‘Unlikely. It was an old bridge.’

‘Nonetheless . . .’

‘I’ll look into it.’

‘There’s going to be unrest, no matter what we do to the leaders, and this time it won’t be limited to the Shanties.’

‘I’ll speak to the captains of the sheriff stations.’

‘Do that. And I’ll call in the First Speaker. He needs to knock heads together in the Adaptor Guild. Our priority must be to restock the stables. Dammit, my estate has shares in several of them.’ He squared his shoulders and returned his attention to the genteel throng walking all over his lawns in high heels. His wife was over by one of the fountains, chatting to a group of old women in hats that were mostly plumage. ‘I’d better get back out there before my sons claim all the fuckable daughters for tonight.’

3

‘Look at this,’ Coulan said, slapping down a copy of the Hilltop Eye on the table as he came in that evening.

The pamphlet had broken the story about the sterile neuts.

‘They got everything,’ Coulan continued. ‘How there hasn’t been a new mod in the city for a month now. How the stables have been conspiring to keep quiet about it. They’ve told the whole story.’

‘I should hope they have,’ Bethaneve said indignantly. ‘We keep feeding the pamphlets enough information. I’m never really sure how good our connection to them is. Does it say what the stables are doing about the neut shortage?’

‘No. But Hilltop Eye also found out that the towns around Varlan have the same problem. The stables are going to have to import from the regions we haven’t reached.’

‘That’ll cost them,’ Bethaneve said in satisfaction.

‘But the mods will return,’ Coulan said, ‘and now the stables will be on their guard against the neuts being sterilized again.’

‘We’ll be in power by then,’ Slvasta said.

‘In Nalani borough council,’ Bethaneve retorted scathingly. ‘Our timing was all wrong. We should have been winning elections in district councils before we hit the neuts.’

Javier clapped his hands down on both their shoulders. ‘I say this is fortuitous timing. Tomorrow morning, every stallholder in Wellfield is going to be taking on new workers. Human workers.’

‘That are all going to become union members,’ Slvasta said. ‘And there were more mod-apes than humans at the Wellfield.’

‘Uracus, the unemployed will be out there tonight asking for work if they have any sense,’ Coulan said. ‘We have to make sure they all know to sign on with the union.’

‘I don’t,’ Javier said. ‘I’m a stallholder now, one of the oppressor class.’ He smirked. ‘Slvasta should go.’

‘Bryan-Anthony knows what to do,’ Slvasta said. ‘He’s at the Wellfield right now, with several loyal union supporters, making it very clear to stallholders that any new cutter has to be signed up with the union first.’

‘And Ryszard is still at the sheriff station,’ Coulan said. ‘There’s some senior Citizens’ Dawn members there as well; two of them came along from the district headquarters. People in high places are getting very nervous about the Nalani borough elections.’

‘Now, there’s a sentence you don’t often hear,’ Bethaneve said with a relaxed smile.

‘It’s still three weeks away,’ Slvasta said. ‘There’s a lot can go wrong before that.’

She shook her head ruefully. ‘You’re such an optimist.’

‘Anyway, Javier and I are off to Coval Road tonight. We’re addressing a meeting, pulling in a few more voters.’

‘Isn’t the Ellington pub on Coval Road?’ Bethaneve asked.

‘Life is a constant Uracus for us politicians.’

*

Even though it was election day, Slvasta still kept to the usual routine. Up early, take a cart with Pabel to Plessey station to collect the day’s meat. Back to Wellfield to package it for customers. He didn’t get to vote until after midday.

His local voting station had set up in a shabby old community hall on Footscray Avenue, just round the corner from Tarleton Gardens. A bored, uniformed sheriff standing outside nodded impassively as he went through the doorway.

The election officials had set up five voting booths inside. Two women were sitting behind a desk, with a huge leather-bound voting ledger. The line to vote stretched the length of the hall, which apparently was rare. Normally turnout was about twenty per cent. Slvasta joined the queue. One or two people recognized him as a candidate and nodded or grinned. It took five minutes for him to reach the desk; the line behind him was still back to the door. ‘Busy?’ he said to the woman who checked his name off before handing him a voting slip. She gave him a disapproving look and beckoned the next voter forward.

As he drew the flimsy curtain across the booth he realized how much he wanted Bethaneve here with him, how much nicer it would have been for them to have voted together. But she was busy, and appearances must be kept to protect themselves from discovery and danger. Slvasta looked down at the voting sheet. There were eight parties competing to run Nalani’s borough council. Citizens’ Dawn and Democratic Unity were the largest and best organized, followed by the usual collection of eccentric independent candidates who had some burning local issue to promote. It was an unusually large number. Even some of the pamphlets they didn’t have contacts with had noted it. Everyone was interested in the emergence of a workers’ union again. Many thought Bryan-Anthony was a political genius for developing a political base so quickly.

It was a strange feeling, seeing his own name on the ballot. This, then, was the leap into the abyss, he thought; after this there can be no going back. He just had to have the courage – another reason he wished Bethaneve was here. How she would scorn his pathetic doubts. He closed his eyes, and saw Ingmar’s face.

I was weak before. I will not be again.

He placed his cross against his own party, pressing the pencil down hard so it left a firm dark mark that could never be disputed.

The world outside was so ordinary for such a momentous day. Bright sunlight shone down, prickling his face as he left the hall. A few high strands of cloud ribbed the sapphire sky above the city. As Slvasta started down Footscray Avenue, he saw a man at the end of the road, sitting on a bench which gave him a perfect view of everyone going into the hall. He’d been there when Slvasta walked to the hall as well: ordinary clothes, ordinary features, unobtrusively reading a gazette. Not quite fuzzed, but giving off a subtle psychic impression of insignificance. A tiny ’path that wheedled: ignore me, just below conscious thought – unless you hunted for the emanation.

A small smile lifted Slvasta’s lips and he scanned round with his ex-sight. Sure enough, there was a mod-bird perched on a chimney stack, its keen eyes gazing along Footscray Avenue, exposing the road’s traffic to its hidden owner.

So you are worried about us, Slvasta thought as he walked past the watcher, studiously disregarding him. As you should be.

4

Looking round the Nalani council chamber, Slvasta wasn’t quite sure they’d won such a big victory after all. The chamber had a pretty standard layout, but degraded by age and cheapened by generations of dispirited councillors. Those councillors who did turn up sat in rows at long benches, facing a dais from which the mayor ran the proceedings. The wood panelling on the walls was old and dark, helping to amplify the gloom, while the glass cupola in the middle of the roof was so grimy it barely let any light through. The borough clerk had given Slvasta a copy of the council’s current financial accounts. Which, after one of the most depressing hours of his life reading it, Slvasta was surprised the council could afford to print in the first place.

Bethaneve and Coulan were up in the public gallery, along with over a hundred Democratic Unity supporters and several reporters from gazettes across the city. Slvasta winked up at Bethaneve just as the county clerk called the meeting to order. First order of business was to appoint a new mayor. Out of the seventeen seats, fourteen had been won by Democratic Unity, with Citizens’ Dawn keeping just two, while one had gone to an independent road-improvement campaigner. Bryan-Anthony was nominated to be mayor, and quickly seconded. The vote was unanimous, and Bryan-Anthony walked up to the dais amid a lot of cheering and applause from the public gallery. He was given the robe with its fur-lined collar, and a heavy gold chain of office. Then he was sworn in as a faithful and loyal subject of the Captain, an oath he recited without any trace of irony.