Limaal Mandella watched his son step forward and the people’s adulation warmed him. He had done well by his sons. They were all his father would have wished grandsons to be. Then he saw a glitter of light in the pipework overhanging Corporation Plaza. He had lived too many years in the wickedest place in the world not to know what it was.
He brought his son down in a crunching tackle as his matchroom-attuned ears heard the silenced shot clear and sharp as the clarion of an Archangelsk above the voice of the masses. Something huge and black exploded out of his back, something he had not suspected had laid hidden there. He felt surprise, anger, pain, tasted brass money in his mouth and said, “Good God, I’m hit.” He said it in such a matter-of-fact manner that he was still being surprised by it when the darkness came over his shoulder and took him away with it.
The crowd swayed and screamed. Two thousand index fingers pointed to where the guilty one was scrambling down a flight of ladders that led into the heart of the industrial labyrinth. Rael Mandella Jr. was huddled over his father’s body; Taasmin Mandella pulverized by the death of her twin. At the last instant of his life the mystic link between Limaal and his sister had been restored and she had tasted the blood in his mouth and felt the pain and the fear and the blackness swallow him. Though she still lived, she had died with her brother.
Then the Grey Lady rose before the people, and, removing her mask, they saw that her face was dark and terrible so that they cried out in fear.
“This is between my family and Mikal Margolis!” she cried out, breaking her silence. She raised her holy left hand and thunder rocked Corporation Plaza. At her summoning every loose piece of machinery in Steeltown leaped into the air: pipes, welding torches, garden rakes, radios, electro-trikes, pumps, voltmeters, even the Bryghte Chylde of Chemowa left its pole and flew to her call. The junk formed a wheeling flock above Corporation Plaza. It drew closer, closer still, and the terrified masses saw metal running and fusing and reforming into two steel angels, grim and vengeful, swooping above their heads. One sported airfoils and jet engines, the other twin sets of rotor blades.