Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road by Ken MacLeod Read Free Book Online Page B

small state
(population 99,854, last time anyone had bothered to count, and
dropping by the day). The structures of the ISTWR were an
exercise in socialist camp, modelled on those of the old Soviet
republics but without the leading role of the Party. The result
of that strategic omission had been a democracy as genuine as
that of its inspiration had been false. Or so it had seemed, in
the republic’s more prosperous days.
    Myra arrived early, and took the privilege of the first
arrival – the chairman’s seat, at the head of the
long, bare table of scarred mahogany with a clunky blast-proof
secretarial device in the centre. There were another dozen seats,
six along either side of the table, each with its traditional
mineral water and notepaper in front of it. The room was bare,
win-dowless but lit by full-spectrum plates in the ceiling. The
only decoration on the white walls was a framed photograph of the
long-dead nuclear physicist after whom the city was named.
    Valentina Kozlova came in, her military fatigues elegant as
always, her hair untidy, her hands full of hardcopy. She was in
her fifties, a still-young child of the century, young enough and
lucky enough to have got the anti-ageing treatments before she
got old. She smiled tensely and sat down. Then Andrei Mukhartov,
cropped-blond, fortyish and looking it -probably by intent
– soberly conventional in a three-piece suit of
electric-blue raw silk. Denis Gubanov,younger than the others,
ostentatiously casual, needing a shave, looking as though
he’d just come in from sounding out an informer in some
sleazy spaceport bar. Alexander Sherman arrived last, giving his
usual impression of having been pulled away from more urgent
business. His fashionable pseudo-plastic jump-suit was doubtless
just the job for his post, but Myra liked it even less than she
liked him. He sat down and glanced around as though expecting the
meeting to begin immediately, then pursed his lips and slid two
sheets of paper across to Myra.
    ‘More resignations, I’m afraid,’ he said.
‘Tatyana and Michael have…’
    Taken off for richer pastures,’ Myra said. ‘I
heard.’ She looked at the empty spaces around the depleted
table, and shrugged. ‘Well, according to revolutionary
convention there is no such thing as an inquorate meeting,
so…’
    ‘We really must co-opt some new members!’ Sherman
said.
    ‘Yes,’ said Myra drily. ‘We really
must’
    Her tone made Alexander snap back, ‘It’s a
disgrace – we have no Commissar for Law, or the Interior,
or – ’
    ‘Yes, yes,’ Myra interrupted. ‘And half the
fucking members of the Supreme Soviet have fucked off -the wrong
half, as it happens, I couldn’t find a competent commissar
for anything among the remainder. At the rate we’re
going, we won’t have enough of an electorate to make
up the numbers! So what do you suggest?’
    Alexander Sherman opened his mouth, closed it, and shrugged.
His mutinous look convinced Myra that he’d be the next to
go – as Commissar for Industry, he had the right
connections already.
    ‘OK, comrades,’ Myra said, ‘let’s call
the meetingto order.’ She took off her eyeband and laid it
formally on the table, and those who hadn’t already done so
followed suit. It was not quite a rule to do so, but it was the
custom – a gesture of politeness as well as an assurance
that everyone was paying attention – to set aside
one’s personal for the duration of the meeting. Myra could
never make up her mind whether it was mutual trust, or mutual
suspicion, that lay behind the custom of not doing the same with
one’s personal weapons. Nobody’d ever pulled a gun at
a Sovnarkom meeting, but there were precedents…
    ‘Recorder: on. Regular meeting of the Council, Friday 9
May 2059, Myra Godwin-Davidova presiding, five members
present’ She looked around, then looked back at the
recorder’s steel grille. ‘I move that we shelve