…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 tunnel mouth and declaims in glossolalia and then in words. He says he is a prophet of the spider, and though they do not obey the commands he gives them the workers of the iron road watch him with hesitant respect.

He walks among the forced idleness of the track-layers. He shouts at the tunnellers to put down their picks and go nude and run away north into the unknown places of the continent. He shouts at them to copulate with the spiders in the dust. They are all draped in threads from the Weaver’s spinnerets. They are knotted in a new configuration.

– 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, tunnel-men, gendarmes. The rebuffed gather. A counterdemonstration of surly lustful men. They mutter. Some go to masturbate behind rocks; some simply go. Many stay.

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, Ann-Hari says, -no lay. No pay no lay no pay no lay.

– 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 tunnel-man comes, put it on my tab, she tells him no and he knocks her so hard it splits her eye. Belladona had her arm broke. No pay no lay, Judah. Money first from now.

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. Ann-Hari and the others swish their skirts and laugh while the men watch. Judah is not the only man who is a friend to these infuriated whores. He, Shaun Sullervan, Thick Shanks, a clutch of others watch together.

– 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, Ann-Hari says. -Won’t take promises. You pay; until then no lay.

– We ain’t got the money Ann you know that sweetheart…

– 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 tunnellers. It is a rape squad intent on punishment. But there is an alarm, a panic from Remade women sent to clean clothes near the Fucktown tents. They see the men creeping and yell, and the men are on them quickly and attacking to silence them. A squad of the prostitutes come running.

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 tunnel-men strike. They gather at the tunnel mouth. The foremen run to negotiate. The tunnellers have their spokesman: a thin man, a weak geothaumaturge, his hands stained basalt black by the stone he makes into slurry.

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 tunnellers have made demands. The graders will not work. The track-layers cannot, and only sit in the sun and play dice or fight. It is becoming violent like a prairie town. The perpetual train sits. The gendarmes and foremen confer. There is rain, but it is hot and unrefreshing.

– 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 innard that speaks. His breath leaves him a moment at the thought that he can hear its words.

– 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 tunnel mouth with others from the idle workforce. The tunnellers are arranged like a fighting unit, and they carry their picks. The foremen and gendarmes are before them, with a corps of tethered Remade.