Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

they’re really like. Just because they call themselves
communists doesn’t mean they’re nice – you should know that!’
    Nok-Yung laughed harshly. ‘They have no Great Leader or
Dear Leader, you can love it or leave it, and we’re going
to try it’
    By this time they had reached the edge of the crowd. Myra
reined in the horse and signalled the truck to stop. Nok-Yung
jumped off the running-board. What had seemed from a distance
like aimless wandering resolved itself into people moving about
purposefully, retrieving and stacking their possessions from the
self-disassembling huts. Most of them ignored her arrival. Myra
was not surprised or put out. The benefits of her oversight were
easy enough to overlook, and the camp committee itself was not a
popular body among the prisoners, elected though it was. Like a
company union, it had partially represented the interests of the
labourers, while often enough relaying the will of the
owners.
    She noticed Shin Se-Ha, dapper in a sadly dated sarariman suit which he’d probably worn for the
first and last time at his trial, but which for now signified his
new freedom. He carried a small case through the scooting
children and trudging adults. By now other vehicles and beasts
were trundling or plodding into view, summoned by phones restored
to their proper owners.
    Myra stood, fondling the mare’s neck, quieting it, as
the Japanese mathematician picked his way towards her. She tried
to search her memory of what he’d been sent down for:
misuse of company resources or some such pretext –
he’d run refinements of Otoh’s neo-Marxian
capital-reproduction schemata, primed with empirical data, on the
university’s computers. The real reason was his results,
which he’d indiscreetly spread-sheeted around: the sinister
algebra of the Otoh equations added up to complete breakdown in
two more business-cycles.
    That had been one boom and one slump ago.
    ‘Hello, Myra,’ he said. He put the case down.
Probably contained all he owned, he was that sort of guy.
Frightening, in his way.
    ‘Hi, Se-Ha. Nok-Yung tells me you’re going
-’ she nodded forward ‘ – East’
    ‘I am. Sorry if you do not approve.’
    Very direct! The sun shone in her face like an
interrogation-lamp and the wind made a constant white noise. It
was a time for telling the truth or facing worse ordeals.
    ‘Whether I approve or not is not the point,’ she
said. ‘You’re free, and I have no say in what you do.
But I should warn you that the Kazakhstani Republic will resist
the Sheenisov, and so will I. We will not be rolled over. I would
be sorry to be on the opposite side to you in a battle, but
– ’
    She shrugged.
    ‘I would be sorry too,’ said Shin. ‘But
„so it goes“, ah-so!’
    ’Ah-so indeed,’ she smiled, and suddenly
realised how Reid had been able to keep up his no-hard-feelings
enmities for so long. ‘Meanwhile, I have something for
you.’ She waved a hand at the truck. ‘This, and
everything in it.’ She tossed him the truck’s
control-panel, which he deftly caught. ‘Go on, have a
look.’
    Doors clicked open, banged shut. He came back. He caught her
hand; he bowed over it, as though about to kiss her knuckles, and
stepped back.
    T am in your debt,’ he said, stiffly. Then he spread his
hands, looking Western and abashedrather than Eastern and
indebted. ‘What can I say, Myra? You’re very
kind.’
    ‘Ah, don’t be silly, my friend,’ she said.
‘You and Nok-Yung and the others made my work here a lot
more rewarding than it would otherwise have been. I owe you it,
if anything.’ She shared with him a conspiratorial chuckle.
‘And a library of revolutionary theory might just come in
handy where you’re going, eh?’
    Tes. I don’t know if I can take the
responsibility.’ He shook his head, thinking about it.
‘There are books and documents in that van which have never been scanned in,’
    Myra patted a pocket. ‘Not even in the 2045 Library of
Congress?’
    ‘Not even that!’ He seemed to find the thought
awesome, a violation of the order of nature. It gave pause even
to Myra’s resolution, as half a lifetime’s easy
assumption that everything was archived, that every jot and
tittle lived unchanged in silicon heaven, was suddenly confronted
with the reality that some thoughts might only face eternity in
the frail ark of woodpulp, and that she was responsible for them.
Her commitment