The Revolution Business

"I can't agree to that, Poul. I don't have the authority to make agreements like that. I can tell you that my father can make a decision, but it would be better to petition him yourself-"

(Urgently) "It has to be done tonight!"

"I'm sure it does. And I can arrange for my father to see you within the hour-but the request must come directly from your lips to his ears." (Pause.) "You understand that he will expect some reward for this inconvenience."

"Of course." (Pause.) "We expect to pay for any assistance, and I am authorized to negotiate with you-or your father. Only understand that it is a matter of some urgency, and while we are prepared to be generous, we would take a very poor view of any attempt to exploit the situation to our detriment."

"Oh, that's understood. Give me an hour to prepare things and you will be welcome at my father's house. Do you need directions?"

[END TRANSCRIPT]

Erasmus Burgeson arrived in Fort Petrograd four days late, footsore and weary and out-of-pocket-but a free man, thanks to those extraordinary friends of Miriam Beckstein who had arrived just in time to stop the secret police from collaring the two of them.

After the shoot-out at the one-cow railroad station in the middle of nowhere, he'd taken up Miriam's invitation to help himself to the political officer's no-longer-needed steamer, and topped off both its tanks before cracking open the throttle and bumping across dirt tracks and paved military roads in the general direction of the southwest and the Bay Area. But the car had run out of steam ten miles before he reached Miwoc City, and he'd had second (and third) thoughts about the wisdom of paying a mechanic to come out and get her rolling again, in light of the car's bloodstained provenance. (Not to mention the bullet hole in the left, passenger side, door.)

So he'd walked into Miwoc, dusty and sore-footed, and taken a room in a working men's hostel, and spent the night lying awake listening to the fights and the begging and the ru

It was a hundred miles to the big city, where the guns of Fort Petrograd loomed out across the headland of the bay, aiming south towards San Mateo. It shouldn't have taken three days, but Erasmus decided to avoid the railways-one close shave with the law was more than enough-and not risk buying an automobile: A solitary man driving alone was as good as a green flag to a certain kind of highwayman, and it would swallow all his remaining funds besides. The buses and streetcars that co

Until, on the third day, the bus he was riding from Abadon reached Patwin (which Miriam would have pointed to on a map and called "Vallejo"), and ran into a general strike, and barricades, and grim-faced men beneath a blue flag slashed diagonally with a cross of St. Andrew beneath the glaring face of a wild turkey. "Ye can gae nae farthur," said the leader of the band blocking the high street, "wi'out an aye calling ye strikebreaker." He stood in front of the bus with arms crossed in front of him and the stolid self-confidence born of having two brothers-in-arms standing behind him with hunting rifles and an elderly and unreliable-looking carronade-probably looted from the town hall's front steps-to back them up.

"I'm no' arguing wi't'artillery," said the driver, turning to address his passengers. "End of t' road!"

An hour later, by means of various secret handshakes and circumlocutions, Erasmus was talking to the leader of the strike force, a lean, rat-faced man called Dunstable. "I was on my way to Fort Petrograd on Party business when I was forced off the train and only just escaped with my life. I need to get there immediately. Party business."

"Let me see what I can do," said Dunstable, then vanished into the back of the Town Aldermen's office, doubtless to cable for directions. The two hard-faced men with pistols sat with Erasmus in silence; he made himself comfortable until Dunstable returned. "Aye, well, your story checks out." Dunstable nodded at the two men. "Joe, go and get the mayor's runabout. Frank, you stay with Mister Burgeson here. You and Joe will drive Mister Burgeson straight to Fort Petrograd, to the Crimea Barracks-you know how to find it? Good. Our people hold it. When you get there, do as Mister Burgeson says."

Erasmus stood. "I'll send them back as soon as possible," he promised. "Good luck here."

"Luck?" Dunstable snorted. "Luck's got now't to do with it: People are starving and the frogs are trying to retake New France!"

"They're what?" Erasmus stared at him.

"Oh, the king's got it nailed down quiet like, but we know the score. Furrin troops in Red Club, a dauphin looking to set foot in New Orleans next week." Dunstable tapped the side of his nose. "Got to look fer our selves in times of unrest, `aven't we?"

It took eight hours to drive the fifty miles from Patwin, overlooking the i

It was, in short, exactly the sort of confused pre-revolutionary situation that Erasmus had spent most of his life not praying, but hoping for. And he was in very nearly exactly the wrong place, if not for having the good luck to run into Dunstable and his fellow travelers.

The broad boulevards and steel-framed stone buildings of metropolitan Fort Petrograd were awash with excited strikers from the munitions factories and-not entirely to Erasmus's surprise-sailors from the vast naval base sprawling across the southwestern rim of the bay (which Miriam would have pointed to on a map and called "San Mateo"). Erasmus made a snap decision. "Forget the Crimea Barracks, take me to City Hall," he told Joe.

City Hall, a neoclassical lump of concrete reinforced with steel-and, curiously, featuring no windows less than eighteen feet above ground level, and clear lines of fire in all directions-was the logical place to go. And so, when they were stopped two blocks from the place by a barricade ma