Jubilee Year

by Gerard O'Neill

  The response was immediate as the police dragged the scrawny old man back to the fence.

  The soiled union representative looked frantic. He turned to the officers and gestured for them to release their prisoner.

  Their decision came too late.

  One constable caught a glimpse of a missile traveling toward at his head and sprang back just in time. The beer bottle exploding at the base of the podium behind him, spraying the trade unionists and the police alike in froth and glass shards.

  The old man yanked himself free in the chaos, and delighted that he had done so, pumped his fists into the air and shouted his defiance.

  The men on the stage fell back as they saw the unity of the crowd heavily weighted against them. They turned to the police with fearful eyes, but the black line of armed men had already fallen back behind the iron fence.

  A figure with a scarf wrapped around his lower face leaped up onto the podium. The scarf fell away to reveal the face of a young man. He grabbed the rostrum with both hands and leaned out over his audience.

  “Why do we bother to listen to the rotten corrupted unions? Have we ever received a fraction of what they promised us over the years? Look at the hands they have delivered us into! Are they not drenched in our blood, in our sweat, and in our tears? The unions have betrayed us!”

  Cries of agreement were sparse at first, but the excitement was contagious, and the response grew louder.

  “Is it not true that we all share the same miserable conditions?” He peered out into the faces around him and tried again. “Are we not united in our struggle?”

  This time the crowd roared their answer.

  “Yes!”

  “Are we not the workers? Are our numbers not far greater than theirs? Are we not powerful when we stand together?”

  The angry young man’s voice echoed off the sides of the buildings. A great cheer rose from the crowd and it began to sound like the howl of a hurricane.

  The union speakers with their megaphones had melted away. They were all behind the high iron fence where the police cowered with hands resting nervously on the holsters of their sidearms.

  A wave of collective anger rolled through the gathered masses. But in moments it was replaced by something urgent and righteous. An angry buzz came from the crowd as if from a huge hive of hornets.

  “Come on,” Penny said, eyeing the lines of police behind the fence. “It's turning nasty.” She grasped his hand and pulled him with her.

  They moved to the outer fringe and found themselves caught in a current of moving bodies that pushed against them and threatened to propel them into the thick of it. With a growing sense of urgency, Penny locked her arm in his and pulled him along with her.

  “We have to find a lane or a mall,” she told him.

  “Don't worry!” He told her, and he hoped his fear did not show in his face. He saw her frightened eyes were open wide, and he knew that she saw the same.

  They worked their way to the side of the main crowd and moved up the street toward the city towers. The valley of concrete echoed with the beat of drums and the chant of the protesters who by now had formed into a column moving down the street. Excited young and old and beckoned to Storm and Penny to join the march.

  “Where are they going?” He asked her.

  She gave a nervous giggle despite her creeping panic. “Maybe they don't know themselves.”

  He followed her down into a side street. In the distance came the sound of glass shattering and car alarms, shouts of anger, and catcalls.

  “Shit!” She exclaimed. “This wasn't a good idea.”

  Ahead of them, they saw two large identical vans that were parked diagonally, almost blocking the narrow lane. Several large men were gathered around the rear doors. Some had their faces hidden behind balaclavas; others wore helmets with face guards.

  “Look at the band of orange tape they all wore on their left arms,” Storm said. “It has to be an identifier.”

  The back doors of the vehicles flew open and large black carry bags were thrown at the feet of the men waiting outside. They reached inside the bags and handed around the thick sticks and broken bricks.

  One of the men in the van looked up. For a moment he stared at the two onlookers in surprise.

  “Okay, it’s time to leave,” Storm muttered.

  They turned on their heels and walked briskly back toward the street ignoring the shouts behind them.

  “Hey, you two. Stop!”

  “Come on!” Storm shouted, grabbing her wrist and pulling her after him. “Run!”

  They reached the corner, with the sound of boots clattering down the sidewalk behind them and gaining on them fast. They launched themselves into the line of startled marchers. Not until they were sure they were once more in the midst of the column, did they turn to face each other.

  “Who were they?” She asked him.

  “I don't know,” he said, wishing he could tell her something else. That they were going to get out of the crowd. That she was going to make it to her graduation. He hoped she couldn't hear the shaking in his voice.

  The momentum of the marching throng behind them pushed them onwards, carrying them like so much flotsam picked up by a wave. They worked their way to the edge of the crowd, keeping an eye out for the men with orange tape around their upper arms.

  “Let's try another side street,” he urged her. “We should head back to that train station you were talking about.”

  When they broke from the dense column and found themselves back on the sidewalk, they came upon a man bailed up by a group of protesters. The two of them needed to sidle along the stonework of the building closer to escape being picked up by the river of marchers. And they found themselves squeezing past the cluster of accusers.

  Their angry screaming voices were shrill even over the noise of the protesters. A large woman with a wild mass of brown hair pointed an outstretched finger. Her face contorted in anger.

  “I saw him throwing rocks at the pigs. He's here to make trouble.”

  A tall middle-aged man with a large paunch prodded his burly victim in the chest. “Are you a pig?”

  Their prisoner stared sullenly at the angry faces surrounding him. He glanced up the street. It was almost a casual gesture.

  “Look!” Storm said in Penny's ear. “Look at his left arm.”

  The man wore a single band of orange tape encircling his upper arm.

  “See what he's doing!” A woman cried out. “He's hoping to be rescued.” She took out her phone and began snapping photos of the man. “Well, congratulations,” she sneered. “Now you're going to be seen by millions.”

  “I'm not a cop,” the man said. “I hate 'em as much as you do.”

  “Is that why you're trying so hard to stir shit?” The woman screamed, pressing her nose into the face of the burly man. “We saw you throw that rock through the shop window back there.”

  Penny pulled at Storm's arm. “I know there's an entrance to the station at the corner of the next intersection.”

  They hurried into the moving mass of bodies in the center of the street, bumping and jostling as they pushed forward.

  People were running en mass down the wide street, like a torrent running from a great tap. The crowd was suddenly split apart by a black column of police dressed in riot armor. Onlookers who knew of such things would have noted the riot squad adopted a thin version of the long rectangular favored by the Roman Army. The clear high-impact polycarbonate shields were closed in an impenetrable wall as they drove forward, cutting a swathe through the people.

  18

  Sanctuary in the Mall

  The protesters parted as a canister bounced across the bitumen. A second followed, and then a third. The swirls of gas wrapping around their legs.

  Storm tripped and looking down saw a middle-aged woman huddled, her arms protecting her head. He pulled her to her feet a moment before the panicked crowd surged forward.

  The white cloud thickened.
<
br />   His throat tightened, and he began to cough, and stumbling on, he barely noticed Penny's hand was no longer in his.

  A stone edifice loomed before him. Instinct alone prevented him from blindly slamming into the wall. He took the impact on his arm and sank to a crouch. His eyes stung horribly, but he rubbed them anyway to clear his vision.

  “Storm!”

  He looked up and saw her familiar dark hair fall over him.

  All around them, people were running into one another, tripping and falling. Two youths limped by at a good pace, given their injuries. One of them with a bloodied shirt was bent under the weight of his companion, who had a hand pressed to his face as if it might fall off.

  Ahead of them, two officers had a knee each pressed into the back of a large screaming woman, pinning her to the sidewalk. A third officer with her face almost hidden by a gas mask was firing her Taser in a methodical fashion. She ignored the screams of pain and outrage. Each pulse of electricity crackling down the wires mimicked the signals from the downed protestor’s brain, wresting control from it, and sending bundles of fibers into unrelenting and agonizing spasms.

  A black-gloved hand reached out and grabbed at Storm as the two stumbled past. But the officer was not able to hold both the twisting body beneath him and make yet another arrest at the same time.

  Storm spun on his feet, wrenching himself free from the man's grasp.

  The two of them ran. Never daring to look back. Not until they reached the top of a set of steps.

  Penny recognized the familiar large pavement stones under her feet and the blue and white flags flapping over their heads. They were in Martin Place, the busy pedestrian thoroughfare in the city's central business district.

  Office workers and shoppers hurried by to escape the chaos. Along the streets, red and blue lights flashed past as police forced traffic aside with horn blasts that challenged pain thresholds. The blasts of stun grenades echoed off the glass towers to mix with the shriek of sirens. The noise of chaos compressed in the concrete valleys. And in the shop fronts, people stood with mouths open in frozen screams as silent black helicopters flitted overhead like vultures over the carnage of the protest a block away.

  “Over there!” Penny cried out.

  The entrance to a mall was just a short distance ahead of them.

  The man behind the counter looked to be the only person inside the cafe. He gave a nod of acknowledgment. At the corner of the mall entrance was a bank, its glass windows of offering them a view of the street and a chance to watch out for a black uniform. It gave them the possibility of another escape.

  Penny pulled off her jacket and stared at the streaks of blood on the material. It was ruined but at least the blood was not her own. She turned it inside out and used the soft lining to rub her stinging eyes.

  Storm sank into the chair beside her.

  Outside the door of the cafe, two men stood beside a trestle table covered in booklets. The younger of the two watched the commotion outside, but the older man had taken a keen interest in the two refugees sitting at the table. He walked into the cafe, unscrewed the cap and set the plastic bottle down on the table top.

  “You need to wash the chemicals off your face,” he told Penny. “But be careful not to rub your eyes,” he added.

  The moment she finished splashing her face, Storm snatched the bottle from her hands. He shook what was left over his head, tilting his face up under the water.

  “This place has just gone totally insane!” Penny said, her voice breaking.

  “You are safe here for the moment,” the man told them.

  “How do you know?” Penny asked him.

  “Because you are not on the street in the protest!”

  “Of course not! We were never part of it.”

  “Are you sure? Aren't you both workers, just like the people they are rounding up? The reactionary violence of the security forces is shocking, isn't it?” He nodded to the street. “They want us to be afraid of them.”

  He studied Penny's face.

  “You are not afraid of the truth, are you?”

  “What are you selling?” Storm asked, bewildered and suddenly feeling the flush of anger. He was not in the mood for an interrogation, but instinct told him to play for time. “What's in your pamphlets?”

  “The truth.”

  “So, you're selling religion?”

  “We represent workers and students in every country. People like you. We are here to inform.”

  Storm got to his feet and walked out the door to see the booklets lying on the table. He walked back inside and sat down to read the booklet given to him by the young man outside.

  Penny pulled the pamphlet from Storm's hand and ran her eyes down it, then she stood up.

  “Storm?”

  “Let me ask you both a question,” asked the younger man who had followed Storm back inside. “Why do you think so many joined the march today?”

  “Come on,” Penny said, pulling at Storm's arm. “Let's go.”

  “Everyone's fed up with the government and the bankers!” Storm said shaking himself free of Penny's grasp.

  “Austerity is imposed on us by the ruling class,” the older man told them. “That means the government refused to fund social services and forced us to pay one hundred percent of the essentials like water. Things we must have just to live. You have heard of the gap between the one percent and the rest. Well, the gap between the ruling class and the working class is huge. The financial, social, and political system is broken beyond repair. They make us pay for it. And when I say us I mean the ninety-nine percent. The working class. Ultimately, our ruling class will take us all to war. They will fight the ruling class of a different nation and have their workers die just to steal the wealth of that country.”

  “That's not true,” Penny said unused to being lectured to by a total stranger and feeling bombarded by too much information. “Things do improve,”

  “How will anything improve if we continue on like this?” Their lecturer asked her.

  Penny waved her finger at the activist.

  “Politicians represent the views of the people. They argue those ideas in Parliament and things change. It's not so complicated, and change doesn't happen overnight!”

  “Do you think we have a democracy?” The man asked.

  She considered the question. “Well—whatever it is we have right now, I know I didn't vote for it. Then again, I never vote so I guess I can't say anything.”

  “Why not? And why don't you vote?”

  “No one inspires me,” she replied.

  “That’s not an accident, is it? All the political parties uphold the status quo. They support austerity and war. The politicians and their policies reflect only the needs of the ruling class. The thin layer of society who own the mines, the factories, and the banks.”

  “Yes, well I don't find any of that relevant to me,” Penny said with a despondent shrug.

  She turned to Storm and pulled him aside. “These guys are Marxists!” She whispered in his ear. “You can't argue with them because they're always going to be right.”

  “We’re speaking to the students at Sydney University on the main concourse this afternoon. Why don't you stop by?” The older man suggested to Storm.

  “Storm?

  “Okay,” he said to Penny when he caught the look on her face. “Let's go then.”

  19

  Arrested

  Storm had promised Penny he would make it to her graduation. What he really didn’t want to do was to endure breakfast and polite conversation with Penny’s stuck up friends and their parents beforehand. He told her he would be there after he had a coffee. Instead, he took a bus to Sydney University and found his way to the main concourse. He had no idea why, but the man in the mall had made it sound interesting. Maybe he could find out what the protest was about. It didn’t matter. He was only filling in time before the graduation. He told himself he would stay thirty minutes max before he headed straight
to Penny’s graduation.

  The man with the mic accepted the water bottle from a colleague, and took several long sips, while he sized up his audience. There was no doubting there were many who were interested. The solid rounds of applause said as much. The dissenters though were far from giving up. He set down the bottle and switched on the mic.

  Another soda can hit the concrete behind him. The speaker tapped it aside without a pause in his oratory.

  Storm sat down on the fringe of the student audience, not far from a large Gothic arch of carved stone. The overhead stonework looked like it could provide shelter from the drizzle that was not too far away. The sky had clouded over again.

  The humidity was building, and it didn't take long before a dribble of sweat trickled down his chest. Most of the students were wearing T-shirts and shorts, and rubber flip-flops on their feet. He gazed down at his jeans and sneakers. They were his dress choice for Penny's graduation.

  It seemed easy enough to pick the hecklers in the audience. They all seemed to be dressed more or less like him. And there was something else familiar about them. He realized with a start it was their chunky bodies. They were the kind of people he imagined were seriously into lifting weights. They did not look like the skinny, mostly hungry looking students who made up the majority of those sitting around him.

  “He's a bloody commie,” jeered one of the hecklers, a stocky woman. “He would have us all in chains. Remember what Stalin did to his own people!”

  “Well, that is an excellent point you raise,” the man with the mic said to the woman. “We must realize history is a chain of cause and effect. This is the only way we can clearly see the direction we are heading. Stalin was a nationalist and a dictator. Russia's bureaucracy was a betrayal of the workers' revolution.”

  A can bounced off the steps behind feet of the speaker and spun across the concrete.

  For the second time in the same day, Storm felt the collective disquiet of those around him. Students were nodding their heads in agreement with the words of the man up front. Some raised their fists above their hands using the same gesture he had seen among the crowd on the street.