Iron Council

– Come on now, says an overseer. Judah knows him. He is the man they bring in to do unpopular things. There is a delegation from the prostitutes, twelve women walking close together, headed by A

The overseer stands before the Remade. He turns his back on the strikers and looks at the motley Remade in their integuments of foreign flesh and metal. Judah sees A

– Pick up the picks, the foreman says to the Remade. -Go into the tu

And there is a silence and no motion. The gendarmes have interposed between the strikers and the Remade.

– Take the picks. Go into the tu

There is silence again a while. The men of the perpetual train know how the Remade are being used, and some begin to shout scab, scab preemptively. But the shouts die because none of the Remade are moving.

– Take the picks.

When there is no movement still, the overseer strikes with his whip. It lands loudly and with the blossoming of a scream. A Remade drops, hands to his opened face. There are fear noises, and some of the Remade start and begin to move but one of them makes a low command and they shudder and hold, except one who breaks and runs for the tu

The others do not look at him and he goes into the dark. The young man with the insect-leg tumours is shaking. He is looking hard at the ground. Behind him, the piped man is saying something.

– Take the picks. The overseer moves closer to the Remade.

Something rises in Judah. There is muttering and an anger around him.

– Take the picks or I’ll have to intervene to stop troublemakers. Take the picks and go in or-

People are begi

– or I will have to take action against… He looks slow and ostentatious over the terrified Remade, one by one, pauses while he looks at the piped man, the only one who even momentarily meets his eyes, then grabs the trembling boy, who cries and stumbles. -Or I will have to take action against this ringleader, the overseer says.

There is a moment without speech or sound, and he motions two of the gendarmes, and as they move in the crowd begins to shout again, and the gendarmes beat the young man down.

And as if he were with the stiltspear singing, Judah sees in time gone thick. He watches the descent of the billy clubs, the fumbling of the boy who covers his head and his chitin embellishments. He has time to watch the moving of birds above them. He has time and a fascination for the faces of the crowd.

They are stricken and ca

Judah sees A

It is not Judah who moves first-he never moves first-or the Remade with the pipes, nor Thick Shanks nor Shaun but someone quite unknown in the forefront of the tu

Judah’s ears are stopped with a hot ti

The gendarmes have flintlocks and whips, but are outnumbered. They have thaumaturges, but they are not the militia: there are no spit gobbets of energy or transformations on the strikers, only base charms the railroaders can match and survive.

There are more cactus-men among the track-layers than there are cactus overseers. They run huge through the TRT guards and lay green fists on them, breaking them easily. They shield their friends; the gendarmes are not carrying rivebows that can slice them apart.

The piped Remade man drags the body of the insect-altered boy. The man pulls coal from his pocket and smears it into his mouth, leaving his lips black. He runs. The gendarmes who can still move are retreating. Others litter the ground, beside broken Remade and free men. It is so fast.

Judah is ru

– We have to-Judah shouts, and the piped Remade man is beside him and nodding and shouting too, and there are those who obey him: Remade and free whole men and women, there is A

– You, he says to Judah. -With me.

They round the curve through dead trees and there is the perpetual train. It breathes its smoke and it spits steam as they come closer in mangy army. Its cowcatcher is splayed like ruined teeth. Its chimney flares, seems a fu

– they, they-

– get down, it’s the bastard Remade-

– they shot us down, they beat us-

– disperse you bastards or I’ll godsdamned shoot-

– stop them, Jabber, fuck stop them fuck’s sake-

The gendarmes fringe the train in raggedy formation, guns out, and the surge of the curious and the angry strikers-tu

Now there is a long moment between a standoff and a confusion. A

They raise slivers of the fence that has contained them. They swing the chains that tethered their feet. They grip shivs, pot shards embedded in wood. There are scores, and then hundreds of them.

– Jabber who let them out, what you done ? someone shouts hysterically.

The thing in Judah swells up to see them. It bloats him; it moves like a baby in his belly. Judah shouts for them, a welcome, an alarum.

Men on all fours become bison-men, carrying men wrapped about with limbs, and women walking on elongated arms made of animals’ parts, and men stamping on piston legs like jackhammers come alive, and women all over whiskers, or with finger-thick tendrils feeling through their skin, and tusks stolen from boars and carved from marble, and mouths become interlocked gears, and switching tails of cats and dogs frilling waists like skirts and sweating in inks from Remade glands and astream with a rainbow mess, and this aggregate of criminals, this motley comes closer in freedom.

The gendarmes have withdrawn. They are in their armoured cab, in the guntower. Some have grabbed mules and horses from the tracks’-end corral and gone.

– No no no.

Many among the tu

– This ain’t what we’re here for. This ain’t what this was. A tu

He looks at the blinking Remade, who stare at him. He twists a little.

– No offence, mates. He is speaking to the Remade now. -Look, it ain’t my fucking business. You seen we won’t let them beat you down no more. But, but, you can’t, you got to go back, this is… He indicates the guntower.

It is late. There is a siege and a strange siege calm.

– People have fucking died, the man says. -They’ve died.

The boy with the insect additions is dead. Other Remade were dropped by bullets. A cactus-man was split by a moment of flying wood. Gendarmes have been piled up, broken on mallets, on spikes, on the ersatz weapons of the railroad. There are dazed mourners by trench graves.

Hunters return. Prostitutes sit on rocks in that deserted middle of the world and watch the train. Its firemen and brakemen agitate as the giddy Remade fill the boiler and pull levers and those with boilers of their own steal the high-grade coke. People mill bewildered and ask each other what has happened. They look at the sun and the shifting tree corpses and wait for someone to come into control.