The Abyss Beyond Dreams (70 page)

‘Yeah.’ That part was as much a mystery to him as the rest. The four of them had spent so long talking and arguing about what had to be done physically to achieve success. How do you
march a force of armed men through a city to take out the top of the existing government, and have that accepted by everyone else? So many ideas dismissed, so many details expanded, strategies
planned.

‘We just have to wait. Once you’re elected to the National Council, you—’

‘—become the authentic voice of the disaffected. Up pops my credibility and with it my legitimacy. Yes. Yes.’

‘And if we give the underclass enough to protest about, and the Council doesn’t listen – because it won’t; it’s full of people like Tuksbury – then we have
the justification to launch the revolution.’

‘I know.’ Always there was the doubt. The way the rich with their fancy accountants avoided their fair share of taxes made him furious, and proper taxes for all was a priority for
afterwards. But
they
were the ones planning on sabotaging the city’s water, creating disruption and suffering; it would be
their
activists who blew up the rail bridges,
which would increase Varlan’s economic woes. Without them, things would carry on as they always did, which wasn’t
that
bad . . .

Bethaneve licked her lips. ‘Let me see. What I can do to perk you up?’

Even though she’d already satiated him in the bath, he knew he would be erect again when she wanted him to be. Her sexual skill was something he never questioned. No one with half a brain
asked about previous loves, but still, some small bad part of his mind kept wondering about her and Coulan – if he’d been the one who’d taught her so much about what men truly
enjoyed in bed. If it had been his touch which had encouraged her to cast off her inhibitions.

Fingers caressed him with nonchalant skill, then teekay so soft and slow it was torment plucked individual nerve strands in his cock. His flesh betrayed him immediately, igniting the pleasure
pathways directly into his brain. He watched in awe as the lace robe flowed down over her skin like liquid gossamer, inflaming him still further.

‘A month,’ she whispered as she straddled him. ‘A month after the election. That will be the right time. The perfect time. That will be when you lead us forward and take
control of the whole world. Does that satisfy you? Is that what you want?’ Her teekay crept around his balls like fronds of arctic frost, gripping mercilessly to balance him perfectly on the
edge between pain and ecstasy.

‘Yes,’ he cried, ‘Oh Giu, yes!’ Not knowing or caring what he was agreeing with any more.

Some people simply couldn’t be arsed – especially those who looked down on politicians and politics with the same contempt as they would regard a smear of animal
dung on their boot sole. But still, many more did care, turning out to vote, making the effort. Outside some polling stations where Democratic Unity had put forward a full field of candidates for
borough council seats, the sheriffs were unaccountably missing. In their stead, Citizens’ Dawn toughs watched over the free private vote, making sure the cross went in the right place.
Wherever that happened, the knowledge slipped through Bethaneve’s communication network and local Democratic Unity activists arrived, demanding privacy and freedom from intimidation. Fights
broke out, but they were sporadic, with the sheriffs finally turning up only to cart both sides off to the local station where they sat out the rest of the day cooling off in the drunk tank.

Then there were cases of people being told they weren’t on the borough voting registry. There was nothing Bethaneve could do about that. But Tovakar, Andricea and Yannrith each had their
own missions, running cells to intercept postal ballots that had been in storage for the last month. Citizens’ Dawn had been adding to the envelopes with their own false voters – dead
or nonexistent. Those sacks were discreetly swapped with alternatives full of the same fantasy people, but now voting for Democratic Unity.

Some borough voting forms were in short supply.

Officials never turned up to open voting stations.

Four Democratic Unity candidates were arrested on charges ranging from tax evasion to assault, making their candidacies invalid.

It was another unremarkable election day on Bienvenido.

Despite everything the establishment threw at them, Democratic Unity’s vote held solid in their strongholds of the more deprived boroughs. Slvasta, who arrived at Langley’s council
hall at five o’clock in the afternoon for the count, was ’pathed reports from party officials right across the city. Turn-out had been good. Interference was about what they expected.
By eight o’clock, results were starting to come in. With a third of the thirty-three borough councils in the city up for election, five of them were shaping up to be Democratic Unity
boroughs, with another three predicted to have no one party with an overall majority, and Citizens’ Dawn claiming the remaining three (the richest boroughs). For them it was a disaster.

Five National Council seats in or around the capital were also being contested, along with a hundred more across the continent. In Langley, it was obvious from the moment the first sealed voting
sacks were opened who was going to win. Tuksbury hadn’t even been seen in public since the day
Hilltop Eye
published his tax records. Thanks to quiet surveillance by cell members,
Slvasta knew he was holed up at his family estate just outside Varlan.

By eleven o’clock Slvasta had been confirmed as the new National Council representative for Langley. He gave a short thank-you speech (written by Coulan and Bethaneve) to his delighted
supporters. By midnight the results for the Varlan boroughs were verified. Democratic Unity had won five outright, one more was theirs thanks to a coalition agreement with three independent
councillors, Citizens’ Dawn had four, and one was left without a majority party.

‘Seven councils, counting Nalani,’ Slvasta said as he walked home with Bethaneve, Javier and Coulan. ‘That’s amazing. Really, it is.’ The dark streets had a lot of
pedestrians and cabs for the time of night, all of them going home after the count. High overhead, Andricea’s mod-bird kept level with them, its superb eyesight vigilant for trouble. Yannrith
himself was barely a hundred metres away, and carrying two pistols. There were other party members close by, ready to rush in at a single ’pathed alert.

Javier had insisted on the precautions.

‘You’ll have to resign from Nalani tomorrow morning,’ Coulan said. ‘You can’t sit on two councils.’

‘You’re the only Democratic Unity candidate to get a National Council seat,’ Javier said; he sounded regretful.

‘Bapek gave them a good run for their money in Denbridge,’ Bethaneve said. ‘Thirty-two per cent.’

‘Denbridge is over the river,’ Javier said. ‘Large middle- and working-class population. Shame we couldn’t win it.’

‘We didn’t win Langley,’ Slvasta said. ‘We were given it, remember?’

‘Yeah, and are they ever going to regret that,’ Bethaneve said happily. ‘They think that’s a bribe to keep us in line. Well, even if they survi—’

A wide corona of bright orange light flared across the southern skyline, silhouetting the rooftops and chimney stacks. They saw the flickering haze of a fireball ascending at the centre of it,
wreathed in churning black smoke. Seconds later, the sound of the explosion rolled across them.

‘Uracus!’ Javier snapped. ‘What was that?’

‘It’s down near the quayside, I think,’ Coulan said. ‘Eastwards, too. There are some companies around there that deal in yalseed oil. Big barrels.’

‘Crud,’ Slvasta grunted. ‘Did we order that?’

‘No,’ Bethaneve said. ‘And I don’t like the timing.’

*

It took two days to get the warehouse fires under control, and the city authorities were lucky it rained on the second night. Smoke hung over Varlan for another day as the
ruined buildings three streets above the quayside smouldered. Exploding barrels had thrown flaming yalseed oil a long distance, and the volunteer fire crews were scared to venture too close for
fear of more barrels detonating.

Eventually, when all that was left was a circular area of blackened walls and piles of rubble, hospital staff and fire officers started to pick their way through the tangled debris, ex-sight
probing the stone and charred wood and smashed slates, hunting for bodies.

Twenty-three business premises were destroyed. Fortunately, given it was a commercial district, and late at night, fatalities were minimal. Only eight people were known to have died. But it was
another blow against the city’s economy, with insurance companies hit hard. Everyone’s premiums would be going up.

*

Kysandra was deep into the farm’s accounts when Russell rode into the compound. His arrival gave her an excuse for her u-shadow to fold the spreadcube files away and free
up her exovision. When they’d started planning the revolution, she’d been so enthusiastic and excited, never thinking she’d spend hours – days, weeks – having to
manage the basic finances of the enterprise. But as she’d swiftly learned, shoving a government aside wasn’t cheap.

‘Our insurrection doesn’t even have to work,’ Nigel had said. ‘Not permanently. We just need time to get in and out of the palace. All we really need for that is
anarchy.’

‘It should work,’ she objected. ‘Otherwise we’ve let down so many people.’

‘You can’t afford to think like that. The radicals who make up the movement are just another set of tools to help us complete the job. Nothing more.’

‘But . . . they have to believe that their lives will change for the better to commit to the cause. You’re asking them to risk everything they have.’

‘And that risk will be repaid a thousand-fold. Not by replacing one set of useless, corrupt leaders with another, but by liberating them from the Void. You have to learn to see the big
picture, Kysandra. No more small-town thinking, okay?’

‘Okay.’ But it was difficult. People, real people, were going to get hurt. She just had to keep telling herself it was all worthwhile, because: this was
destiny
they were
working to achieve.

Russell jumped off his horse as his teekay fastened the reins to the paddock fencing. ‘Slvasta won the Langley election,’ his ’path shout informed the compound.
‘Democratic Unity is now a legitimate opposition party.’ He waved a couple of Varlan’s gazettes above his head. ‘It’s official.’

Kysandra hurried out of the house and met him on the veranda. ‘Let me see,’ she said, and took one of the gazettes. It was a large edition, printed yesterday, she noticed –
fast delivery to Adeone
. She kept her shell hard so she didn’t reveal the swirl of disappointment that came from reading the results.
Only Slvasta got elected to the National
Council? We put candidates up in five constituencies. And just six new boroughs with Democratic Unity in the majority?
In her heart she’d been hoping for so much more. Some public
validation from the people they were about to set free.

‘I’ll go and show Nigel,’ she said with a cheery smile. ‘You go in and ask Victorea for some lunch; she’ll make you up some sandwiches.’

Russell touched the brim of his hat respectfully. ‘Thank you.’

Kysandra set off across the compound. It was barely recognizable now. So much had changed, so many buildings added. There were over thirty barns and storehouses, some of them vast, with iron
I-beams supporting the wide span of their roofs. Eight of them were used purely for the farm, housing the mod-apes, horses and dwarfs needed to tend the crops and herds of terrestrial beasts that
now covered almost the whole valley. The two timber mills were as busy as always. And the bulky steam engines thrummed away at the side of the engineering shops. Labourers and the dominated used
two long barns as dormitories, dividing them up into snug but comfortable private rooms, with communal washrooms at one end. The three that housed the weapons factories were quiet now, their
machines idle. Enough guns and ammunition had been manufactured and sent to the various radical groups they’d established, with the majority delivered to the capital. The mod-dwarfs that had
worked on the production lines were now sitting in their stalls, doing nothing but eating and sleeping.

But it was the launch project she admired the most. Four long sheds lined with racks of ge-spider cages, spinning out vast quantities of drosilk. Nigel had introduced that particular variant to
Bienvenido, of course; but not directly. Marek had travelled halfway up the Aflar peninsula to Gretz before teaching the adaption to a small family-run neut stable. That way it wouldn’t be
yet another innovation emerging from Blair Farm. After some experimentation, Nigel had found that to produce the best drosilk, ge-spiders should eat leaves from the deassu bush. If everyone else
was breeding ge-spiders and producing drosilk for the clothing industry, there would be nothing odd about Blair Farm buying deassu leaves in considerable bulk.

After the ge-spider sheds was the booster bunker, which had been dug deep into the soil. Here the drosilk was wound carefully and precisely onto a long iron cylinder (precision milled, which had
taken months) and sprayed with resin before being cured in a huge kiln. There were nineteen layers in all, each of which needed to be flawless. Only when sensors linked to the
Skylady
had
confirmed that the last layer was unspoiled did the cylinder get taken out of the tube. Despite their very best monitoring and quality control, they only managed to get one perfect cylinder for
every three attempts. Finished cylinders were wheeled into the second half of the booster bunker, behind thick iron and concrete wedge-shaped doors so heavy that they needed a set of train wheels
to roll across the chamber on their own tracks.

That was where the process was finished, filling the cylinders with propellant, turning them into giant solid rocket motors. She could still remember the first test firing, with the booster
standing vertical, its exhaust nozzle pointing up into the sky. Even standing a kilometre away, the roar of sound was like a solid force as it punched across her. The fire plume was incandescent,
searing purple after-images across her retinas for minutes, while the smoke jet soared ever higher into the clear sky, reaching for the clouds above. It was as if the universe had somehow cracked
open, allowing a gale of elemental forces to howl through the gap.