“We’re doing things,” he said. Her tirade made him uneasy-or perhaps melancholic, nostalgic. He did not know of the actions and the changes that she spoke of, that he would once have been part of. But all his excitement, his pride came up in him and effaced anxiety, and he smiled. “Oh Jack,” he had said. “You don’t know what we’ll do.”
The door of the office opened and Old Shoulder and Marcus emerged, seen only by Ori. The cactus-man held Ori’s eyes and then was gone behind the curious crowd.
Carefully, not too sudden, Ori let Catlina know they were done, and they let their voices down like two people tired of arguing. Ori walked under the skyrails and the arches of the Dexter Line, the trains over his head lit up by gas, under skies awash in brown dusk, toward Badside where Toro was waiting. He walked back to his masked boss, whom he saw so rarely, whose face he never saw, leaving a dead man behind him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ori went to the docks of Kelltree. There was a congregation, made to look spontaneous, which the Caucus and its factions had spread word of for weeks. They could not have listed it in RR or The Forge so had relied on graffiti, handslang and rumour. The militia would close them down: the question was how long they had. A mass milled in the forefront of the Paradox Warehouse, dockworkers and a few clerks, human mostly, but all the races were there; even Remade, carefully at the edges of the crowd.
From canals that linked the docks to the river, vodyanoi watched the gathering. A few score yards away, hidden by roofs, was the Gross Tar, the meet of the Tar and the Canker, the wide river that bisected the east of the city. When tall ships passed, Ori could see their masts move behind the houses, their rigging over the chimneys.
Airships went over. Quick now, Ori thought. A wedge of men and women came through the crowd, coalescing out of randomness and moving with sudden purpose. They bundled around one man whom they pushed to the brick shed become a stage, where he vaulted up and was joined by someone Ori recognised, a Caucusist, from the Proscribed.
“Friends,” the man shouted. “We’ve someone wants to talk to you, a friend of mine, Jack, ” and there were humourless smiles. “He wants to tell something of the war.”
They had so little time. Militia spies would be running to their contacts. In the thaumaturgic listening post in the Spike, the echelon of communicators and communicatrices would be blinking fast and trying to decipher from the city’s welter of cognition which illicit topics were being spoken. Quick now, Ori thought.
Looking behind him to gauge the size of the crowd, Ori was surprised to see Petron. The Nuevist was lacing his art activism with real dissidence, was risking more than late fighting in Salacus Fields. Ori was impressed.
There were Caucusists everywhere. Ori saw someone from the Excess, from the Suffragim; he saw an editor of Runagate Rampant. This speaker was not affiliated, and all the factions of the unstable, chaotic, infighting and comradely front had to share him. They were vying for the man.
“He has things to say,” the Proscribed man was shouting. “Jack here… Jack here is back from the war.”
There was an utter sudden hush. The man was a soldier. Ori was poised. What was this, this stupidity? Yes there was press-ganging and military Remaking, but whatever his history, this man was, formally at least, militia. And he had been invited here. He stepped forward.
“Don’t fret about me. I’m here, I’m here to tell you, of, of the real,” the man said. He was not a good speaker. But he shouted loud enough that all could hear him, and his own anxiety kept the crowd there.
He spoke fast. He had been warned he would not have long. “I ain’t spoken before to people like this,” he said and they could hear his voice trembling, this man who had carried guns and killed for New Crobuzon.
The war’s a lie (he said). I got my badge. (He drew it out by his fingertips as if it were dirty. City finds that he’s a dead man, thought Ori.) Months on them ships, we went through the Firewater Straits, on till landfall, and we thought we’d have to fight on the seas, we was trained to, sailor-soldiers, ‘acause them Tesh ships were out for us, we saw them and their weapons in flocks circling but they ain’t seen us, and it ain’t all city-loyal, the militia, not now, us from Dog Fenn on that ship were there because there ain’t no other jobs to do. Let loose and told to go liberate them Tesh villages.
They don’t want us. I seen things… What they done to us. What we done back. (There was a restive stirring somewhere in the streets and a brief incoming of Caucus scouts handslanging frantically to the Proscribed man and he whispered to the speaker. Ori got ready to run. The militia renegade gabbled in anger.) It ain’t no war for liberty, nor for the Teshi, they hate us and we, we fucking hated them I tell you, and it was a, it’s carnage there, just plain murder, they sending their children out stuffed full of hex to make us melt, I had my men melt on me, and I done things… You don’t know what it is, in Tesh. They ain’t like us. Jabber, I done things to people… (The Proscribed man hurried him, pulled him to the shed’s edge.)
So screw the militia and screw their war. I ain’t no friends to the damn Teshi after what they done but I don’t hate them half so much as I hate them. (He pointed at the basalt column-palace of Parliament, prodding the sky with tubes and tuskish jags, profane and arrogant.) Anyone needs dying it ain’t some damn Tesh peasant, it’s them, in there, who got us here. Who’ll take them out? (He cocked his thumb, shot his finger several times toward the Parliament-a Remaking offence.) Screw their war.
And at that someone from Runagate Rampant barked, “Yeah, so fight to lose, fight for defeat,” and there was angry calling from those who saw stupidity in this. They yelled at the Runagaters that they supported Tesh, that they were agents of the Crawling Liquid, but before there were fists between the factions, the whistles of the guards went, and the crowd began to scatter. Ori wrote fast on a tear of paper.
Militia were coming. People were prepared, and they ran. Ori ran too, but not for the doors or the broken fence. He went straight for the speaker.
Pushed past the bickering Caucus members who surrounded him. Some recognised Ori, stared at him with greeting or query stillborn as he went past them to the raging soldier-Jack. Ori put
his name and his address into the speaker’s pocket, and whispered.
“Who’ll take them out?” he said. “We will. These lot won’t. Come find me.”
And then there was the burring of propellers and an airship protruded over them. Ropes spilled down and dribbled armoured militia. There were the sounds of dogs. The gates of the Paradox Warehouse were too full of people, and there was a panic. “Men-o’-war!” someone shouted, and yes there slowly rising to swell over the walls were the grotesque gland-bodies contoured with extrusions and organic holes, ridden by militia manipulating the exposed nerves of the giant filament-dangling things, flying them sedately toward the crews of Caucusists, the toxin in their tendrils dripping. Ori ran.
There would be other militia squads on the street: shunnriders, plainclothes infiltrators. Ori had to take care. He itched at the sense that some sharpshooter might target him from the airship. But he knew the ways through these streets. Most of the audience had already disappeared in New Crobuzon’s brick tangles, careering past startled shop holders and corner-hanging vagrants to stop suddenly and walk like everyone else was walking, a few streets on. Later, a mile away on the other side of the river, Ori heard that no one had been captured or killed, and was savagely delighted.