The Revolution Business

move to the conference room? He is not well, and the doctor said not to disturb him overly. They will try to feed him in half an hour, and need space…'

'That sounds like a good idea,' said Brilliana. 'Will you call us if any other visitors arrive, Carlos?'

'I'll do that.' He nodded. 'This way, please.'

Over peppermint tea and refreshments in the conference room, Miriam eyed Iris warily. 'You're looking healthy.'

Iris nodded. 'Over here, treatment is easier to come by.' She was making do with a single cane, moving without any obvious signs of the multiple sclerosis that periodically confined her to a wheelchair. 'And certain bottlenecks are… no longer present.' Months ago, she'd as good as told Miriam that she was on her own: that Hildegarde-or other members of the conservative faction-had a death grip on the supply of medicines she needed, and if Iris went against their will she'd stay in a wheelchair in the near-medieval conditions of the Gruinmarkt until she rotted.

'How nice.' Miriam managed an acidic smile. 'So what happens now?'

Iris looked at her sharply. 'That depends on you, kid. Depends on whether you're willing to play ball.'

'That depends on what rules the ball game is played by.'

Her mother nodded. 'Yes, well; the rules are changing.' She glanced at the young people gathered at the other end of the room, chatting over drinks and snacks. 'There's a garden here. Are you up to pushing a wheelchair?'

'I think I can trust them, Mom.' Miriam let a note of exasperation into her voice.

'More fool you, then,' Iris said tartly. 'Your uncle trusted me, and look where it got him…' She trailed off thoughtfully, then shrugged. 'You may be right about them. I'm not saying you're not. Just… don't be so certain of people. You can never tell in advance who's going to betray you. And we need to talk in private, just you and me. So let's get a wheelchair and go look at the flowers.'

'What's to talk about that needs so much secrecy?' Miriam asked.

Iris smiled crookedly. 'Oh, you'd be surprised, kid. I've got a plan. And I figure you've got a plan, too. So, let's walk, and I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours.'

'After the last plan you hatched that got me sucked in…' Miriam followed Iris slowly into the corridor, shaking her head. 'But it got worse. You know what those bastards have done to me?'

'Yes.' A moment's pause, then: 'Mother-dearest told me, right before the betrothal. She was very proud of it.' Miriam quailed at the tone in Iris's-her own mother's-voice. A stranger might not have recognized it, but Miriam had grown up knowing what it signified: the unnatural calm before a storm of coldly righteous anger. 'I'm appalled, but not surprised. That's how they play the game, after all. They were raised to only value us for one thing.' They reached the nursing station; an empty wheelchair waited beside it. 'If you could push?..' Iris asked.

The garden was bright and empty, neatly manicured lawns bordered by magnolia hedges. 'You said the rules had changed,' Miriam said quietly. 'But I don't see much sign of them changing.'

'As I said, I've been developing a plan. It's a long-term project-you don't get an entrenched aristocracy to change how they do things overnight-and it relies on an indirect approach; the first step is to build a coalition and the second is to steer it. So I've been cutting deals, finding out what it'll take to get various parties to sign on. For it to succeed, we've got to work together, but everyone I've spoken to so far seems to be willing to do that-for their own reasons, if not for mine. Now… the one thing the Conservatives will rely on is the sure knowledge that mothers and daughters always work at cross-purposes. They always stab each other in the back, because the way the Clan is set up to encourage arranged first-cousin marriages puts them in conflict. But… our rules are different. That's a big part of why I raised you in the United States, by the way. I wanted a daughter I could trust, a daughter who'd trust me. A daughter I could work with rather than against.'

Miriam stared at the backs of her hands on the handles of the wheelchair. A daughter's hands. Trusting, maybe too trusting. 'What do you want?' she asked.

Iris chuckled quietly. 'Well, let me see… knowing you, you're planning something to do with business models and new worlds. Am I right? You're plotting a business revolution.' Without waiting for Miriam's assent she continued: 'My plan is a bit different. I just want to make sure that no daughter of the families ever goes through what you've been put through ever again, for dynastic reasons. Or what I went through. That's all; nothing huge.'

Miriam cleared her throat. 'But. You'd need to break the Clan's entire structure to do that,' she said conversationally. She could hear the blood throbbing in her ears.

'Yes,' said Iris. 'You see? You're not the only one of us who wants a revolution.' Her voice dropped a notch. 'The trouble is, like I said: I can't make it work without your help. You're in a powerful position, and better still, you've got a perfect excuse for moving across social boundaries rather than obeying convention. It's not going to be obvious to onlookers whether you're doing stuff deliberately or because you don't know better. Which gives you a certain freedom of action… Meanwhile, my plan depends on us agreeing to cooperate, and that's something the braid system tends to discourage. See? A year ago you wouldn't have been this suspicious of my motives. That's part of the problem. I know it's a lot to ask of you-but I want you to trust me to help you.'

Miriam stared at the back of her mother's head, her mind a whirl of emotions. Once, a year ago, she'd have trusted Iris implicitly, but now that she knew the forge her mother had been tempered in, a tiny voice urged caution. 'Tell me exactly what you're planning,' she said slowly, 'then I'll tell you what I'm planning.'

'And then?'

'Then perhaps we can do a deal.'

Working in the belly of the beast, supervising the electrically-driven presses of the Petrograd Times and minding the telautograph senders that broadcast the message of the Committee for Democratic Accountability up and down the western seaboard, Erasmus had little time to spare for mundane tasks-he slept under his desk, having not had time even to requisition a room in a miner's flophouse-but a superb perspective on the revolution. 'We're going to succeed,' he told John Winstanley one morning, over tea. 'I think this time it's actually going to work.'

Winstanley had stared at him. 'You thought it might not? Careful, citizen!'

'Feh.' Burgeson snorted. 'I've spent half my life in exile, citizen, working underground for a second chance. Ask Sir Adam, or Lady Bishop, if you doubt my commitment. And I'll willingly do it all over again and go for third time lucky, and even a fourth, if this one doesn't succeed. I'm just pleased to note that it probably won't be necessary and taking advantage of your discretion to vent a little steam in company where it won't fog the minds of the new fish.'

'Ahem. Well, then, I certainly can't find fault with that. I'm sorry, Erasmus. Sometimes it's hard to be sure who's reliable and who isn't.'

Burgeson turned his attention back to the pile of communiques on the table, studiously ignoring the Truth Commissioner. He was rapidly developing a jaundiced view of many of his fellow revolutionaries, now that the time to come out of the shadows and march for freedom and democracy had arrived; too many of them stood revealed as time-servers and insidious busybodies, who glowingly talked up their activities in the underground struggle with scant evidence of actually having done anything. I didn't spend twenty years as a fugitive just so the likes of you could criticize me for pessimism, citizen. The New Men seemed to be more preoccupied with rooting out dissenters and those lacking in ideological zeal than in actually building a better nation, but Erasmus wasn't yet sure enough of his footing to speak out against them. The rot had spread surprisingly far in a matter of weeks. Not so surprising, if what the membership subcommittee reports is right, he reminded himself; the council's declared members-whose number could all count on a short drop to the end of a rope if the revolution failed-had quadrupled in the past two weeks, and just keeping Polis informers out of the rank and file was proving a challenge.

'Let's see,' he said. 'Jim, if you'd be so good?…'

'Ayup.' Jim, who Erasmus had drafted as a sub-editor as soon as he'd ascertained his literacy, picked up the top of the pile. 'Lessee now. Yesterday, Telegraph Street, Cyprus Hill: A people's collective has seized control of the Jevons Ironworks and Steam Corporation factory and is restarting the manufacturing of parts for the war effort, with the arming of the Cyprus Hill militia as a first priority. The first four armored steamers have been delivered and are patrolling the Hispaniola Reaches already.'

'Bottom drawer,' Erasmus said instantly. 'Next.'