Iron Council

The Weaver hangs in complex stillness. Body tarry black, a teardrop globe, a glintless head. Four long legs angled down to end in dagger-feet, four shorter up, as if in the centre of a web, hanging in the air. Ten, twelve feet long, and now, what, what is it, turning slowly, slightly, as if suspended, and the world seems snagged. Judah feels a tug as if the world is tethered by silks the Weaver is gathering as it turns.

Judah makes a debased throat sound. It is dragged out of him by this Weaver’s unseen threads. It is a kind of unbidden worship.

All along the slope the men and women of the railway stand seared by what they see, and some try to get away and some stupid few crawl closer as if to an altar but most, like Judah, only stand still and watch.

– Don’t touch it, don’t fucking go near it, it’s a godsdamned Weaver, someone is saying, someone a long way below. The spider-thing turns. The rocks continue to sing, and now the Weaver joins them.

Its voice comes out from under stones. Its voice is a shudder in dust.

… ONE AND ONE AND ONE AND TWO AND RED RED-BLACK RED-BLUE BLACK THROUGH HILLCUT WIRETRAWL AGASH AGASP AGAPE LEGATE AND CONSTRUCT MY TIES MY EYES CHILDER KINDER WHAT STONECUT AND DUSTDRUM YOU SOUND A SLOW ATRAP TRAPPING A RHYTHM IN TOOL AND STONE…

Its voice becomes a bark in time, a beating that makes the little rocklets dance on the slope.

…EAT MUSIC EAT SOUND PUSH THE PULSE PULSILOGUM THE MAGIC…

Thoughts and the textures of things are snared and pulled in to the Weaver.

…GRIND AND GROUND CARE AND UNCRUSH WHAT IS BEFORE UNCRUSH UNCRUSH YOUR NAME IS RAKAMADEVA ROCK MY DEVIL YOU FLINCH INCH ATWARD OF WHAT WILL BE YOU BUILD…

And the Weaver pulls in all its arms and drops lightly unreeled from its turning point in the air still sucking in what light there is and bloating on it as if it is the only real thing and Judah and the ground he stands upon and the threadbare trees he clutches are all old images, sun-bleached, on which a vivid spider walks.

The Weaver picks up its legs one by knifepoint one and treads at the edge of the ravine and it dances along it as the uncoloured women and men edge behind it and it turns its head in sly playful slide to stare at them with a constellation of eyes like black eggs. Each time it does the people who follow it freeze and haul back until it turns again and moves on and they follow it as if bound to.

It slips over the rim of the cliff and they run to see the arachnid thing pick dainty as a high-shoed girl down the sheer. It runs, it begins to run, until its huge absurd shape careers downward and it is by the roots to the bridge, the girders that spit out from the rock halfway to earth, and the Weaver leaps out and without passing through intervening space is on the half-done stump of construction, and small in the distance it begins to spin, to turn cartwheel, becomes a rimless wheel and skitters the girders where in the day the Remade bridge-monkeys hang and build.

…AND BREAK AND BREAK… The Weaver’s voice comes as loud as if it were next to Judah…PUSH BRUSH THEY AWAIT WITH BREATHBAIT AND ADRIP FOR YOUR INTERVENTION DEVILS OF THE MOTION ELATION CITATION CITE THE SITE TOWER SIGH NIGH VEER STAR AND CLEAR YOU ARE YOU ARE FINE IN TIME YON OF THE PLAINS STEAM-MAN… And the Weaver is gone and the weak night light bleeds back into Judah’s eyes. The Weaver is gone and it takes many seconds of staring at the spider-shaped absence on the bridge until the men and women of the railroad turn away. Someone begins to cry.

The next day a handful of men are dead. They stare up at their canvas or at the sky with eyes quite washed of all colour and with smiles as if of quiet pleasure.

There is an old man long gone mad who has come quietly with the railroad for miles, sitting while the hammermen swing and the whores sell relief, a man become a mascot, become a piece of luck. After the Weaver he stands above the tu

He walks among the forced idleness of the track-layers. He shouts at the tu

– We saw a Weaver, Judah says. -Most people never see that. We saw a Weaver.

The next day the women strike.

– No, they say to the men who come to their tents, and who stare at them uncomprehending. The women stand together in a militia, holding what weapons they have. A picket of rags and petticoats.

There are scores of them, determined and surprised by themselves. They turn away the hammermen, tu

The dust of the two gatherings rises as they face each other. The gendarmes come-they do not quite know what to do; the women are doing nothing but refusing, the men are only waiting. -No pay, A

– We’ll not do it no more for promises, she says to Judah. -Since we come here and there ain’t no money, they been doing and doing it on credit. Our men, our gendarmes, now the new lads. And they ain’t had women here for a long time; they hurt us, Judah. They come and say put it on my tab girl and you can’t say no and you know they ain’t going to pay.

– Cyra lost her eye, she said. -Some tu

The women defend Fucktown. They have patrols with sticks and stilettos; there is a frontline. They take turns to watch the children. There must be those among them who are not happy with the confrontation, but they are quietened into solidarity. A

– Come on girls what’s this then, says a foreman. -What’s the story? What are you after? We need you, beauties. He smiles.

– Won’t be beat down anymore, John, A

– We ain’t got the money A

– Ain’t my problem. Have your man Wrightby pay his men, then… She jigs her hips.

That night a group of men try with something between lightheartedness and anger to push their way past the picket, but the women block them and beat them hard and the men retreat holding split heads and screaming in astonishment as much as pain. -Stupid fuckpig bitch, one man screams. -You stupid bitch, you smashed my fucking head, bitch.

They do not let the men touch them the next day and there is no longer novelty or near-humour to the situation. A man takes out his cock, shakes it at them. -Want payment? he shouts. -I’ll give you payment. Eat this you fucking dirty moneygrab sluts. There are those in the crowd of men who have enough affection for the women they have travelled with that they do not like that, and they hush him, but there are others who applaud.

– Get money, and come in, the women shout. -Don’t blame us, horny bastards.

There is another attempt on their camp. This time it is led by the tu

Men are stabbed, a woman’s face is broken, and when the prostitutes have overcome the intruders one of the Remade women is found concussed and leaking from her head. The whole women hesitate briefly before they carry her in to tend her.

In the morning the tu

He says, -We go back in when them girls let us back in, too, and his men laugh. -We’ve got needs, he says.

The prostitutes and tu

– Mate with the spiders, the old man says. -It’s time to change.

Everything is still. Only the bridge is being built, and now in the evenings when the bridge crews come off their work, some cross the ravine to their sister encampment, because they want to see the trouble. They come-hotchi in spines, apes trained and constrained by Remaking, Remade men given simian bodies. They come to see the strikes. They tour from one to another.

The newspapermen on the perpetual train, who have been despatching their stories when there are messengers, suddenly have something new to cover. One takes a heliotype of the picket of women.

– I don’t know what I’ll say, he says to Judah. -They don’t want me talking about tarts in The Quarrel.

– Take all the plates you can, says Judah. -This is something you should remember. This is important, he says, and it is his oddity, his beatific i

– We are all spiders’ children, says the mad old man.

There are handwritten Runagate Rampant s on the rocks.

This is not three strikes, or two strikes and a half. This is one strike, against one enemy, with one goal. The women are not our opponents. The women are not to be blamed. No pay no lay they tell us, and that can be our slogan too. We will not lay another tie, another rail, until the money promised is ours. They say it, and we say it too. We say: No pay no lay!

When the overseers and gendarmes realise that the disparate groups are not tiring of the strike, will not exhaust themselves with recrimination, there is a change. Judah feels it when he rises and sees the foremen moving with new purpose.

It is already hot, he is already sweating, when unbreakfasted he goes to the tu