Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

worth seeing again; she’d have
to rethink her wardrobe…
    The driver lifted her two big suitcases from the boot; she
waited for a moment as he clunked it down and closed the nearside
door, then she walked towards the hotel entrance, looking
curiously at the demo as she hurried past it. There was about
three yards of clearance between the shopfronts and the
half-dozen or so Republican Guards deployed along the pavement to
demarcate the front line of the demo. Behind the Guards the crowd
was jumping up and down and yelling and chanting.
    She glanced up at a placard being waved above her and saw at
the centre of it a blurrily blown-up newsfeed-clip picture of her
own face. Suddenly thecontending chants became clear, like
separate conversations at a party.
    Victory to – the SSU!’
    That one was in a battle of the soundwaves with,
‘Sheenisov – hands off! Viva –
Kazakhstan!’
    Above them both, not chanted but being shouted repeatedly
through one of the loud-hailers, ‘Support the political
revolution in the ISTWRI.’
    A competing loud-hailer was going on in a more liberal,
educated and educational tone about the crimes of Myra
Godwin’s regime – she caught the words ‘nuclear
mercenaries’ and ‘shameful exploitation’ in
passing.
    For a moment Myra stopped walking; she just stood there, too
shocked to move. Her gaze slid past the reflecting shades of a
Guard to make eye-contact with a young girl in a tartan scarf.
The girl’s chant stopped in mid-shout and Myra
couldn’t look away from her disbelieving, open-mouthed
face. Then the girl reached over the Guard’s shoulder and
pointed a shaking finger at Myra.
    ‘That’s herl’ she squealed.
‘She’s here!’
    Myra smiled at the girl and looked away and walked steadily
towards the steps up to the hotel door, now only about ten yards
away. The driver puffed along behind her. The chants continued;
it seemed she was getting away with it.
    And then a silence spread out, just a little slower than
sound, from the girl who had identified her. The chants died
down, the loud-hailer speeches ceased. The crowd surged through
the wide gaps between the Guards, blocking the pavement. A young
man, not as tall as Myra but more heavily built, stood in front
of her, yelling incomprehensibly in her face.
    Her old understanding of the Glasgow accent restored from
memory.
    ‘ Ah despise you!’ the man was shouting. ‘Yi
usetae call yirsel a Trotskyist an yir worse than the fuckin
Stalinists! Sellin nuclear threats and then sellin slave labour!
And noo yir fightin agin the Sheenisov! They’re the hope o
the world and yir fightin them for the fuckin Yanks! Ya fuckin
sell-out, ya fuckin capitalist hoor!’
    He leaned in her face ever more threateningly as he spoke. His
fists were balling, he was working himself up to take a swing at
her. Three yards behind his back somebody holding up a
‘Defend the ISTWR!’ placard was pushing through the
press of bodies. Myra took one step back, bumping into one of her
suitcases – the driver was still holding it, still behind
her. Good.
    She slipped her right hand inside her coat. The yelling
man’s clamour, and forward momentum, stopped. Another
silence expanded around them. Myra reached into a pocket above
her thumping heart and pulled out her Kazkhstani diplomatic
passport. She thumbed it open and held it high, then waved it in
front of the nearest Guard’s nose.
    ‘Officer,’ she said without turning around,
‘please escort my driver into the hotel.’
    ‘Aw right, ma’am.’
    ‘Thanks!’
    The driver passed by on her left surrounded by uniforms. Myra
took advantage of the accompanying flurry of distraction to dive
behind the man who’d yelled at her, and to push herself
into the small huddle of pro-ISTWR demonstrators. She glanced
quickly around five shocked but friendly faces, noticing lapel
badges with a flashed grin of recognition and pride – the
old hammer-and-sickle-and-’, a solidarity-campaign button
with the ISTWR’s signature radiation trefoil, sun-and-eagle
stickers…
    ‘Comrades,’ she said, ‘let’s go
inside.’
    The comrades clustered around her and together they stepped
back on the pavement. The angry man was being restrained by some
of his own comrades, but still denouncing Myra at the top of his
voice. Myra’s group marched up the steps and through the
hotel’s big swing doors into the now crowded foyer. White
marble