But now the fucking Mercatoria, the fucking Ascendancy or fucking Omnocracy, or whatever they fucking were, the fucking Hierchon (more likely, one of his new rotational crop of advisers who saw a way to make some money and gain some extra power), or the Peregal below him or Apparitor below him or just the Diegesian gimplet who was actually nominally the governor or mayor or whatever he was supposed to fucking be (his post, his presence and his protecting bully boys only here at all thanks to an earlier dispute over who controlled what, resulting in a grubby, century-old compromise), anyway the fucking big boys, the fucking people who owned fucking everything or thought some fucker ought to own fucking everything had decided, decreed, deemed that proprietorship of the whole fucking place — and that of lots of other similar habs in similar situations of disputed\uncertain\dubious\happily contingent ownership — should pass to what they called a properly accredited and responsible authority. Which basically meant them. Or if not them, their chums. Somebody who took things like ownership and rent-gathering and petty law-enforcement and so on seriously. It was the law-makers, the law-givers, being outlaws, and it would not be allowed to stand, it would not be allowed to pass, it would not go unchallenged, it would not go into the local statutes without a serious fucking challenge. These people, for whatever fuckwit reason, were destroying part of what was good about the habs, about Sepekte-Orbit, about Ulubis system, about the society they were all in the end a part of. Ultimately they were being stupid and self-destructive, and all that was required was that the people who could see all this clearly — because they were right here, at the sharp end, at the cutting edge — pointed this out to them. They were all on the same side in the end, it was just that sometimes the fuckers in authority got too far away from the reality of life as the mass of people lived it, and that was when you had to make a stand, make a point and make yourself heard.
So they went to the protest, down the friction tubes and the bungees and along the tramways to the central plaza and the makings of a great crowd.
“You just have to think about it,” Mome said as they walked the last street into the plaza. “The Beyonders never attack habs, never attack whole cities, never attack anything big and easy and defenceless. They attack the military and the authorities and big infrastructure stuff. Their attacks, their violence, their military strategy is a discourse amenable to analysis if one is prepared to approach it shorn of propagandistic preconceptions. And the message is clear: their argument, their war is with the Mercatorial system, with the Ascendancy and the Omnocracy and the Administrata and not with the common people, not with us.”
“Resent being called common!” Sonj protested. “Erring on the side of generosity including you in the category ‘people’, Sonj,” Mome shot back. Mome was a little guy, pale, intense and always slightly hunched, as though perpetually preparing either to pounce or duck. Sonj was huge; a big bumbling dark brown geezer of changeable moods and intensely curly short red hair who only looked at home or even slightly graceful in low gee.
“Doesn’t necessarily make them the good guys,” Fassin insisted.
“Makes them people open to reason, people capable of indulging in meaningful dialogue,” Mome said. “Not just mad fuckers to be put down like vermin, which is pretty much what we’re told they are.”
“So what’s stopping them talking to us?” Fassin asked.
“Us,” Mome said. “Takes two to talk.”
They all looked at him. Mome was known to talk a lot. Sometimes to audiences who had, basically, long since fallen asleep. He shrugged.
“My cousin Lain—” Thay said.
“Another one?” Mome asked, feigning incredulity.
“Sister of cousin Kel, half-sister of cousin Yayz,” Thay explained patiently. She was Sonj’s part, also generously made; awkward in low gee but bouncily agile on the hab’s internal surface at two-thirds of a gee. “My cousin Lain,” she continued determinedly, “the one in the Navarchy, says that she reckons the reason the Beyonders attack so much at all is because if they don’t the Navarchy and the Summed Fleet goes after them. And we don’t just attack military stuff. She says we hit their habs. Kill millions of them. Lot of offs unhappy with—”
“Lots of whats unhappy with?” Mome asked.
“Lots of offs,” Thay repeated.
“I got the word,” Mome repeated with a sigh, “I just didn’t get the meaning.” He snapped his fingers. “Wait. Short for ‘officers’, right?”
“Correct.”
“Brilliant. Carry on.”
“Lot of offs unhappy with this,” Thay said again, “so the “yonds — the Beyonders — just attack us to keep us on the defensive.” She nodded once. “That’s what my cousin Lain says.”
“Ayee! Crazy “yonding talk,” Mome said, putting his hands over his ears. “Get us all arrested.” They laughed.
“At least we have the freedom to say this sort of thing,” Fassin pointed out.
Mome did his special Hollow Laugh.
In the central plaza, Fassin greeted people, drank in the sense of solidarity and slightly edgy fun — lots of inventive costumes, towering floss-sculptures and buzzing balloonderers (trailing slogan banners, yelling chants and scattering narconfetti) — but still felt oddly apart from it all. He looked up and around, ignoring for the moment the people — mostly human — and the circle of domed and gleaming buildings.
The hab was a giant, verdant city rolled up into a spinning tube, with small hills and many lakes and criss-cross avenues between low-rise hanging-garden apartments and winding rivers and spindly towers, some arched like bows and reaching all the way up to the suntube, where they curved — or needle-eyed -round to meet towers on the far side. Bunches of nests -surrounded by mirrors, trailed with friction tubes like jungle creepers — clustered near the long axis, and dirigiblisters floated like strange, semi-transparent clouds beneath them.
Then Fassin heard some sort of shout at one edge of the crowd, nearest the palace of the Diegesian, which was the focus for the protest. He might have smelled something strange, but then that was probably just one of the cruising balloonderers disseminating some drug that Fassin’s immedio-immune system hadn’t recognised. Then he realised maybe it wasn’t, because all the balloonderers dropped suddenly, as one, out of the air. Also, the sun in the suntube went out. Which never happened. He heard lots of odd noises, some of which might have been screaming. It seemed to get cold very quickly. That was odd too. People were hitting him, with their shoulders mostly, as they went running past him, then they were falling over him, and he realised he was Fassin?, realised he was Fassin lying down, then he was Fassin getting hit again, but he was Fassin trying to get up and stand again, and he was Fassin, he was Fassin, he was on his knees and he was Fassin just about to get up from his knees onto his feet — swaying, feeling very strange, wondering what all the people were doing lying down around him — when — Fassin — he was knocked down again. By a man in armour, steel grey, with a big trunchbuster club and no face and a couple of little buzz-drones at each shoulder, spraying gas and making a high, terrible keening noise that he — Fassin! — wanted to get away from, but his nose and eyes and everything else stung and hurt and he didn’t know what to do, he was Fasssin! just standing there and the guy with the big club thing as long as a spear came up to him and he Fasssin? stupidly thought he might ask him what was going on and what was wrong with Faaassssiiinnn? wrong when the man swept his club-spear trunchbuster thing round and into his face, knocking some teeth out and sending him spinning to “Fassin?”